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Show r T 7 J Lconomic Highlights Industrial News Review . - Happenings that Affect the Dinner Pails, Dividend Checks and Tax "ft Bills of Every Individual. National) Nation-al) al and International Problems In-separate In-separate from Local Welfare. oOo One of the principal questions of the time is, "What does industry think of the New Deal?" You can find businessmen who are opposed to the New Deal, and you can find ones who arc for it, but a genuine con-I con-I census of opinion has been conspicu-Vq, conspicu-Vq, ously absent. During the last few (! weeks at least a partial answer to I the potent question has been afford-i3y afford-i3y ed. Two distinct sources have pro-1 pro-1 vided important, if conflicting evidence, evi-dence, on the attitude of large and middle-sized industrial'sts toward the extraordinary acts of the Roosevelt TWi reign. One source is the United States WWi chamber of commerce which, in the past, has pursued a vague, fence-j fence-j straddl'ng course in discussing poli-f(f poli-f(f tical matters. The chamber is not, as some believe, made up of the largest industrialists of the country few heads of America's vast national and international eorporat'ons belong to Bb it or attend its meetings. Its member-ship member-ship consists principally of middle-s'zed middle-s'zed industrialsts. The other day it 1111 eonvened for its annual meeting and its members went on record as being aggressively and bitterly opposed to o the New Deal in practically every " major particular. Heads of the chamber cham-ber sought to temper the chamber's resolutions, asked for a pol'cy of ' moderation, but they were snowed under un-der with the wrath of the delegates. Out of a literal uproar, the most exciting ex-citing in the chamber's history, came : 5 resolutions placing the body on record rec-ord as be'ng opposed, without . the slightest qualification, to the administration's admin-istration's social security bill, the publ'c utility act, most, of the prin-r prin-r cipal provisions of the banking act, extension of NRA (save temporarily and in a highly modified form), the proposed AAA amendments which would give the Secretary of Agriculture Agricul-ture sweeping powers over processors ame and producers, and all pending labor legislat'on. Only New Deal measures 1 5JJ, to gain approval were such relatively unimportant ones as reciprocal trade ' pacts, direct subsidies for shipping -.-J, and retirement of submarginal lands il from production. It is a sign'ficant . fact that- two years ago President Roosevelt addressed the chamber personally, a year ago sent it a conciliatory con-ciliatory message. This year he "cut it dead." Thus, the break between the adm'nistration and the type of indus-ys indus-ys k trialists who make up the' chamber iwaiii seems complete. Second' source of evi- nsi dence on business' attitude toward the ids New Deal came from an industrial r- organization of a rather d'fferent na- ture than the chamber the depart-IA depart-IA ment of commerce's business advisory jtj and planning council. This group is much smaller in membersh'p than the chamber, is much bigger in the I light of the corporations it represents. repre-sents. It consists of only Class A industrialists, in-dustrialists, such as American Telephone's Tele-phone's President Gifford, General Electric's President Swope, U. S. Steel's President Taylor, Chase Na-1 Na-1 (Continued on last page 1 I Economic Highlights tional Bank's President Aldrich. Its members meet often and informally w'th the president, represent about all the contact with American industry indus-try he has. From the council, through the White House, came a report giving giv-ing almost unqualified endorsement to the New Deal, wh eh the president produced as an antidote to the chamber cham-ber of commerce's attacks. However, ' even this, from the adminsitration standpoint, is not so cheering as it might be, inasmuch as it was immediately imme-diately claimed, by a senator, that the White House had issued only flattering flat-tering parts of the report, and had squelched all the criticism the orig n-al n-al contained. Unheard from as it has no central organization through which to speak is l'ttle business, which, in the aggregate, is the biggest big-gest business of all. The corner grocery gro-cery store doesn't look like much when stacked up against U. S. Steel but ten thousand corner grocery stores do. Attitude of l'ttle business toward the New Deal is strictly a matter of opinion. This much can be said, from a digest of a wealth of comment it does not think so much of the adm'nistration as it used to, is coming to believe that some of the measures to which it gave its unanimous unani-mous support two years ago are not so good. The way little business finally final-ly sw'ngs may determine whether the : administration rises or falls and ; may far outweigh the influences of super and middle-sized business combined. com-bined. oOo President Roosevelt wants the NRA extended for two years by congress. But he recently told a senator that he would not oppose even a ten-months' extension. Result: the senate finance committee has approved a draft of a resolution which, in the words of 'one commentator, "offered an emasculated emas-culated Blue Eagle less than ten I months to flutter to its grave." The : resolution would extend NRA to April i J, 1936, and would draw its teeth by el'minating all regulation of intrastate intra-state business, and. all price-fixing, with the exception of mineral resource re-source industries. |