A SHIELD AGAINST BUSINESS AND LABOR GIANTS

Quinn, T. K.

A Shield Against Business and Labor Giants by T. K. QUINN WHATEVER the words of denial and confusion, the recent, unwarranted oil and steel price rises have increased already swollen profits and...

...The obvious answer to our dilemmas is to apply more effectively and universally the democratic process which we are so actively advocating elsewhere in the world...
...No evidence to justify any such increase the country over has ever been produced...
...Perhaps an appointed board with fewer members would be most practical...
...What is not generally understood is that these price increases not only protect the profit margins but increase the actual dollar amounts, figured as a percentage on the larger base...
...But this will in no way solve the problem that confronts us, which is no less than the preservation of the American system as it was intended by our forefathers—a wholesome republic with the maximum of democratic authority under a constitution and balance of powers...
...In practice, the prices are all uniform and as fixed as the prices for electrical power and light...
...Russell Kirk, who wrote The Conservative Mind, said in a recent magazine article that American businessmen are inhumane, not inhuman mind you, but inhumane in that "they are deficient in the disciplines that nurture the spirit...
...Big Business conditions our lives today more than the political maneuvers affecting us...
...Otherwise it can be done by the government appointing public representatives, like the Roman tribunes, to sit on boards of directors and administrative committees of corporations and unions...
...Even the men who run these monster things don't really know what they are doing...
...Unwilling to accept responsibility for the awful consequences, the price gougers have now come up with the T. K. QUINN was formerly senior vice president of the General Electric Company...
...The sinister working of our system and its effect under these conditions is the subject of a number of recent discerning articles and books by public-spirited writers and scholars...
...The temptation to partiality and bribery would be ever present...
...The steel price increase of $6 per ton is of course reflected in every refrigerator, automobile, range, or other metal device the consumer purchases...
...Instead, it has all the appearance of a gigantic, impersonal machine disgorging a cornucopia of products at a prodigious rate, under the direction of a few faceless men at the top bent solely upon profit and their own positions, regardless of the consequences to the nation...
...It's all too big and too overwhelming...
...To whom can he turn...
...We are provided' with...
...It hardly seems to the individual victims to be the land of the free or home of the brave...
...Democracy is not a mere selection of political or economic forms...
...We have seen how labor and management have worked together in some instances against the interests of both the public and the workers...
...He has no organization even to find the facts...
...An alert and informed electorate would not accept unreason, imposition, indifference, complacency, or deadening conformity...
...The American repeats and hears his friends and neighbors say, over and over again, "There is nothing I can do about it...
...They may be expected to cry out to the heavens in righteous indignation...
...It is therefore to the multiple interest of the controlled industry officials to increase both costs and prices...
...Neither can we hope to lead the world...
...There is no public control of these latter prices...
...America is not yet a country where their extreme selfishness can be restrained, but with public support it could be held in check...
...One can have a little more respect for the brazen method of U. S. Steel in announcing the higher "administered prices" for the whole industry, which were immediately adopted by all the other steel companies, than for the ill-disguised subtlety of Standard Oil of New Jersey, acting through its subsidiary Humble Oil, which had a corresponding result...
...I can testify from a lifetime of experience in both big and small business that the opposite of these propositions is the truth, if experience is needed to disprove what is so manifestly false, v All of these phenomena are closely related...
...The fewer the number of informed constituents, the less responsible the representation...
...It explains in part the failure of so many to vote, the indifference to social improvements, the resignation to crowded schools and inadequate teaching staffs, and the lessening of interest in other public affairs and unselfish pursuits...
...At least they do not measure the damage to the public...
...A Dave Beck or a James Hoffa can be elected to office despite their black records because they are not chosen by the individual members of their unions in the glare of publicity and the facts but by a few agents or locally intimidated or self-serving officials...
...The figures and the record established by the O'Mahoney and Ke-fauver Committees of the U. S. Senate cannot be denied, although the testimony of the perpetrators appears to assume that no one ever checks their statements or looks at the record...
...Perfectly valid objections can and will be raised to any plan proposed for public representation where private interests and positions are concerned...
...In all instances I am a captive customer with devices and gadgets requiring electricity, gas, and oil to operate...
...Practically, this opposing authority can be established within labor and industry by themselves if it is honestly and seriously undertaken...
...Decisions are made by a self-serving few...
...What can he do if the President is helpless and appears to bow before the profit-bent giants of industry...
...Their conduct as well as their authority often overflow and adversely affect the public interest which should be the nation's first concern...
...We shall not, I venture, regain our interest in the humanities as opposed to profits and machines until we breathe new life into our weakened democratic process—until we regain the feeling that we can individually do something about it...
...The present method by which a few trade union leaders can get together with a few private corporation officials and boost wages and prices in a way that continues to endanger the preservation of our whole way of life is wholly indefensible...
...The public is not represented...
...Theoretically, oil and gasoline prices are regulated by competition within the industry...
...Neither are the stockholders individually, nor the employees, or union members—yet they have the greatest stake in the outcome...
...Whom can he trust...
...Our mass-culture depersonalizes the individual to conform to machine uniformity and makes him less consciously free...
...David Reisman in his Individualism Reconsidered writes, "In America, success is central...
...At my own place in Connecticut the price of electricity is regulated by a public utility commission, and my total annual cost is about $300 per year...
...All corporate giants and trade unions exercising what amounts to sovereign powers must either come under the strict control of the government with the public interest directly represented, or they must set up within their own organizations a loyal opposition representing the public interest with at least inhibitory power...
...Standard Oil of New Jersey, the prize profit-maker of all American corporations, whose common stock will be found in the portfolios of more investment trusts than any other, promptly rose on the stock exchanges as did the stocks of all of the other fifteen giant oil corporations...
...The individual consumer has but one voice...
...They should be the last from the standpoint of the public interest to control these conditions...
...They and their advertising agencies are setting the pace and patterns for uniform conduct and beliefs so that even our scholars and academic leaders find it to their financial advantage to rationalize our plight...
...The chairman of U. S. Steel not only "faced out" the Kefauver Committee but actually undertook to justify the corporation's untenable position in an entirely one-sided Reader's Digest article...
...And the solution to the problem is not less but more independence and more democracy...
...A Shield Against Business and Labor Giants by T. K. QUINN WHATEVER the words of denial and confusion, the recent, unwarranted oil and steel price rises have increased already swollen profits and prices and magnified inflation...
...The most that can be said for it is that one-half the increase was partially justified by increased costs...
...It is of a piece and pattern with our national conformity, apathy, and complacency...
...I pay about $500 per year for oil and gasoline...
...For all practical purposes the President of the United States is so elected today...
...Labor, too, has become a sovereignty like Big Business...
...On the contrary, the published figures of the big oil companies have all reflected substantial profit increases since then...
...Until this situation is corrected, graft and corruption will prevail, and democracy cannot hope to approach its fulfillment in America...
...The board could be authorized to assign public representatives to attend the official meetings of big unions and corporations and report back any action inimical to the public interest...
...There is no balance of power inside industry or labor organizations...
...Corporation officials in particular do not realize or recognize that they are operating quasi-public institutions...
...The two giants—labor and management—are now close to being counterbalanced, although management still has the more powerful hand...
...Thus, we magnify the concentration of power in the hands of a few despite all the outward fanfare of opposition, while headline-seeking politicians chase erring individuals to hold up to public scorn...
...Sumner Slichter of Harvard, expressing the Big Business viewpoint, has argued in the New York Times Magazine that the fewer the competitors the greater the competition, and by way of multiplying incredibility, he maintains that the giant corporations are creative...
...Together they are making a mockery of democracy in the economic field...
...Department managers and technicians cannot best be chosen by democratic vote, nor can management be well undertaken by the untrained, but on moral questions or those broadly affecting the public, duly elected or appointed representatives of the people should always be present to say "no" with authority...
...This is the new world being created by General Motors, Standard Oil, Bancamerica, Metropolitan Life, and a few score other such billionaire corporations...
...It is an inflation that is pinching millions into poverty...
...In comic books and cartoons, mass magazines, motion pictures, radio and television, advertising, and music, we tend toward stereotyped patterns—catering to the lowest tastes, discouraging art, spiritual recreation, and wholesome activities...
...The oil and gasoline price increase cost the average New England house hold user about $30 per year...
...Board members would have to be chosen with the care and investigation followed in the selection of Supreme Court justices...
...nor should we...
...I am here referring to the method, not the merit, of the cases which either labor or management might present...
...Here again, the grievous fault in the process is that the public interest is not represented...
...Instead of striving to find, create, and accomplish individually, and not to yield, he becomes more passive and disinterested until "Aw, what's the use," threatens to become the national slogan...
...The higher the costs in labor and material the greater the profits in amount even if the percentage margins are not increased...
...new defense that they are not th&, perpetrators but the victims, and that, inflation, if you please, is not a man-made phenomenon but something like an act of God...
...Tragically, this un-American attitude of futility is becoming characteristic of our times...
...Having no authority, the many have no participation nor responsibility, and without these basic prerequisites they have little or no interest...
...He is the author of several books on American business, including "Giant Business: Threat to Democracy" and "Giant Corporations: Challenge to Freedom...
...A public Board of Economic Authority appointed by the President or even elected, one from each state, is a step well worth considering...
...Under democracy every citizen should have the right to have constantly questioned, examined, publicized, and, if necessary, changed, every act of power, economic or political, that is exercised over him...
...We have seen, too, how the appointment of certain members to public bodies like the Federal Trade Commission, TVA, Federal Communications Commission, and others, has tended to serve private rather than public interests...
...Similarly, it is doubtful whether the objectionable conduct or anti-public interest decisions of private corporations could continue on the present scale if they were subject to more independent democatic influences instead of "blocks of stock" ballots from banks, insurance companies, and investment trusts...
...An empty sock," said Benjamin Franklin, "cannot stand upright...
...Democracy cannot function with one-sided interests in control and without the checks and balances so wisely provided by our forefathers in the regulation of the political government...
...We corrected this defect in our national elections years ago when we provided for the direct election of U. S. Senators...
...The American citizen who stands by helplessly as a victim of these highhanded, unconscionable practices that adversely affect the public interest without democratic sanctions of any kind, finds little satisfaction in the puny and futile pleas of the President that the giant corporations please exercise restraint and help to hold the price line against disastrous inflation...
...It consists, as John Dewey said, "in having a responsible share according to capacity in forming and directing the groups to which one belongs...
...In this never-never land of designed confusion, with the requests of the President ignored as so much idle chatter, the citizen has that for-' eign feeling of helplessness...
...But the maintenance or equities between them would not alone solve the problem of the public interest or the subordinate problem of assuring democratic justice within either industry or labor...
...Kirk insists they are largely ignorant of the humanities, which record the wisdom of the ages and properly instruct us in the nature of man...
...a catalogue of what fs success and what is failure, and nothing matters except achieving the first and avoiding the latter...

Vol. 21 • December 1957 • No. 12


 
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