Voice of Business

Formed in 1912 because President Taft (among others) wanted to hear the Voice of Business, the U. S. Chamber of Commerce today has some 750,000 members, 1,700 affiliated local Chambers, a de luxe Indiana limestone pile in Washington. There 3,000 C. of C. delegates last week gathered to let the Voice be heard. As it has been every year since 1934, its dominant note was anti-New Deal. But it had lost much of its bitterness, gained some of its optimism.

An unpleasantly complicated, two-sided issue--war--troubled the delegates in public and in private (see p. 21). It was so troublous that eventually Chambermen handed the whole question over to the Board for further study, forwent passing any specific resolutions on non-domestic issues. On domestic issues the Chamber knew its mind better.

Armstrong Cork's Henning Webb Prentis Jr. took U. S. relief policy to pieces. He said that 1) no one really knows how many unemployed there are, 2) many persons now on relief shouldn't be, 3) unemployment insurance should not be paid while a worker looks around for "suitable employment."

Resurrected for what he called his swan song was Republican Ancient (74) Charles Gates ("Charlie") Dawes, first director of the Budget. He declared his belief that the public debt soars because Government departments are putting one over on Franklin Roosevelt; that if the next President would make his department heads swear fealty to the idea of budget balancing, and if a "coordinating control system" would mete out each department's funds, deficits would end. (Three days later, indignant Franklin Roosevelt, who has not been to a C. of C. convention in seven years, told some 5,000 Democratic women that boards were no way to balance a budget, made his oft-repeated challenge: to balance the budget, which appropriation should be cut, which taxes raised?)

Between sessions Chambermen gathered by the goldfish pool in the Chamber patio, compared their New Deal-inflicted wounds. One noon some 100 of them played hookey from a Chamber luncheon, paid an adulatory visit to G. 0. P. Candidate Bob Taft. Close to 400 Senators and Representatives also had meals with the Chambermen, who have a new respect for politicians, since Congress has begun to act as a check on the New Deal.

Moreover, though Chambermen attacked New Deal administrative methods, they did not demand complete repeal of New Deal laws. Investment Bankers Association's Emmett F. Connely, after a hot blast against TNEC, suggested "innumerable instances where the administration of the laws as they now stand could be simplified to everyone's benefit without changing the law itself." Henning Prentis said: "Let government amend those laws that are obviously unfair to the businessman in certain particulars, such as the National Labor Relations Act, the Wage and Hour Act, and the two Securities acts." Yale & Towne's President W. Gibson Carey Jr., retiring Chamber president, declared: "Our governmental institutions, though somewhat perverted, are still intact," and added, "As is true in nearly every period, there has been some constructive accomplishment."

The Chamber's next president: Chicago Insuranceman James Scott Kemper.

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