Word: nra
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...lost his job as a rewrite man on William Randolph Hearst's San Francisco Call-Bulletin because, against office orders, he insisted on attending the Guild convention in St. Paul. When after much transcontinental haggling the paper refused to reinstate him, the National Labor Relations Board recommended that NRA take away the Call-Bulletin's Blue Eagle (TIME, Dec. 24). Instantly the newspaper publishers of the U. S. sprang to arms. Dodging the merits of the Jennings case, the publishers insisted that the Labor Board had no jurisdiction over newspaper employes' complaints; that the Newspaper Code provided...
Meanwhile "Assistant President" Donald Richberg had taken the publishers' side in what had become, on the surface, a highly legalistic dispute. Ignoring the Labor Board's recommendation, NRA turned the Jennings case testimony over to the Newspaper Industrial Board for "recommendation." Temporarily appeased, Mr. Davis cautiously announced he would postpone the convention call for a few days...
...observers expected the Industrial Board to accomplish anything. Its eight members are almost always deadlocked, and a ninth impartial member can be called in only by a majority vote. Back to NRA went the Jennings case, and Mr. Davis again unlimbered his big gun, this time definitely calling a convention for Jan. 28 in Manhattan's Hotel Biltmore. In vain did Presidential Secretary Louis Howe and Secretary of Labor Perkins work for a compromise...
Such was the situation last week when President Roosevelt stepped in. To Chairman Francis Biddle of the Labor Board he wrote a "hands-off" letter which, at first blush, looked like surrender to the publishers. Acknowledging that a few of the 550 NRA codes contained special provisions for adjudicating labor disputes, the President laid down three principles limiting the Labor Board's activities in such cases: 1) The Labor Board shall refuse to hear any complaint or even review testimony. 2) It may hear complaints that a Code Board is improperly constituted, and submit recommendations to the President...
Washington wiseacres saw significant strategy in the President's action: no lover of the publishers, he has been increasingly vexed by their mounting criticisms of the New Deal. Rather than give them the slightest justification for bolting NRA. he was leaning over backward to preserve the letter of the Code, thus paying out enough rope for the publishers to hang themselves. The White House apparently expected the Newspaper Industrial Board to deal quickly and fairly with the Jennings case or else hold its peace if the Government takes a hand...