Don't think Benito ever wrote such a book. He did publish a book about his rise to power in 1928 or so. Frances Perkins said about 1946 or so that Hugh Johnson (Head of the NRA) had showed her a book by or about Mussolini back in 1933 and said the corporate state was good stuff. I think Johnson rather liked strong arm economic tactics -- after all, he had been a general during the war and managed parts of the national economy.
Certainly the first major industrial move by Roosevelt was the National Industrial Recovery Act (1933), and it superficially resembled the Italian Corporate State. But it was profoundly different. Roosevelt's purpose was to organize industrial codes to suppress "ruinous" competition. Please understand that competition was ruinous. No single firm (unless it was a monopolist) could refuse to cut prices and wages without being destroyed. The monetary and banking system had collapsed. The NRA idea was to allow corporations to associate in establishing "codes of competition" and labor codes as well. Each industry established minimum wages and agreed to a labor code that would permit collective bargaining. The idea, of course, was to stop cutting each others' throats and also to stop cutting the workers' throats. If the bulk of the industry agreed to a code it was effectively exempted from antitrust laws. Once an industry majority agreed to the code, dissenting firms could be coerced in various ways to make them conform. The symbol of NRA concurrence was the Blue Eagle. The principal difference between the Corporate State and the New Deal was that the New Deal was far more all encompassing. It provided rights for workers, pensions, welfare, bank reform, freer trade. Plus, the fascists opposed the New Deal.
I, nor anyone else, have no way of knowing whether the NRA would have turned into either an effective or a dictatorial state. The Supreme Court in 1935 ruled it unconstitutional. (This led to Roosevelt's excellent but unsuccessful Court packing plan, and then to the "Second" New Deal, complete with Trust Busting, NLRA, SSA, etc.)
I have included an article on Hugh Johnson Times "Man of the Year for 1933." I have edited out much of the other candidates to save space:
January 1, 1934
RECOVERY: Hugh S. Johnson
In
the White House sat Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He was Man of the Year in 1932, when the
New Deal was new. More popular than the day he won the Presidency, he had lived up to the
brightest expectations of the electorate. But he needed no fresh laurels, could well afford to pass
them along to an associate.
The secret of the New Deal's success lies in the well-known fact that the time to make
sociological hay is when the economic sun is not shining. But four years of hard times did not
soften the U.S. industrial order, which had gone its untrammeled way for generations. Given a
program, given the political power to legalize it, it nevertheless took a dynamic personality to
hammer the mold of "industrial democracy" on to the nation's adamantine industrial life. Such a
man had to possess an enormous amount of physical energy. He had to have gusto. He had to be
a phrasemaker. He had to be handy with the tools of propaganda. He had to have the ruthless
drive of a Cromwell and the tact of a Disraeli. In 2,000 A.D. there will still be alive hundreds
& hundreds of octogenarians to whom the words "chiselers," "codes," "crackdown" and "Blue
Eagle" will have an historic association. And to them the Man of the Year of 1933 will be
National Recovery Administrator Hugh Samuel Johnson.
The year was more than one third gone before Man of the year Johnson burst like a flaming
meteorite on the country. On May 19 the New York Times first reported that he, "soldier,
lawyer and manufacturer," had been offered "almost unlimited powers" under "the pending
Industrial Regulation Bill." As administrator of the Wartime Draft General Johnson had enjoyed
publicity aplenty, but since then he had been out of sight in the news. After June 16, when the
Recovery Act was signed, Man of the Year Johnson's scowl, his broad mouth and furrowed
brow, his pithy epithets, the daily state of his health and temper, made acres of newspictures,
miles of news copy every 24 hours. He was not the Administrator of NRA. he was NRA. In
plotting their common course through the last six months of 1933, future historians will mark
well these dates:
July 9--The cotton textile code is signed, providing a 40-hr. week, $12 minimum weekly wages,
abolishing child labor--the first and still the most satisfactory trade agreement. It was arrived at,
said General Johnson, "in a goldfish bowl."
July 27--With heavy industry lagging behind in the codification march, the President sends
5,000,000 "re-employment agreements" to 5,000,000 employers of whom 3,000,000 sign. The
Blue Eagle is born. "A truce on selfishness, a test of patriotism," cried General Johnson.
Aug. 5--National Labor Board is created to settle the wave of strikes created by the resurgence
of organized Labor.
Aug. 19--"The most memorable date in NRA history." It is sweltering in Washington. Since
early morning, Administrator Johnson has been toiling with three groups of stubborn
industrialists. Just before midnight, when the President is leaving for Hyde Park, General
Johnson dashes for the White House. "Three major codes signed!" he cries. "That's a day's
work!" Estimated jobs created: lumber, 115,000; steel, 50,000; oil, 240,800.
Aug. 27--The automobile business becomes the fifth major industry to be codified. "My one
regret," says General Johnson, "is that Henry Ford did not sign."
Aug. 31--Dudley Cates of Chicago, Johnson's right hand man for industry, resigns. Mr. Cates
believed in vertical unions, rather than the oldstyle horizontal unions of the A.F. of L.
Sept. 26--General Johnson retires to a hospital for four days with a boil, rises to fly 17 more
codes to Manhattan for the President to sign.
Oct. 9--Summer boomlet ends. "Buy Now" campaign is rushed into the breach.
Oct. 10--With strikes still pocking the nation from coast to coast, General Johnson warns the
A.F. of L. convention: "The plain, stark truth is that you cannot tolerate the strike.... Public
confidence will turn against you!"
First crackdown, on a Gary, Ind. roadhouse proprietor, whose Blue Eagle is recalled.
Oct. 12--Weirton Steel strike starts.
Oct. 25--Administrator Johnson announces NRA's reorganization into four industrial divisions.
A fifth division, compliance, he personally takes in charge.
Nov. 17--Steel, pointing to a 32.1% increase in wages, a 28.3% increase in payroll, announces
it is "satisfied" with its tentative code, renews it for six months.
Dec. 11--Some 150 dry cleaners are haled to Washington for price agreement violations. To the
Federal Trade Commission were handed 100 of their cases, NRA's greatest "crackdown."
Dec. 13--Ninety code administrators appointed in one day.
Net. Reviewing NRA's first six months, during which General Johnson mustered 1,500,000
volunteer workers and speakers, issued 100,000,000 "pieces of literature," plastered millions of
Blue Eagle posters throughout the land, the historian will look to net results as well as dates.
When the NRAdministration first settled down in the Department of Commerce Building, it had
87 employes, with a half-month payroll of $6,619.41. NRA now employs 1,555 people, uses
105,000 sq. ft. of office space, meets a $166,608.40 bi-monthly payroll. General Johnson gets
$6,000 a year. His secretary, nurse, guardian and constant companion at Washington, in
airplanes, on trains, at banquets, Frances ("Robbie") Robinson, gets $5,780. When that news got
out last month, Man of the Year Johnson hotly announced: "I think that was one below the belt.
She knows more about this organization than anyone else. I am sure that nobody here ever
thought she was a mere stenographer or secretary. She has been my personal assistant straight
through." Not on the payroll is Mrs. Hugh Johnson of the Consumers Board. Son Kilbourne, 26,
on leave from the Army, who spells his name with a "t" as his father used to, draws only his 2nd
lieutenant's pay ($143 per mo.) as a member of NRA's compliance Board.
Of the 3,000,000 Blue Eagles NRA has issued, only 48 have been revoked. It has fought eight
code violators in the courts, has won seven cases. Pending are twelve more. To date 168 codes
have been approved. Seventy-five more will be approved by New Year. Man of the Year
Johnson believes that he has put 4,000,000 people to work, has upped the national payroll
$2,500,000,000 in the past half-year. last week the President extended his blanket re-
employment agreements to May 1, but these have lost their importance since 70% of the nation's
workers will be covered by regular codes by Jan. 1.
Reception. Whatever the phrase "industrial democracy" may mean, it is the heart of the
President's recovery program. As embodied in the NRA, "industrial democracy" no longer
terrifies U.S. businessmen. General Johnson's bark has been found to be worse than his bite.
Last week William S. Knudsen, executive vice president of General Motors, was happy to say:
"General Motors Corp., with the rest of the industry, supports our President's recovery program
to the fullest extent.... This is final, official and without reservations."
The shift of sentiment toward NRA was brought about in part by Industry's realization that the
days of cut-throat competition and laissez faire are over. Few industrialists want them back.
Many of them would agree with NRA's Divisional Administrator Arthur Dare Whiteside, Dun &
Bradstreet executive, one of the most experienced practical businessmen in the Administration,
who said last week: "It is obvious in retrospect that four years ago this month the old industrial
order which existed for generations broke down forever. Today we have set up a new order
which has been built on a foundation which I firmly believe will prove indestructible, although I
am definitely convinced that it will be necessary to make alterations."
Phrasemaker into Orator. Few Men of the Year actually achieve intrinsic personal development
within the period they dominate. But General Johnson developed from a picturesque
phrasemaker, who could throw a highly printable aphorism to the Press while climbing up a
Pullman step, into an embroidered and inspiring orator.
"Chiselers," "Old Guard lookout men," and "Rugged Individualists," were his principal targets
of attack on his barnstorming trips out of Washington to sell NRA to the country. He can whip
almost any audience into a fine frenzy of exaltation for the President's recovery program and,
adopting a familiar Wartime trick, can make it appear downright unpatriotic to block NRA's
advance. Yet for a man who lives by invective and abuse of his foes, General Johnson is
surprisingly thin-skinned to criticism of himself and his cause.
To the National Association of Manufacturers in Manhattan three weeks ago, Man of the Year
Johnson, wearing a hard-boiled shirt and expression, even quoted from Tennyson's "Maud" a bit
of heroic verse to achieve the desired effect upon his audience:
We have proved we have hearts in a cause, we are noble still, And myself have awaked, as it
seems, to the better mind: It is better to fight for the good, than to rail at the ill; I have felt with
my native land, I am one with my kind....
But it was left to the citizens of Atlanta, whither Man of the Year Johnson went on his Southern
speaking tour, to hear him in tip-top forensic form:
"The experiment is scarcely begun and yet in the few months of its execution it has produced
25% of the results expected of it....
"Away, slight men! you may have been leaders once. You are corporals of disaster now and a
safe place for you may be yapping at the flanks but it is not safe to stand obstructing the front of
this great army. You might be trampled underfoot--not knowingly but inadvertently--because of
your small stature and of the uplifted glance of a people whose 'eyes have seen the glory' and
whose purpose is intent on the inspired leadership of your neighbor and my friend Franklin
Roosevelt!" |
