Trade v. Inflation

Manager of the Retail Trade Board of the Boston Chamber of Commerce since 1923 has been a ruddy, white-crested lawyer of 47 named Daniel Bloomfield. A relative by marriage of both the Morgenthau and Filene families, Dan Bloomfield began his career as Lincoln Filene's associate in Boston's big Filene department store. In 1928 he conceived an idea which seemed unlikely to set the world afire: a Conference on Distribution to parallel the conference on national and international problems held annually by the Institute of Human Relations at Williamstown, Mass. But under two enthusiasts, Dan Bloomfield and President Patrick Augustin O'Connell, of Boston's Retail Trade Board, conferences have been held every year since then. Last week when the ninth annual conference met in Boston, it proved rather conclusively that Mr. Bloomfield had had a good idea.

For Williamstown's conferences are generally attended by earnest souls who would like to see something done about the ills of the world, rather than by the heads of governments who might actually do something. But Boston's conference on distribution had for its rank-&-file attendants some 750 business men actively engaged in distribution, had such headline speakers as President Percy Straus of R. H. Macy & Co., General R. E. Wood, president of Sears, Roebuck & Co., President Oswald Knauth of Associated Dry Goods Corp., Cosmetician Elizabeth Arden, Professor Paul H. Nystrom of Columbia University, President Karl T. Compton of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and not least of all, Secretary of State Cordell Hull. To garnish this group as chairman of the first day's luncheon session, Director Bloomfield had little difficulty in getting the services of James Roosevelt, who for his own reasons always likes to have a finger in Boston goings-on.

High-spot of the two-day conclave was the aggressive speech of Professor Nystrom. Introduced by Chairman Roosevelt Mr. Nystrom, an authority on business trends, lashed out at irresponsibility of labor unions in a way which just as visibly embarrassed the President's son as it delighted the audience. Said he: ". . . There is resistance [on the part of employers], not to collective bargaining per se, but to what lies behind it. Unfortunately, to many employers, it looks as if any invitation, either of labor to management or of management to labor, to sup at a common table is likely to result noc only in the disappearance of the food but also of the dishes, and in the destruction of the table as well."

Of more lasting import were the remarks of three other speakers which, like chapters of a book, unfolded as clearly as has yet been done the most important basic problem of distribution, international trade.