The Churchmen Study Our Economy
QUINN, T. K.
The Churchmen Study Our Economy The American Economy--attitudes and Opinions. By A. Dudley Ward. Harper. 199 pp. $3.50. Reviewed by T. K. Quinn Author and business executive Too little...
...While there is an underlying realization of the crisis in human values, integrity, decency and justice, chargeable in large part to economic super-organization and the impersonality of corporate society, there is a discouraging note of complacency in the disposition to accept most of it as inevitable...
...man is not made for production but production for man...
...To exercise power of any kind over people deprives them of that much participation and responsibility...
...The evaluation deals with working women, farm and city groups, etc., and the scope of the inquiry covers a range of subjects from why people work to goals, training, honesty, freedom and standards...
...Charles P. Taft, chairman of the study committee, says: "There is no vital threat to our inherited and cherished values either in the status quo or in change as such...
...He does recognize as a "revolution" the process that has brought about the vast alteration in our ways of life during the past half-century...
...There is an attempt to evaluate the opinions and attitudes but no general appraisal of the relation of ethics to economic life, which remains for future study...
...It has been a work of exposition for its own sake rather than a search for cures, remedies or even the reaching of recorded decisions or recommendations...
...Man is not made for the state but the state for man...
...The responses are almost as varied in number as the people interviewed, but the reader will find them interesting and revealing...
...One may hope that the new studies will tackle these issues regardless of vested interests...
...The principal concern of the entire study has been to bring about a broader understanding of the effects of the revolution upon ethics and human values...
...Control over the means of production has the effect of violating democratic principles as much as any means of physical force...
...The present book, The American Economy--Attitudes and Opinions, is the last in the first series...
...For a society to be responsible under modern conditions, it is required that the people have freedom to control, to criticize and to change their government, that power be made responsible by law and distributed as widely as possible through the whole community...
...And irresponsibility lowers all standards and values...
...No definite conclusions are reached...
...Now that a further grant has been made by the Rockefeller Foundation for a second series of studies, some general comment on the first six books is in order...
...The results appear in six volumes...
...To the extent that economic power here is being concentrated in fewer hands in huge corporate enterprise, the individual no longer has a responsible share according to capacity in forming and directing the economic activity of the groups to which he belongs...
...It is required that economic justice and provision for equality of opportunity be established for all the members of society...
...The American Economy--attitudes and Opinions records the results of about 500 professionally planned and conducted individual interviews with a variety of people, and of the discussions of 40 scattered groups, based largely on questionnaires...
...A few years ago, the World Council of Churches took a more positive stand when it resolved: "Man must never be made a mere means for political or economic ends...
...Reviewed by T. K. Quinn Author and business executive Too little publicity has been given to the highly commendable work of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States, and its studies of Christian Ethics and Economic Life...
Vol. 38 • October 1955 • No. 41
