1934-02-10 — Page 11

RIAF SUPPLEME

HONGKONG.

THE NEW DEAL? SPLENDID,

THOUSANDS BACK TO WORK; PAYROLLS JUMP MILLIONS

BY PAUL HARRISON.

The Blue Eagle is strutting pretty proudly on the sidewalks of New York. He has heard Grover A. Whalen declare in ringing tones that "the work of the NRA here has been a smashing success."

Of course Mr. Whalen is the local NRA administra- tor, and may be prejudiced. But Mr. Whalen also has figures.

The figures show that more than 500,000 persons have been put back into business and industry, a num- ber representing about half the city's unemployed only a few months ago.

Wholesale trade is approximately 18 per cent above the volume of last year, and retail trade has im- proved nearly 25 per cent.

Factories have hired 20 per cent more workers, and manufacturing payrolls have increnacit 13 рег

cent.

THOUSANDS BACK AT WORK.

In the retail field, more than 30 per cent of the businesses have signed the president's re-employ- ment agreement, 33,100 new jobs have been created, and atore payrolls have jumped $43,- 470,000 a year.

retail

Thirty thousand New Yorkers are working in reforestation camps, and about 150,000 are on the payrolls of the Civil Works Administration.

New York likes the NRA very much indeed. Conse- quently, also, it also has de monstrated considerable idola- try for Gen. Hugh Johnson, who has not spoken quite so bluntly hereabout as he has in some other sections of the country.

Besides, New York is very re- mote from the centres of some of the more critical probleme.

ALL'S QUIET IN N.Y, Wheat is just something that one buys in one form or another at the bakers' at about the same oll price. Ment is a commodity which appears with dependable regularity in refrigerator cars.

Steel is something one bets on in the stock market. And so on.

Here's an example which prob- ably is true of hundreds of New York concerns:

"In the states where our raw materials come from, and where our factories are located," said a manufacturer, "we fought the NRA tooth and nail. We've been scrapping in Washington, too. But all's quict in our New York busi- neas office, where we had to put on a lot more employees."

IS THE VERDICT OF NEW YORK

Nowhere Is the New Deal in higher favour than in New York City.... 'Here's a striking afrelew of Manhattan, showing the nation's money centre in the foreground, and the East River at the right, Hudson at the left, fringed with miles of piers accommodat Ing ocean commerce.

the

bureau

of Interpretation, bellove

While many NRA' groups are being dissolved into regional au- thorities, officials kere that this one must continue essen- tially as before.

"It's too big a job for regional supervision," says Thomas J. Donovan, vice chairman of the De-

·partment of Law and Complaints. "For instance, the New York state organisation at present has a staff of only 12 people, while the one for the city is keeping 200 And at the peak, of our busy.

than 500 activity we had employees."

more

THRONGS SEEK ADVICE.

From the first week in August, when the Blue Eagle went into action here, the bureau of inter- pretation functioned more as an educational and diplomatic aer- vice than as a legal office.

with even hazier notions of what it was all about, romped in with the idea that the NRA was created especially to restore their old jobs. Not just any jobs, but the places which they last held.

Nobody knows how this thought became so prevalent, but disiliu- sionment brought grumbling.

The division of law has re- ceived and responded to 32,000 inquiries. The complaint division, which opened its doors on the first day 150 clamouring clients, has received Beveral thousand charges of evasion every month, and had eight clerks in its file room who did nothing but move the incoming and outgoing re- ports.

MANY COMPLAINTS SETTLED.

Employers demanded rulings Of the complaints considered on scores of specific applications valid, 11,917 have been neted of the PRA. And, thousands of upon, being referred varlously to unemployed

men and women, the investigation department, the

mediation board, and the retail code authority. The organization, as you may have guessed, is some- what complicated.

The city's retail code author- ity is the largest local code body in the country, irrespec- tive of industry, and has nearly 60,000 business units under its direction. These, in turn, han- dle about one-tenth of the total volume of retail business in the nation.

DECISIONS ARE ENFORCED, "Thore has not been a single case of outright refusal to comply with our rulings: Two employers took their appeals to Washington in a perfectly regular way, but our original decision held.

were up-

L

"The volume of complaints has been getting heavier as consumers, employes, and retail competitors have gotten used to the idea that this outfit means business and is Here's Maurice Mermey, the ex-perfectly capable of enforcing its

decisions." ecutive secretary: "Since the retail code went into effect on

As for unfair business practices, October 30, we havo '225 com

their retail codesters have been plaints, about 190 of which dealt

eo thorough in their investigatione with labour. Of the complaints of complaints that they have sent followed through. 60 per cent.shoppers about the city pricing all were found to be justified and re-kinds of goods. aulted in nearly 10,000 employees having their wages raised or their hours of work reduced.

"CRAFT HAVE CHANGED BUT

THE LIFEBOATS' WAR WITH THE SEA

By Sir Herbert Russell, K.B.E.

THE METEOROLOGICAL OF- strokes. TFICE were right--but then

This is what lifeboating meant

The

they usually are. The "gale warn- ing" fast became a reality. The half-a-century ago. In spite of the fitful growl of the south-wester

march of progress, it remains life- steadily took a deeper note; the boating still. More than likely low-flying acud getting more hur that self-game scene was re-enacted ried and more torn. A slashing during the week-end gale. sobbing, rain-squall challenged me to shut the window. As I resumed Rye lifeboat, which was rolled over and drowned her crew a few years my sent a block-framed picture on

ago, was very similar to the one in the wall opposite suddenly seemed

the picture, but the Bct of the to plead for notice. It is a photo- tempest enabled her to lay her gravure, presented by the Royal

course under strips of reefed National Lifeboat Institution to

canvas. You may hear mon-and "the author of my being," as Mr. seafaring men, too--say that life- Micawber put it, inscribed "in boating now is but child's-play recognition of his valuable

compared to what it was in bygone operation" in connexion with the

times; that the motor does the work wreck of the Indian Chief in

whilst the crew sit sheltered in the January, 1881.

little cabin.

CD-

It is a picture of an old-time life- This is only partly true. That bont atruggling against a feather- the motor has added immensely to white sea. The hooting rain squall the life-saving resources of this gives a wild reality to the curling grandest of human services is quito surges and the spray showering obvious. But the man still counts over the staggering little craft, above the machine. The power- Less than a mile away les the driven lifeboat has her limitations. wreck. She might be twenty miles For many years there was station- away for the hopeless sense of dis- ed at Padelow the largest lifeboat tanco imparted by the head-on in the world; she has now been re- fury that lies between her lifeboat. placed by a motor-boat. She was The boat la mantless; ten oilskin-called the Helen Peel and WAS clad Ogures, bulky in their cork-bullt to work up and down the iron- Jackets, are straining at their oara; | bound coasts of North Cornwall and the bowman crouching behind the Davon. Steam-driven, her bollern forward airbox is "conning" them were always alight, day and night, and the coxawain, leaning forward throughout the winter months. from the yokelines, seems to away But she was altogether too big to in rhythm with their sweeping venture alongside a ship on the

recks, and whon sho was called away she usually towed the Padstow surf lifeboat with her. Really there was very little differ

CARTWHEELS,

GIDDAP

MINISTRATION FINANCIAL POLEY

once between auch an experience and that of the men of the Rama gate lifeboat Bradford, being towed by the tug Vulcan to the Long

Fake bankruptcy and going- out-of-business sales, misbrand

laws kopt the situation pretty well out of hand. •*

When the Blue Englo fret: swooped on the teaming midtown garment section, the International Lady Garment Workers" : 'Union ranked twenty-sixth in member- ship among the city's labour organ- isations.

The strikes bogan early in Au- gust, and the NRA faced its most formidable problem right at the start of its own activity. Dress factory workers walked out, 60,- 000 strong. Embroidery and un- derwear workers, about 84,000. struck next

.

Grover Whalen and his mon presided at hearings night and day, for woeka. One by one the different branches of the industry rosumed operation, and in every case labour was benefited.

WAGES ARE BOOSTED. The work week, which had been virtually unlimited, was reduced. to 48 and 62 hours. Pitifully low wages of many employees were in- creased as much as 100 per cent, in roaching the $10 minimum,

A minimum wage also was EB- tablished for unskilled as well as skilled labour..

Sweatshope and home work practically, were abolished. So was child labour, with the work. ing age limit raised to 18 years. From a membership of 60,000, with a ranking of twenty-sixth, the garment union membership rose to 175,000 and third place in strength.

Up to Nov, 1, when the Re- gional Labour Board took over the work of the city committee, set- tlement had been, made of 55 strikes involving 250,000 ployees, a total weekly payroll of $6,000,000, and affecting the live- lihood of some 700,000 persons.

am-

ing of goods, and other com- mon dodges of unscrupulous merchants have been halted in every case in which a complaint

Since Nov. 1, the Regional La- has been lodged against them.bour Board has settled 148 strikes, averted 22, and thus has kept ap- Mr. Whalen himself is proudest proximately 21,000 workers at of his organization's accomplish- | their jobs. ments in the labour field.

RACKETS STILL ALIVE. SETTLED GARMENT STRIKES

Labour's opposition to the NRA "Our outstanding achievement," in New York has been negligible, as the he says, "was the early settling with fow such examples of the garment strikes, in which food workers and waiters' unions' trades workers threat to cause a New Year's Eve 94,000 needle

persons, as a walked out. Mediation of those strike of 150,000 strikes was the supreme test, protest against the restaurant locally, of the proposition that code when it was awaiting the

signature of the president. labour could, and would, operate."

CO

New York's garment Industry nover had "boon more than scatteringly unionized. Hideaway sweatshops, child labour, clashing union factions and the schemes of sub-contractors, to dodge labour

In spite of Mr. Whalen's state ment that there have been only a few cases in which there was even a suspicion of racketeering, there la considerable newspaper dence that some labour unions still are victimized by racketeers.

NOT THE CHAPPIES"

PUBLIC

SILVER

DOLLARS

THE EWEST

Sand where the Indian Chlef was going to pieces.

Do not let me be misunderstood." The motor Hoboat is of priceless

ovi.

benefit to those in perll amongst was a life-saving job. The sufferer the shallows. She can do what is was put on board and rushed across the twenty-five miles of water to Impracticable to the enll-driven Penzance.

resources

eraft, which pays the penalty of her buoyancy by blowing away to leeward like a haystack. She can thrust her way against sea and wind, playing a searchlight on the wreck if she is working by night; aho can spray ell from her drums to baffle the broken water whlist she spreads her not for the ship- wrecked men to jump Into it. But to pretend that these minimise the risks and hardships of lifeboat service is more than unfair to the men who do the job. Icy water and cutting wind remain untamable. A sailing lifeboat can bump upon a sandbank without worso consequences than jumping the crow off the thwarts; a motor lifeboat would probably be disabled by such a blow, falling so much more heavily.

Recently I was yarning with an elghty years old Deal boatman- persistently obstinate in his convic- tion that a Deal galley-punt was superior to any lifeboat that ever was. He fell to reminiscing upon life-saving on the Goodwins. The conclusion to which he came was that "things have changed a morts! lot, but the chaps, they are still just the same." Of course they have not changed. You can nover mechanise the qualities of courage and endurance of the British long- shoremen who form the volunteer crews of our lifeboats. They may, Indeed, have thoughts of a nice | little anlvage job as they race along to the boat-house to collar a life- belt, which secures them a place in the boat lying in distant readiness to launch, or to slip her mooring chain. But the uppermost desire, overriding every other considera- tion, is the hope of returning home with the Red Fing dying.

Lifeboating means war with the sen and, whatever the weapons used, the sea is a ruthlese and Long before the Red Flag be dangerous enemy to tackle. I have came a synonym for anarchy it was a fairly familiar acquaintance with the symbol of the Royal National the lifeboat stations in the Scillies Lifeboat Institution. Flown at the and at Seanan Cove. At each of masthead of a lifeboat, it signified- these there is a magnificent motor that she was returning to land with lifeboat. The seas they have to shipwrecked men on board, And face in a "deep Atlantic depression" the most hard-bitten amongst the form the beat, possible commentary crowd of watchers on the pler or upon any suggestion that mechani- the beach cal progress has robbed lifeboat "hurrah!"

cannot repress a on catching sight bf

work of Its peril. On the contrary, that tiny soutare of bunting flaming It has increased it by making it in the wind, possible for men to face that peril where they could never have got off at all in a sailing lifeboat,

The gale continues to deepen and the broken water in my picture Assuredly the motor lifeboat has seems to flicker more ghastly white. greatly widened the scope for life I open my paper and see that life, saving. Not very long ago a boats have been out in half-a-dozen. resident of St. Mary's was stricken places. What matters it whether with acute appendicitis. The local they are motor-boats or little Ball- medical verdict was that an im- ing surf boats? The men who mediate operation was essential but crank-up in the one would equally that, for reasons which ara imeagerly holst the lug in the other. material to the story, this could not They may secretly doubt whether be undertaken on the Island. The they will ever get out against such Coxswain of the lifeboat being ap- | wind and ses—they never pause to pealed to promptly decided that this express any doubt,