Show Count Your Luther H. Hodges of Commerce i was a bov in foe Fourth of J Afloat exciting holiday The whole town 5 for the races in the sack and the wild race i races Then greased t a picnic bought U at the refreshment i and settled clown for the Faring oratory was I admired m that pre-World 1 f 1 We en- the rolling phrases liberation from tyranny which took place The inspiring echoed in our minds later when brilliant JJ exploded in the night I L years passed and the of emphasis grad- I shifted from the life as a won for us to the pre- individual freedoms that must guard lazily against attack and e- la The Four Freedoms of D. Roosevelt freedom of wor-K of freedom from want and from fear became of our As year I'd like to bring I B Fifth Freedom a free-ir we enjoy minute of 4 fey day of our yet one In rarely mention Freedom s I I does this Fifth Freely Simply that in our our business and our we Americans a range of free choices and almost of in many other parts world For I FREEDOM OF j WHERE WE LIVE I Americans are free to live Minever they One fam-r moves from the city to a Another goes from a i apartment to a house of ib Still another heads I ret or north to a different in pursuit of a new a better fresher or merely a change of w People in many countries J Way do not have this I When I visited the Soviet Un-J ks in 1959 as one of nine State I a man working in m i factory told through an that he came from I a distant part II f Russia where there were V ouy 1 you like to work in I tbt I I his face lit f why don't I in- I I He shook his Later I explained to me that I ia order to buy a tick-I to that distant the I Eai would be required to show I poof that he had a job I tit to obtain a he would I to be So the idea I wis because he had I to choice as to his location or 1 fa I Last fall in I noticed I dozen West Berliners stand-I on a mound near the East-I dividing line waving their I some occa-I anally wiping tears I I a woman to whom she I as I my and her I and my elderly I we told I 1 looked and saw another of people feet away in Berlin imprisoned be-I seven-foot wall topped I barbed wire and broken I The divided members ol I j family had written to each I ner making a date to wave Particular time on that Way By contrast I freedom to move about anc I wherever we please is il-I by a delightful I recently at the Depart Census EDITOR'S NOTE One of our moat exciting American freedoms is one wn seldom Freedom of hi a new kind of Fourth of July the Secretary of Commerce talks about its for office in Kansas A young licensed to teach school anywhere in the state of asked the census people a simple and sensible question before accepting a job city in Nebraska has the highest proportion of unmarried men between the ages of 30 and FREEDOM OF WHAT WE BUY The abundance of goods in our supermarkets and department stores is so overwhelming that we tend not to be aware of it until we travel to a place where scarcity prevails Tn many parts of the Communist world there is outright famine today no food to be had at any Even the poorest of our choosing an ice cream cone for a child from numerous has difficulty imagining mass starvation striking a country- like a Biblical In East where the shops are nearly a woman goes from queue to and spends half a day assembling the barest necessities for the next 24 hours In the Soviet everyone I saw appeared to be healthy and but the diet is about 60 percent bread and 10 percent Not much choice there In nearly everything of a luxury nature seemed to be pretty much out of reach of the average But let us not be and happy about our good The graveyard of history is filled with the bones of people who became too and were overrun by the lean and hungry We must help other some of whose citizens exist on as little as each to improve their lot In so we will also help because some day they will be able to buy automobiles and television set from FREEDOM OF HOW WE RUN A BUSINESS The Americans who make and sell all those radios and bicycles enjoy broad freedoms of choice which we call free Of our commercial society is complex today and sometimes red tape and collisions of public and private interest tend to confuse I find this true in Government but the fundamental freedoms are always there and the goals are worth all our impatience and An industrialist can make up his mind at build a front-wheel drive car that goes miles an A storekeeper can abruptly bored with children's clothes I'd rather sell hobby A salesman can walk out of his job at an appliance company and look for work in the soft drink All three can set about their new projects that very without the slightest thought of permits or The one person who exercises an ultimate veto over them is the consumer He must freely choose to buy what they or they'll soon have no no no job Esgen-I ours is a consumer-controlled When I traveled in it took effort of I will to grasp the idea that all and industries are run and owned bv the State I A working man cannot ly change Neither can a factory operator make shirts In- stead of replace ery or open new branches These are not FREEDOM OF THE WAY WE ADVERTISE An Important free choice of the American businessman is how he sells his He can put a sign in his window and hope the neighbors will see it Or he can buy space in a publication or time on the air with the unique sales tool called try to sell to millions of people Of this freedom is sometimes but blanket criticism of advertising reflects a profound ignorance of its essential role in our economy Without advertising to stimulate a constantly expanding demand for goods and we wouldn't be the wealthiest nation that has ever existed Under our profits make possible the investments that create jobs and increase To keep this cycle spiraling potential demand must be transformed into actual Advertising does this by informing purchasers of the choices offered A single example will show the service rendered to our whole economy by the right kind of advertising When the first man-made fabrics came out they were referred to slightingly as or The word synthetic was the equivalent of and the public was disposed to think of the new materials as But carefully thought-out advertising informed buyers of the special merits of each of the new The goods lived up to the promises made for and the production of man-made fibers has reached an astonishing two billion pounds a FREEDOM OF CHOICE WHERE WE SELL The American businessman can freely choose to sell locally or to faraway Since the Department of Commerce began Its current drive to raise our level of exports from four per cent of Gross National Product exports over 31 per many smaller businessmen have been amazed to leam that this choice as a practical open to One Midwest manufacturer of work clothes asked us of he really could sell his garments We put him in touch with agents in the United Kingdom and The salesman he sent to England wrote enough orders to the factory and saved Germany for a later The ten American exhibitors at our London Trade Center's lamps and home lighting show this March wrote in initial The hit of the show was the three-way light bulb and an everyday item for but a novelty in Britain American factories are now rushing three-way units for shipment I feel that far too few of our businessmen are taking advantage of their freedom to sell overseas A recent trade mission to eight new West African republics ran into many German and French wide awake to the commercial potential of these new but not a single American Yet a ten percent increase in our exports would virtually eliminate the deficit in our international accounts and create new jobs and FREEDOM OF WHAT KIND OF TOWN I want to talk about the choices a community can As you are free to decide what kind of town yours will be residential or fast growing or slow to a place where people come to get rich or kick up their And when things go you can choose remedies Certain areas today are sorely depressed because resources have been depleted industries have moved or leaders of the community have grown careless and When this people can simply bemoan their fate and accept or they can leave and start somewhere else Or they can act in concert to improve their condition I think particularly of a Maryland city with a real In on the Eastern was in a decline after the closing of a major food More than 12 per cent of the labor force wag Stores were The prospects were indeed bleak when four young businessmen formed an Industrial Committee and by ringing collected partly in and So bills With this hard work and they to a manufacturing two boat companies and a publishing a new sewage system was needed to serve expanding industry The new Area Redevelopment I program of the Department of Commerce assisted the city with a loan and a and more new jobs came into The people of Cambridge are taxpayers again instead of tax-users because they chose to do something about their They made their FREEDOM OF LET'S KEEP IT I get impatient with people who say we Americans have lost our lost our lost our We have Sometimes I wish for a little of that rousing Fourth of July oratory of my boyhood so wc could feel again the heady excitement and throbbing sense of our I think we need to remind ourselves that we are not forced to go where we are do what we are or eat what we are given because years we declared for and the pursuit of An as we our Freedom of Choice in scores of we by the unselfishness and the farsightedness of our assure the continuation of the freedoms we cherish and their extension to Liberty is the power we have over Hugo Grotius Some of us buy books and never read others never buy |