ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY FOR POSTWAE AMERICA
Maverick, Maury
Economic Democracy For Postwar America By MAURY MAVERICK AS Chairman and General Manager of the Smaller War Plants Corporation I have a definite governmental task to perform. This is important in...
...If we can have decentralization and diversification of industry, we are likely to have a more healthy economy and a better economic equilibrium...
...We shall need public works to supplement free enterprise and small business after the war...
...It is essential to civilized society to have such improvements...
...It is efficient in a real sense only if there is an opportunity for new energy and new methods to move in and challenge any existing business...
...We need a decentralization of industry throughout the United States...
...Aluminum, copper, and steel were the materials most closely controlled by great business cartels before the war, but they were first on the list of shortages announced by the War Production Board...
...Big business is not of itself an evil thing, any more than a little business is good just because it is little...
...thinking...
...The Meaning Of Free Enterprise We cannot have national prosperity or a healthy system of small business unless we have real free enterprise...
...Its purpose was to "aggressively mobilize" small business, redress the unequal balance between small and big business by increasing the granting of prime and subcontracts for war goods to smaller plants, as well as to step up essential civilian production...
...A Deadly Parallel IAM not engaged in any crusade against big business as such...
...Moreover, we certainly have the right to make plans and should be making plans for postwar reconversion without jeopardizing the war effort...
...It is only the indispensable improvement program of any healthy...
...If we have giant economic concerns this means economic dictatorship, and economic dictatorship leads directly to political dictatorship...
...We Americans should, and will, have big business concerns...
...2) small business men must be given full opportunity to engage in any kind of civilian program as rapidly as the war program permits...
...If the American people are told the truth about this war, there is nothing to fear about postwar plans and plans for reconversion...
...But while we are fighting for victory, production adjustments will be made and, in fact, are already being made without injury to the war production effort...
...Our national industrial economy rests, not on a few large centers of mass production, but on countless small towns, each with one or more small factories...
...To that end, (1) there must be a vigorous and unrelenting prosecution of all unlawful restraints on trade, and especially aggressive enforcement of the laws against trusts, cartels, and monopolies—which are the greatest menace to full employment after the war...
...Where is there efficiency in a svsteni which brought about the notorious shortages of war materials iust before the outbreak of the war—tell me that...
...They are now taken for granted and those who fiercely opposed them when they were being adopted do not even suggest abandoning them today...
...Large businesses must not be permitted to put iron fences around their spheres of influence by the exercise of any monopoly power or unfair trade practices...
...This is not socialism, not communism, not radicalism...
...4) favorable consideration, or even preferential treatment, should be given small business in purchasing surplus war materials and machinery in the postwar period, and (5) little business must be supplied with adequate technical aids with respect to operation and management...
...If we wish to escape political dictators we must see to it that we avoid economic dictatorship...
...We Can Do Both At this point I want to make one thing clear...
...Big business is and can be efficient only if there is an absolutely free opportunity for small business to challenge the leaders...
...We can assure political democracy only by making it certain that we first have economic democracy...
...For A Healthy Nation I want it to be understood that, in favoring free enterprise and small business, I am not at all opposed to public works...
...I have no patience with those who constantly harp on the alleged efficiency of big business, as though big business is always efficient and small business can never be such...
...Cartels do not serve or benefit anybody except their own members...
...I am in favor of an expansion of public works in the future...
...We have more stable economic conditions if we have a diversification of industry not only in big cities like Washington, Baltimore, Phila- -delphia, and New York, but also in cities with a population of 50,000 to 250,000...
...Reconversion does not necessarily mean that the war has already been won...
...Finally, it is well to remember that the economic and social democracy which free enterprise, small business, and social legislation will produce—and must produce—is also the basis of political democracy...
...We will have a sounder and safer America if our economic society maintains a proper balance between small and large business...
...nation...
...This means that we are against cartels dividing up markets, and against trusts and monopolies which cut down production in order to .keep up prices...
...The war has not yet been won...
...Our anti-monopoly laws should be vigorously enforced in order that the several million independent businesses of the country can be preserved and permitted to retain their independence and expand...
...Too much economic power, and with it,a concentration of political power, in the hands of a few is always a dangerous thing in any society...
...There is a deadly parallel between the degree of concentration of industry and the acute shortages of raw materials which plagued the nation in the early days of this war...
...So long as we are honest, and keep the people fully informed, we can carry on both efforts—keep on fighting effectively and also prepare for the future...
...I want to mention briefly the work of the Smaller War Plants Corporation as a preliminary to considering the ways in which free enterprise and small business can help to produce the sort of postwar world in which the mass of Americans can prosper and flourish as free citizens...
...But we must also realize that our three million little businesses and plants must be preserved...
...Recognizing that the preservation and encouragement of small business must be a basic national policy, even in war, we at the Smaller War Plants Corporation consider our first and immediate job to be to see that these small firms get their fair share of the war contracts and ^secure materials, machinery, and finances to carry out such war contracts as they get...
...When our boys come back from the war, we should do everything possible to prevent a reconcentration of industry in a few big cities, intensifying housing problems, crime, vice, poverty, and all other familiar social problems...
...I can remember the bitter opposition I once received for supporting labor legislation, social security, minimum wage laws, and the like...
...This is important in itself, but I can bring to it the greater enthusiasm and devotion because it is an indispensable factor in promoting the economic, social, and political system which I hope to see emerge in postwar days—a system which will assure economic security, social justice, and political democracy...
...They serve the interest of members by restricting competition...
...The time has arrived to give up the folly.of blind worship of big business as such...
...The Smaller War Plants Corporation was set up on June 11, 1942, within the framework of the War Production Board...
...And public works are not the only type of governmental aid we are going to continue and expand...
...The battle is still on...
...I don't regret for a moment the time I spent helping to put over the Tennessee Valley Authority, Boulder Dam, Grand Coulee, and the like...
...The strength of this nation is not to be found in million dollar factories, although there will be some of that kind...
...There is going to be a great deal of essential city planning—rehousing, and even the breaking up of our great city concentrations and the redistribution of city populations in smaller and more human residential centers...
...This is just what kills off small enterprise and impoverishes the nation...
...But these social gains are only the start for those which will be needed after the war...
...If we can produce more civilian goods without hurting the war effort, through the use of labor and materials not required in the war effort, we should do so...
...But looking beyond the war to the long-range problem, we must prepare now to implement the proposition that the small business unit is the most vital thing in the whole American system of economic life...
...These boys must also have the opportunity to start out on their own, establish small businesses, and accomplish the aims and ambitions they have dreamed of—the cause, indeed, for which they are now fighting...
...Some folks warn us that the American people might lose their morale if we discuss and plan for peacetime economy...
...They are the foundation on which we must build a better America for all—the cornerstone of social justice...
...3) adequate financial aid must be made available to small business...
...A cartel is a small ring of private individuals or companies which get a substantial control over the production or distribution of some basic material or some necessity of life...
...What I mean by free enterprise is the "real McCoy" in this respect—a truly free- enterprise with new ideas, new projects, new materials, and new methods of production...
...we should, and will, have mass production on a grand scale...
...For too long have we allowed bigness to dazzle our eyes and distort our...
...Any cartel is a gun pointed straight at your standard of living...
...Our American economy will be sounder and safer if there is a wide distribution of ownership and management in our production facilities...
...This is free enterprise and the American system...
...After the war we shall have a backlog of essential ' public improvements costing from 30 to 50 billion dollars—public health, reforestation, irrigation, conservation, the building of highways, slum clearance, and all the rest...
...We require these things not only to furnish employment for the needy, but for the welfare of the nation...
...I wish to make it plain that we intend to fight not merely for equal treatment but for preferential treatment, since the war' program has tended to distort still further the inequalities already existing in our economic structure...
...This nation must become free from the chains of economic domination...
...Moreover, cartels are a gun pointed at your liberties as free men...
...We must recognize that many who are now carrying on propaganda for free enterprise do not really believe in free enterprise at all...
...All they want is to free business enterprise from healthy and necessary public control and regulation, so they can impose their own controls and restraints on business in the form of cartels, monopolies, price rigging, curtailment of output, and the like—those things that helped on the great depression of 1929...
...We must be certain that when our boys come back home, the towns and villages they left will still be there, not as ghost towns, but alive and able to reemploy them in the mills and factories where they learned their trade...
...The social gains of the past 10 or 12 years have now come to be accepted...
...If we let our little businesses be gobbled up by cartels and monopolies, then our little people—and most of us are little people—will be gobbled up in turn...
...Rather it will be found in the thousands of -small shops and plants where men are struggling for a vi- , sion and looking to a goal, where new ideas are developed and new methods are perfected in the toil of men who work for themselves and their loved ones...
Vol. 8 • May 1944 • No. 18
