Business: Let’s Gang Up!

Edward F. (“Ned”) Hutton, rich stockbroker and board chairman of General Foods Corp., likes to speak his mind on business and politics. Sometimes Mr. Hutton’s phraseology lets him in for public trouble. Last summer, in sounding off against soak-the-rich taxes, he declared that today he considered himself “70% slave and 30% free.” Thereupon Columnist Westbrook Pegler mused: “This undoubtedly is true on the basis of his tax returns, but there is no denying that such slavery has its little compensations. Mr. Hutton’s slave quarters in Palm Beach might be called a model cabin. His 16,000-acre patch in South Carolina is sufficient to supply potatoes and greens for a slave family of normal appetite, besides an occasional ‘possum, and the Hutton slave ship, the Hussar, the largest sailing yacht in the world, offers a pleasant escape from the driving lash of his masters, who pay no taxes and are therefor 100% free.”

Last week Ned Hutton laid himself open to fresh trouble. This time, in the current issue of Public Utilities Fortnightly, he proposed that U. S. business unite to form a super-lobby “which will be heard . . . in the Halls of Congress, in the executive departments, and even in the White House itself.” Wrote Mr. Hutton:

“Benjamin Franklin, when signing the Declaration of Independence, said that if they did not all hang together they would all hang separately. If the major industries of this country do not hang together, if they do not openly call their stockholders and employes to the colors in a 1935 declaration of independence, the radicals that now infest the executive and legislative departments of our Government will joyously hang them all separately.”

Mr. Hutton deplored “minority pressure groups” but saw no alternative except the formation of another. What was more, “business and industry can have a lobby which will overshadow them all. Why don’t we organize it and come to the help of any part of business & industry when that help is needed? Why not create an American Federation of Business?” To rally his forces Mr. Hutton cried: “So I say: ‘Let’s gang up!’ ”

Ill abed in his South Carolina home last week, Mr. Hutton must have sat bolt upright when he heard the reaction to his suggestion. Angry editorials burgeoned. Chairman O’Connor of the House Lobby Committee thought Mr. Hutton should be investigated. Mr. Hutton’s trim, dapper figure appeared in a Rollin Kirby cartoon, soliciting Big Business support to “gang” Franklin D. Roosevelt. President Colby Chester of General Foods hastily disclaimed his chairman’s ideas as representing corporate policy. A market letter of Weingarten & Co. offered Stockbroker Hutton some sage advice: “Interests and forces opposed to the Administration can accomplish much more . . . in fighting out the issues on their merits rather than talking about . . . super-lobbies and ‘ganging up.’ ”

Desperately Mr. Hutton tried to explain by telegraph his use of the phrase “gang up.” Said he: “This is an expression that I have used ever since my boyhood days, and all I had in mind to say was ‘let’s get together.’ ” He had written the article last summer “when most of us in the business world were aroused over the threats of confiscatory legislation. Since that time, however, I have noted with pleasure that the Roosevelt Administration has taken steps in the right direction. . . .” To demonstrate his complete regeneration Mr. Hutton frowned severely on the public utility industry’s refusal to “register and comply with the law” (see p. 62).