TRADE: Spam for Peace

To tempestuous, highbrowed Jay Catherwood Hormel, president of meat-packing (Geo. A.) Hormel & Co., World War II is anathema. How to keep the U. S. out of it has become his most solemn thought. Month ago at Chicago’s American Legion Convention he got a bright idea: a popular song, a song that would sweep the nation like Barney Google or The Music Goes ‘Round and ‘Round.

Serious, handsome Jay C. got Professional Songwriter Harry Harris (collaborator in the current hit: Baby Me), told him what he wanted. Last week he had it: a baleful ditty, words and music by Harris, fervent approval by pop-eyed Songster Eddie Cantor, title by Hormel:

THIS AIN’T OUR WAR!

Never interfere if you should hear a battle

through your wall,

So your neighbor and his wife may not

agree,

And that’s the way the U. S. A. should feel

about the brawl,

Taking place across the sea.

THIS AIN’T OUR WAR!

We don’t want that kind of trouble any

more.

A lot of us remember when we went across to France,

And what did we get? What did we get?

We got a kick in the pants. No!

THIS AIN’T OUR WAR!

Not unless they come a-knockin’ at our

door.

If they want to fight each other, well, it’s none of our affair,

We haven’t any mothers with an extra son to spare,

Let’s sing “God Bless America” instead of

“Over There,”

THIS AIN’T OUR WAR!

This is only one more example of young (47) Jay C.’s industrial nonconformism. From the Hormel plant at Austin, Minn., he upset the packing industry with canned whole ham, spiced ham, canned whole chicken, beef stock soups and, lately, Spam (canned pork for making spam-wiches, etc.). There two years ago he signed a closed shop contract with C. I. O., defying packing industry precedent. He also guaranteed his workers 52 paychecks a year, and this year started a joint earnings plan which lets employes share the Hormel surplus (if any) with stockholders on a profits-wages ratio.

A showman before he thought of This Ain’t Our War, Jay C. proved his feeling for box office several years ago. To push Hormel’s chile con carne, he cooked up an expensive musical show called the “Hormel Chile-Beaners,” sent it barnstorming through Minnesota. It salted away Jay C.’s right to the title of the Billy Rose of the meat packers.

None of these pyrotechnics has hurt Hormel’s business. Since Jay C. took over, his company has had only one bad year: a $608,779 deficit in 1931. Last year it netted a comfortable $1,031,574 profit on sales of $56,921,648 worth of meat, vegetables, poultry products, paid a $1.50 dividend on 474,990 shares of common.