Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/moyfiles/1933moy.001

Text File | 1993-07-21 | 14KB | 286 lines

                                                                              ╚January 1, 1934

RECOVERY 

Man of the Year:Hugh Samuel Johnson



   The year 1933 was the fourth in the greatest industrial crisis
in history. Standing between an old world that was forever dead
and a new world that was not fully born, whom would the
discerning and alert U.S. citizen pick as Man of the Year?

   Notably barren of candidates was the British Commonwealth.
Pious Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald's London Economic
Conference was a notorious fiasco. In rapid succession, France
dealt and discarded three Cabinets in twelve months, produced no
leader sufficiently bold or capable to rescue her from the
climbing quicksands of insolvency. In Russia Maxim Maximovich
Litvinoff was a hero for his success in bringing about
U.S. recognition of the U.S.S.R., but that country's perennial
Man of the Year remained Josef Stalin, whose dictatorship was
marked by no major innovation.

   After three years of political ups-&-downs, Adolf Hitler at
last sat atop the German Totalitarian State, but Hitler lost Man
of the Year stature as the result of the wave of international
resentment and boycott he fomented by his hysterical anti-Semitic
campaign. And Hitlerism had yet to lift Germany from its economic
trough. Possibly Italy's Benito Mussolini will be 1934 Man of the
Year when his new Corporative State begins to show results.

   Another candidate for Man of Next Year is bellicose General
Sadao Araki of Japan. But War Minister Araki is not yet Japan's
dictator and last week his Emperor became the father of his first
son.

   Air-minded individuals might pick Italo Balbo, leader of
Italy's mass flight to the World's Fair, as the year's
outstanding airman. But the Federation Aeronautique
Internationale hinted that it would make no award this year,
having honored Flyer Bablo once before.

   In the field of medicine no young Banting skyrocketed from
obscurity with a cancer cure. Geneticist Thomas Hunt Morgan of
Caltech received a Nobel Prize for his studies in the heredity of
fruit flies, but Dr. Morgan's reward was the result of research
carried on over a period of many years.

   Dropping his search in the world field and turning his eyes
toward home, the Man-of-the-Year-hunter would discover no likely
candidates in the realm of sport. No golfer won more than one big
match, and Robert Tyre Jones's record of 1930 (British & U.S.
open, British & U.S. amateur) had not been remotely approached.
Frank Shields, who was left off the Davis Cup team for his
erratic playing, was named No. I U.S. tennist, after Ellsworth
Vines turned professional.

   As picked by the Pulitzer Prize judges, Maxwell Anderson's
Both Your Houses might be called Play of the Year. However, it
developed early trouble at the box-office. George M. Cohan's
performances in Pigeons & People and Ah Wilderness ranked high at
both ends of the season, but represented no zenith to that
talented actor's career.

   With Little Women, Cinemactress Katharine Hepburn made a place
for herself in the film firmament. But Greta Garbo is still
America's Swedish Sweetheart.

   Among books, best seller was Hervey Allen's 2 3/4-lb. Anthony
Adverse, yet this super-romance was a retrogression in literary
technique.

   As to the nation's financial community, skewered by
investigations and hogtied by the Securities Act, Virginia's
sardonic Senator Glass articulated a widely-held public estimate
when he remarked: "Down in my town not long ago they hanged a
banker for marrying a white woman."

   As the selection narrowed down, it became plain to the alert
U.S. observer that he must choose his Man of the Year from within
his Government. Who? No member of the Cabinet, with the debatable
exception of busy Secretary of the Interior Ickes, had stood out
head and shoulders above his fellows. No Senator, no
Representative had glittered individually at the Capitol. In the
White House sat Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He was Man of the Year
in 1932, when the New Deal was new. More popular than the day he
won the Presidency, he had lived up to the brightest expectations
of the electorate. But he needed no fresh laurels, could well
afford to pass them along to an associate.

   The secret of the New Deal's success lies in the well-known
fact that the time to make sociological hay is when the economic
sun is not shining. But four years of hard times did not soften
the U.S. industrial order, which had gone its untrammeled way for
generations. Given a program, given the political power to
legalize it, it nevertheless took a dynamic personality to hammer
the mold of "industrial democracy" on to the nation's adamantine
industrial life. Such a man had to possess an enormous amount of
physical energy. He had to have gusto. He had to be a
phrasemaker. He had to be handy with the tools of propaganda. He
had to have the ruthless drive of a Cromwell and the tact of a
Disraeli. In 2,000 A.D. there will still be alive hundreds &
hundreds of octogenarians to whom the words "chiselers," "codes,"
"crackdown" and "Blue Eagle" will have an historic association.
And to them the Man of the Year of 1933 will be National Recovery
Administrator Hugh Samuel Johnson.

   The year was more than one third gone before Man of the Year
Johnson burst like a flaming meteorite on the country. On May 19
the New York Times first reported that he, "soldier, lawyer and
manufacturer," had been offered "almost unlimited powers" under
"the pending Industrial Regulation Bill." As administrator of the
Wartime Draft General Johnson had enjoyed publicity aplenty, but
since then he had been out of sight in the news. After June 16,
when the Recovery Act was signed, Man of the Year Johnson's
scowl, his broad mouth and furrowed brow, his pithy epithets, the
daily state of his health and temper, made acres of newspictures,
miles of news copy every 24 hours. He was not the Administrator
of NRA. he was NRA. In plotting their common course through the
last six months of 1933, future historians will mark well these
dates:

   July 9 -- The cotton textile code is signed, providing a
40-hr. week, $12 minimum weekly wages, abolishing child labor --
the first and still the most satisfactory trade agreement. It
was arrived at, said General Johnson, "in a goldfish bowl."

   July 27 -- With heavy industry lagging behind in the
codification march, the President sends 5,000,000 "re-employment
agreements" to 5,000,000 employers of whom 3,000,000 sign. The
Blue Eagle is born. "A truce on selfishness, a test of
patriotism," cried General Johnson.

   Aug. 5 -- National Labor Board is created to settle the wave
of strikes created by the resurgence of organized Labor.

   Aug. 19 -- "The most memorable date in NRA history." It is
sweltering in Washington. Since early morning, Administrator
Johnson has been toiling with three groups of stubborn
industrialists. Just before midnight, when the President is
leaving for Hyde Park, General Johnson dashes for the White
House. "Three major codes signed!" he cries. "That's a day's
work!" Estimated jobs created: lumber, 115,000; steel, 50,000;
oil, 240,800.

   Aug. 27 -- The automobile business becomes the fifth major
industry to be codified. "My one regret," says General Johnson,
"is that Henry Ford did not sign."

   Aug. 31 -- Dudley Cates of Chicago, Johnson's right hand man
for industry, resigns. Mr. Cates believed in vertical unions,
rather than the oldstyle horizontal unions of the A.F. of L.

   Sept. 26 -- General Johnson retires to a hospital for four
days with a boil, rises to fly 17 more codes to Manhattan for the
President to sign.

   Oct. 9 -- Summer boomlet ends. "Buy Now" campaign is rushed
into the breach.

   Oct. 10 -- With strikes still pocking the nation from coast to
coast, General Johnson warns the A.F. of L. convention: "The
plain, stark truth is that you cannot tolerate the strike. . . .
Public confidence will turn against you!"

   First crackdown, on a Gary, Ind. roadhouse proprietor, whose
Blue Eagle is recalled.

   Oct. 12 -- Weirton Steel strike starts.

   Oct. 25 -- Administrator Johnson announces NRA's
reorganization into four industrial divisions. A fifth division,
compliance, he personally takes in charge.

   Nov. 17 -- Steel, pointing to a 32.1% increase in wages, a
28.3% increase in payroll, announces it is "satisfied" with its
tentative code, renews it for six months.

   Dec. 11 -- Some 150 dry cleaners are hauled to Washington for
price agreement violations. To the Federal Trade Commission were
handed 100 of their cases, NRA's greatest "crackdown."

   Dec. 13 -- Ninety code administrators appointed in one day.

   Net. Reviewing NRA's first six months, during which General
Johnson mustered 1,500,000 volunteer workers and speakers, issued
100,000,000 "pieces of literature," plastered millions of Blue
Eagle posters throughout the land, the historian will look to net
results as well as dates. When the NRAdministration first settled
down in the Department of Commerce Building, it had 87 employes,
with a half-month payroll of $6,619.41. NRA now employs 1,555
people, uses 105,000 sq. ft. of office space, meets a $166,608.40
bi-monthly payroll. General Johnson gets $6,000 a year. His
secretary, nurse, guardian and constant companion at Washington,
in airplanes, on trains, at banquets, Frances ("Robbie")
Robinson, gets $5,780. When that news got out last month, Man of
the Year Johnson hotly announced: "I think that was one below the
belt. She knows more about this organization than anyone else. I
am sure that nobody here ever thought she was a mere stenographer
or secretary. She has been my personal assistant straight
through." Not on the payroll is Mrs. Hugh Johnson of the
Consumers Board. Son Kilbourne, 26, on leave from the Army, who
spells his name with a "t" as his father used to, draws only his
2nd lieutenant's pay ($143 per mo.) as a member of NRA's
compliance Board.

   Of the 3,000,000 Blue Eagles NRA has issued, only 48 have been
revoked. It has fought eight code violators in the courts, has
won seven cases. Pending are twelve more. To date 168 codes have
been approved. Seventy-five more will be approved by New Year.
Man of the Year Johnson believes that he has put 4,000,000 people
to work, has upped the national payroll $2,500,000,000 in the
past half-year. last week the President extended his blanket re-
employment agreements to May 1, but these have lost their
importance since 70% of the nation's workers will be covered by
regular codes by Jan. 1.

   Reception. Whatever the phrase "industrial democracy" may
mean, it is the heart of the President's recovery program. As
embodied in the NRA, "industrial democracy" no longer terrifies
U.S. businessmen. General Johnson's bark has been found to be
worse than his bite. Last week William S. Knudsen, executive vice
president of General Motors, was happy to say: "General Motors
Corp., with the rest of the industry, supports our President's
recovery program to the fullest extent.... This is final,
official and without reservations."

   The shift of sentiment toward NRA was brought about in part by
Industry's realization that the days of cut-throat competition
and laissez faire are over. Few industrialists want them back.
Many of them would agree with NRA's Divisional Administrator
Arthur Dare Whiteside, Dun & Bradstreet executive, one of the
most experienced practical businessmen in the Administration, who
said last week: "It is obvious in retrospect that four years ago
this month the old industrial order which existed for generations
broke down forever. Today we have set up a new order which has
been built on a foundation which I firmly believe will prove
indestructible, although I am definitely convinced that it will
be necessary to make alterations."

   Phrasemaker into Orator. Few Men of the Year actually achieve
intrinsic personal development within the period they dominate.
But General Johnson developed from a picturesque phrasemaker, who
could throw a highly printable aphorism to the Press while
climbing up a Pullman step, into an embroidered and inspiring
orator.

   "Chiselers," "Old Guard lookout men," and "Rugged
Individualists," were his principal targets of attack on his
barnstorming trips out of Washington to sell NRA to the country.
He can whip almost any audience into a fine frenzy of exaltation
for the President's recovery program and, adopting a familiar
Wartime trick, can make it appear downright unpatriotic to block
NRA's advance. Yet for a man who lives by invective and abuse of
his foes, General Johnson is surprisingly thin-skinned to
criticism of himself and his cause.

   To the National Association of Manufacturers in Manhattan
three weeks ago, Man of the Year Johnson, wearing a hard-boiled
shirt and expression, even quoted from Tennyson's "Maud" a bit of
heroic verse to achieve the desired effect upon his audience:

   We have proved we have hearts in a cause, we are noble still,

   And myself have awaked, as it seems, to the better mind:

   It is better to fight for the good, than to rail at the ill;

   I have felt with my native land, I am one with my kind. . . .

   But it was left to the citizens of Atlanta, whither Man of the
Year Johnson went on his Southern speaking tour, to hear him in
tip-top forensic form:

   "The experiment is scarcely begun and yet in the few months of
its execution it has produced 25% of the results expected of it.
. . .

   "Away, slight men! you may have been leaders once. You are
corporals of disaster now and a safe place for you may be yapping
at the flanks but it is not safe to stand obstructing the front
of this great army. You might be trampled underfoot -- not
knowingly but inadvertently -- because of your small stature and
of the uplifted glance of a people whose 'eyes have seen the
glory' and whose purpose is intent on the inspired leadership of
your neighbor and my friend Franklin Roosevelt!"