It's unprecedented for the nation to be outraged about corporate pay, right? Not exactly: In the 1930s, as the Depression gripped the nation, furor about compensation rose to fever pitch, and Washington applied shears to salaries. In an article soon to be published in the University of Richmond Law Review, Harwell Wells, an assistant professor of law at Temple University, says the decade exposed "deep tensions" about the issue. A big difference between then and now is that the 1930s fury was directed not at financial institutions but rather at "excessive" payers among industrial and consumer companies -- like Bethlehem...