RECOVERY: Mixed Doubles

(See front cover) One day last week a bather at Bethany Beach, Del. walked into the surf wearing his wrist watch. The salt water all but ruined the watch but did not harm the bather. For sea baths, sunshine and rest in company with his wife were decidedly good for General Hugh S. Johnson—all the better because, as the watch incident showed, he was still preoccupied with business.

A United Pressman cornered him as he returned from a walk on the beach with two neighborhood children. Standing on the sand, wearing a blue shirt open at the throat, blue trousers, white shoes and no socks, the NRAdministrator unburdened his mind:

“I am not going to allow the progress that has been made thus far to be nullified by interests which are opposing me on any such silly pretext as that my administration has been irascible and intemperate.

“I, for one, have no political aspirations. I am going to carry out my administration as I think it should be done. I am not given to suspicion of other people’s motives. Suspicion, you know, is the shadow of a man’s own soul. If there have been suspicion and implications of bad faith, they do not come from me.”

There was, as usual, a fine ring of righteousness in the General’s words but little enlightenment for the country at large as to one of the fiercest, fieriest backstage fights of the New Deal. All Washington knew that a mighty tussle was in progress over the future of NRA. Newshawks got circumstantial glimpses of the contest—a second-hand piece of gossip here, an angry word by way of confirmation there.

General Johnson would fight like a demon behind closed doors and then be circumspect and calm as a May morn in the White House lobby. Putting together all its available information, the Press came to this conclusion:

General Johnson and Donald Randall Richberg, NRA’s general counsel, were at swords’ points. At a meeting of NRA’s Policy Board lately the NRAdministrator had accused Mr. Richberg of playing “fast and loose” with him. Fatigued almost to the breaking point, the doughty General had bellowed: “I expect complete loyalty from every one of you. And that means you”—pointing a finger at Acting General Counsel Blackwell Smith—”and you”— pointing at Economic Adviser Leon Henderson. Messrs. Smith and Henderson politely retorted that their resignations were already on their chief’s desk.

The tale went on. At the White House, President Roosevelt was supposed to have suggested that General Johnson go to Europe to study recovery measures. The General rapped back: “You’re trying to ease me out like George Peek.” Then he stalked angrily back to his office. Frances M. (“Robbie”) Robinson, his onetime stenographer but now his ultraloyal assistant and shadow at NRA headquarters, urged him to make a “dramatic exit,” for Business would surely rally to him if he did so. So the General dictated a two-and-a-half page letter. By midnight it was done and on its way to the White House by messenger. The President, reading in bed, laid aside his book, took up the Johnson missive. Then and there with his own hand, Mr. Roosevelt wrote the General a note refusing his resignation.

Such was the tale. The details might be denied one by one as fabulous but their total effect was to dramatize beyond any denial the inward convulsions through which NRA is passing. About questions of impersonal policy, a highly personal contest was raging. This two-fold fight was not between Hugh Johnson and Donald Richberg alone. It was, in effect, a game of mixed doubles.

The Ladies. Last February one of the ladies of the New Deal spoke thus over the radio: “. . . From Helen of Troy, the Queen of Sheba, Cleopatra, Elizabeth, Catherine of Russia and Queen Victoria, all through the centuries, governing women have had a part in shaping the destiny of nations. . . . This country has never had a Secretary of Labor better informed of her job, more certain of her goal, more skilled in reaching it … than the present incumbent.”

All Washington knew last week that Madam Secretary Perkins was one who wanted changes in NRA. Considering the number of times she and Mr. Richberg had been in session with the President it seemed not at all unlikely that she might reach her goal.

But the tribute to women who governed by sense or sex was made by General Johnson’s partner in the current contest, a slim ambitious miss who, a year before, had been an inconspicuous nobody at Democratic National Committee head quarters. Thinking more of her future than her past, NRAssistant Frances Robinson continued:

“Take our own government in Washington today. You will find in practically every branch an able conscientious woman who really runs the particular office. She rarely has the title. . . . Perhaps some of you have wondered how politicians, lifted suddenly from obscurity, can carry on the intricate affairs of a highly technical government job. There is no mystery. These transplanted gentlemen have not, by magic, become genii of finance or statesmanship, but they have found in their new offices some unassuming woman who knows what it’s all about and carries on. I could name a dozen such cases, but I won’t. Custom has hallowed the procedure. . . . When all this emergency is over, there will be a sudden realization that it was women who implemented . . . the New Deal.”

Ably and conscientiously has “Robbie” herself “implemented” General Johnson. Last year when some critics carped at his giving his “stenographer” a $6,800 job, the General justly retorted: “I think that was one below the belt.” No mere stenographer was she. The little 100-lb., 5-ft. high “Robbie” is a self-made woman. Washington thinks she is a Jewess, but she has deliberately veiled her early life in mystery, admitting only that she was born on Christmas Day, 1906 in Troy, N. Y., and was reared in Illinois. She once had a job with Radio Corporation of America. In the summer of 1933 General Johnson picked her up at Democratic headquarters in Washington.

Although she joined him first as secretary, she quickly advanced to a position of importance. During the code-making days she worked with him often as much as 20 hours at a stretch. She reviewed parades with him. She got herself photographed with him. She attended banquets with him. She went to business conferences at the White House with him. She went to diplomatic receptions at the White House with him. And, above all, she traveled with him—over 40,000 miles to date, mostly by air. She went to the Pacific Coast with him last July, joined his fishing parties, left San Francisco agog with gossip. On the way home she stopped off with the General at his mother’s in Okmulgee, Okla. for a dinner of steak, shoestring potatoes and lemon pie. Frequently during their hops, she takes down the speech which he is to deliver at their next alighting, later stands at his elbow while he delivers it. When the secretary of NRA Division Administrator George Berry complained that her boss would not wear white shoes with his linen suit, “Robbie” dug up an extra pair of General Johnson’s for Mr. Berry.

But Miss Robinson is more than a tireless shadow. She is a power in NRA. Wearing up-to-date styles and a bejeweled blue eagle at her throat, she plays NRA hostess to important visitors, tells them funny stories. With be-rouged lips and frequently carrying a cigaret, she trots in ” out of offices on her high heels, sometimes dropping a wink to those in her favor, giving curt directions in a slightly strident voice, popping from telephone to telephone to give orders to captains of industry and Cabinet officers. Once last year, badgered by newshawks’ questions, General Johnson snapped: “I don’t know. Ask the little skirt.” Since then at press conferences, to which she wears a hat, she spouts facts and statistics encyclopedically. Newshawks play up to her because her word is law. For reward she straightens their neckties and dusts their lapels, while she tells about the $1 breakfast that she had to leave untouched that morning at the Shoreham Hotel in order to rush to the office.

To a woman of her character, her boss’ cause is her cause. Last week she was visiting him at Bethany Beach when the stories of his quarrel with Mr. Richberg were being circulated. When she returned, newshawks were waiting for her in NRA’s outer office. With flashing eyes and the look of an injured woman, she swept past them into her private office. Later she gave them to understand that she had not implemented the intra-NRA quarrel: “The General does not need any counsel. He has a mind of his own and a strong one. He doesn’t need any advice from a little stick like me.”

The Gentlemen. Very few officials in Washington do not like General Johnson. Erratic they have found him, sometimes unstable in his decisions, nearly always so overworked during the past year that he was in a constant state of irritation, but withal honest, forthright, energetic. Those who would welcome his departure do so only because if he stays they see no way of: 1) altering NRA policies; 2) changing NRA from a melodrama starring Hugh S. Johnson to a businesslike administration of recovery measures. Last week it was learned that the President had. as a reward of merit, raised the salary of the General from $6,800 to $15,000—equal to that of the Vice President, the Speaker, members of the Cabinet.

The reason General Johnson had served for a whole year at such a lowly salary was that he had assigned NRA’s top salary, $14,000, to Donald Richberg in order to get the Chicago lawyer as NRA’s chief counsel. Whereas General Johnson was the son of a postmaster and politician in rough and tumble Oklahoma, Donald Richberg was the son of a successful lawyer with a good practice in Chicago. Son Richberg, as became his position in the world, went through the University of Chicago and Harvard Law School, entered his father’s law office—and promptly became disgusted with the world around him. To him the discovery that large corporations play politics and get favors from local politicians was a terrible shock. He wrote a book, The Shadow Men. (In 1934 it would have been Forgotten Men.) When Theodore Roosevelt campaigned in 1912, Richberg went into politics as a Bull Mooser. He went in again in 1924 as a supporter of La Follette, but he did not back a winning political combination until he went to Washington last year to tie up with the New Deal.

In the meantime he made his reputation as a liberal in his own profession. He fought for Labor and against great corporations. He became counsel for the railway brotherhoods. As counsel for the National Conference on the Valuation of Railroads, he helped to write the Railway Labor Act of 1926. He was special counsel for the city in Chicago’s attack on the Insull gas company. As a friend of the court, he argued the O’Fallon Railroad valuation case before the Supreme Court in 1929.

When General Johnson took him to head NRA’s legal department, Industry looked at his record, heartily distrusted him. Gradually it came to think well of his integrity and fairness as an NRA official. But critics turned up among his old progressive friends who felt he had grown less radical. He denied this:

“I have never been as radical as I have been pictured. I am antiSocialist. But, as for my so-called radicalism, I am as radical in my beliefs as ever. However there is a difference between being an advocate and a man in public office. My job was general counsel for the NRA and I believe that if a man in public office permits himself to be partisan to any one group he loses his usefulness as a public servant. People cannot see that. They want you to be partisan.”

For a whole year Donald Richberg worked desperately hard for his friend Hugh Johnson in spite of their different temperaments. He also became useful to Franklin Roosevelt and gradually the President found how closely he and NRA’s counsel saw eye to eye. Month by month Richberg and Johnson grew apart while Richberg and Roosevelt grew together. Before the President set out for Hawaii he “borrowed” Richberg from NRA and made him temporary head of the National Emergency Council to develop and co ordinate the New Deal’s recovery pro gram. What developments Mr. Richberg planned may be seen when NRA is reorganized. Last week the President renewed his temporary job for 30 days. But one thing Donald Richberg had already accomplished. He had gathered material for a series of reports on what the New Deal had already done. The first instalments on NRA, AAA and Relief were already published, official compilations of results, formal rather than critical, admirable material for New Deal politicians to draw on for their campaign speeches.

Issues. The temperamental difference between General Johnson and Mr. Richberg is large. One talks loud, the other little. One overworks habitually and lunches at his desk. The other works hard but goes out to lunch, home for dinner. Yet they might have been held together by mutual respect for each other’s honesty had not differences in their philosophies cropped up. Johnson’s idea of NRA was basically that businessmen should get together and improve conditions. To that end he lashed Industry on with his bold tongue for a whole year. Similarly, his idea of NRA reorganization is largely an improvement in its efficiency, to teach business to run itself better.

He lacks in good measure the simple conviction which Mr. Richberg shares with other New Dealers, that under the old order selfishness and greed reigned supreme, that rugged individualism was another name for “goldplated anarchy,” that “the primary reason for industrial enterprise is to provide a livelihood to workers.”

Hence last week General Johnson, going doggedly ahead with his plans for reorganization, announced the grouping of NRA codes into 22 new divisions with the eventual hope of consolidating the 682 present codes into 250. But this was merely a change in executive method, no change in aim.

Mr. Richberg, less fond of public pronouncements, did not make public his proposals, but those close to the Administration had a general idea of their trend, a change of NRA aims. The two big issues were:

1) Competition. NRA’s policy under General Johnson has been to suspend the anti-trust laws, to allow some price-fixing, some limitation of production. Mr. Richberg, a lifelong advocate of fair and free competition, tends to look askance on such measures. If his views are followed in reorganizing NRA, price-fixing may go by the boards, along with limitation of production, and suspension of the anti-trust laws. That, at least, is the direction of his inclinations and those of his partner, Madam Secretary Perkins.

2) Regulation. General Johnson looks upon NRA as a means for encouraging business to regulate itself. He has indicated that he looks forward eventually to turning NRA over to business, allowing the Government merely to keep tab on how business behaves. Mr. Richberg thinks of regulation not in terms of self-regulation but in terms of such regulation as is imposed by the Federal Trade Commission. Instead of turning codes more and more back to industry he may well favor putting representatives of the Government and of labor on code authorities. “A middle course between the anarchy of unplanned, undisciplined industrialism and the tyranny of State control,” is his concept of NRA’s function—a middle course, perhaps, but far from General Johnson’s idea of the middle.

Such differences of theory rather than personal differences were what stood between Mr. Richberg and General Johnson last week. To the testy General his general counsel’s advocacy of changes in Johnson’s own NRA could not help but savor of disloyalty. Mr. Richberg’s loyalty to his own ideals put him in a delicate position regarding his old friend. But neither wished to quarrel with the other. Which one eventually gets the upper hand will be decided by President Roosevelt, but there is little doubt which way he leans. He does not want to break with the General, especially before election, but he has no thought whatever of parting with Donald Richberg.

If anyone wanted a clue of how the wind blows he had only to be in Washington last week. General Johnson was away on vacation while NRA’s remaking was under consideration. Donald Richberg, busy with multitudinous conferences on future policy, slipped out early to pick up his wife and their 8-year-old daughter Eloise at their temporary home in Chevy Chase and go house-hunting for another, more permanent residence in Washington’s environs.