The outstanding voice at General Johnson's NRA conference has been that of Mrs. Gifford Pinchot, wife of the governor of Pennsylvania. In bringing up the charge that there are towns in Pennsylvania in which she was not permitted to speak in favor of the recovery program, and in giving the names of steel employees who were discharged because of their part in her labour meetings, Mrs. Pinchot has given a real and unmistakable challenge to the present administration. Mrs. Pinchot was one of the many liberals who believed in the NRA before an examination of the fundamental political philosophy could vitalize it; her disillusionment, sharply expressed in General Johnson's conference, may serve the purpose of bringing other liberals to that examination.

Mr. Weir and Mr. Budd, who head the Budd Manufacturing Company in Philadelphia, are the especial targets of Mrs. Pinchot's attack. The Budd company has openly defied the code provisions of the NRA, and the complaints against them have been referred back and forth, with an agonizing inconstancy, from the Department of Justice to the National Labour Board. When Mrs. Pinchot wired to Senator Wagner of the Labour Board, an assistant wired back a request for affidavits, although several thousands of affidavits were already in the hands of the Board, and as many more with the Department of Justice.

But there is, after all, not much reason for Mrs. Pinchot's pained surprise. The Blue Eagle is an eagle without talons, whether or not there be compliance boards in every hamlet in the republic. The Blue Eagle forfeited its hopes for even a temporary success when it backed down on collective bargaining, which is the only sane path to industrial democracy. It did not back down because the President was losing courage, or because the great interests had an undue influence on the formation of his policy. It backed down because it was making pretensions to something which it did not have, and something which, if it had been insisted upon, would have blown it out of Washington in ten days, beak, wings, and placards. Whatever tinge of liberalism the blue eagle may have had, it was the old bird, perched safely on the rights of private property and the sanctity of parliamentary government.

Perhaps the NRA can weed out child labour, now that adult labour is the issue. Perhaps it can weed out unfair competition, when competition is the issue. Perhaps it can give labour an advisory power, when labour ownership and control is the issue. But anyone who knows the history of the Labour Party in England and the Social Democrats in Germany will give very small odds that it can accomplish even these things, in the face of a capitalist emergency which cannot afford the concessions which it might have afforded in its healthier days.

Mr. Roosevelt's administration is faced with three very formidable kinds of opposition; two of which are composed of those who know what the real issues are, and the last of which, among whom Mrs. Pinchot and her class are numbered, does not fully realize them. He will be attacked by the intelligent members of the group which now owns our instruments of production and distribution, because his legislation cannot but act against their fundamental interests. He will be attacked by those who are fighting for the public ownership of industry, because his plan of a control without ownership is clearly a plan that cannot succeed except through the reactionary dictatorship of fascism. And he will be attacked, ever more and more, by the liberals who believe in his ends, as they realize the futility of the means which he has chosen to achieve them. If all the nation's industrialists were as realistic as Mr. Weir and Mr. Budd, if all saw as they do the weakness of Mr. Roosevelt's position, we should not have to wait so long for that crescendo in which the basic theme of our social structure will finally become manifest.