SHOWDOWN ON THE HOME FRONT

...The effects of monopoly fall with especial force upon the farm population of our country...

...There are other fields in which monopoly has already grown so great that one finds it hard to believe that any agency other than the Government of the United States can be powerful enough to cope with the situation...

...Either we are going to hug monopoly to our bosom and run up the white flag and say that the public interest has to be protected in some other way than by the free activity of truly competitive business, or else we have to face this problem and do something about it...

...Public Yardsticks Needed In his very able report to the Special Committee on Postwar Economic Policy and Planning of the Senate which is known as Senate Document 106, Sen...

...It has let governmental policy through the Petroleum Administration for War be dictated by the major oil companies...

...There are many things which in the nature of the present circumstances we cannot do...

...And while I do not advocate that public agencies, Federal, state, or local, immediately take over the entire business in these fields of natural monopoly, I certainly do advocate that enough of them be owned and operated by public bodies to inject into the business the elements of true competition and of abundant supply at the lowest economically sound cost...

...I say these things because the whole purpose of monopoly is to gain a sufficiently great degree of control over production to control the output and the supply of a product...

...d) to offer such property for sale, wherever practicable, in small enough quantities or lots to enable veterans, small business, farmers, and similar purchasers to have full opportunity to purchase portions of it...

...3. All property having been declared to be in surplus shall at regular intervals be catalogued by the Director with the advice and assistance of the Board and suitable arrangements shall be made to disseminate such information in the widest possible manner throughout the country...

...That answer is the publicly owned yardstick...

...The philosophy of scarcity which is inherent in monopoly can have only one result in the long run—impoverishment of the nation...

...ne of these industries is oil, about which I have on numerous occasions addressed the House of Representatives at great length, but I wish to reemphasize the absolute necessity of action which can be effective in either protecting the opportunity of truly independent corporations to exist in the oil industry, or else can protect the public interest through Government itself—by means of public ownership of pipelines, for example...

...The growth of monopoly power, particularly if it has international connections, spells the doom of such an America...

...Even the question of pipeline ownership, a key to major oil company control, has been pretty much left alone...

...We also know, or ought to know by this time, that during the present war these same German forces have not been idle...

...We are right up against the decision which will determine the future course of our country for centuries to come...

...The Basic Decision The record of the Congress so far on this matter is not one from which we can take much encouragement...

...On the other hand, the power of monopoly not only remains, but has unquestionably been greatly strengthened as a result of war conditions and the necessities of war production...

...The United States Steel Corporation is close behind with $2,120,000,000...

...Joseph C. O'Mahoney of Wyoming includes a table which compares the total assessed valuation of the 48 states of the Union with the total assets of 34 corporations in this country having assets of a billion dollars or more...

...It is interesting to note that the total assessed property valuation of the various states amounts altogether to $143,000,000,000 and the total assets of these corporations to more than half that sum, namely $73,000,-000,000...

...Indeed international monopoly power was directly responsible for the scarcities which have caused us so much difficulty with regard to rubber, tin, steel, copper, and aluminum...

...William Clayton, a former Liberty Leaguer, almost complete discriminatory power to do as he sees fit...

...These are the fields of public utilities, communications, and to some extent transportation...

...These ideas have lulled America into inaction long enough...

...There were good reasons for this...

...But there were many other ways that this problem could have been met and solved, several of which were offered in the nature of amendments to the bill when it went through the House...

...For years Americans have wondered why it was that agriculture received such an unjustly small proportion of the national, income...

...One is H.R...

...I could go further and show how it was that this philosophy of scarcity, restricting production in nation after nation, insisting upon the levying of higher and higher tariff barriers, parceling out world trade and carving up world markets into preserves which were closed to competitors—how these developments in the period after World War I laid the groundwork for the present war and were, along with the aggression of the fascist countries, the cause of this conflict...

...Neither has my bill to make it illegal and an action in restraint of trade for the owner of a patgnt to refuse a reasonable offer for its use or to enter into a patent agreement which restricts production...

...On the contrary, whatever is necessary to be sacrificed for that purpose must be...

...O'Mahoney and myself have introduced legislation to require registration of all cartel agreements entered into by any American corporation...

...I have introduced two bills on this subject, portions of which I should like to quote to readers of The Progressive...

...There are fields of business where monopoly is inevitable, indeed where it is the only sensible form of organization...

...The first is that monopoly has proven a far more serious obstacle to all-out war production than any, except those in the very inner circle of the war program, realize...

...2. It is hereby declared to be the policy of Congress to dispose of all surplus governmental property in such manner as— (a)* to secure for the Government and its taxpayers the maximum practical return from the sale of such property...

...True, progress has been made and bottlenecks have been broken—in some instances, be it said to their credit, by men who have come into Government service straight out of some of the biggest monopoly corporations in the country...

...We know Schacht has been spending a great deal of time in Switzerland and is very close to the so-called Bank of International Settlements...

...Indeed, one of the last acts of the House before it recessed June 23 was to pass a bill completely exempting the huge business of insurance from all the Anti-Trust Laws...

...The very people who talk about the preservation of private enterprise and free economy are demonstrating at this very moment that what they really mean by these phrases is the further freedom of a few monopolists to exploit the people and deny them full production, and to block the chance of any small business men to enter certain fields of industry...

...Through the years agriculture has remained predominantly a competitive industry...

...This has not been passed...

...Squeezing The Farmers This has been true because thousands, sometimes millions, of farmers have been marketing the same crop at the same time and because purchasers were therefore in a position to compel farmers to compete with one another in the sale of those crops for lower and lower prices...

...Therefore it is imperative that we chart our present and postwar course with a view to avoiding that greatest of all dangers to free democratic institutions, namely, closely-held, private monopoly power...

...Throughout the years America has prided herself on being a land of opportunity, a land of enterprise, a land where men with ideas could put those ideas into effect, build prosperous businesses both large and small, increase the supply of available goods and benefit their country thereby...

...We are now fashioning the molds into which the world of the days after this war will be poured...

...I mention this legislation only to show two things—first, that there is before Congress a considerable body of legislation that would effectively combat monopoly power and that, second, Congress so far has not taken action in such legislation...

...Only 10 states have assets greater than the American Telephone & Telegraph Company, the Chase National Bank, or the Prudential Life Insurance Company, all of which corporations have assets between $4,500,000,-000 and $5,000,000,000...

...Pending Legislation Sen...

...But the time is already long overdue when we should most seriously consider the increasing power of domestic monopoly and even of international cartels in the economic structure...

...But for governmental yardsticks, the price of electricity to the farmer would have been an exorbitant cost exacted from him by the monopolistic power of private utilities...

...A Major Cause Of War For one thing, we cannot interfere with maximum production for the war...

...But for governmental regulation the same thing would have been true of charges for railroad transportation...

...5082 which lays down a. policy for disposal of surplus property in the following language: "SEC...

...We know that the report of that Bank of International Settlements on postwar arrangements in Europe was hailed with joy all through Germany, but was very coldly received in the democratic countries...

...I know about those soothing sentences which tell us that after all bigness is no crime, that huge corporations have been responsible for much of the industrial advance which has been made in recent years, that the management of these corporations is becoming more enlightened as time goes on...

...b) to cause such property to be of the greatest possible benefit to the greatest practicable number of citizens of the United States...

...We have witnessed the war program build up the power of monopoly more than ever and we are now witnessing a situation where unless present tendencies are sharply changed, there will be nothing in the Congressional program for the reconversion period which will be calculated to protect small enterprise and pull the teeth of monopoly and cartels...

...It shall be unlawful to resell surplus property for any price in excess of the allowable mark-up...

...I also have another bill, of which mention has briefly been made in the columns of The Progressive, which would require that before Government-owned plants could be sold, the Anti-Trust Division of the Department of Justice would have to make certain that its sale did not further a monopolistic situation and under which the Smaller War Plants Corporation would likewise have veto power over such sales if in its opinion they would contribute to increasing monopoly power...

...Vigilance Is Vital In my judgment, if we are really to win this war for freedom, this battle against monopoly and cartels must be won at the same time...

...Already literature is being sent to members of Congress urging modification or even outright repeal of the Anti-trust Laws of the United States...

...But on the whole Congress has shied away from any of its forthright action which is required to reduce the power of monopoly...

...There are two reasons for this...

...Selling in a market, therefore, dominated by monopolistic buyers able to force the price of his crops far below even the farmer's cost of production, and buying in a market at prices controlled by the seller, again without regard to real values, it has been inevitable that the farmers of America have failed to obtain their fair share of national income throughout the years...

...Otherwise the world will drift into the kind of artificial scarcity economy which, in the period between the First and Second World Wars, condemned it to another blood bath...

...Such catalogue shall contain as accurate information as possible concerning each item together with the price at which such item is to be sold to direct purchasers from the Government and the allowable mark-up for resale...

...True, the Smaller War Plants Corporation has been created by Congress and is now under Maury Maverick doing excellent work...

...The policies we allow to come into being now while the war is still in progress, will inevitably have far-reaching influence in shaping the kind of world in which our children will live...

...We must not deceive ourselves...

...Meanwhile, item after item which the farmers had to buy—tractors, farm machinery, fertilizer, feed, seed, even processed food products themselves—have had to be paid for at prices fixed by monopolistic control of the market...

...For full and unlimited production is the only means of increasing real wealth...

...There is only one answer here, only one way in which the public interest can ultimately be served...

...This bill provides that where a Government-owned plant cannot be sold without increasing monopoly power, it is to be leased for private operation on condition that its capacity must be used at least up to 75 per cent thereof...

...The purpose of such control in turn is to maintain artificial price levels...

...done...

...c) to prevent any sufih property being employed as an opportunity for profiteering by anyone...

...This bill was excused on the ground that the Supreme Court decision declaring insurance to be interstate commerce created a serious problem in the industry...

...This is the basic reason why farm tenancy has increased as much as it has in America, the basic reason why Congress attempts from time to time to wrestle with the agricultural problem without more definite long-run success...

...Regulation has been tried and found wanting...

...To a great extent, then, the question as to whether America and her Allies will really win the war or not depends upon what their policy is with regard to the great economic problems, especially in regard to monopolies and cartels...

...SEC...

...But the reason has never been far to seek...

...The total combined assessed valuation of the states of Arizona, Idaho, Vermont, Wyoming, Delaware, Mon-tana, and New Mexico fails to equal the assets of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey or the United States Steel Corporation...

...These methods would not have had the effect of exempting insurance from all the Anti-Trust Laws...

...It has not authorized a real investigation of monopoly in the petroleum industry...

...They knew the methods that they proposed to use to form cartels with French, British, and American firms would be successful in throttling production in the other nations and could be employed by these powerful German corporations in preparation for the next war...

...The greatest non-financial corporation in the country, second only to the American Telephone & Telegraph Company, is the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, controlling assets of almost every conceivable sort, amounting in all to $2,200,000,000...

...It is perhaps significant that the very financial agencies—the huge banks and insurance companies—which are the centers of monopoly power in America, are most frequently the landlords of the farmers who have lost ownership of their land through the operation of monopoly in our American economy...

...Whatever the military situation may have been, the Germans knew that their great monopoly industries were in as strong a position" as ever...

...We know that there are those people in America who will say—off the record at least—-that "after all, Hjalmar Schacht is not such a bad fellow...

...There are only six states in the Union which have assessed valuation greater than the total assets of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, which amount to $6,000,000,000...

...By and large, only through the formation of cooperatives have farmers been able to protect themselves against serious declines in prices for their crops at every period of harvest...

...With regard to the disposal of surplus property, particularly property in Government-owned plants, the program so far has been to leave in the hands of Mr...

...It has not passed a resolution introduced by myself to make a thorough inquiry into this entire problem of the power of the major oil companies...

...Every true American must be vigilant not only in supporting the war with every ounce of his energy, but also in fighting this all-important home-front battle against monopoly and cartels...