National Affairs: Man of the Year, 1932

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(See front cover)

Scanning the dreary horizon of 1932 as it recedes into history, upon whom would the discerning eye of an alert U. S. citizen fix as Man of the Year?

Beyond his own shores he would find no new name that had skyrocketed into world consciousness during the twelvemonth. Mahatma Gandhi, 1930's Man of the Year, is still a prisoner of Britain in the Poona jail and his Indian followers are quiescent if not quiet. Pierre Laval, 1931's Man of the Year, was swept out of the premiership of France last February, is today only a Senator without portfolio. The May elections put Edouard Herriot into power for six months but fortnight ago he and his Ministry went crashing out on the issue of paying the U. S. War Debt.

The year showed Neville Chamberlain. Chancellor of the Exchequer, to be Britain's strong man but he was not yet on top; Laborite Ramsay MacDonald continues to head the National (Conservative coalition) ministry. Prime Minister Mac-Donald, more than any other official participant, was given credit for the outcome of the Lausanne Conference in July but there have been other conferences, will doubtless be many more.

In 1931 Adolf Hitler was Germany's rising star. In 1932 he and his Nazis slipped back to the tune of 2,000,000 lost votes. His thunder was largely stolen by

General Kurt von Schleicher, the new Chancellor to whom many a German looks as Man of Next Year.

Russia and Italy, one with its Stalin, the other with its Mussolini, rocked along through the year unchanged and unchanging under dictatorship.

Turning back to his own country, the discerning citizen of the U. S. would find more promising material. Charles Augustus Lindbergh, 1927 Man of the Year, had become the Victim of the Year in 1932. For the loss of his son & namesake the nation had given him all its sympathy but to him went no plaudits for any new achievement. When in 1928 Walter P. Chrysler became Man of the Year his Manhattan office building was starting to rise as the world's tallest, his Chrysler Motors organized to vie with General Motors. Now the Chrysler Building is overtopped by the Empire State and the automobile industry is pinioned on the rock of hard times. The prestige of 192g's Man of the Year, Owen D. Young, world financier, friend to Samuel Insull, is still great but even he has produced no sovereign simple for prostrate business.

Banker of the Year was certainly Winthrop Williams Aldrich who last week seemed about to succeed Albert Henry Wiggin as head of great Chase National (see p. 27) but his big achievements lay ahead of him. Scanning the realm of business the well-informed citizen would probably conclude that the biggest and boldest strides against the economic tide were those of Errett Lobban Cord who turned from highways to skyways in his restless effort to expand. The year proved that there was no such thing as a Depression-proof industry. Yet John Hartford's Great Atlantic & Pacific food stores, by holding the line, came closest to an exception.

Most scientific citizens would award the title of Man of the Year to General Electric's Irving Langmuir who won this year's Nobel Prize for his surface chemistry.