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Show Practical Planners Plot "Fll Nation's Economic Future LSj- Map Expansion of Foreign Trade as Help in fr 111 v Meeting Goal of 60,000,000 Jobs In Postwar Period. "ffv,rsL By BAUKIIXgE News Analyst and Commentator WNU Service, Union Trust Building: Washington, I). C. "Sixty million Jobs!" That phrase has been batted about hopefully, contemptuously, with the raised eyebrow of cynical doubt, with the act Jaw of desperate determination. People may believe It la an Ideal dream or feel that It la quite practicable prac-ticable but the majority of experts will tell you unless It Is achieved we face the old cycle: Inflation, depression, depres-sion, war and pestilence. But the phrase "60 million Jobs" has acquired a new meaning In the last few weeks. Why? Because of a plnn that has been presented to achieve this goal. The men who have worked It out, and the things that have brought them together and welded their Ideas into on effective implement, have caused some of the hard-headed experts, who are accustomed accus-tomed to weigh such ideas on the scales of experience and either toss them Into the scrap heap or hold them up os worthy of use, to call this plan good. The "plan" is contained In little red-bound booklet issued as Pamphlets Pam-phlets Nos. 37-38 of the National Planning association and called "America's New Opportunities in World Trade." And let me hasten to say right here that this organization organiza-tion Is not to be confused with another an-other New Deal group of a similar name which congress in its wisdom, wis-dom, or otherwise, has weighed In the balance and found wanting. The National Planning association about which I am writing Is a nongovernmental, non-governmental, non-partisan association associ-ation of businessmen and scholars, labor leaders, farmers, bankers and manufacturers, all, insofar as this task Is concerned, at once selfless workers in the vineyard of the public pub-lic good, and husbandmen who realize their neighbor's prosperity Is likewise their own. There are three reasons why the plan for creating Jobs, worked out by this organization, has made an Impression on Washington and elsewhere: else-where: First, It has been examined and praised by certain media of public thought which can hardly be described de-scribed as champions of the Impractical, Imprac-tical, the Utopian or the unAmerlcan the New York Times, the New York Herald Tribune, and Business Week, to mention only three. Second, because of the men who authored or sponsored it all leaders lead-ers In their respective fields of American enterprise. Third, because of the way the organization which brought these men together came Into being. Now let me give you the gist of the plan. Mutt. Booit Importi, Foreign lnve$tmentt A 10 billion dollar trade budget calling for increased imports and increased in-creased foreign Investments. That sounds pretty unorthodox to start with. There would be tariff reductions reduc-tions to increase the Imports on the theory that only thus will foreign countries be able to get the money to buy our goods. There would be steps taken to make foreign capital Investments accure In order to build them up. There would be an International bank for reconstruction and development; de-velopment; there would be long time foreign trade agreements coordinated coordi-nated with long-time investment programs. Now, in order to understand why uch an unorthodox program finds such ready acceptance In a hard-bitten world fed up with Utopian planning, plan-ning, let me take you back to the genesis of the organization from which this plan emerged. We find out selves In the comfortable com-fortable but somewhat gloomy quarters of the old City club in New York where met a group of men. most of thrm engineers, some economists, econo-mists, others interested as members of that club, who had become tired of the type of "research" which was largely a collection of ancient history his-tory and which looked backward Instead In-stead of forward. These men saw the weakness In the kind of "report" frequently asked for and submitted to great corporations and other Institutions by high-paid and well-informed experts, ex-perts, but written entirely by men who had no responsibility for the actual carrying out of the programs, men who had no power whatever to make the decisions necessary to meet the actual conditions with which they were faced. At about the same time, a similar simi-lar group was meeting in England. It had moved a little farther ahead, perhaps because its members had come to the point where they 'felt that efficient planning, such as successful suc-cessful business institutions carried through, might be applied to public affairs as well. They colled themselves them-selves the "P E P" (political and economic planning). This group was made up of British government officials, offi-cials, people from the "City" (London's (Lon-don's Wall street), members of industry, in-dustry, finance, the Bank of England Eng-land (which, you recall, is a private pri-vate institution) and others. By virtue of a fortunate International Inter-national marriage the ideas of the American and British groups mingled. And so, the American group came to the conclusion: first, that planning must be done by forward-looking, rather than historically-minded groups, Including persons per-sons who actually had to make the decisions to carry out the plans. Second, that since (as the previous years had shown) even the well-planned well-planned industrial and governmental efforts fall when the "unplanned" efforts ef-forts go down as they did 'in the depression, it might be wise to carry car-ry the planning into the national field. By 1034 the National Planning association as-sociation had been organized, had received the backing of a number of 1 foundations, individual contributions and memberships and was able to issue its first report In December of that year setting forth its principles. Other reports followed. Birth of a Big Idea Just when the "60 million Jobs" Idea was born, I do not know. Certainly Cer-tainly it was before anyone had hit upon that particular figure which, indeed, must be considered rather as a symbol than an exact estimate of tomorrow's needs. But there was one statement made at a meeting in 1940 which seems to me to have been the inspiration for the present report. It was Donald Nelson who spoke and the gist of what he said was this: "In order to get full production for the war effort we must conquer certain future fears. Labor must be cured of the fear that this tremendous tre-mendous production effort will bring a reaction and that war workers will be working themselves out of a job later. Capitol must be cured of the fear that it will bring Inflation and depression which mean that they are working themselves out of their investments in-vestments and profit." Whether this caused the board oi trustees of the NPA to call upon Its committee on International policy to set their heads .to writing a prescription pre-scription for full employment, I do not know. But It might seem to have caused constructive thinking In that direction. These are some of the men involved: in-volved: William Batt. one of America's leading industrialists and a member of the War Production board, heads the NPA's board of trustees. The chairman of the committee of the NPA which prepared the report it Stacy May. economic advisor to the McGraw-Hill publishing company. There are 21 others who compost the committee which drew up the report. re-port. They are representative members mem-bers of Industry, labor, agriculture, finance, public affairs, professional life. (Copies of the plan "Amcrica'i New Opportunities In World Trade," Pamphlets Nos. 37-38, can be obtained ob-tained for SO cents by writing the National Planning association, 80C 21st street, Washington, D. C.) RATS! They say that rodents de sert a sinking ship. If that Is the case Washington ti assured a safe voyage for we hnvt In the capital more than our share And the White House has Its quota, too. although the situation there hai been ameliorated since the day when Theodore Roosevelt hired s special rst charmer to run out the vermin with trained ferrets. |
