A STARTING POINT
A Starring Point THERE is cause for sober reflection over the future of free competitive enterprise in the studies recently made of small business in the economy of America. Small business,...
...Truman called the Democratic members of the Committee to the White House and vigorously denounced the Senate for "letting him down" and urged that the House support this program...
...But the significance of the President's timing cannot be overlooked...
...The watered down version of the unemployment compensation bill went to the House Ways and Means Committee where it was shelved out of spite toward striking workers...
...Truman must fish or cut bait...
...The times call for more than mere speech-making...
...THIS is not a heartening picture for the future of small business...
...Vague expression by Government of its preference for competition is not enough," Clark bluntly told Congress...
...There are two ways that this can best be done...
...Plants with 100 to 500 workers fell from 27.8 to 12.2 per cent and plants with less than 100 employes declined from 18.8 to 11 per cent of total production...
...Certainly the White House has not lost touch so completely with Congress that it wasn't informed of what was going to happen to the bill...
...The President's record on this bill is all too typical of the political maneuvering with vital legislation...
...The ruinous scarcity policies of monopoly must be scrapped if a system of free enterprise is to survive...
...Truman...
...Soon after, however, there came reports from Washington that Mr...
...He waited until the Ways and Means Committee had shelved the bill before he called them to the White House to make his plea for support...
...There is a growing disappointment over the way in which he is handling the fight for a progressive reconversion program...
...Secondly, the grip of monopoly on some of our basic industries must be broken...
...ATTORNEY GENERAL CLARK presented documentary evidence showing that Alcoa controls 95 per cent of the nation's aluminum capacity, and an overwhelming percentage of the sources of raw bauxite from which the metal is made...
...Truman reneged on his public statement and gave the Senate tories an out by sending a confidential memorandum stating that he considered the $25 for 26 weeks provision only "desirable...
...It is vitally important that all Americans should understand the significance of this trend, for if we are to continue our system of free enterprise small business must be the foundation upon which it is based...
...Truman cannot indefinitely play both sides of the street, trying to please both reactionaries and liberals...
...Those who really believe in a genuine free enterprise must give active and relentless support to measures that will strengthen and enlarge the influence of small business in the nation's economy...
...It is opposed, of course, by the American Bankers Association and the National Chamber of Commerce...
...The economic crisis we face is far too grave to be met with timid political flip-flops and appeasement...
...The obligation to reshape the industry "is unmistakable and unavoidable...
...Alcoa, long a symbol of monopoly at its worst, is an excellent starting point...
...Which Way, Mr...
...First: the Government must follow President Truman's recommendation that a program to provide much needed financial and advisory assistance for small business be adopted...
...A few weeks ago the President told Congress that the Kilgore unemployment compensation bill providing for benefits of $25 for 26 weeks for unemployed workers was a "must" in the Administration program...
...According to surveys by Maury Maverick's Smaller War Plants Corporation 500,000 small businesses have disappeared from the American scene since the war began...
...Clark has flung down a challenge to Congress which can not be ignored...
...It was evident that the Administration was disturbed over the reaction to the report that Truman himself knifed the Kilgore Bill and that he was seeking to regain favor with progressives by reasserting his stand in favor of its provisions...
...He showed that the Reynolds Metal Company, Alcoa's only competitor, could operate only 59 per cent of its producing capacity without dependence on Alcoa...
...In this connection it is encouraging to note that Attorney General Tom Clark recently recommended to Congress that the giant aluminum trust, dominated by the Alu-minum Company of America, be broken up into small competing units and that government plants be disposed of in such a way as to encourage competition for Alcoa...
...This program has already been formulated by SWPC and has received widespread acceptance...
...Clark's recommendation was accompanied by an 80 page document outlining an astounding case against Alcoa...
...Plants with from 500 to 2,500 employes declined from 31.3 to 21.3 per cent...
...The studies show the alarming effect concentration of war orders in big business has had on our small business...
...This was followed by another suspicious maneuver...
...This private conference was given extensive publicity by White House public relations men...
...Why didn't the President confer with the Committee before the vote on shelving was taken...
...But these studies show that its healthy, invigorating influence is gradually disappearing" before the growth of our corporate monopolies...
...Small business, operating freely and in genuine competition, has been the backbone of our system of free enterprise...
...His approach is soundly American and should have the support and sympathy of all who profess serious intentions of making free enterprise work...
...James Murray, Montana Democrat and sponsor of the Full Employment Bill, emphasized the interdependence of full employment and a genuinely free competitive economy...
...Speeches are the stock in trade of the monopolists who have tortured and twisted "free enterprise" till it has become anathema to millions of forward-looking people...
...PROGRESSIVES in Washington are beginning to wonder out loud what kind of a political game President Truman is playing...
...He set forth how Alcoa's powerful hold on the aluminum industry put it in a position to restrict the production of this vital metal before the war, endangered the war effort by creating bottlenecks in the supply of materials to our armed forces, and is today, by its strangling of competition, endangering full employment in an industry which, if free, would be one of the most promising fields of industrial expansion in the nation...
...In last week's issue of The Progressive, Sen...
...This trend, noted and documented before the war by the Temporary National Economic Committee, was given new impetus by the war program...
...Another survey reveals that in the metal products industries, plants with more than 2,500 employes increased their share of total production from 22.3 per cent in 1939 to 55.5 in 1943...
Vol. 9 • October 1945 • No. 40
