The State of the Nation on Election Eve:
CASS, OSCAR
The State of the Nation on Election Eve Despite the apathy of both parties and of the people at large, both our political and economic systems face profound problems By Oscar Gass IN THEIR BROAD...
...The American people were told that, if the declared policy of their government did not succeed in Asia, the primary reason was that Communism had planted treason in the highest places of the United States Government...
...Farm income has already fallen about 25 per cent from 1951 to 1953...
...World War II and the postwar export market kept people on American farms who must now leave—though nobody wants to say so...
...The movement of a million farm families to urban occupations could take place in the United States in five, six or seven years of expanding urban demand for labor...
...Output being lost in 1954 was equal to half the total United States foreign aid since the end of World War II...
...These relationships are variously found difficult and troubling or heavily burdening and frustrating...
...Income came to be more equally distributed among individuals and regions...
...Oscar Gass, a Washington consulting economist, tried to sketch the state of the nation for foreign readers in this article, condensed from the British monthly Twentieth Century...
...Most Americans believe that domestically in 1954 they are enjoying an average year about mid-course in what the advertising men have named "the American century...
...Security and loyalty dismissals ranged wide...
...The unity of the American community derives not from abnegation of the acquisition of things, but from increasing success in accumulating them and from wide concurrence in the system of doing it...
...We think that American readers will also profit from it...
...In the past twenty years, the number of civilians employed by the Federal Government has tripled, from 720,000 to 2,160,000...
...There will be a further fall in 1954...
...Economic institutions and practices were questioned and rejected...
...Many of these people were probably not at work in 1954 because there was no work for them to do...
...When Senator McCarthy threatened to "kick the brains out of" anybody he regarded as shielding the guilty, the authentic voice of the storm-trooper was heard in the land...
...The Court ruled that, in time of war, the military—perhaps even without the concurrence of Congress—can decide what political attitudes require imprisonment, what groups have such attitudes, and what constitutes evidence of belonging to such a group...
...the decisions of the military can be carried out without indictment or trial of any kind...
...The farmer's resistance to the process of leaving the farm may have cost the U. S. Treasury as much as $10 billion for accumulated farm commodities before the present crop year is over...
...When they proved not to he over—indeed, to be only beginning—contentment gradually acquired a solidity that had certainly not been approximated since 1929, and which, I believe, was not equaled even then...
...Few Americans would have been so confident in the 1930s of the sufficiency of the past, and few liberals would have been so quick to deny the need to "look abroad"—or, indeed, to look from one end of the earth to the other—in search of solutions...
...Yet, the United States has today no Federal career civil service which ranks as a profession like the practice of law, medicine or engineering...
...Congressmen and Senators investigated, probed, pried and challenged...
...One is the weakening of the fabric of civil liberty and responsible public conduct...
...were 66 per cent greater in June 1954 (the last month available...
...political relations in which various independent state and local organizations are tougher than any national party...
...Twenty years of Democratic administration in Washington fostered illusions concerning the emergence of a genuine career service...
...The American people did not view their domestic public affairs with such contented minds twenty years ago or even ten years ago...
...James Reston, chief Washington correspondent of the New York Times, summed up the current political campaign us "bush-league," in terms of candidates and of issues discussed...
...The poorest state, Mississippi, had a rise from $201 to $834 and from 35 per cent of the national average to 49 per cent...
...But the polite analysis has at the moment a further unpleasantness: it implies that the recession is about to get worse...
...Now that the excess-profits tax is gone, General Motors and Ford are having a banner year, but some 40,000 automobile dealers—who have had to cut their margins sharply, while manufacturers' prices remained untouched—are having their worst year since World War II...
...But there are greater dangers...
...Several outstanding senior officers, in some cases with service reaching back to the Hoover Administration, were dismissed as part of general "reductions in force...
...Yet, personal consumption of every kind increased massively...
...Despite the frivolity of the politicians, the U. S. in 1954 has grave and identifiable problems which require elucidation...
...Oppenheimer is a world figure...
...Some are concerned over the increasing organization of American society to assure conformity of various kinds...
...The polite analysis of the decline in production since the summer of 1953 is that it is "only an inventory recession...
...Barkley...
...in 1954, the average "standard of living" of Americans is one that the average European will probably not attain in the forty-six years which remain to the twentieth century, and correspondingly more remote from most of mankind...
...There is no perspective of the fierceness of the conflict between rich and poor in societies where property is widely identified with privileges having no foundation in public utility...
...Although nothing in sight constitutes a reasoned basis for forecasting a general economic upturn, hope springs eternal...
...By now, the thought that relatively full employment might be a transitory wartime phenomenon has been buried...
...They knew the loss of dignity and independence that such things entail...
...This policy was to reduce public expenditure so as to make way for an increase in private expenditure...
...As a contribution to the understanding of economic processes, this explanation may not rate high: inventories were lower in relation to sales when the recession began than they had been at earlier periods of sustained economic expansion...
...a legal system of rights and procedures which, in the higher courts, has been little affected by hysteria...
...During the past year, sales have fallen faster than inventories...
...They look toward the Congressional elections with the conviction that the choices they have to make are of no special importance...
...In July 1953, this category of those not working but not "unemployed" numbered 6,126,000...
...Nearly 500,000 farms were abandoned in 1945-50 despite exceptional export demand and one urban recession...
...During World War II, in the Japanese-American cases, the Supreme Court held practically that constitutional safeguards do not apply under such circumstances...
...America is endangered today by inattention to dispersion of industry and population, and by neglect of air defense (as distinguished from attack...
...Some able, public-spirited and hardworking officers remain, but more of the best have left or are leaving...
...The most important cause of increased equality was the reduction in unemployment, but a second major factor was the increased progressiveness of taxation...
...The chronicle of recession should, however, not be carried to the point of suggesting a society under profound economic stress...
...The Communist leadership may itself choose the alternative of war—if not today, then ten or twenty years hence, when it thinks that it has a better chance of victory...
...Critical appraisal came to be regarded as somewhat annoyingly irrelevant...
...That is the current position of the farm problem...
...Most Americans do not believe that atomic bombs or hydrogen bombs will fall on the United States in any war with the Soviet Union, even though there are perfunctory civil-defense drills today...
...Conviction solidified, particularly after 1946, that basically the economic system was working well and would continue to work well...
...The State of the Nation on Election Eve Despite the apathy of both parties and of the people at large, both our political and economic systems face profound problems By Oscar Gass IN THEIR BROAD NUMBERS, the people of the United Stales seem well satisfied with the general course of their domestic, economic and political affairs as things stand in the autumn of 1954...
...A major advance in the degree of success of the United States in accumulating wealth took place after 1939...
...Lower farm-price supports will save money for the Treasury...
...Smith, or Senator Cooper by Mr...
...But Senator McCarthy has no storm troops and could not today create a significant political party or take over the leadership of an existing one...
...Light was directed toward every corner where some explanation might be found...
...They will mean poorer farmers...
...These rulings could be the starting point in World War III...
...With the consolidation of that success has come a decided shift in public psychology...
...The Democratic party was returned to office repeatedly as the party less satisfied with the existing economic order and more determined to effect changes...
...On the other hand, few business firms, few universities and no local government bodies today would employ an ordinary person, even in the least "sensitive" occupation, after he had been dismissed by the Federal Government as a possible security or loyalty risk...
...in per capita terms, it declined 1 per cent...
...For the present, the fiscal environment of the 1953-54 recession period seems therefore likely to be sustained in its general features...
...In 1939, unemployment was still 9.5 million...
...Tenure remained uncertain, even for the capable, discreet and loyal, because—even apart from such legal techniques of discharge as administrative reorganizations and the abolition of positions—no strong tradition existed against making a position so uncomfortable for a senior officer that he would feel it necessary to resign...
...In the early autumn of 1954, however, contentment is the dominant note...
...Insecurity and poverty were close to a great many Americans...
...It seems extremely unlikely that he or anyone else will establish an authoritarian government in the United States in time of peace...
...The American university of the 1930s had been a seedbed of political, economic and social criticism —sometimes silly, half-baked or irresponsible, but uninhibited by fear...
...Unfortunately, this courage is largely irrelevant to the basic problem under recession circumstances...
...Creative in institutions, the New Deal had yet failed to achieve sustained economic expansion...
...The South and particularly the Negro remained relatively poor, but they were neither so poor nor so far behind the others as fifteen years earlier...
...Most men were "so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluous coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them...
...The Republican Administration has approached the Federal service with desires to find positions for deserving Republicans, to reduce expenditure and therefore personnel, and to remove security and loyalty risks...
...In 1939, about 9.6 million persons worked on farms, in 1954 about 6.4 million...
...With the exception of the Foreign Service, there was no organized rotation of duties within a department and there was no organized rotation at all among the various departments...
...career officers had the special skills of lawyers, economists, engineers, etc...
...In the economic sphere, the American people came to fear only that, with the end of hostilities, good times might be over...
...The change in outlook came when the fear of a serious post-World War II depression had passed...
...A published record like that of the Oppenheimer case may give a misleading impression...
...After showing no trend from 1919 through 1939, the share of the richest 5 per cent of the population in disposable personal income decreased by one-third in the next decade (from 22.7 per cent in 1939 to 15.7 per cent in 1948...
...The labor, materials and plants freed by the reduction in Government spending have been released to idleness...
...By the third quarter of 1954, idle steel capacity ran to 40 million tons a year...
...Forces which would resist authoritarian leveling are many: traditions of civil liberties, given lip-service by all and actively upheld by a minority...
...Most other economic problems are aggravated by a general decline in demand...
...The initiative of peace or war will not necessarily remain with the NATO powers, the United Nations or any such group...
...Even the threat of Soviet aggression is regarded by ordinary Americans as potential and remote, not actual and immediate...
...Professor Rostow has noted that, in these cases, "One hundred thousand persons were sent to concentration camps on a record which wouldn't support a conviction for stealing a dog...
...Then came the simplicities of war—the amplitude of demand, the proliferation of new manufacturing capacity, the universal liquidity and the labor shortage...
...Real national output rose only 6 per cent from 1929 through 1939...
...This is a very puzzling change for a single year...
...Never for a single year were the unemployed less than one-sixth of the labor force...
...Her thinking is not adjusted to atomic warfare in which both sides have atomic bombs and are able to deliver them...
...In the early 1950s, a prominent social-research foundation enlisted a team of psychologists and political scientists to investigate why American university students now abstained from political interest, discussions and activities...
...Few would now recommend to exceptionally able young people that they should think of Federal civil-service careers...
...Their great dangers are not clear and urgent in the minds of the people of the United States—little more clear and urgent for the few than for the many...
...The uneasy, questioning society of the 1930s has become the contented one of the 1950s, so confident that it has most of the answers...
...Nevertheless, in 1938-39 the economy was drifting without a steady course...
...Farm employment has not declined fast enough...
...In this picture, the Communist tyranny is the only major source of unrest in the world...
...In July 1953, about 1,548,000 persons were estimated officially to be totally unemployed...
...But they will not necessarily mean fewer farmers or less farm output...
...To be dismissed even in a "reduction in force" arouses suspicion...
...They spent more on education and research...
...The quality of personnel in the Federal service continues to deteriorate...
...The Korean War is over, and American soldiers are coming home...
...The employment position is one that could topple quite a few Congressmen...
...Americans ate more, wore more, built more and traveled more than ever before...
...People believed that the decline was greater...
...Less than 60 per cent of the unemployed were receiving unemployment benefits...
...When that success has faltered, as in the 1930s, the community has fallen to questioning its institutions, practices, leadership and accomplishments...
...Simultaneously, general productive activity also turned downward...
...The economic achievements of the Eisenhower Administration have not been positive factors in this general public contentment...
...Americans are spending and buying houses, as confident people do...
...There is no panic and little deep concern...
...There was no planned grooming of officers for successively higher responsibilities...
...Do these higher ratios of inventories to sales then foreshadow a second wave of decline in economic activity which—since there is more "imbalance" to correct—will be sharper than that of the previous year...
...Indeed, as prices also more than doubled, most people had the pleasant illusion that their gains had been even greater...
...From the peak second quarter of 1953 to the same quarter of 1954, Government expenditure on goods and services (including spending of non-Federal authorities] declined by about $8.5 billion a year...
...One hundred years ago, that searching, solitary, wilful man, Henry David Thoreau, told his countrymen that they were starving their lives to accumulate things...
...In time of peace—there's the rub...
...Despite these things, the United States is not a totalitarian country in 1954—very far from it...
...The economy of the United States has been producing, in rapidly increasing abundance, for fifteen years without any setback which has left a scar on public memory...
...The sources of influence, strength and authority remain lavishly pluralist...
...Our own Albert N. Votaw last week noted that the Democrats were running against Hoover, and the Republicans against Hiss...
...Something unexplained happened in the category of persons identified as "with a job but not at work...
...Up to now, the distinctive economic policy of the Administration has been a failure—though not a spectacular failure...
...More serious than the position of small businessmen or farmers is that of the unemployed...
...Inventories which were 60 per cent greater than sales in June 1953...
...Things are not perfect, but they are good enough...
...They are "feeding at the public trough...
...Any person who has been reasonably successful in selling steel, building houses or making radios is regarded as probably competent to staff any Government position...
...Never has American discomfiture in war been exploited more ruthlessly by self-styled patriots...
...The discontents of farmers, small businessmen and unemployed are only of marginal electoral depth...
...Congressman Jones may be replaced by Mr...
...What a decline in farm-price supports will mean immediately is dissatisfied farmers...
...They are important in Washington and New York...
...But the weight of all foreign events and relations in forming general American public sentiment now is not remotely comparable to that of domestic affairs...
...Meanwhile, farm output per man-hour rose about 70 per cent...
...From 1939 to 1953, total real national product in the United States approximately doubled...
...Most dangerous of all perhaps is the simple picture of world happenings that irresponsible demagogues have been painting recently for the American people and which many Americans have accepted...
...Per capita real product increased 72 per cent...
...If the one year's increase in the number "with a job but not at work" is added to the 3,346,000 listed as unemployed, they make a total of 5,242,000...
...Soon the air was full af accusations, innuendoes, denials and recantations...
...Then, though the American people continue to believe the contrary, atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs (or worse evils) will probably fall on the United States...
...The period was short enough for the change to be fully appreciated...
...No bombs fell on the United States in World War II, though there were perfunctory civil-defense precautions...
...In any case, they were not working...
...Soon—somehow—things will be on the road up again...
...It is no easy thing, and if a society in which farmers, too, have a voice spends many billions of dollars fumbling with the problem, that is quite natural...
...We are all unprepared...
...The surplus manpower on farms may run to 1.2 million man-years (or even 1.5 million man-years if it is taken from the least productive farms...
...Disloyalty" among America's presumed allies was a secondary reason...
...All vacancies in the top five grades of the Federal service have apparently been reserved for persons approved by the Republican National Committee...
...In the summer of 1954, total national product has been running about $30 billion a year lower than it would have been as the result of steady growth in the size of the employed labor force and in productivity from the second quarter of 1953...
...There was no conception of a general Government career officer...
...The economic recession which began in August-September 1953 has hurt some groups and will probably hurt more, but the recession has not yet visibly aroused wide and deep fears...
...By 1951, even a distinguished liberal historian, in a volume entitled Living Ideas in America, could write that, in dealing with public problems, "Americans need not look abroad for solutions or fabricate new ones, but they can turn, with confidence, to their own historical past...
...The degree of conformity currently exacted is, however, found oppressive only by relatively few, and Americans are not tender of individual differences in 1954...
...it is nothing to get excited about...
...trade unions and other associations of many kinds that command strong loyalties...
...The American people did not believe that its survival was threatened by Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan...
...Under present employment conditions, the movement away from farms cannot take place at all—or to no useful purpose...
...in July 1954, it had risen to 7,992,000...
...The higher ranks of Government positions are regarded as consisting of people who somehow—and probably in ways that are no better than they should be—have got hold of a good thing...
...in July 1954, about 3,346,000...
...At one edge of public consciousness there remains the problem of the relationships of the United States with other countries...
...If Thoreau's thought is wisdom, it is a wisdom that America has rejected...
...Unfortunately, the law will apparently afford little protection to civil liberties, or even constitutional processes, once bombs begin to fall on the United States...
...Some groups of small businessmen are at least as unhappy as most farmers...
...The 1930s were a decade of economic failure...
...Thereafter, Government spending turned downward...
...The cold war then supervened, and to the cold war the hot (Korean) war...
...There is no view of the effort of the colored races to find a place beside the dominant white race, no image of the struggles of subject national groups, no insight into the fears of destruction in war which affect the conduct of peoples weaker or less fortunately situated than the American...
...Federal Government expenditure is to decline again in the fiscal year ending June 30, 1955, and a still further reduction has been made the basis of budgetary planning for the subsequent year...
...Yet, the American people, for the most part, still regarded itself as prosperous...
...Farm labor productivity continues to rise about twice as fast as non-farm productivity...
...That means that about a million farm families must leave the land...
...This is 8 per cent of the total civilian labor force...
...The reduction in public expenditure has been achieved, but to no purpose: Private expenditure declined also...
...As private spending also declined (though prices rose), total national product declined by about $14 billion, uncorrected for price changes, and perhaps $16.5 billion in prices of the second quarter of 1953...
...For the first time in many decades, Americans became uninterested even in the issues involved in private concentration of economic power...
...Would not power always be offset by countervailing power, and was not Big Business necessary to do big things...
...a little-known officer would be dismissed unhesitatingly on a small fraction of the evidence cited against him...
...Coming into office in January 1953, the Administration could not influence either the income or the expenditure of the Federal Government significantly in the old fiscal year which ended June 30, 1953...
...This includes those temporarily laid off, ill, on strike, idle because of weather, waiting to begin a new employment, or on vacation...
...wide and deep-seated unity of outlook regarding many basic characteristics of economic organization, property and enterprise...
...The Eisenhower Administration has had the political courage to push through legislation authorizing lower farm-price supports...
...In the Southeast, per capita income rose from $303 to $1,159 and from 56 per cent of the national average to 68 per cent...
...Those businessmen, politicians, journalists and professors who saw an upturn in the spring, then in the summer, see it now in the autumn...
...How will the American political structure stand under that shock...
...Government absorbed 23 per cent of total product and private investment 14 per cent in 1953, in contrast to 14 per cent and 10 per cent fifteen years earlier...
...But there was never any serious system of examination for entering those Federal positions which correspond —however remotely —to the British administrative class...
...Another is the isolation of the American mode of life from the common lot of humanity...
...The regions which were farthest behind in 1939 made the most rapid relative advance in the subsequent fifteen years...
Vol. 37 • November 1954 • No. 44
