AMERICA CAN WIN THE PEACE!
Kaiser, Henry J.
America Can Win The Peace! By HENRY J. KAISER THERE are three well-defined points of view about the postwar world: One is a philosophy of pessimism and despair. It requires no imagination to...
...This is a solemn obligation which political and industrial leadership dare not ignore...
...There is demand enough in sight to keep every productive force in America working to capacity for 25 years...
...It is generally admitted that the peak of war production has passed...
...To employ the ancient Biblical symbol—the cutback and the layoff come like a "thief in the night...
...that it will be able to borrow all the short-term capital it needs from the banks...
...The use to which wealth is put is vastly important, but the fact remains there can be no social progress without it...
...who have neither the courage nor the vision to act in your behalf or for the benefit of our citizens as a whole...
...I see the rank and file of our people decently housed, many of them for the first time...
...It belongs to those days when we lay hold on the opportunities of peace to build the kind of a world we know we can have...
...They are willing to pay any price to perpetuate their privilege and to prolong that which they think is their advantage...
...For a good many weeks American business has been listening in the hope that private finance would offer an answer to this vital question...
...I subscribe to the belief that the morale of any people engaged in war depends in no small part on the conviction that they are fighting for a cause...
...The scientific revolution is no less striking than the social revolution which is in progress throughout the world...
...I see a great throng engaged in research—not only in pure science and learning, but in invention and industry—equipped with the finest facilities which can be devised...
...our transportation system creaks and groans under capacity loads...
...to entrench themselves in the patterns and models of yesterday...
...There is accumulating at this moment a pressure of demand for the necessities, comforts, and conveniences—and even for the luxuries of life—which is greater than anv heretofore expressed...
...Circumstances may be doing our timing for us...
...Long before that time, wise men will have not only planned, but put into execution the transition of our economy from war to peace...
...The truth is, we dare not have depression and unemployment...
...It is my considered belief that, next to victory in war, the greatest problem which America faces is that of organizing production for full employment...
...Just as there have been development projects too large for private finance, so there are times when the credit needs transcend the ability of private agencies...
...This conflict has been a ruthless and brutal teacher, but it has taught us many things we needed to know...
...While recruiting still proceeds in accordance with military requirements, we are informed that more than one million men have been .returned to civilian life...
...The corollary is that the less we need Government aid, the less Government will interfere with the rights of investors to choose when and how they will employ their savings...
...Apparently there are some who hold to the belief that sound and solvent industry has built up reserves in bank deposits...
...I am fully aware that when the nation is at war and a gigantic military offensive is pending, the timing of our reconversion effort is of the utmost importance...
...beyond our borders are the markets of the world, virtually everyone of them depleted, nearly all of them served by areas which now lie in the waste and ruin caused by war...
...There are those who would have you believe that the American way of life has gone out of style, and that you had better surrender your initiative and your independence to the super-state...
...There are others who still paint a dismal picture of revolution, disorder, class conflict, and wholesale business depression...
...We shall probably have to do both...
...Something over half of the industrial equipment which was moved out of our factories to make way for war production is now obsolete...
...Now electronics have come almost literally out of the air, and a new world has opened up to us greater potentials than those which Columbus viewed when he sailed into the regions of the North American continent...
...It could be a tragic blunder...
...There is a substance to our faith which is stronger than words, more powerful than oratory, more dynamic than thought itself, and more enduring than dreams...
...As the colossal war machine which we have created rolls on toward victory, scarcity gives way to abundance...
...Still others will attempt to persuade you that there must be a long period of readjustment while the body politic rests and recuperates from the strain of war...
...The real test to the nation does not come in the glamour of war...
...With every advance in scientific learning, human society becomes more closely integrated...
...There is a terrifying tendency on the part of some of the leaders of industry to play safe by doing as little as possible...
...Much of it will never be used again...
...I see a vast development in hospitals and medical service, which will bring health and healing within the reach of countless thousands to whom it has thus far been denied...
...Lodestar Of All Our Hopes Lay hold on this word "enterprise," which in its origins means to undertake, and give it a new meaning...
...They are, as always, selfish, short-sighted, and anti-social...
...I have no fear that you will be influenced by the prophets of disaster...
...If you have not yet trained your eyes to see beyond the valley in which you live, then begin now to think in terms of postwar America...
...each one of which should now know its limitation: labor, management, and government...
...Our people have the right to the facilities which assure their health...
...A new statesmanship should now be striving to reconcile the interests of men and machines, for we are witnessing the passing of the barriers of space and time...
...I see our ports teeming with the goods of trade, carried in our own ships, financed by our savings, exports and imports quickening the economic life of our fellow nations as well as our own...
...The necessity for reconversion could come on us quickly, almost without warning...
...and there is no evidence on the fighting fronts today that such will be the case...
...many of them are on the way to fulfillment...
...Whatever truth there may be in this position, it ignores the nature and extent of the social and economic upheaval which has taken place...
...War contracts are being terminated every day...
...All of the miracles which are being wrought in the stupendous business of war production cry out against the false conservatism whicn is unwilling even to look into postwar prospects, to say nothing of doing something now to assure their realization...
...The second attitude represents the opposite extreme—with flights of fancy about a perfect world, peopled by a perfect mankind...
...There is the instant need to take up the-slack as fast as, it appears, It is shocking to be obliged to admit that the war has taught us a great deal about progress...
...our tools and machines are wearing out...
...In view of the magnitude of the problem, this may have to be a joint credit pool in which banking, life insurance, Government, and even industry itself will participate...
...Take two great English verbs into your vocabulary today: "do" and "will...
...There are those who still believe that their personal interests are more important than the welfare of the nation—the monopolists who think only in terms of protecting that which they have...
...These are no more than the fantasies of defeated men—the nightmares of the timid, the alarms of the fearful, and the faithless...
...If we fail to reconvert, to expand, and to develop, without laying the burden of unemployment upon our people, it will be our own fault...
...There is instant and urgent need for a vast credit pool to take care of the rehabilitation of enterprise, both large and small, for whatever period is necessary to restore them to independent financial status...
...The era of the light metals, the plastics, and the plywoods may already have been ushered in...
...namely, to create, to build, to possess, to enjoy, and best of all, to share...
...We have got to be worthy of it...
...If freedom means anything, we have got to achieve it...
...It has proven that the productive capacity of America exceeds any and all pre-war estimates...
...As long as we recognize that Government financing does nothing more than mobilize the wealth and the saving of the people through taxation and borrowing, we are safe in employing it sparingly...
...there is evidence that there will be an additional 750,000 by the end of 1944...
...The good life, however, calls you to live dangerously, to venture heroically, to risk valiantly, for in such dy-i namic faith all of the high ground of progress has been taken throughout the whole story of mankind...
...The moment for action may well be here...
...Be fully aware that there are men and forces today who will conspire against us...
...The menace of unemployment is again at hand, for on V-Day when we celebrate the victory, virtually every war contract will terminate...
...These prospects are not the day dreams of idle speculation...
...With a relatively few exceptions, individuals no longer produce what they eat, or wear, or employ in the every-day business of living...
...Where will the money come from to quicken the production, sales, and distribution of the goods which will help us restore the economic values of our society...
...They want the equipment which a modern and progressive technology can provide...
...1WISH I had the eloquence and the power to persuade every authority to observe the danger signals which are now apparent...
...Again and again, it has been said that we can win the war and lose the peace...
...This is the time to prove that we can support it...
...It took a war to teach us the real capacity of America to produce, and we have discovered that it far exceeds any and all of the estimates...
...Again and again it has been said that we fight for freedom...
...our substance is being consumed...
...If to what is now known about metals, precision and efficiency are courageously applied, we can produce more wealth in a decade than the founders of the nation created in a century...
...Against this background I have been trying to think of America and the postwar world...
...but it is not something to merely talk about...
...Our hope is in ourselves, and our faith will prevail...
...Such a time is at hand...
...I see them traveling with greater convenience, at a lower cost per mile, than ever before...
...to fall back on outworn methods and obsolete tools...
...all of them are within the early reach of possibility...
...It is a grave mistake to suppose that reconversion can await the declaration of peace...
...they are willing to pay for them...
...When I say this, I am not thinking of the oft-repeated threat of revolution...
...No people, at any time in history, have ever contemplated such immeasurable prospects as those which are now in the realm of realizable promise...
...Unhappily the remnants of monopoly and vested interests are-still with us...
...We could be as unprepared as we were for Pearl Harbor...
...and we do so in the full knowledge that we cannot enjoy this blessing unless the great majority of our fellow men share in it...
...Faith and courage are at the opposite pole from pessimism and defeat...
...I see our government restoring to individuals and to enterprise that full freedom which gives them not only opportunity, but the sense of responsibility...
...If we could join hands, you and I, and go together now into this world of your tomorrow, I know we would see a promised land which would dispel all doubt...
...for all three are wholly and completely inter-dependent...
...Unhappily our choice now is not between Government financing and private financing...
...I see our cities cleared of slums...
...Our Hope Is In Ourselves' EMPLOYMENT for all is the first duty of the new democracy which is emerging from this ordeal by fire...
...If we are wise, no one of the three will seek to dominate and control...
...our people lack safe and comfortable housing, by perhaps millions of units...
...I have in mind our solemn obligation to provide opportunity for all who want to take part in the rebuilding of the American economy...
...ICANNOT subscribe to the theory that a depression, even of short duration, is a necessary consequence of the war...
...Could we but have the will to mobilize our powers for peace, as we do now for war, we could reach the highest ground which civilization has yet attained...
...It is not an exaggeration to say that the heavy iron age is largely on the way out...
...It is altogether too easy to raise that bogy against everything which we do not happen to like...
...If the human mechanism can be adapted to the speeds which have now been realized in the rocket plane, we may move from place to place throughout the earth at a rate of 500 miles per hour...
...Therefore, the production of wealth—new wealth, serviceable wealth —is a lofty goal and worthy of all our best powers...
...It, therefore, becomes a major concern of responsible men to deal realistically and immediately with the task of making employment possible for all who have the will to work...
...and that it will have recourse to the old channels of investment for its long-term needs...
...Will it be a partial or a total eclipse...
...May I ask, is it too much to hope that the singleness of purpose which now unites us will survive when once again we pursue the arts of peace ? The morale of the fighting men on our far-flung battlelines is a compound of many things—love of country, devotion to freedom, personal courage, teamwork, and confidence in leadership...
...It will be-because we lack the courage to do the things that need to be done now and every day until the peacetime economy is restored...
...to build Maginot Lines around that which they have...
...If such things transpire, it will be because America has lost her nerve...
...By its very, nature, the mechanical age renders men more than ever dependent on each other...
...It is not enough to say that men fight to exist—for there are some types of existence which are not worth defending...
...Stockpiles have begun to appear...
...In our present conflict we follow none of these aims or objectives...
...It requires no imagination to conjure up revolution, confusion, and chaos...
...But lest you fall a victim to the theory that the production of wealth is all that man needs, remember that the social welfare which is so greatly to be desired, can never be enjoyed by nations which have no productive capacity...
...The shadow of unemployment darkens the rim of the sun...
...I see them traveling on a vast network of highways, engineered for speed, comfort, and safety...
...I see labor and management recognizing that their interests are one, and that there is no conflict between them which cannot be solved by reasonable men...
...We are on the threshold of the greatest period of productivity which the world has ever known—indeed there is evidence that we have already crossed this threshold...
...Nevertheless, the timing of this momentous return to civilian production is a thing over which we may have no control...
...I see them traveling in automobiles which incorporate all and more than we have learned in the lessons of war transportation...
...our highways are inadequate...
...We know how to do it, because we have done it...
...There comes a time when plans, and even visions, must be converted into action...
...our narrow streets opened to care for a volume of traffic more than double that of the prewar days...
...I have ventured to say before, and I say it again, that the Fifth Freedom should be the freedom to produce...
...Once you have captured this vision, raise yuuC sights further still...
...A New Statesmanship But neither speed, nor power, nor skill will insure the opportunity to live the good life...
...Wars have been fought over religion, trade, geographic boundaries, natural resources, lines of communication, political ambitions, and the passion for power...
...But the real situatipn is just as simple as this: The greater the willingness of private finance to do its job, the less will be the need of Government aid...
...The third line of thought is that we can deal with human nature as it is, and build a far better civilization than we have thus far enjoyed...
...In the fraction of a second which it would take my voice to reach your ears, it could be heard in London, Sidney, or Cape Town...
...These are the words of action, which must be the lodestar of all our hopes...
...In a definite sense, this would be almost as great a tragedy as defeat...
...But more than all these is the belief that the homeland will provide an abundant opportunity to live the good life...
...Fighting For A Cause There is a trinity of forces for the postwar task, each one of which has now proven its worth...
...It is blind to the fact that a vast number of business organizations will have to have special accommodations which do not conform to standard credit requirements...
...It takes neither strength nor character to forecast the downfall of civilization...
...Already the basic materials of our industrial age begin to accumulate in quantity...
...The manpower shortage has been substantially relieved by the steady reduction of man hours in the war plants which are operating on a sound and efficient basis...
...It used to be said that there would never again be anything to stimulate American industry as the automobile did, in the first three decades of this century...
...no one of the three will press for special privilege or advantage...
Vol. 8 • May 1944 • No. 22
