THE PRESS AT FRISCO
The Press At Frisco AMERICAN press and radio commentators at the San Francisco conference of the United Nations outnumber the delegates by more than 5 to 1. Nevertheless, coverage of the conference...
...Is that the story you've written?' I asked...
...Unless small business flourishes in the postwar era, he said in a Chicago speech, full employment, full production, and real free enterprise will be lost...
...These studies show that of the 3,317,000 small business firms in the United States in 1939 almost half a million, as Maverick pointed out, have closed shop...
...There are distinguished exceptions, to be sure, but they are a small and honorable minority...
...President Truman has asked Secretary of Commerce Henry Wallace to study the question and submit a report on which recommendations can be made for legislative action...
...Moreover, the American delegation's position would be immeasurably strengthened should it fight for a more democratic organization than was conceived at Dumbarton Oaks and Yalta...
...Although the Department of Justice has instituted anti-trust suits involving abuse of patent rights, no specific policy has been formulated for the prevention of such abuses...
...Jonathan Stout, reporting to the New Leader from the San Francisco conference, made somewhat the same observation when he said: "On 3 occasions within the first 2 days after we arrived I heard with amazement delegates make the most optimistic statements about the future of the conference, and then, in private, and off the record, have had them tell me that they are hoping against hope that the conference would not lay an egg "A writer of a nationally-known syndicated column was more than plain-spoken...
...THE country heard some blunt talk recently from Maury Maverick, Chairman and General Manager of the Smaller War Plants Corporation, that should not go unheeded...
...President Truman's decisive action will be taken as an indication that he means business about freeing America from the grip of monopoly...
...The Press At Frisco AMERICAN press and radio commentators at the San Francisco conference of the United Nations outnumber the delegates by more than 5 to 1. Nevertheless, coverage of the conference is incredibly bad...
...Many of the new manufacturing firms will close when the demand for war materials ends...
...He said he had not yet seen anything to lighten, but a great deal to deepen, his pessimism as to any really effective postwar peace organization...
...Meanwhile, big business has made a war killing and will be able to meet the readjustment without too much trouble...
...The biggest wartime decreases came in wholesale businesses, 21 per cent of which locked their doors...
...Recent studies, demonstrating the weak position of small business in our economy and the urgent need for some program along the lines Maverick advocates, have been made by the U. S. Department of Commerce...
...The Department of Justice has exposed the patent agreements which allowed the Nazis to paralyze our industrial capacity...
...The people so desperately want to hear that the San Francisco conference has succeeded that I cannot tell them how badly things have begun.' " It would be difficult to conceive a greater disservice to the American people who "so desperately want to hear that the San Francisco conference has succeeded" than to mislead and bamboozle them with a phony optimism, to play on their hopes and prayers by minimizing the scope of the assignment and the gravity of the problems to be faced...
...What this means in terms of future employment stability can be easily seen when it is considered that 28,464,000 people made a living or found employment in those firms in 1939...
...Oh, no,' he replied, T don't dare write that story.' 'Why not?' 'Because,' he answered, 'the people don't want to hear that story...
...It would then have behind it the powerful force of an enlightened public opinion...
...Paul Davis—who isn't Paul Davis but the collective pen name for several experienced correspondents on whose special reports The Progressive relies—summed it up in his article on Page One of this issue when he wrote: "If the newspaper correspondents and radio commentators publicly told the nation what they privately tell each other, the people of the United States would be far better equipped to light for a work...
...The challenge of San Francisco—and it is a great and honorable challenge—will be met only if an awakened citizenry is in full possession of the facts and understands the difficulties and obstacles that need to be surmounted...
...Truman himself did some valuable exploratory work in this field in the early days of the war...
...Maverick advocated a program which would include easy credit for small business, preferential treatment in the readjustment to peacetime production, and technical assistance such as the Government now provides for agriculture...
...The danger is that the retailers, wholesalers, and service trades will never .come back if the nation is faced with a critical postwar slump...
...Manufacturing, mining, and quarrying have shown a slight wartime increase...
...America has learned a lot in the past 5 years about how patent rights ha.ve been abused to strengthen and establish monopoly and cartel control...
...Deception now can only lead to bitter disillusionment later when we could least afford it...
...Encouraging Step "PROGRESSIVES watching for signs of the di-rection to be taken by President Truman's Administration will be pleased with his decision last week to tackle the patent problem as it relates to evasions of the anti-trust laws...
...Unless the Government acts to bolster it, one of the fundamental bulwarks of democratic America will collapse...
...Big business cannot meet the problems of readjustment alone," Maverick warned, pointing out that the war thus far has cost this nation a "half million" small concerns...
...Most correspondents and commentators seem to have concluded that they are not reporters but official propagandists, that their job is to conceal rather than reveal what is going on...
...The position of small business, it is painfully clear, is very shaky...
...Whither Small Business...
...ble urogram of international cooperation and a just and democratic peace settlement...
...This is a most encouraging step...
...The others will bid for business held by the old established firms...
...In the retail trade 17 per cent folded up, and 15 per cent of the service trades gasped their last breath...
...The Senate investigating committee headed by Mr...
...Unless we get them back and with them another half million we cannot expect a "vigorous, expanding business economy," he declared...
Vol. 9 • May 1945 • No. 19
