"A NUISANCE"

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 716, 16 December 1933, Page 6

"A NUISANCE"

THE N.R.A. CODES INTEIRESTING SIDELIGHT ON PRIYATE OPINION IN U.S.A. • "SIGN — AN(D'- FORGET IT" An interesting indication of prdvate opinion in the United States upon Mr. Roosevelt's N.R.A. or National Riecovery plans is contained in a letter recently received by a Rotorua resident from a friend dn the United States. The writer encioses a clipping of a leading article from th'©" New York Sun of October 23 in which favourable comment is made upon New Zealand's recovery and a speech hy Rt. Hon. J. G. Coates, criticising Mr. Roosevelt's recovery measures, is quoted. The letter states, inter alia: — \ '"Perhaps the enclosed clipping about the N.R.A. may interest you. I think Mr. Coates showed his good sense in not acceptin'g the suggestion. The N.R.A. has not proved to be the grand success ithat some deluded creatures here are trying to make out. We are having no end of trouble with it. It has, in fact, become a joke — 'though a rather painful joke, to be sure. Life, these days, is nothing but one strike after anather. As H. I. Phillips, of the New York Sun, says: — 1 "Looking around the country just now and obsierving all those labour walkouts, you can't help concluding that the Blue Eagle is having striking results." "Mandates such as the N.R.A., Prohibition, and the like, seemjngly only induce our people to become hypocrites, crooks and snoopers. You wnuld he surnrised at the ereat num-

ber of persons who sign the codes with no intention whatever of living up to them. They make no secret of it, either. In talking to each other about it, .they laugh and say, "Sign? Sure — tand then forget it." ."Some claim it is utterly impossible "to live up to the codes. "It stamds to reason that the same treatment won't apply to all businesses. What is one man's meat is another man's poison. The one thing that everyone is agreed 011 is that codes are an intolerable unisance. "To most of us, the N.RA. looks like nothing more than a slick dodge to cater to the labour unions and ensure their votes in the next presidential election. "It is no loiiger the poor downtrodden working man. Ihat moves us

to pity. It is now the poor downtrodden employ er that enlhts our sympathy. "The editor of the Saturday Evening Post said recently in an editorial: To free the working man and enslave the employer is not a sound

programme. We freely ' concede that labour has many just grievances that must be remedied; we believe that there is no place in an enlightened society for the old type of hard-lboil-ed employer; but labour can only come into its own by moderation in. ics dematids and by recognising the average . employer has had almost five years of grief and. red ink. Press him too hard and he will find it simpler to strike in his turn and let labour take over the grief and the red ink." "Well, some of the employers are doing that right now. The unions have gone quite-too far, and several firms have closed their factories altogeth'er, not being able to carry on their business without this perpetual (and, often bloody) strdfe caused by unreasonable union labour leaders and their everlasting "strikes." "The irony of it is that the poor working men themselves are in most cases crazy to get back to work again a.t almost any wage — any, thing to get started once more — but their union leaders don't let them. "And then they shriek and rave about the great army of the unemployed! "Instead of helpingi us, the N.R.A. is really holding us back. The editor of a Western newspaper hit the nail right on the head when he said: — N.R.A. has hindered rather than helped recovery in the Middle Wtest. Every farmer and every business man knows that. We were- on the way to a sound recovery until it disorganised the ranks of agriculture, business and industry. If General Johnson wants to call our designation of a spade as a spade 'treason,' he can make the most of it. It is not going to do him any good to get angry. The stern thunder of fact? drowns out his epithets." — The Marshalltown News (Iowa). "What with kidnapping, hold-ups, murders, suicides, robberies, bank failures, dictators, strikes, politicians and taxes, taxes, taxes, grafters, bootlegigers, racketeers, jazz hounds, and fanatics of all sonts — to say nothing of floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, motor car accidents, bus accidents, airplane accidents, etc., etc., this wonderful country — the Land of the Free and Home of the Brav© — is no longer the pleasant place to live in that it once was."