"NEW DEAL"

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 11, 13 January 1934, Page 9

"NEW DEAL"

FORD INTERVIEWED. WHY SHOULD HE SIGN? Manufacturer Gives Praise and Blame. HIS PET SOLUTION THEORY. (United r.A.-Electric Telegraph—Copyright) (Received 11 a.m.) NEW YORK, January 12. X.K.A. officials are pleased although slightly bewildered at Mr. Henry Ford's attitude to the "New Deal" as expounded in an exclusive interview •with the "New York Times," in which the manufacturer praised the aims of the N.R.A., but gave absolutely no indication that he had the slightest intention of signing the automobile code. Actually, observers point out, Mr. Ford's position is little changed from when he issued instructions to his salesmen, stating, "Wβ have all got to pitch in to do all the business we can to help the President pull the country out of the hole." ' At that time General Johnson, chief administrator of the N.R.A., accepted Mr. Ford's status as an obeyer if not a signer of the code, thus being entitled to bid for Government contracts since then. »There has been no change in the administration's policy since Mr. Ford's statement in the course of an interview that he believes the N.R.A. to be "the first move, though, a faulty and halting one, toward a new industrial social era, which, when it comes, will usher in the millennium of justice and plenty," but that instead of President Roosevelt leading the way and guiding him he (Mr. Ford) had been a practitioner of a > kindred economic philosophy for many years. "Why Should We Be Opposed?" "Opposed to the N.R.A.?" Mr.' Ford exclaimed in the course of the interview. "Why should wo be opposed to it? Mr. Roosevelt is only trying to make industry do what we were doing 20 years ago," but after such praise he added a cryptic note, which is regarded as being typical of his well-known industrial individualism. "Sign the code, why should we sign it? We- are obeying the law, everything in the law." In fact, we were obeying it before there was a law." In praising and criticising the N.R.A., Mr. Ford took the position that it had gone too far in some directions and not far enough in others. He doubted if i* had materially increased the mass of buying power, but on the other hand he commended it for its attack on sweatshop working conditions and child labour. He 'denounced the so-called cordination of industry. Too Much Selfishness. "The N.R.A. has not tackled the fundamentals yet," he declared. "There has been too much selfishness in the support of it. Some interests thought they could use the N.R.A. to start new trade and trusted to run out as independents, but it did not work. The N.R.A. has not stopped them, but the independents did; but if these supporters of the N.R.A. keep trying to crush competition they will get left. Competition furnishes an incentive for people to rise, for genius to come up."

In the course of the interview Mr. Ford took occasion to reiterate his pet unemployment solution. He would dissolve the great industrial centres and create suburban areas wherein workers would grow their own food and augment their incomes by part-time industrial work.

Mr. Ford said his undertakings along that line had been successful. He ■wished that some civil works money, •which he considers little better than charity,' might be used for a like purpose.