Post-War Business Planners in the United States, 1939–48: The Rise of the Corporate Moderates 9781472511720, 9781350012578, 9781472512161

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Post-War Business Planners in the United States, 1939–48

Post-War Business Planners in the United States, 1939–48 The Rise of the Corporate Moderates Charlie Whitham

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2016 Paperback edition first published 2018 © Charlie Whitham, 2016 Charlie Whitham has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identifi ed as Author of this work. Cover design: Sharon Mah Cover image © Brett Lamb / Getty Images All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: PB: ePDF: ePub:

978-1-4725-1172-0 978-1-3500-6727-1 978-1-4725-1216-1 978-1-4725-0875-1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Whitham, Charlie, author. Title: Post-war business planners in the United States, 1939-48 : the rise of the corporate moderates / Charlie Whitham. Description: New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifi ers: LCCN 2016012288 (print) | LCCN 2016036822 (ebook) | ISBN 9781472511720 (hardback) | ISBN 9781472512161 (ePDF) | ISBN 9781472508751 (ePub) | ISBN 9781472508751 (epub) | ISBN 9781472512161 (epdf) Subjects: LCSH: Business planning–United States–History–21st century. | World War, 1939-1945–United States. | BISAC: HISTORY / Modern / 20th Century. | POLITICAL SCIENCE / Public Policy / Economic Policy. Classifi cation: LCC HD30.28 .W448 2016 (print) | LCC HD30.28 (ebook) | DDC 338.70973/09044–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016012288 Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

To my parents, Iris and Brian. In loving memory

Contents List of Abbreviations Preface Context and Themes 1 The Planners Before 1939 2 War in Europe: The Liberal Initiative, 1939–41 3 Total War: Twilight of the Liberal Monopoly, 1942 4 War’s Height: The Challenge of Conservatism, 1943–44 5 War’s End: The International Question Brings Convergence, 1944–45 6 Transition: The Arrival of a Moderate Consensus, 1945–48 Conclusions Appendix 1: Composition of Planning Organizations Appendix 2: Chronology of Major Planning Publications Notes Bibliography Index

viii ix 1 13 21 59 89 131 149 185 195 196 202 257 278

List of Abbreviations

BAC CBS CEA CED CFR ECA IBRD IMF ITO NAM NBC NPA NRPB OPA OWI TCF USCC

Business Advisory Council Columbia Broadcasting System Council of Economic Advisers Committee for Economic Development Council on Foreign Relations Economic Cooperation Administration International Bank for Reconstruction and Development International Monetary Fund International Trade Organization National Association of Manufacturers National Broadcasting Corporation National Planning Association National Resources and Planning Board Office of Price Administration Office of War Information Twentieth Century Fund United States Chamber of Commerce

Preface

This book was inspired by a long-held fascination with wartime America and a desire to understand the processes that enabled the United States to emerge as the world’s first superpower after the Second World War. Major influences on this journey have been the revisionist New Left historians and political scientists of the 1960s, who were the first scholars to seriously challenge the orthodox view that the United States was a more or less passive agent in assuming a dominant status after 1945 whose motives in responding to the collapse of the European world order and its subsequent restructuring in ways which best suited American interests were primarily selfless and humanitarian. The work of the revisionists forced a major reappraisal of modern US history which has been systematically reviewed, challenged and refined in the decades since. Few stones have been left unturned in the findings of the revisionist scholars, but one area which has received the least direct scrutiny or embellishment was that of the role of corporate liberals in the advance of post-war US power, abroad and at home. First identified by David  Eakins and G.  William Domhoff in the 1960s, corporate liberals were charged with having a direct influence on the formulation of key US foreign economic programmes after the war, including the famous Marshall Plan. Of three corporate groups named in these studies  – the Committee for Economic Development (CED), National Planning Association (NPA) and the Twentieth Century Fund (TCF) – it was the former which stood out as the leading agent in promoting corporate opinion in this period and which attracted the most attention from scholars. Subsequent examinations of these groups have been few and far between, and those which exist have focused almost exclusively on the post-war star of the corporate world, the CED. As a diplomatic historian I was intrigued by the potential for non-state actors such as businessmen to influence high-level policy decision-making, and it appeared there was considerable room for further study of these figures and sufficient space to be filled in our knowledge of the activities of these intriguing agents to determine more accurately the true extent of their role and influence in shaping post-war American power. Early on, it became clear that the three organizations identified by the revisionists were indeed the most important of the many business groups of the war period. It also became apparent that the activities of these groups could not be understood in isolation from the wider social, political, as well as economic changes which took place in wartime America. Foremost among these changes as far as this book was concerned was the moderation of 1930s New Deal liberalism into a form of ‘conservative liberalism’ which came to dominate US political economy after 1945. In this regard, the works of Robert Collins, Brian Waddell and Alan Brinkley have been indispensable in providing the overarching societal context for the actions of the corporate liberals.

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Preface

As the examination of these groups unfolded it also became apparent that they could not be fully understood in isolation from each other. The overemphasis on the CED was understandable given its post-war dominance but did not provide the fullest picture of how seriously the corporate elite organized, schemed and planned to make the most of the opportunities that would likely befall the United States after the war. What emerged from the documents was that there existed an energetic, highly sophisticated and substantial post-war planning community of corporate activists, academics and assorted professionals who debated feverishly over the future direction of the country. They were united in their determination to take advantage of the potential for raised economic prosperity after the war and to extend the merits of US capitalism overseas, but were divided over what would constitute the right balance between public and private enterprise to attain these goals at home and what would be the best mechanism for advancing US interests abroad. In other words, the three main corporate liberal organizations were part of a larger and evolving community of post-war planners, formed out of vestiges of the pre-war era and a fresh national impetus for post-war planning among business activists which emerged out of the unique circumstances the country found itself in as the world crisis unfolded. The business planning community grew to comprise activists from the left and the right, and presented alternate and competing visions of a post-war America. More accurately, it was a diverse milieu of interchanging and interconnected personnel that operated within and travelled between the space that existed between ‘corporate liberals’ and ‘corporate moderates’. It was out of this organic process of introspection within an elite layer of forward-thinking corporate leaders – indeed, it was thanks to it – that the corporate moderates in the shape of the CED finally emerged triumphant to play an influential part in the formation of a consensus on the political economy of the United States and the extension of its interests across the world. It is hoped that in presenting the rise of corporate moderates to post-war dominance in this way we will obtain a more rounded and more accurate appreciation of the role of this elite layer of business leaders in framing the post-war era for the United States which builds upon the original work of the revisionists and those since who have sought to put more ‘flesh on the bones’ of their groundbreaking critique of US superpowerdom. The ability to live up to this claim would not have been possible without my unique and exceptional access to the primary documents of the leading business planning organizations. This has enabled me to chart more precisely the rise and the role of the CED in the post-war era. This in itself would have been a worthwhile exercise, especially for comprehending its origins and its progress in the pre-Marshall Plan phase, the least scrutinized chapter in its history. Even more importantly, new primary evidence has allowed me to record the vital part played by the lesser-known TCF and the NPA, whose liberal roots and New Deal associations caused these groups to be overshadowed by the post-war ascendancy of the corporate moderates. In fact, the contribution of these ‘liberal’ organizations to the formation of a moderate consensus over the national and international character of the post-war US economy was vital, and its grasp is indispensable to developing a complete picture of how the business planning community and the corporate moderates evolved during the war. Indeed, the

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core premise of this book is that it is more accurate to view, and better to understand, the post-war ascendancy of the corporate moderates and their most famous exponent, the CED, as part of a wartime process of examination within a larger community of far-sighted businessmen, academics and government officials that, in identifying the boundless opportunities which the unprecedented circumstances of the world’s most total war lent the United States, sought to articulate and advance American interests within a vision of their nation in a radically altered post-war order. In gathering material for this book over the last ten years, I have relied on the help and advice of countless individuals. My thanks go to all of them in making this book possible, but some deserve special mention. First and foremost is the generous staff of two organizations that granted me unlimited and unprecedented access to their private documents without which this study would not have been possible. They are Tom Helleberg, Laura Jaramillo and Jason Renker of the Century Foundation in New York (the records are now held at New York University), and Joe Minarek of the CED in Washington, DC. Dan Golodner and William LeFevre at the Reuther Library of Wayne State University were similarly generous of their time and resources in allowing me access to their (at that time) unprocessed holdings of the NPA. For the invaluable help at the various libraries, I would like to mention David Woolner of the FDR Library for his support and generous hospitality; Rod Ross at the Center for Legislative Archives in NARA, Washington, DC; Julia Gardner of the University of Chicago for her diligence; and the many people who have helped me at the Library of Congress, the Truman Library, Hoover Institution (Stanford University), and the Butler Library (Columbia University). Several individuals have also helped me by sharing their expertise on this topic, notably Susan Ariel Aaronson, Tom Zeiler, Inderjeet Parmar and, especially, G. William Domhoff, whose landmark research on corporate elites was an inspiration for my decision to enter into this field. To them I am indebted. None of my trips to the archives, or the countless hours spent writing this book, would have been possible without the love and enduring patience of my partner Mary and our two children, Ellis and Eve. My gratitude eternally. Last, but by no means least, my thanks to the British Academy, the FDR Trust and the Truman Library for their generosity in providing funding for this research.

Note on Sources At the time of writing the records of the NPA and the TCF were not catalogued. The system of referencing these documents in this book is therefore the creation of the author.

Context and Themes

Speaking before an audience of Washington’s political, academic and corporate elite in December 1943, distinguished industrialist and chairman of the NPA, William L. Batt, shared his latest concern: I have thought in the last few months of the extraordinary change in sentiment of the American people toward this subject of planning. It used to be a thing one was a little apologetic about in certain circles. Today everybody is anxious to know whether enough thinking is being done that might promise some solution of the problems which he himself sees.1

The comment was designed to impress upon US leaders the concept that Batt, his organization and several other business groups like it had already accepted and had been feverishly broadcasting since 1939: that the United States needed to plan for peace as seriously as it had for war. The United States emerged from the Second World War as the world’s economic, military and political superpower. During the war the US economy more than doubled in size, its armed forces became second to none and its global reach was unparalleled. Even before war’s end, the US government had begun to erect the financial and commercial architecture of the world economy for decades to follow. Reaching this superpower status required the engagement of the entire nation in an unprecedented effort that brought together leaders of industry, labour, agriculture and government. The role of the business community in raising the productive power of the United States is well documented. Top executives not only turned over their plants to the manufacture of war material but also staffed in large numbers the myriad federal agencies that oversaw the mobilization process. Less well known is the role of corporate leaders in making plans for when the fighting stopped. The burgeoning power of the nation raised concerns over how the heights of production achieved during wartime could be maintained when it was all over and, more importantly, how this tremendous conversion could be achieved without tipping the country into another depression. The response of the business community to this historic challenge – and their direct enlistment by the government – was significant and grew as businessmen awoke to the prospect of continued prosperity in the post-war era. They became organized into groups, carried out research and spread awareness of the potential, if planned effectively and early, of the United States to emerge from the world’s greatest conflict as the world’s greatest power. Wartime America offered a unique opportunity for businessmen to shape national policy. The country’s post-war dominance can obscure the fact that for its ruling elite the

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Post-War Business Planners in the United States, 1939–48

achievement of ‘superpowerdom’ was a highly convoluted affair. The complexities of the US federal system, partisan politics and the idiosyncratic management style of President Franklin D. Roosevelt fractured the overall coordination of war, let alone post-war, planning. Lack of coordination, continuity and leadership from the top meant post-war economic matters were delegated to the individual federal departments, and only those with enough resources and enthusiasm to organize post-war policy did so. This book charts the activities of several highly enthusiastic business planning groups who, in the considerable space left by the government, sought to influence the economic future of the country. At times these planners interfaced with the government, and some were even directly approached to assist the war-burdened authorities. Unlike planners of other countries, they were not preoccupied solely with organizing for and winning the war. Instead, American planners worked on the common assumption that their country would clearly win the war and finish it in good shape. What remained for them was how best to take advantage of the country’s unique standing and economic prowess, having awakened from years of stupor during the Great Depression, and how this could be harnessed in a post-war world. They engaged with all the major economic questions of the day, both national and international, helped prepare US business for the post-war transition and influenced such milestone policies as the Bretton Woods Agreements, the Employment (Murray) Act and the European Recovery (Marshall) Plan. American business planning for the post-war was dominated by three organizations: the TCF, the NPA and the CED. Together they were the country’s principal organizations outside of the government dedicated to economic post-war planning. Indeed, their operations far exceeded, in resources and output, those of government agencies. The NPA was already a planning enthusiast, as was the progressive TCF. Both groups were led and financed by business interests, although they often concerned themselves with economic and social issues beyond those strictly confined to ‘business’. The CED was devised primarily as a business organization specially created to take over post-war planning from the BAC after 1942. The efforts of these groups dwarfed those of the long-standing trade associations of the NAM and the USCC, which did not transform themselves nor dedicate large resources to post-war matters. While many other private groups became drawn into the discussion over the future of the US economy, none matched the size, breadth and ambition of these three organizations, which were in evidence in the grand conferences and speaking tours of the NPA, in the frequent radio shows and movie shorts of the TCF and in the countrywide network of the CED. They spent millions and their publications numbered the hundreds of thousands. Though originating at different times with separate headquarters and with private budgets, these groups comprised near-identical structural units with an interchangeable membership and, over time, developed a broadly similar approach to solving what they perceived as the basic problems of the post-war US economy: how to maintain high production and high employment in a free-enterprise system. Together they formed the core of a genuine post-war business planning ‘community’ during a unique moment of national activism at a pivotal time in US history. The contribution of these groups to the war and post-war effort is largely unrecognized in the literature, and no other studies of US planning deal with them together in one place. Only segments that deal with individual organizations can be

Context and Themes

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found, and none which chart in any detail their wartime exploits. Only the CED, which rose to prominence at the end of the war, has attracted notable scholarly attention, although even the works that refer to the CED neglect the fact that the CED was part of a wider planning community of like-minded corporate leaders, government officials and academics. This study is based on new primary material on the TCF, NPA, CED and the BAC that provides a more complete and accurate record of the exploits of the post-war business planners. The story of US post-war planning during the Second World War is therefore incomplete if it does not consider the substantial, and at times influential, input of the business planners. Their plans were methodically researched, rarely fanciful, and symptomatic of the raised expectations and considerable excitement among a significant section of business, academia and government for US post-war prosperity.

Wartime America The overarching and indispensable context of any study of wartime America, and especially one that deals with the attitudes of its business class, is the well-documented advance of political conservatism across the nation. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had already attracted the wrath of conservatives with his New Deal programme of public spending, welfare provision and federal intervention to rescue the ailing economy during the Great Depression of the 1930s. By the end of the decade it was apparent that the New Deal had failed to lift the economy out of its profound slump, and a political stalemate between liberals, who supported economic reforms, and conservatives, who resisted government intrusion in the economy, prevailed until the wartime mobilization offered fresh impetus to the debate over the future of the US economy. The war lifted the aspirations of the ‘New Dealers’, who viewed centralized economic planning like that demonstrated by the war ‘command economy’ as a more or less permanent remedy for the shortcomings of modern capitalism with its ‘boom– bust’ cycle and periodic unemployment. The government, so effective in directing the war effort, and not the free market was demonstrably the best instrument to organize the economy. However, the war boom also revived the image of private capitalism and triggered fresh confidence in the power of the free market to right itself after the doldrums of the Great Depression. A ‘conservative coalition’ of Republicans and alienated Southern Democrats acquired enough backing during the war years to present a formidable and continuous challenge to the liberal pretensions of the administration and its supporters. In the end, the wartime expansion of the government and the massive growth of the domestic economy and of US power and responsibility overseas had a transformative effect on the nation’s political and economic elite, which led to the rejection of both liberal and conservative prescriptions for post-war America. There emerged a layer of moderates who disliked the idea of a ‘planned economy’ but recognized, thanks to the war experience, that the government had a valuable role in ironing out the ‘wrinkles’ in free-market capitalism, such as fluctuating employment levels and the boom–bust cycle. After a series of bruising political encounters during the war, liberals dropped their concerns over market-led capitalism and conservatives

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yielded to limited government responsibility for fiscal management and welfare. The result was an end of the reform-based liberalism of the New Dealers and a triumph for a brand of ‘moderate conservatism’ that eventually dominated post-war US society.2 The nationwide battle between liberals and conservatives reached its peak during the war and served as a critical backdrop for the business planners, who inevitably became associated – though sometimes not very clearly – with one side or the other. In fact, in several ways the experiences of the business planners not only reflected but directly articulated the wider economic, political and social struggle taking place in wartime America. What emerges is a complex picture of business attitudes and perceptions during the war. Surprisingly, business receptiveness to the prospect of sustained federal management of the post-war economy remained solid throughout the war and was the dominant assumption among post-war planners in the first years of the conflict. This liberal ‘monopoly’ over post-war planning, however, was eventually challenged by supporters of the free market, leading to an explosion of research and publicity comprising hundreds of publications and furious grass-roots organization in a contest over the leadership of business and influence over government policy towards the achievement of what they all agreed would be a spell of unparalleled economic prosperity. This book is an account of how this exceptional American wartime experience of economic, political and social questioning was revealed through the behaviour of the major business planning groups, how they battled for supremacy over key post-war issues, and how their journey illuminated the broader process of moderation which shaped the political economy of the United States for decades after the war. By 1948 the wartime schemes and assumptions of the business planners had been played out: a moderate consensus had been reached about the role of government in the national and world economy. The post-war period, as it turned out, was briefer than expected, and quickly gave way to the new era of the Cold War, shifting the attention of business planners and others accordingly and providing a natural cut-off point for this examination. Within this overarching wartime context, three themes in particular are crucial to understanding the actions of the three main post-war business planning organizations and for this study form the primary basis upon which they are examined. The first relates to arguments already touched upon above regarding the role of the state in the national economy and requires embellishment as it speaks to the core preoccupation of the business planners. The second concerns ideas about the United States in the wider world, and the third deals with the relationship between business and government. Below is a brief introduction to each theme.

Damaged capitalism: Federal and free-market solutions The deliberations of the post-war planners did not take place in a vacuum. They were informed by several years of introspection about the political economy of the United States. As historian and CED alumnus Herbert Stein pointed out, the war years were ‘a period of gestation for the ideas and controversies of the depression decade’.3 The Great Depression of the 1930s had been the most serious challenge that

Context and Themes

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US capitalism had known and triggered a struggle within the nation’s business and political class over how best to rescue the system and avoid a repeat performance. Extreme solutions of total state control (fascism or socialism) were rejected, but very few in politics or in business opposed the emergency intervention of the government to rescue the economy. However, the extent and duration of that intervention was hotly contested, especially by private business interests and conservative opponents of President Roosevelt and his New Deal rescue programme of economic and welfare measures.4 The devotees of laissez-faire economics spoke mainly for the wider private business community and held that federal involvement in the economy should be limited to the role of ‘umpire’ in a system of self-regulating free enterprise. These ‘freemarket’ advocates believed that US capitalism was best served with limited welfare and trades union interference at home combined with fierce protection from overseas competition through high tariffs and trade restrictions. Business proponents of the free market received organized voice in the established groupings of the NAM (1895) and the USCC (1912), which mostly represented small- and medium-sized firms, and political expression in the Republican Party.5 But with the economy fragile for most of the decade, and the memory of the Great Crash still vividly etched on the minds of the public, the advocates of free-market solutions were stymied as the Roosevelt administration became increasingly populated by disciples of a new economic theory.6 British economist John Maynard Keynes championed the federal government as a driver, not just caretaker, of the economy. Keynes wanted to rescue free-market capitalism from the limitations of laissez-faire and the constraints of ‘state’ capitalism by using fiscal intervention to direct the economy. The essentially moderate ideas of Keynes were broad enough to attract a wide spectrum of supporters from all corners of the political and business universe, and for the purposes of this study, historian Robert Collins offered the best model for classifying them. Crudely speaking, to the right were the ‘pump-primers’ who argued for a large but short-lived dose of deficit spending to revive the market economy as an emergency measure only. In the centre were the ‘compensatory spenders’ who argued that capitalism needed intermittent doses of government spending to keep it going. And to the left stood the ‘stagnationists’, who believed that capitalism could not survive without sustained government intervention.7 A minority of businessmen were attracted to the Keynesian method and found voice in the BAC during the 1930s, but most did not, with only a handful showing interest from the ranks of the NAM or the USCC. The failure of the New Deal to fundamentally rescue the economy sustained its critics throughout the decade, especially when Roosevelt, who despite being open to experimentation had been reluctant to adopt Keynesian methods, was forced to intervene more heavily in the system in the recession of 1938 by employing deficit spending to stimulate economic performance just as Keynes proposed.8 But before the Keynesian enthusiasts could claim victory, the nation was transformed by the outbreak of war, a process of massive state-sponsored productive activity far greater than anything imagined under the New Deal. This rescued the flagging economy but raised more sharply the uncertainties of the previous decade over the longer-term responsibilities of the federal government in organizing economic life.9 Only this time the arguments took place against a backdrop of boom and not of stagnation. Economic theorists and planners were now filled with

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Post-War Business Planners in the United States, 1939–48

hope and enthusiasm as capitalism was flourishing, but what did this mean for the future, specifically how could these high levels of productivity be maintained when war spending stopped, and could the gap be filled by private investment and consumption? As mentioned above, the greatly enlarged role of government in organizing the war effort had a contradictory effect. It naturally boosted the claims of the New Dealers and some Keynesians about the need for a permanently enhanced role for government in the post-war economy. Government debt could finance economic expansion without destroying capitalism or fuelling inflation. Many Keynesian supporters were elevated to leading positions in the new wartime agencies. Federal bureaucracies swelled to unimaginable proportions and government became intimately involved in all walks of life. Yet the war boom and the raised profile it granted to the captains of industry also allowed businesses to finally shake off the pessimism of the Depression years and energized those who advocated free-market solutions. Capitalism now worked and looked better than ever. For them, the New Deal clearly failed to revive the economy and was now redundant, thanks to the war which had restored capitalism and granted only temporary control to government. Rationing and wartime controls also bred antipathy towards big government. No one wanted to return to the state of uncertainty that dominated the pre-war years, a sentiment reflected in the well-documented growth of social and political conservatism as the country prospered throughout the war period. In this complex and turbulent atmosphere, competing prescriptions for a bountiful post-war US capitalism were unveiled as economic planners toiled to solve what all agreed was the most pressing problem facing the country during the war: surviving the transition from a thriving war economy to an equally successful peacetime economy while avoiding a new depression. Most agreed that this required finding jobs for around twenty million defence workers and ten million servicemen and women. Much debate took place about how this transition could be achieved, and just as it had done in solving the last crisis, much of it centred on the exact balance of federal and free-market involvement in reaching the universally accepted longterm goals of high productivity and employment after the war. All were aware that mechanisms devised for the ‘transition period’ would, in fact, critically define the economy for years afterwards. The battle over the future of the American economy took place throughout the United States, and especially within and between the postwar business planning organizations.

The international question: Foreign trade and the national economy A question closely related to theories about the future of the national economy emerged as a second theme that concerned the post-war business planning community, namely the relationship between foreign trade and domestic economic performance, or basically which was more dependent on the other. American foreign economic policy during the war was heavily influenced by the convictions of Secretary of State Cordell Hull. After he took leadership of the State Department in 1933, the guiding

Context and Themes

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mantra of Hull’s economic diplomacy was the achievement of liberalized world trade through the multilateral reduction of protective barriers and the elimination of discriminatory practices. The creation of a level playing field in trade was believed to foster international peace, guarantee overseas markets for American goods and ensure economic hegemony for the immense productivity of the United States.10 At the top of Hull’s list of targets for post-war trade liberalization was the highly protectionist British Imperial Preference System created in 1932 to shield Britain from the global depression.11 More importantly for this examination, some more extreme multilateralists – or free-traders – argued that expansion of foreign trade was not only desirable but absolutely indispensable if full employment was to be achieved and the return of depression avoided without resort to state capitalist or ‘socialist’ solutions. Adoption of free trade had, therefore, to be undertaken immediately after the fighting stopped as an international priority: the future of US market capitalism depended on it. This uncompromising interpretation of the role of foreign trade, which placed it at the centre of any strategy to avoid a new depression, was at odds with that of Keynes and his acolytes. For them, international trade was certainly important, but of only secondary importance to achieving high employment by domestic means. Further, they argued that a nation’s overseas activity could be successfully expanded only after high domestic employment had been achieved. Free-market conservatives and protectionists, such as in the NAM and the USCC, were also sceptical about trade liberalization, as they traditionally favoured high tariffs and continued protection from overseas competition and maintained that this was the best way to avoid a postwar depression.12 The conundrum at the heart of the ‘expansionist’ concept was that a nation could sell more overseas only by eventually buying more from overseas to enable others to obtain sufficient wealth and the right currency. Resolving this economic truism – the export–import dilemma – perplexed academics, officials and post-war planners of all persuasions during the war. The debate over free trade was elevated to centre stage towards the end of the war as planners awakened to the worldwide opportunities for trade expansion that would befall the United States in the emerging post-war order. Even the administration was torn on the issue. Against the dominant free-trade multilateralism of the State Department stood a variety of Keynesians working for Washington and the leadership of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce in the Commerce Department. The contest between these two approaches was played out in the major business planning groups, which had links with both federal departments. This included the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), an independent policy group enlisted to devise postwar policy options for the State Department and which included leading personnel from the business planning community. The Council became a vital influence in shaping the attitudes of the business planners on trade liberalization and international economics as a whole. The business planners argued over whether overseas trade expansion was indispensable to avoiding unemployment in the post-war transition or was just an added bonus for an emerging superpower. This was no academic point: it had profound implications for the structure of the post-war economy of the United States. The ‘domestic-first’ approach meant protectionist controls and tariffs could be tolerated to boost national employment: measures that were anathema to the ardent

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Post-War Business Planners in the United States, 1939–48

free-traders. Decisions over foreign trade naturally affected US relations with the rest of the world and, crucially, government attitudes towards building the new financial and commercial institutions that would enshrine American economic supremacy in the post-war era. The importance of international economics to US prosperity was recognized early by the post-war planners, and their role in shaping American postwar ‘expansionist’ foreign economic policy has already been noted by scholars.13

Business–government relations: Corporate liberalism theory The themes listed above were the principal underlying issues of political economy with which the US capitalist class had to contend during the war period. The dominant theory that has emerged to explain how they responded, and which has been used to analyse some post-war planners, is ‘corporate liberalism’. This concept emerged from the New Left radical intellectuals of the 1960s and has since been widely used as a basis for analysing US business groups. Basically, the theory argued that ‘enlightened’ elements in the capitalist class at times exerted a liberal influence upon the policies of the federal government, such as in the promotion of business regulation, welfare and full-employment programmes, even if it meant hurting elements of the business class as these mechanisms were perceived as being in the longer-term interests of stabilizing the economy and were therefore good for business. Corporate liberals were therefore a layer of ‘far-sighted’ business leaders acting either to protect capitalism from the encroachments of labour or to improve capitalism through an orderly rationalization of the economic and social structure. This distinguished them from the rest of the corporate world, known broadly as ‘conservatives’, who acted purely to protect their own narrow business interests and generally resisted any government intrusion in the workings of the free market. Having undergone several reinterpretations over the years, the theory was first used to explain the actions of reformist business leaders seeking to offset the challenges of labour during the Progressive Era and has since been applied to the Truman right through to the Nixon epochs.14 More importantly for this study, corporate liberal theory has been used to explain the post-1945 dominance in the United States of a ‘moderated’ form of corporate liberalism. Enlightened businessmen were united in recognizing the importance of the state in the running of modern capitalism, but for many that was where the similarities ended. They were divided over the precise nature of state involvement and offered various solutions along a spectrum of ‘strong’ state or ‘weak’ state formulations. Supporters of the latter have been labelled ‘corporate moderates’ and it was their blend of public–private economics that prevailed and became determinative in prosecuting US capitalism since the end of the Second World War.15 Corporate liberal theory therefore offers the best characterization of, and explanation for, the existence of the post-war planners in this study. The NPA, TCF and the BAC (or the CED) were all led by businessmen and shared in varying degrees the view that government had a critical role in balancing labour, business, agricultural

Context and Themes

9

and international interests to achieve national prosperity. These groups offered strongor weak-state solutions that ranged from New Deal-type social reforms to measures that primarily safeguarded free enterprise, and embraced some version or other of Keynesian economics. This definition also excludes groups like the NAM and the USCC, which ideologically and structurally existed outside of the business–government nexus and remained mostly hostile to government interference in the workings of the freemarket economy. According to corporate liberal theory, these bodies represented the least far-sighted, or conservative, sections of the US business class. These were also structurally very different business organizations, archetypal employers’ associations lobbying on behalf of a large, broad-based general membership representing all industries and all sizes of business enterprise whose commercial interests were more entrenched in the domestic sphere. For the NAM and the USCC, federal involvement in the economy should be limited to the role of an ‘umpire’ in a system of self-regulating free enterprise fiercely protected from outside competition.16 Although some limited and important crossover between the NAM, the USCC and the corporate planners did occur, compared to the NPA, TCF and the BAC (or the CED), these organizations did not adjust significantly their philosophy or their structures to accommodate wartime matters and devoted very few resources to post-war planning. In this regard, and especially for a proper analysis of the business groups in this study, the ability to draw distinctions within a broader community of what have been variously and often loosely defined as ‘corporate liberals’ is especially important. As a generic term to distinguish business leaders who recognized the utility of state involvement in economic affairs, the label ‘corporate liberal’ is too simplistic and limiting as a description for the variety of business activists which emerged during the war period. The rise of ‘New Deal liberalism’ in the 1930s further complicates the search for an effective nomenclature. For the purposes of clarity, generally speaking, the NPA and the TCF represented the corporate liberal wing of enlightened business, and the BAC (or the CED) the corporate moderates. However, as will become clear, within these unavoidably broad categorizations considerable fluidity existed, allowing ‘enlightened’ businessmen to journey from liberal to moderate destinations. The identification and tracking of this process is the central aim of this book. This account does not fundamentally challenge these well-established interpretations of the origins of US corporate liberalism or its lasting moderate variant. The chief task of this book is to improve our understanding of how it was that the economic models promoted by corporate moderates, like the CED (or the BAC), and not those of corporate liberals represented in the NPA and the TCF, assumed mainstream prominence in US business–government relations after the war. In other words, to continue with the benefit of unpublished material where the historian David Eakins left off almost half a century ago. Eakins was the first (and the last) scholar to identify the combined influence of the TCF, NPA and the CED in the formation of a moderated liberalism, a trio whose ‘liberalism was grounded in a class-conscious desire to sustain and stabilize a healthy American capitalist system’.17 In the years since, however, it has been the CED and not the other groups that attracted the most attention from scholars. This has been largely due to the high profile the organization enjoyed after 1945 as one of the country’s ‘most glamorous spokesmen’ for enlightened businessmen and for

10

Post-War Business Planners in the United States, 1939–48

being a ‘crucial factor in the shaping of America’s postwar political economy’.18 None of the fine scholarly treatments of this post-war corporate supremo devoted much space to the wartime business planning context of the CED’s rise or the role of the other business planners in crafting a moderate variant of the mixed economy. The near absence of the TCF from this narrative is especially striking.19 What unfolds is that the CED did not emerge into a post-war planning void when it started out in 1942 – an assumption that isolated treatments of the CED can foster – but entered an already bustling and highly developed post-war planning community of business and academic activists who shared a general enthusiasm for the future of US capitalism. In fact, the moderate brand that became the CED motif was crafted out of a process of close and deliberate interaction with this wider community of corporate activists and their supporters. The subsequent overemphasis on the accomplishments of the CED obscures the contribution of this energetic layer of innovators, the substantial cross-fertilization of ideas and personnel, the resources they spent and the years of debate they undertook as they contemplated a future of unprecedented prosperity at a crossroads in the history of US, and world, capitalism. Business activists were an elite group engaged in a high-octane bout of questioning and introspection that was unprecedented in US history, a process that encouraged substantial crossover of ideas and individuals between and within groups and allowed for practical convergence and even ideological consensus between liberals and moderates.20 This study will show that in a variety of ways the post-war planning community was a showcase not only for the contest between corporate liberals and corporate moderates for leadership over the direction of the US economy but also for the decade-long confrontation between New Deal liberals and traditionalist conservatives over the control of US society that so consumed wartime politics.21 By locating the wartime origins of post-war US business orthodoxy within the context of this wider, fast-developing and intellectually fluid post-war planning community, this study will expand on the early work of Eakins and others and better our understanding of the advance of corporate moderates within the United States – such as the CED – from a minority voice in the 1930s to a dominant force in American political economy after the war.

Chapter structure As outlined above, analysis of the post-war planners will chiefly take place within the broad theme of the national battle over the political economy of the United States. Post-war planning underwent several phases that roughly followed the trajectory of American involvement in, preparations for, and political reaction to, the evolving global war and immediately post-war periods. The actions of the business planners, as an evolutionary and interactive process, are therefore presented in a roughly chronological fashion which matches the national journey. The following chapter sketches the business organizations of this study as they stood before the outbreak of war in Europe. This includes the BAC which assumed post-war planning duties until the establishment of the CED in 1942, which is dealt with in Chapter 3. Chapter 2 covers the period 1939–41, as the United States maintained a safe but prosperous distance

Context and Themes

11

from the European conflagration. The liberal planning organizations were the first to benefit from the heightened business interest in post-war economic affairs, and began outlining – at different rates and with varying degrees of detail – plans which sought to optimize the economic standing of the United States in all post-war eventualities. The tempo of post-war planning increased after December 1940 as business planners began to realize the dramatic post-war impact of the country’s involvement in the war as the United States became the ‘arsenal of democracy’ for the Allied powers in Europe. Post-war planning underwent a fresh phase with America’s direct involvement in the war after Pearl Harbor. Business involvement in the huge mobilization effort naturally impacted on the business planners, who developed even more sophisticated plans to realize the full potential of US power that military engagement in the war would inevitably bring. This was the peak of liberal domination over post-war planning and is the subject of Chapter 3. However, during 1942 the liberal monopoly of the postwar planning community was quietly challenged by government and business interests fearful of the long-term survival of free-enterprise capitalism. They created a new organization, the CED, out of the war-engaged BAC. The coincidence of the arrival of the CED with the revival of conservatism across the nation is the subject of Chapter 4. As the country neared the peak of its total war effort, the activities of the business planners also intensified, as 1944, the anticipated final year of the war, drew nearer. The resurgence of conservative opposition in US politics and the fast emergence of the CED within the business planning community compelled the formerly dominant liberal planners to make adjustments. The CED, for its part, was drawn towards certain liberal positions as it searched for practicable solutions. The pull towards a moderate centre ground had begun. Planners had already acknowledged the likely global ramifications of the post-war rise in US economic power, and as the fighting ground to a halt, business planners elaborated on the country’s international role as the guardian and promoter of free-market capitalism. An area of liberal-conservative convergence, Chapter 5 looks at the post-war planners’ schemes for US economic leadership on the global stage and its relationship to domestic recovery and continued prosperity. As the transition beckoned, the tapering of the post-war planning groups that had begun in 1943 meant that by 1945 a consensus had emerged on the major economic issues around which the planners had finally converged. The reactions of the planners to the immediate post-war transition, the increasing importance of European reconstruction to the US economy and the ascendancy of the corporate moderate viewpoint under the stewardship of the CED are all plotted in Chapter 6. The final chapter draws conclusions.

1

The Planners Before 1939

The post-war business planners of the 1940s were part of an evolutionary tendency in modern US capitalism. Business interest in the direct shaping of government affairs began during the Progressive Era at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Enlightened capitalists sought to round off the hard edges of the US economy through various economic and social reforms as the country endured its second industrial revolution.1 The coming together of business, government and academia in solving the country’s ills was massively boosted under the New Deal programmes of the 1930s and took on new forms in the turbulent war years. The following is an outline of the origins and disposition of the business organizations that became most closely involved in post-war planning after 1939. They were all brought together by corporate liberal businessmen, and with the exception of one, they remained committed to post-war planning for the duration of the war and the immediate post-war period.

The Twentieth Century Fund The oldest organization to feature prominently in post-war planning during the 1940s was the TCF. To date the only published history of the TCF is a short memoir by leading wartime government official and lifetime member Adolf Berle.2 Founded in 1919 by the Boston retail mogul Edward A. Filene, the TCF had its roots in the Progressive movement of the pre-First World War era. Edward, together with his brother Lincoln, had earlier formed the Cooperative League to promote credit unions, but with the TCF chose to broaden their attack on poverty by developing a network of liberal groups through which coordinated action to advance the national welfare could be taken. Filene was joined by Henry S. Dennison, president of the Dennison Manufacturing Company and deputy chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, and New England journalist, newspaper proprietor and former director of the Filene empire, John Fahey. Convinced that business must work together with the state, early TCF projects comprised typical progressive causes, such as municipal reform, press freedom and the democratization of industry, but with an emphasis on devising practical solutions through scientific study rather than political lobbying.3 This was achieved by enlisting a paid specialist on a given topic to conduct an investigation and suggest practical solutions, a procedure the TCF maintained for decades. Faith in the power of ‘objective’ scientific analysis remained a cornerstone of the TCF philosophy,

14

Post-War Business Planners in the United States, 1939–48

a faith it clung to in the predominantly anti-reform years of conservative Republican policies during the 1920s. It also became clear to Filene that social welfare and social justice were rooted in economics, and even before the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the TCF had begun to ready itself to challenge the dominant laissez-faire economic precepts of the time. The shift towards the commissioning of economic research was quickened by Evans Clark, an economics journalist with the New York Times and the left-leaning New York Call, who, in 1928, was appointed as the first full-time executive director of the TCF, a position he retained for the next twenty-five years. Under Clark, the TCF became one of the first business groups to focus primarily on socioeconomic research and when the Great Depression struck was well prepared to begin the nationwide task of finding solutions to the country’s extreme social and economic problems. The powerful forces of the Depression shattered the self-confidence of America’s business class and unleashed a wave of introspection and questioning among the business elite and academia about the causes of the economic collapse and viable remedies. Finding itself swimming with, rather than against, the political tide, the TCF enthusiastically answered the call to duty when President Roosevelt began his recovery programmes in 1933. Its study of the nation’s internal debts published that year was the first of its kind, and the TCF collected much of the information used to draft the Securities Exchange Act and later social security legislation. More fundamentally, in 1932 the TCF directed economist Frederic J. Dewhurst of the University of Pennsylvania to re-examine ‘the basic assumptions of economic science’ and his report of February 1933, which emphasized empirically based reasoning over the commonly practised deductive method, echoed similar findings by other economists at the time, including those of Keynes.4 The separation of the TCF from the exponents of business conservatism was made emphatic with Lincoln Filene’s endorsement of the Keynesian analysis of the US economy in 1935 and the resignation, in 1936, of Edward from the USCC, where he had been a leading member since 1912. By the end of the decade, the leadership of the TCF comprised a hardcore of New Deal veterans. Its president, John Fahey, directed much of the country’s housing policy as chairman of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board Administration. Even more active in the New Deal than Fahey was the chairman of the TCF executive committee (and trustee), Dennison. He had been chairman of the Industrial Advisory Board of the signature agency of Roosevelt’s first New Deal, the National Recovery Administration, then became adviser to the National Resources Committee. In the 1940s Dennison became assistant director of the administration’s Central Bureau of Planning and Statistics and business adviser to the NRPB. An important figure in the TCF during the 1930s was Adolf Berle. A strong advocate of central economic planning, Berle became an architect of, and early cheerleader for, the New Deal. In 1932 he co-wrote the widely acclaimed The Modern Corporation and Private Property with Gardiner C. Means and in 1933 became an economic adviser in Roosevelt’s original ‘Brains Trust’. With his expertise in corporate law and finance, Berle worked as a planner for the government in the Reconstruction Finance Corporation during 1933–38, and fashioned much of the banking and securities legislation of the New Deal, such as the Securities and Exchange Act.

The Planners Before 1939

15

As salaried officers of the executive committee,5 Fahey, Dennison, Clark and Dewhurst formed the prime leadership of the TCF during the war. Berle remained in full-time, high-level service in the State Department during the 1940s but maintained close contact with the TCF executive and its trustees. Berle remained a powerful force on the TCF and made several critical interventions during the war period. Corporate liberals were therefore the driving force behind the wartime TCF and also comprised the bulk of its membership (see Appendix 1). The philosophy of blending corporate minds with academia was explicit throughout the organization. Beyond the executive committee sat fourteen trustees, the most significant of which, for their wartime input, included (after Berle) Francis Biddle, US attorney general; Charles P. Taft, assistant coordinator in the State Department’s Office for Coordination of Health, Welfare and Related Activities (later director of Wartime Economic Affairs in 1944); James G. McDonald, honorary chairman of the Foreign Policy Association; Robert S. Lynd, professor of sociology at Columbia University; Bruce Bliven, president and editorial director of the liberal New Republic; William W. Waymack, vice president of the Des Moines Register and Tribune; Oswald W. Knauth, president of the Associated Dry Goods Corporation (and later assistant director of the Statistical Division of the War Production Board); Morris E. Leeds, chairman of Leeds and Northrup Company and former member of the BAC; and William I. Myers, head of the Department of Agricultural Economics and Farm Management at Cornell University, president of the Federal Farm Mortgage Corporation and former chairman of the Land Committee of the NRPB.6 As a primarily research-based foundation, the usual pattern of TCF work was that the trustees agreed on a worthy research topic and appointed an independent special committee to take overall charge of the survey. Each committee prepared for publication a series of concrete recommendations for action to be submitted for trustee oversight. The trustees maintained their impartiality and assumed no responsibility for the findings or the recommendations for action that resulted. Trustees were allowed to sit in on any research committee they chose, but had no vote within it. Public Policy Bulletins were published as distillations of major surveys for wider distribution through interested national and local organizations. Between 1937 and 1944 the TCF published fifteen Bulletins, after which it was decided to publish major surveys in pamphlet form.7 The leadership of the TCF met far less frequently than the other planning groups of this study: just two executive committee meetings and one meeting of trustees per year (all in the New York headquarters). The executive oversight and monitoring of research was left to the special committees assigned to the major projects. The smaller projects without special committees were usually put under the control of an executive committee member. The TCF received most of its finance from a trust fund left by Filene (80 per cent), and income from endowments on its investments (12 per cent) and a small amount from publications sales (3 per cent).8 Much of the trust fund was dispensed to worthy causes, or ‘beneficiaries’, such as trustee McDonald’s Foreign Policy Association (which issued twenty-four reports annually plus a weekly bulletin), and the National Bureau of Economic Research.9 Comprised mostly of businessmen, the TCF was a relatively broad-based organization primarily devoted to liberal economic research, though it benefited from some important contacts in government.

16

Post-War Business Planners in the United States, 1939–48

The Business Advisory Council So dynamic were the forces of questioning unleashed by the Great Depression, forces that had breathed new life into the socio-economic approach of the independent TCF, that the government itself became directly involved in organizing business discussion. On 26 June 1933 the Business Advisory and Planning Council was established under the behest of then secretary of commerce, Daniel C. Roper. Information on the Council’s early formation and wartime exploits can be gleaned from just a few secondary sources, most notably McQuaid and Collins, and only a small amount of primary material.10 Roper wanted to tap the experience of businessmen and bring about a ‘more harmonious relationship between government and business’. Over forty notable businessmen were approached, with interest even shown by members of the anti-New Deal NAM. The new organization quickly became a destination for corporate moderates, or what McQuaid described as ‘compromise-minded corporate managers’.11 Three figures loomed large in the founding of the council. They were Gerard Swope, president of General Electric Company; Walter C. Teagle of Standard Oil; and Henry I. Harriman, a utilities executive and head of the USCC. Mostly composed of executives from the largest corporations, the Council clearly tapped a layer of businessmen who were anxious about the role of government in the economy but were unimpressed with the doctrinaire cries of the free-market crusaders in the NAM and the USCC (including Harriman) and wanted a more ‘constructive’ response to the failings of the economy. Some viewed the council as a means to influence the direction of the government and to ‘moderate’ the New Deal.12 Yet it was obvious from the outset that this group would be kept close to the administration and would enjoy none of the intellectual freedoms boasted by the TCF. As Roper later recalled, the group was intended to act as a ‘clearing house for industrial views on governmental matters which affect business’.13 As an arm of the Commerce Department, which provided all the clerical support (and where its meetings were held), the group had no independence of action: all reports were kept confidential and were for the eyes of the secretary of commerce alone. No reports were released to the press or the Congress without special permission of the secretary, who was ex-officio general chairman of the group.14 The administration effectively used the Council as a pool to serve on the various agencies of Roosevelt’s economic reform programme, helping to form the Industrial Advisory Board for the signature New Deal agency, the National Recovery Administration and scores of other federal bodies.15 Indeed, the NRA was essentially the brainchild of Gerard Swope, first chairman of the Council. Yet, as McQuaid phrased it, the Council was ‘in the government, but not of it’.16 Members were not employees of the government, nor were they bound by government policy. Funding came from private donations, and the leadership had the last say on membership. The Council was a peculiar creation within the administration of a tight fraternity of corporate executives. However, resentment of the administration quickly set in. Resignations followed a clash with Roosevelt after the president craftily used Council findings in his bid to isolate the USCC, and although the word ‘planning’ was dropped from the renamed BAC in 1935 (to differentiate from the New Deal agencies), its relationship with the government was never as cordial. Despite a succession of different chairmen and a membership that

The Planners Before 1939

17

now included leaders from the military, scientific and academic fields, the BAC grew more critical of the New Deal and Roosevelt grew tired of his chief link with business which was ‘only good for the dissemination of morale and a few ethical fundamentals’.17 The hopes of a conservative, yet reform-minded layer of business leaders who might temper the excesses of the government’s Keynesian protagonists were definitely soured. Yet the BAC remained as the destination for businessmen who opposed large-scale federal solutions but recognized that capitalism had changed: laissez-faire had to give way to a more centrally managed economy, and it was their task to represent the interests of private capitalism as an integral part of that management – what Collins termed ‘pragmatic business liberalism’.18 As will be seen, the BAC in 1942 became the progenitor of a major post-war planning organization, the CED, which embodied much of the values of its mother organization. Until then, it fell to this somewhat dysfunctional Depression-era organization to relay post-war issues of business to the government through the Department of Commerce.

The National Economic and Social Planning Association For businessmen, academics and other professionals less fearful about the safety of free-market capitalism in a centrally managed economy there was created at the same time as the BAC another organization that they could join. In 1934 a body was formed that sought neither to be an independent research agency like the TCF nor a de facto government agency like the BAC. The National Economic and Social Planning Association (NESPA) was constituted on 9 October 1934 out of the Roundtable, an economic planning discussion group led by Lewis L. Lorwin, a renowned expert on the international labour movement and a member of the moderate private economic thinktank, the Brookings Institution. NESPA embodied the corporate liberal enthusiasm for ambitious and wide-reaching social and economic change more than any other group in 1930s America. As an organization it was also the most subject to modification and adjustment than any other business planners, a trait which became significant in the turbulent 1940s. Even before the outbreak of war the NESPA underwent substantial alteration. According to the only published official history of the organization, The National Planning Association at Work,19 Lorwin and the Roundtable quickly grew ‘dissatisfied’ with the National Recovery Administration and formed NESPA along with other members of the Roundtable who were likewise heavily involved in the agencies of the New Deal: David Cushman Coyle, consultant to the New Deal’s Public Works Administration; A. Ford Hinrichs of the Department of Labor; George Soule, editor of the New Republic (run by TCF trustee Bliven); Marion H. Hedges, director of Research of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers; and Harlow S. Person, president of the Society for the Advancement of Management (Taylor Society), which promoted theories of ‘scientific’ management–labour practices.20 These enthusiasts of social and economic planning were frustrated with the machinations of government practice. Soule recalled the founding of NESPA as representing a conscious break from the ‘day-to-day emergencies’ and ‘political pressures’ that so absorbed the government bodies in which they were enlisted to

18

Post-War Business Planners in the United States, 1939–48

work. NESPA, on the other hand, was ‘an agency more amenable to study, reflection and long-term considerations, and one strictly non-political in the narrow sense of the term’.21 The founding theory of NESPA was that planning should come ‘from the bottom up’ and incorporate the major economic groups of agriculture, business, labour and the professions.22 NESPA steadfastly rejected the idea that planning ‘belonged to Russia alone’ and believed that ‘the American republic arose out of the planning technique’.23 All energies of the new organization were centred on achieving one easily understood objective that stood as its anthem for the next sixty years: ‘The fullest possible utilization of the productive resources of the United States in order to give the American people the highest possible material and cultural standard of living.’ NESPA made it clear that its primary concentration was on solving the technical problems to achieving this goal, ‘while not excluding the important political questions from the range of their interest’.24 A grant from the rural planning enthusiast Leonard Elmhirst (and later the William C. Whitney Foundation), allowed NESPA to begin publicizing its ideas through a monthly periodical, and for a time this publication, based on volunteer work, was the sum of the new group’s activity. Launched in December 1934, Plan Age became the official organ of NESPA.25 The practical method that NESPA adopted to achieve its aims was based on that of the British Political and Economic Planning (PEP) group, whereby informal clusters of experts were brought together and granted autonomy to issue reports on specific problems as a basis for action. The PEP was formed in 1931 by British planning enthusiasts from similar backgrounds in academia, the professions and business to those of the NESPA (NESPA’s American backer Elmhirst was a founder of the PEP), and served as an early inspiration for the American group. Though no formal links were established between the two organizations, the NESPA helped promote an American subscription list for the PEP through its ties with the liberal New Republic.26 The ‘autonomous’ approach to fact-finding was also similar to that of other US private research groups, like the TCF, but differed in one important regard. Those working on NESPA projects were granted, if they so chose, anonymity. This mechanism, NESPA reckoned, allowed for the widest selection of expertise and could ‘tap the knowledge and competence of men in business or government who could not, for reasons of discretion, take personal responsibility for recommendations of policy’.27 Though superficially similar in its research emphasis, methodology and liberal outlook, what mainly separated the NESPA from the TCF was its holistic approach to solving the country’s problems, a unifying theory that the TCF and other non-political groups did not hold. NESPA aimed to speak not only for business but also for labour and agriculture – the three main economic groups – and ally them with academia. The NESPA sought to balance equally its representation of these groups, but business remained the dominant and leading group, especially during the war, and was the constituency upon which the organization was most dependent for funding.28 This was despite a large representation from labour in its membership, which registered little or no impact upon the mostly corporate executive leadership (see Appendix 1). Indeed, what the NESPA advocated was no socialist cure. The NESPA was profoundly pro-capitalist, as its founders sought to ‘empower’ America’s major economic groups ‘so that economic planning emanated primarily from the private sector rather than

The Planners Before 1939

19

from government alone’. Planning, not politics, was the NESPA’s guiding principle for national recovery and betterment.29 The NESPA insisted that a version of democratic planning was possible as a solution to the deepening world crisis that avoided the pitfalls of the communist or fascist versions poised so ominously across Europe.30 The ‘impartial’ theorizing of the NESPA, centred on a neutral interpretation of economic planning, therefore emerged out of the frustration of certain intellectual and enlightened business figures with the ability of mainstream US political parties to deal effectively with the Depression. By mid-1936 the NESPA applauded the shift in national dialogue about planning caused by the New Deal programmes, but noted that – in an interesting foretaste of the wartime experience – thanks to the noticeable upswing in the domestic economy, a degree of individualism had re-emerged and scepticism had replaced the earlier enthusiasm for social and economic reform. Undeterred, to test the national appetite for planning, the NESPA sent George B. Galloway on a 26,000-mile, eleven-month tour of thirty-five states to meet officials and persons involved in all areas of planning. Galloway, one of the first recruits to NESPA, was a proven researcher and, as former assistant deputy administrator of the National Recovery Administration, another New Deal operative. In all, Galloway interviewed 900 people in 150 cities, and met government and civic leaders along with political activists and pressure groups. Galloway was dismissive of the clearly profound differences that existed between these individuals and groups, and instead became more convinced of the role of NESPA in uniting these varied factions around a common purpose. Galloway believed passionately in the advantages of economic and social planning, and his faith that they were a self-evident, objective truth of inescapable force that all could accept, epitomized the conviction that drove the NESPA.31 Energized by Galloway’s early findings on the national desire for an alternative, by the end of 1936, the NESPA enlarged its work to cover four main areas: general and theoretical; examination of current policies; preparation of special reports; and helping to ‘coordinate the activities of the different planning groups which under various names are working towards the same social ends’.32 Everett Johnston Coil was appointed director in 1937 and remained in that position until 1950. Lorwin resigned as chairman of the board in September 1938, and was succeeded by another founder, George Soule.33 Coil, in particular, remained at the centre of wartime leadership of the NESPA. The NESPA assessment of America’s taste for planning appeared well founded. By 1938, NESPA was sponsoring three committees in cooperation with other agencies that studied population policy, communications services and the control of business cycles.34 Total membership of NESPA began to climb,35 and more than 9,000 copies of Plan Age had been distributed and 2,185 sold. A 1938 survey of its work noted that Plan Age was being used by teachers in universities and was used in adult education. Plan Age had also been mentioned ‘with increasing frequency’ in several journals and magazines, many of them well known, such as the liberal New Republic, Nation, Harpers and Foreign Policy Bulletin, as well as national dailies like the New York Times and the Washington Post.36 The entertaining of deficit spending by Roosevelt in April 1938 fuelled NESPA’s belief that with the increased popularity of Keynes’ theories, the need for justifying

20

Post-War Business Planners in the United States, 1939–48

the case for long-term, coordinated economic planning was less urgent. From 1938 the NESPA spent less time on promoting the need for planning and more time on planning itself, and in so doing fully embraced Keynesian ideas. The motivation for this shift was linked closely to the rise of totalitarian states in Europe and Asia that had arisen from the failure of the democratic capitalist order. In May 1939 Coil argued that democracies also must plan and that a totally free market had given way to an ‘administered economy’. Instead of simply defining the goals of planning, such as high productivity and employment and a rising standard of living, Coil wanted NESPA to concentrate on devising actual policies to achieve them. As Coil explained, NESPA’s job was ‘to help bridge the gap between fact-finding and policy-making’.37 On this premise the NESPA embarked on a massive research and education drive that began in the 1939 launch of a series of special reports on economic and social issues and the release of the first of a long collection of free-standing studies called Planning Pamphlets. Catering for the more academic audience, the bound Planning Pamphlets allowed for a longer, more detailed analysis and a developed argument on singular topics than the shorter articles which appeared in its monthly magazine Plan Age.38 The broadening of the NESPA’s range of publications continued into 1940 with the start of The NESPA Guide, a monthly list of publications and activities in social and economic planning designed to serve as a tool and timesaver for teachers in public and university education.39 More importantly, in the middle of 1939 the NESPA altered its stated goals, becoming more ambitious and spreading beyond the parameters of strictly economic planning. From mid-1939 NESPA’s main objective, as printed on the inside cover of the Plan Age, was altered to ‘the design of methods and the formulation of policies for the more effective organization of our society’ as it believed that ‘a functioning democracy needs social engineering’. But NESPA alleged it had no political agenda, rather it advocated objective, technical solutions to modern-day problems. As Soule later stressed, NESPA’s task was not to provide a ‘hard-and-fast blueprint for a new social order’, as effective planning was a ‘living process, rather than a detailed scheme’.40 In the interwar years three groups had emerged to represent a minority section of US businessmen interested in closer business–government participation in running the economy. The groups differed in scope, orientation and ideological affinity. They comprised enthusiasts of the New Deal, those who wanted to better it, and those who wanted to control it because they feared it. Some possessed joint membership, but there was no attempt to combine resources and all groups maintained their separate identities.41 The BAC was almost entirely composed of businessmen, but even the TCF and the NESPA, which embraced liberals from agriculture, labour and academia, were dominated by corporate activists who were the largest grouping and formed the core leadership within these organizations.42 In all they embraced a mixed bag of corporate activists of the left and the right – from the information-based welfare progressivism of the TCF, the restrained federal liaison of the moderate BAC or the state-centred planning evangelism of the NESPA – who were aroused by the generalized atmosphere of reform and inquiry of the Depression years. As full-scale war threatened to erupt in Europe and Asia, these three organizations poised themselves to develop their ideas and advance their schemes for organizing the economic future of the United States.

2

War in Europe: The Liberal Initiative, 1939–41

Military success depends upon industrial organization backed by unity of command and purpose. … This is primarily a business man’s job and must be done by business management working in complete harmony with the political control of national policy. Walter White, BAC, June 19401 The time had come to go into an exploration of some of the basic problems with which this country would be faced in the future … to study the problems of the United States being considered in relation to the rest of the world. Adolf Berle, TCF, November 19402 The understanding of and preparation for what lies in the future, while not properly the immediate problem of the government, is at the same time the most vital and most urgent long-term problem that we have. On its wise handling and solution depends the future of the whole world. The phrase has been aptly made that it will avail little to win the war and lose the peace. At the end of the war the United States may occupy the pivotal position. George Soule, NESPA, December 19403 In short, what kind of a world might we be able to shape after the war, and in light of the interests of the United States, what can it contribute to establishing that world. Everett Coil, NPA director, July 19414 The arrival of war in Europe surprised few Americans, who with minor exceptions responded much like their predecessors had in 1914: the United States should stay out. But for a minority the impulse to build ramparts was met with an equally powerful desire to lend a helping hand, and the national argument between ‘isolationists’ and ‘interventionists’ over the most fitting American response to the war was reflected in the meetings of the business groups. For them, the question of America’s relationship to the developing war was not based on morality or even ideology, but plain economic realities. Either way, they figured, it was in American interests to plan for after the war. It soon emerged that this war, regardless of whether the United States was going to be involved as a belligerent or not, would have profound consequences for the socioeconomic fabric of the nation. In different ways the business activists of the TCF, the

22

Post-War Business Planners in the United States, 1939–48

NPA and the BAC sought to influence government policy in these early stages of building the nation’s defences and watched closely the actions of the administration. Government initiatives will, therefore, be summarized first before undertaking a detailed treatment of the reactions of the business groups to the unfolding war in Europe. Federal planning for the end of the war began as soon as war broke out in Europe. It began early, but thanks to Roosevelt’s penchant for competitive delegation to numerous agencies with often overlapping duties and responsibilities, and the additional pressure of conservative opposition in Congress, the official response to post-war planning was tentative. This is of no surprise, given that no organization was created with the overall responsibility of developing the country’s war-making capacity, let alone its post-war planning. Indeed, it was largely thanks to the absence of an overarching economic planning body in Washington for most of the war that opportunities were created for groups outside of the government to become influential both in the country’s war, and more importantly for this study, post-war planning activities. The prevailing view of the US war mobilization effort during the Second World War is that, in spite of its spectacular success, it was afflicted from the outset by poor administrative coordination, political gainsaying and the self-interested tactics of big business and the military.5 In the difficult interlude between depression and full belligerency, Roosevelt acted cautiously so as not to inflame isolationist sentiment by engaging too forcefully in the defence effort. The conservative bloc forged during the New Deal era reminded Roosevelt that there would be no question of the nation’s defence being provided by anything other than private enterprise: there was no suggestion of nationalizing industries as in Europe. Rather, federal censure of big business was relaxed as corporations were enticed to switch to war production. Until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, American business was slow to accept defence contracts over fears about profitability, market disruption and suspicion of government restructuring of certain industries. Some feared expansion would only make a post-war recession more likely. The government was obliged to adopt several measures to attract firms to convert their outputs to defence, such as guaranteeing profits, underwriting any losses and building new plants that were leased with a promise they would be sold at a ‘fair price’ after the emergency.6 Under these delicate circumstances Roosevelt avoided handing wide authority to a single government agency and instead, as he had in the New Deal, divided responsibilities between advisers to ensure his overall command. This offered him flexibility but at the expense of coherence.7 This lack of firm executive leadership led to what one historian described as the country’s ‘halting drift into mobilization’, which left considerable space for private business interests – liberals, moderates but mostly anti-New Deal conservatives – to create a powerful lodgement in the mobilization process. A shortage of technical expertise in the administration of corporations and statistical analysis has also been identified as compounding the government’s political weakness in confronting business.8 As time passed, out of what one historian called ‘simple organizational necessity’,9 Roosevelt was obliged to sanction new departments with significant big business, and mostly anti-New Deal, influence rather than utilize existing ones over which he could exercise better control, and a layer of pro-business

War in Europe: The Liberal Initiative, 1939–41

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voices took positions of high authority in the war economy.10 It was the middle of 1943 before planning of the war effort achieved anything near cohesion. This proclivity for executive indecision produced a similar environment of opportunity for individuals and groups outside of government with the requisite knowledge, associations and enthusiasm for post-war planning. This was because the same reservations over establishing an overarching body to control national defence similarly dogged executive action on ‘post-defence’ matters. In the end it fell to a proto-New Deal agency to get the ball rolling. Formed in 1939 from remnants of the National Resources Committee (1935), the NRPB was devised to coordinate the government’s various public works programmes and conduct socio-economic research to stimulate ideas about national planning. Answerable to the president alone, the NRPB was Roosevelt’s foremost adviser on planning matters, and as the war crisis loomed the NRPB had a unique supply of valuable information on the nation’s economic resources, especially in the fields of industry, transportation and energy.11 However, the stuttering official preparations for war did not immediately help the NRPB, which became sidelined as its leading members were swiftly incorporated into the huge new mobilization agencies to maintain Washington authority.12 But this left open the area of post-defence planning of the national economy, and it was in this activity, somewhat by default, that the NRPB was able to craft a niche during the early stages of the war. At the end of 1939 Roosevelt told the NRPB to continue its focus on ‘long-term planning’, and in November 1940, the president directly instructed the NRPB to ‘collect, analyze and collate all constructive plans’ for the ‘post-defence period’.13 The president was more emphatic but stopped short of establishing an overarching agency in charge of the nation’s post-war planning. Like many other agencies created by Roosevelt, the NRPB was viewed as a ‘piecemeal’ outfit, and he regularly dismissed suggestions from its panel out of fear of the political upshot.14 The NRPB was no more than a clearing house for ideas to be submitted for consideration by the president, much as its predecessor had become during the 1930s.15 Still, the NRPB was closely linked to the post-war planning community, enjoying ties with all the major organizations, sharing members, information and ideas. Stalwarts Henry Dennison (TCF and BAC), and Beardsley Ruml (NPA and CED) supplied the business viewpoint on a ‘supervisory panel’ for the NRPB. Until its dissolution in 1943, the NRPB played an important role in fostering the nation’s post-war planning outside, rather than inside, the government. Beyond the White House, federal departments were generally slow to focus on domestic economic post-war planning. It was not before the impetus of Pearl Harbor that the Department of Commerce took deliberate steps in developing plans. Until December 1941 any discussion of post-war issues was dealt with by various subdivisions of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, such as the Divisions of Industrial, Regional and International Economy and the Bureau of Research and Statistics. Evidence of any post-war thinking is slim, and only a publication by the Division of Regional Economy of September 1941 entitled Suggested Topics in the Fields of Business and Economics, which included a heading ‘Post-War Problems’, gave any hint of official interest from the department. In the Commerce Department, any ideas about post-war planning were being left to the BAC. In other departments, such

24

Post-War Business Planners in the United States, 1939–48

as in the Departments of the Treasury, the Interior or Labor, no post-war planning was initiated before 1942. Distanced from the convoluted machinations of economic mobilization, the organization of post-war foreign economic policy was more straightforward, but no less piecemeal, than domestic economic post-war planning. As the organ with the principal duty of formulating the country’s foreign policy, the State Department was quick to devote space for examining post-war economic issues. After all, a core aim of Secretary of State Cordell Hull was to eradicate the system of economic autarchy and discrimination that had enveloped Europe and much of the world since the early 1930s. These matters quickly came to dominate US wartime diplomacy with the Allies, and especially with Britain regarding the future of its protectionist Imperial Preference regime. The lack of trust between Roosevelt and Hull certainly compounded harmonization of post-war planning, but on principles such as breaking international protectionism they were as one.16 Hull was able to closely direct the government’s overall foreign policy strategy but concerned himself little with the specifics of diplomacy, which was left to the president and his many confidants.17 For the time being, therefore, reflection on the finer details of post-war policy was consigned to lower-ranking officials in the backrooms of the department.18 But, as in the case of national economic planning in the NRPB, the light touch of officialdom allowed space for the involvement of private bodies from outside of government. First moves began when Hull appointed Leo Pasvolsky to head a small group in 1939 to look at postwar topics. Its work was split into a Division of Political Studies under Harley Notter (responsible for special research into foreign relations and post-war reconstruction) and a Division of Economic Studies led by Leroy D. Stinebower (which studied foreign economic relations and post-war reconstruction).19 Pasvolsky and his team of eight were soon bogged down with operational duties, so they immediately created links with the private ‘think-tank’, the CFR based in Princeton University.20 The CFR was formed in 1921 in response to dissatisfaction with the country’s poor performance at the Paris Peace Conference, and united business chiefs with government leaders and academic experts.21 During the 1930s the CFR developed its internationalist outlook by taking on government isolationists and nationally minded industrialists through discussion groups, research studies and its journal Foreign Affairs. When war broke out in Europe in September 1939 the CFR offered to ‘secretly’ work for the State Department (as Hull did not wish to be directly associated with an outside group), and by December it was officially enlisted to begin studies on post-war foreign policy with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation.22 It was in the interval between 1940 and 1941, when the government was most preoccupied with launching its war effort and before the State Department organized its post-war planning more seriously, that the CFR enjoyed most influence, especially over the founding of the United Nations. From 1942 to 1945 the CFR was largely incorporated by the State Department to develop post-war foreign policy in a variety of areas, provided a base for recruitment onto government agencies and helped preparations for the Bretton Woods Proposals and the United Nations.23 As a quasi-government think tank in the direct employ of the State Department, the CFR was unlike the other business planning groups which operated at a greater distance from the government and with more autonomy.

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Nonetheless, as with the NRPB, the CFR was a valuable interface between government and business. Its research was based around five study groups looking at questions of economics and finance, security and armaments, politics, territory and peace aims. The Economic and Financial Group, which became the most important of the CFR’s divisions, was filled with Keynesian enthusiasts, liberals and moderates, and shared members with all the major post-war planning groups. Growing in stature after 1945, the CFR became a vital gateway into the federal decision-making process and was an important influence on the post-war business planners as they gradually developed their positions on international questions. In the early stages of the war, with the energies of the nation devoted to overcoming the physical and social complexities of gearing for defence, and with overseas developments in such violent flux, institutional consideration of post-hostilities matters was understandably of lower priority. This is not to say that the post-war interests of the United States were not part of the wider strategic thinking of the administration. Indeed, post-war matters figured prominently in early US diplomacy with the British. Rather, it was at the bureaucratic level of detailed tackling of post-war problems that the government was unable yet to devote larger resources. Alternatively, the president’s competitive style of leadership fostered an environment for departmental initiative. But this was clearly lacking in the months leading up to Pearl Harbor. The obvious agencies to conduct post-war planning, the State and Commerce Departments, dedicated slight attention and resources or were very slow off the mark. Further, as key departments, State and Commerce did not communicate well with each other, and thus began their efforts in an uncoordinated fashion. Such centralized leadership was normally provided by the White House, but this was not forthcoming. More crucially, there was no attempt or obvious urgency to connect the nation’s domestic economic post-war planning with its foreign economic policy, a weakness that became more apparent as the war progressed. All federal agencies, however, had a common approach to where they would gather the right planning expertise: outside of government. Here, unlike in the capital, post-war planning was quickly taking shape.

The NESPA gears for the post-war The NESPA was the first business planning group to recognize the importance of postwar issues and take organizational steps to examine them. Between 1939 and 1941, the organization accelerated the process it had begun in 1938 of gradually shifting the focus of its work away from the consequences of the New Deal and towards the domestic, and increasingly global, political and economic concerns of the United States for the war and post-war intervals. The NESPA undertook its most significant reorganization to date to meet this challenge after a ‘takeover’ by leading lights of the Commerce Department’s BAC. Enjoying close ties to the NRPB, the NESPA became the first of all the business planning groups to be selected by a federal agency to help frame the country’s economic policy options for the post-war era. By the end of 1941 the NESPA was a vastly expanded organization with rising credibility and distributing a variety of publications extolling the virtues of post-war planning to an ever-widening audience.

26

Post-War Business Planners in the United States, 1939–48

When war finally broke in Europe in September 1939, the NESPA was galvanized to confront what it considered were the three main problems of planning that faced the country, in which the organization early recognized the importance of planning for post-war eventualities. The first was helping the country prepare for its adjustment to the changes brought about by the war. The second was preparing for possible involvement in the war, and the third was ‘readjustment to peace, either from neutrality or belligerency’. NESPA immediately sponsored a group of expert economists to ‘attack’ these problems.24 Under the overall title ‘American Policy for Peace’, the group compiled a number of reports and articles that ran from November 1939 through the following year in Plan Age and the longer and more rigorous Planning Pamphlets.25 In one of the first articles to appear in this series the NESPA trashed any idea that the European war might rescue the US economy, further underscoring its philosophy that major changes in economic relations were necessary to make America prosperous again. In ‘The Immediate Impact of War’ from the December 1939 edition of Plan Age, a detailed argument was made against the prospect of a general revival of the economy into 1940 as a result of any war boom, arguing that any rises that might occur would be only temporary and anyhow would never achieve the levels of productivity necessary to ensure that ‘unemployment will cease to be a major human and economic problem’. In relating the significant differences between economic conditions at the beginning of the 1914–18 war and those that prevailed in the current war in Europe, the article was pessimistic about the chances for any long-term rise in national exports or domestic consumption, despite recent upswings in industrial activity. Even government expenditure had tailed off in recent months. Indeed, any lift in the national income was likely to fall short of what the NESPA believed was the primary objective of government and business: a minimum 50 per cent increase in industrial production over the next couple of years. This expansion, NESPA admitted, was ‘greater than many people realize’, and represented ‘an expansion beyond the industrial experience of the country’. Without stating precisely how the necessary long-term investment and demand might be achieved, whether through government intervention or an export drive, the article concluded that ‘reemployment of our people in productive work still remains the measure of our task, war notwithstanding’.26 The NESPA credo about planning was further advanced in the February 1940 Plan Age that gave space to Eugene Staley to express his internationalist vision of economic planning based upon his recent book World Economy in Transition written for the CFR. Entitled ‘What types of economic planning are compatible with free institutions’, Staley dismissed as unsound arguments that conflated economic planning with a loss of liberty or even free enterprise and championed a ‘mixed system’ that made a ‘planned sector and a market sector work harmoniously side by side’. Furthermore, he argued, national planning, if it was to succeed in harmony with free institutions, had to avoid becoming exclusively nationalistic and be part of a system of international economic cooperation within ‘an environment of world order maintained by world government’. Staley urged that the United States move from the sidelines of the war and begin constructing these agencies: The only way in which one nation, even a nation as strong as ours, can avoid that warping of its economy toward war preparation and hence toward greater peril to

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its free institutions, is to join in a general effort whenever the moment seems best to ‘make the world safe for democracy’, not by fighting a war but by constructing permanent institutions for world economic cooperation and maintenance of world order – that is, world government.

Staley’s views were later fleshed out in CFR proposals that became influential in framing government plans for a United Nations and a new liberalized world economic structure.27 For now, Staley’s ideas were wholeheartedly endorsed in printed comments by NESPA trustees Soule and Coyle.28 In July 1940 the NESPA sponsored the first public event dedicated to discussing the post-war period. The four-day national conference was held in San Francisco under the title ‘Planning for America at Peace’ in association with the American Institute of Planners, the American Planning and Civic Association and the American Society of Planning Officials. Session topics were dominated by domestic planning issues, with no mention of international factors.29 The October 1940 Plan Age also carried the earliest public call to Americans to start planning for the post-war, not just the likely wartime, period. Mark Rosenfelt, assistant director of the Educational Film Institute in New York, argued that the United States should begin economic planning for what he called the ‘third frontier’ (after America’s first and second frontiers of agricultural and industrial development of the last century), of new industrial growth which the country might experience after the dislocations of a wartime economy. Rosenfelt wanted national planning for the conversion to peacetime production because he felt the expansion of foreign trade and the development of new industries could not be guaranteed to satisfy the country’s needs. While ‘completely free’ foreign trade might work, Rosenfelt believed that ‘from what we can now see of the future, probable conditions at the end of the war in no way promise a favorable environment for the development of this frontier. Until a system of real international stability is set up, and its pattern known, we cannot safely plan to base our economy upon any other than our own resources.’30 With continental Europe now entirely under the heel of the Axis powers and with Britain tenuously holding out, the United States was virtually cut off from its main economic partner. Rosenfelt’s vision of the future was entirely pragmatic and, in hindsight, very perceptive. As the NESPA had earlier recognized, whether as a neutral or a belligerent, the United States would be compelled to adjust to the profound changes that this latest war in Europe would bring. His downplaying of the role of overseas markets in facilitating the smooth transition to a peacetime economy, which was eminently rational given the international circumstances of late 1940, and his concentration on domestic solutions are also resonant with the Keynesian mindset of the NESPA.31 The key role of Britain in sustaining the US economy was readily accepted by the NESPA. The great deterioration in the European war after the fall of France in the summer of 1940 led the NESPA to demand more of its government in helping the lone British to face down the Nazi challenge. After September 1940 it seemed that Britain had, in fact, narrowly avoided invasion, yet the island hung precariously on the edges of a continent gripped by the iron fist of the Third Reich. In December 1940, just days before Roosevelt called for arms to be supplied directly to Britain and announced his proposal for a Lend-Lease scheme, Plan Age ran an article that sketched out a way in

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Post-War Business Planners in the United States, 1939–48

which the United States, still a neutral, could better its support for the Allied cause. In his article ‘American Economic Power as a Weapon’, Albert T. Lauterbach of the Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton, argued that ‘it has not yet been generally recognized that Britain’s survival is as much in the American as in the British interest’, and that the US should ‘in its own vital interest’ deliver the ‘greatest possible assistance’ to Britain. He called for Americans to make sacrifices in private consumption, such as new cars, and endure higher taxation. Most of all Lauterbach called for an ‘overall planning body’ with considerable executive authority to coordinate US economic policy. The creation of such a powerful government body would be worthwhile, he claimed, as ‘none of the alleged dangers for democracy of such extraordinary measures can be as grave as the danger of a British defeat’.32 Lauterbach’s plea to help Britain was apposite, given that Roosevelt was soon to announce aid to Britain. Further academic support for the president’s initiative was given by fellow Harvard economist and NESPA member Alvin Hansen. Hansen was the foremost US academic in support of Keynesianism, and served as technical adviser to the NRPB, the State Department and the Federal Reserve Board, and was chairman of the US-Canada Joint Economic Committee that looked at post-war economic dislocations. At the annual meeting of the American Economic Association in December 1940, Hansen and Arthur R. Upgren, an economist from Dartmouth and Minnesota universities and a member of the Economic and Financial group of the CFR (and later CED), delivered a paper on ‘Some Aspects, Near-Term and Long-Term, of the International Position of the United States’. In it the pair underscored the country’s economic interest in maintaining European, and at least British, markets to sustain the US economy. A Nazi-dominated Europe could be compensated by British survival: but the Western Hemisphere alone – that is Central and South America – was not sufficient to support the United States as all sectors relied on agricultural exports. Hemispheric isolation from Britain and Europe was therefore highly detrimental to US economic interests: ‘If the outcome of the war is such that Germany will dominate the continent of Europe, this would entail the continuance of autarchic trade policies, resulting in largely cutting off this area from trade with the rest of the world.’ However, if Britain remained in control of the seas along with the United States, then ‘a large trading area would be available for this country, even though Germany should retain control of the continent of Europe. … This represents a reasonably satisfactory triangular trade area, including by far the most important of our former world trade.’33 Both Upgren and Hansen became important figures in the post-war business planning community. By the end of 1940, therefore, the NESPA was ‘increasingly conscious … of the paramount need for careful and continuous preparation for a more positive postwar world’, and had appropriated the Lauterbach-Hansen-Upgren outline. As Soule perceived events, this included the ‘readjustment of international relationships’ and ‘the reconstruction of world trade with the aim of enabling our own and every country to demobilize its war resources and reorient them toward the welfare of its people’. Soule pleaded that these goals not be ‘overlooked’ in the rush of immediate preparations for defence, and that the country recognize that the understanding of and preparation for what lies in the future, while not properly the immediate problem of the government, is at the same time the most vital and

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most urgent long-term problem that we have. On its wise handling and solution depends the future of the whole world. … At the end of the war the United States may occupy the pivotal position.34

The NESPA began 1941 with a thoroughgoing programme of investigation of postwar problems. On 6 February 1941 the NESPA held a ‘Post-War Reconstruction Meeting’ where it was agreed to begin an outline study as a basis for organizing the economy for peace. The agenda for the meeting was extensive and included the full range of economic questions that might arise when the war stopped as they related to agriculture, industry, trade, finance, employment as well as broader questions on the place of the United States in the new post-war world order.35 The meeting agreed a ‘general method of attack’ for a wide-ranging list of five objectives for post-war reconstruction which, for the first time by the NESPA, was not limited to economic issues but placed America’s socio-economic goals within an international perspective. These were ‘full and increasing’ production of goods and services; the fullest opportunity for employment; ‘socially desirable distribution’ of goods and services; the preservation of democracy and essential democratic liberties; and ‘the kind of worldsociety which will permit concentration on the above objectives’. These objectives were based on the premise that Nazi Germany would be defeated (as a German victory would shift the problem from ‘the maintenance of employment to the maintenance of democracy’), and a belief that ‘the machinery for reconstruction’ would not appear overnight but ‘must grow out of the structures developed while the war is being fought’. In short, Europe would be in desperate need of American resources and expertise. The group sought to derive from this study ‘a program for America’s participation in the organization of peace, with special reference to what this country should demand from others, and what it can and should contribute’.36 The central assumption of the participants was that ‘the war would end within the year’.37 This optimistic view of the duration of the war naturally underestimated the actual extent and profound impact that the war was likely to have upon the United States and the world economy. After all, the United States was not yet a belligerent in the conflict, and much hope still rested on the ability of Britain to halt the advancing Nazi forces, which had not yet turned to attack the Soviet Union, sparing the Americans. Any projections about issues arising from national war expenditures, security and employment – to name but a few – were hence fragile in the extreme. The checklist of problem areas that the NESPA wished to tackle was therefore impossibly wide and, in hindsight, a touch naïve. Indeed, when the Post-War Reconstruction Group, as it was initially called, first met three weeks later, it recognized the inherent limitations in making accurate judgements of economic impacts even for the expectedly brief period in question, and could only ‘draw the outlines of such a picture’.38 However, the prospectus of study outlined by the group represented the first major statement of intention with the most comprehensive list of post-war goals by any US business organization. An important aid in this process was P. E. Corbett’s Post-War World, a draft copy of which was inspected by the group. Sponsored by the Institute of Pacific Relations of the American Council, Corbett, of McGill University, supported the creation of a supra-national body called a ‘World Commonwealth’ to run global affairs in place of the existing system of warring nation states. Corbett presented a survey of

30

Post-War Business Planners in the United States, 1939–48

the interwar years in which he attacked the existing system of international treaties and power-politics.39 The integration of Corbett’s book as a backdrop to the group’s discussion of post-war issues highlighted not only the socially liberal but also the grand visionary tendencies of the NESPA discussants. This was overall a very upbeat picture of the United States in the post-war world. Yet the group’s prescription for success was conditional on the continued, targeted intervention of the federal government in the economy. For them, there must be no ‘return to normalcy’ as had followed the last war. Without a new approach, the group feared the positive gains of the war economy, like full employment, higher productivity and raised incomes, would be lost and depression would return. If the war in Europe ended in 1942, as envisaged, the group ruled that the US economy would be in good shape and there would be ‘no fundamental change in our economic structure’. But this situation would not last if either the end of the war brought a return of international confidence and US defence spending suddenly dropped, or if the war ended with a Nazi defeat but the major powers maintained a high level of spending on armaments, bringing a 50 per cent drop in US defence expenditure which would also be capable of causing ‘a major crisis’. Hence the group reckoned the only way to avoid the return of economic gloom after hostilities, and not return to the same ‘unbalanced’ conditions which plagued the 1930s, was sustained government spending. But this spending was no panacea. In the longer term the group believed: ‘Government spending in itself can be no permanent solution. It must fall into place as a unit in a concerted program of action to correct the fundamental maladjustments in our economic system. Only when we have found a program to correct these shall we have solved the post-war problem in any other than a temporary way.’40 The NESPA clearly viewed the European crisis as a turning point, an opportunity, in which the United States could correct the economic and social ills of the preceding decade. Already, mechanisms for organizing the ‘transition’ from a war to a peacetime footing across a multitude of scenarios were intimately linked to establishing a longterm corrective for US capitalism. As Coil later emphasized, post-war planning must be considered more than a method to avoid chaos at war’s end; rather, it should be undertaken ‘with an eye to what kind of economic structure it is desirable to develop’.41 The NESPA’s commitment to what it regarded as the best way to run the capitalist economy, a ‘mixed’ approach, was emphasized at the next meeting of the group in March: ‘The issue is not between complete public ownership and complete laissezfaire – no clear-cut black or white case. Many different forms of economic organization are possible, and the form should depend on the particular function to be performed and the service rendered.’ In the short term, immediately following the war, the group advised a huge dose of government spending on public works and welfare services. This included a shift from war to welfare products and provision of social security in the form of pensions, family allowances and so on, as well as spending on conservation, education, health, nutrition, recreation, labour standards and training. To enable these programmes, the group believed change and planning were required in the three core areas of wage policy, price policy and tax policy. Though pragmatic and necessary, the group viewed these measures as just the beginning of a new way of running America born of the country’s unique political, as well as economic, standing in the

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post-war world. Not only will the United States ‘have reached new highs of employment, production, income, and savings’ after the war, it must ‘prepare to assume a role of world leadership’ and, if Britain survived, make ‘statements of war aims’ as ‘an essential part of the campaign for victory over Nazism’.42 Through the group, the NESPA had begun to trace an extensive vision of America in a radically altered post-war world. Heavily informed by New Deal liberalism, it nevertheless went much further than outlining a scheme for rescuing a failed economic system. Under the new post-war conditions, the government could be used to correct the economy’s ‘fundamental maladjustments’ and bring greater prosperity. It was a highly positive assessment (of a grim world situation) that embraced not only the national economic potential that would derive from the altered world relations but also some of the social, political and international ramifications of the country’s new-found status. It was the first ‘global’ vision of the United States articulated by any post-war business planning organization. The final impetus to gearing the organization for wholehearted post-war planning came when the NESPA was approached by a leading cadre of the BAC to ‘assume’, as the official history of the NESPA claimed, ‘the primary role in planning for the economy after the war’.43 The trio comprised William L. Batt, president of ballbearing manufacturers SKF Industries, Clinton S. Golden, president of the United Steel Workers, and Charles E. Wilson, head of the General Electric Corporation.44 It is unclear how this precisely came about, or on what date (around April 1941), but it has been suggested that mounting dissatisfaction with Roosevelt’s lack of enthusiasm for post-war planning for fear it would weaken the defence effort led members of the BAC to approach the NESPA.45 This would certainly have made sense. The NESPA understood planning and knew how government worked. And thanks to its latest public information drive the NESPA was arguably the most well-known planning group in the United States at the time. Still, it is notable that the BAC members made the approach, especially as Batt had only recently left his chairmanship of the BAC, and was evidently keen to direct post-war studies in ways that the BAC were currently unable (more on this later in the chapter). Indeed, Batt was emerging as a major corporate figure in the promotion of post-war planning both inside and outside of government. This was a prime example of the sort of cross-fertilization that took place among the post-war business planners during the war. Whatever its precise motives, what Eakins described as the ‘corporate liberal business takeover’ of the NESPA signalled a fresh casting of the organization for both the war and post-war periods.46 More accurately, it was a corporate moderate takeover which entailed changes in leadership, structure and outlook. For a start, the composition of its highest decision-making body was changed. Batt replaced Soule as chairman of NESPA’s board of trustees and both Wilson and Golden were inducted as trustees.47 Members of the War Manpower Commission and the Economic Stabilization Board also joined the trustees. These new additions did not constitute a BAC ‘takeover’, but certainly increased the BAC and government presence in the organization. NESPA still preserved its traditional representation of business, organized labour and agricultural concerns. Golden joined Robert J. Watt of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) as the board’s vice chair, with three of its sixteen

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Post-War Business Planners in the United States, 1939–48

trustees from organized labour and another the president of the National Farmers Union. It was to better reflect the interests of these three main economic groups that Batt suggested the NESPA not only enlarge its board of trustees but also streamline its overall structure. Up to that point the NESPA approached its work through special committees formed around specific topics that were dissolved once completed. However, this process was thought unrepresentative and lacked the input of what were deemed the major economic groups. Without the knowledge and experience of these groups, the NESPA recommendations were thought unlikely to ‘deserve or to win wide public acceptance or support’.48 To correct this, the NESPA – renamed the NPA on 24 April 1941 – created in the coming months Standing Committees on Business, Labor and Agriculture. The standing committees would meet four to six times a year and were expected to develop joint policy statements and backup reports on specific issues.49 As Soule grandly announced, it was hoped that within the new organization ‘persons experienced in business and labor will join with those in government and the universities in studying ways we can demobilize and use all of our resources, to the limits of our manpower, in the building of a better world’.50 Henceforth the NPA concerned itself exclusively with devising schemes for the betterment of the US economy and society after the fighting stopped. The first crop of leaders for the standing committees comprised, as chair of the Agriculture Committee, Nobel Prize winner for economics and head of the Department of Economics at Iowa State College Theodore W. Schultz (the Agriculture Committee also included Donald R. Murphy, editor of Wallace’s Farmer and Iowa Farmstead); Clinton S. Golden, as chair of the Labor Committee, whose members also included Marion Hedges, as vice chair, Walter P. Reuther of the United Auto Workers, Boris Shiskin of the AFL and Katherine Pollak Ellickson of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Less liberal in outlook was the composition of the new Business Committee, which was now chaired by David C. Prince of General Electric and proKeynes Beardsley Ruml, treasurer and chairman of the board of R. H. Macy, as vicechair.51 Ruml was quickly adopting a more central position in the planning community, and would become a key moderating influence among the corporate liberals. An early promoter of social science in the 1920s and a New Deal planning devotee, Ruml – a registered Republican who voted Democratic – did not consider himself a ‘liberal’ and chose moderation over radicalism. Preferring to operate from behind the scenes, Ruml helped convince Roosevelt to adopt deficit-spending to escape the recession in 1938. Before joining Macys, Ruml was the dean of social sciences at the University of Chicago and later director of the National Bureau of Economic Research. At the time he joined the NPA, Ruml was business adviser to the NRPB.52 Alongside the loss of one of its founders in Soule and the heavy BAC presence on the board, the new NPA solidified its executive leadership. To allow for the enhanced role of the NPA, and thanks to more generous support from the Whitney Foundation, Coil was appointed as the first full-time director, a post he held for the next ten years.53 The NPA reiterated its basic mission ‘to serve as a joint forum and meeting place for all the major constituent groups of the private economy’ with direct government participation ‘specifically excluded’.54 The NPA was not in the direct employ of the administration, nor did it answer to it. Yet the NPA was now arguably in the service

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of the government, with a direct link to its war-related agencies and their personnel tightly embedded near the top of the NPA organization. It is important to remember that while the BAC invitation may have galvanized, even flattered, the NESPA leadership, turning to the NESPA was, after all, an act born of frustration with official disinterest in post-war matters. The administration in 1941, perhaps understandably given the uncertain international situation, was uninterested in post-war planning, and seemed content, as the BAC move illustrated, to leave such thinking to an enthusiastic group of volunteers in the private domain. In short, the business planners had some way to go to convince Roosevelt that planning for peace was almost as critical as planning for war. Indeed, the measure of this task was recorded by the NPA itself in the autumn of 1941. The state of government post-war preparedness was neatly summarized in the first edition of the re-branded NESPA Guide, which from 1941 became the ten-monthly review pamphlet Public Policy Digest designed as a ‘working tool and timesaver’ for those unable to keep track of the many planning events across the country.55 The September 1941 issue of the Digest was almost entirely devoted to describing the various government agencies involved in war and post-war planning as a result of the administration’s latest departmental shake-up in response to the worsening international situation. The NPA logged reassuring signs from the executive and the legislature, but overall the NPA judged there was still a lot to be done. It noted that ‘progress in government planning along these lines is still spotted and uneven’, and that ‘much of the exchange of ideas between the agencies’ took place on an informal basis between interested parties, with some agencies still in the ‘talking stage’.56 In contrast with the administration, by the middle of 1941 the NPA was well advanced in its post-war planning. So much so that soon after its ‘takeover’ by BAC moderates the NPA was approached by the NRPB for help. In June 1941, Coil met with the recently hired NRPB aficionado on post-war planning and NPA trustee, Luther H. Gulick, who believed there were specific post-war issues which required ‘advanced work and preparation’ which ‘could best be studied by an organization outside the Government’ and offered to help the NPA find the necessary funding to undertake the work. Coil and Gulick together held meetings in Washington and New York with ‘experienced persons’ over suitable projects to investigate.57 Coil’s resulting list of ‘Needed Post-War Studies’ comprised ten topics on domestic economic matters and two relating to foreign economic policy. They were Anglo–American cooperation and planning international investment in the post-war period. Given the NRPB’s remit to explore domestic planning issues only, the inclusion of foreign economic questions for the NPA to consider is noteworthy, and possibly explained why Gulick sought the NPA’s help. On the topics of foreign economics, Coil proposed that the NPA must study three areas of the problem. The first was ‘the heritage of the war and the defense effort’, which included the physical changes wrought by the war on the world economy, and changes in the concentration of gold and foreign assets, as well as new debts incurred by Britain and others. There would also be ‘institutional changes’ to world financing, alterations in the structure of international trade, and the substitution of foreign exchange control for free exchange markets. There was also the possible use of Lend-Lease as ‘an institution for economic rehabilitation’. The second area for study

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was the immediate post-war finance problems of ‘relief and restoration’. The third was ‘financing the expansion of world incomes’.58 Apparently Batt was not one of the ‘experienced persons’ approached by Gulick and Coil over the list of topics. When informed five days later, Batt, in what seemed an expression of his authority, shortened the twelve potential topics to just five items, with ‘Anglo-Commonwealth-American Cooperation’ (note name change) and ‘Planning International Investment in the PostWar World’ placed as the first two entries.59 Closely intertwined with leading members of the BAC and government war agencies, and now working for the NRPB – the de facto post-war coordinators for the government – the recast NPA was centrally involved in post-war planning for the country. The closeness in the outlook of the NPA and the NRPB was quickly made apparent when, soon after its approach to the NPA, the NRPB released the first public report by a government agency on the subject of post-war planning. Released as a pamphlet in August 1941, After Defense – What? Full Employment, Security, Up-Building America, was an effort by the NRPB to draw attention to post-war problems and appeal for help from ‘public and private agencies in this important and intricate task’. Overall the tone of the report was optimistic yet cautious, and in all its essentials echoed the already highly publicized philosophy of the NPA on federal leadership in driving a public–private economy.60 It noted that the defence effort had raised US production to ‘unprecedented heights’ and showed that full employment, expected to be reached in 1944, was not only possible but could be sustained after the European war was over. The key phase in maintaining this optimum level of productivity was the transition period from war to peace. The NRPB therefore called for the government to lead a cooperative effort with business, farmers and workers to transfer an estimated 23 million workers from war to peacetime production and identified several basic ‘objectives’ towards accomplishing this end. They involved decentralization of ‘post-defence emergency activities’ and making full use of ‘our system of modified free enterprise’ to ensure a national income of $100 million a year (the expected peak in 1944) around the universal theme of ‘Up-Building America’. The report did not reflect the current trend in NPA thinking on the importance of international economics, but recognized that foreign policy would have ‘an important bearing’ upon employment and that foreign trade was ‘a two-way street’.61 The close association of the NPA with the NRPB was further underscored in the NRPB publication United States News in a special September 1941 report entitled ‘Planning to Prevent Postwar Depression’. The article contended that the defence boom was ‘demonstrating to planning groups’ that US labour and industry can be fully employed and can be ‘viewed as an opportunity to provide greater prosperity’. The article insisted that a growing number of government officials, businessmen and economists ‘were reaching the conclusion that widespread depression need not follow the defense boom’ if industry and labour were organized as efficiently for peace as they were for war. The expansion of US industry was already vast and there was no reason why this prosperity should not continue as the experience of defence planning would ‘provide a fair outline of the kind of cooperation that will be required after the war’. This wartime cooperation had domestic and international applications. Premised on the ‘basic assumption’ that Germany would be defeated, the initiative would fall to the

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United States as the ‘world’s greatest economic force’ to assume the responsibility for not only underwriting a permanent peace alongside Britain but also ‘founding a more satisfactory world order’. The article mentioned the work of the NPA and listed Batt (who had just assumed the post of director of the Materials Division of the Office of Production Management), Hansen and NRPB chief Charles Eliot as ‘leading advocates’ of post-war planning.62 The process of refinement of the international aspects of post-war planning in the NPA continued for the remainder of 1941. The expectation was that the United States would not only survive the war but in the transition would build the world in its image. The Post-War Reconstruction Group was renamed the International Post-War Group (IPWG), and had its first meeting in July 1941 in the New York offices of Soule’s New Republic, where – in another example of planning community ‘crossover’ – Bruce Bliven, TCF trustee and new NPA member, was editorial director. According to the minutes (which were marked ‘confidential’), much of the discussion involved three very broad problems. These were how to distribute surplus goods after the war, diversifying production in areas dependent on one or two exportable products, and ‘the relation between population growth and the organization of international trade’. In deliberating these problems, the IPWG assumed once more that ‘the democratic powers will plan the peace’ and that there must be ‘international as well as internal security’. It was also agreed that a peace settlement must bring equitable world distribution of goods, but questions about mechanisms of distribution were left for later meetings. France (despite being occupied for a full year) was cited as ‘the prototype of the balanced economy, based on a concept of the decent life’. The outlook of the IPWG towards economic relations with the Soviet Union was also illuminating, especially considering the country had just weeks earlier suffered a massive German invasion: ‘Russia might be one of the least troublesome areas in the post-war world’, the IPWG considered, as the country’s self-sufficiency in raw materials made it less likely to compete in world markets, its government held a favourable foreign trade policy and after the war the Soviet Union’s demand for capital goods could be exchanged for the country’s vast raw materials which would help ‘relieve the strain’ on more industrialized nations. The easy fit of the Soviet Union into a liberalized post-war economic order, led by the United States, was readily assumed by the IPWG. Although nothing of substance was concluded and no meaningful answers were provided, the notes of the July meeting revealed the remarkable breadth of the problems, especially global ones, envisaged by the IPWG, some of which quite prescient if not downright presumptuous, that would face the United States when the fighting stopped, and of the remarkable confidence in the United States to overcome them.63 By the end of July, Coil’s efforts to solidify the NPA’s post-war studies were capped when trustee and BAC member Charles E. Wilson agreed to chair the IPWG. Now they were ready, in Coil’s words, to start the ‘real work’. In his draft outline of the goals of the IPWG, Coil revealed just how sweeping his ambitions for the project, and for the post-war success of the United States, had become: ‘The aim is not to establish the most ideal and perfect world economic system which can be imagined. Rather, it is to establish … what kind of a world might we be able to shape after the war, and in light of the interests of the United States, what can it contribute to establishing

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that world.’ Coil warned, however, that reconstruction was only feasible if it was based upon three simple assumptions about the post-war order, which crucially linked the fate of the country’s national economy with that of the rest of the world. They were the maintenance of domestic employment and production (no depression), raised international living standards and universal freedoms. But Coil was optimistic that whatever the outcome of the war – whether Allied (with or without the United States) or Axis victory – it seemed ‘improbable’ that extremes of autarchy or free trade would prevail, and that ‘arrangements could probably be worked out so that a reasonably balanced condition could exist under any one’. The contradiction between a possible Nazi victory and Coil’s necessary precondition of ‘freedom of person, religion, thought’ was apparently overlooked in this summary.64 As with all its musings so far, the IPWG was charged with a high level of optimism, both regarding the favourable outcome of the war in Europe, which was quite an assumption in July 1941, and of America’s capacity to operate, let alone provide leadership, in any new world order of such contrasting probabilities. In August 1941 the IPWG created a steering committee to join Wilson, Bliven and the NRPB’s Gulick. It comprised trustee William Howard Schubart (Lazard Freres and Company and the Bank of Manhattan), Bjarne Braatoy (Norwegian Shipping Trade Commission and head of the private non-governmental organization American Committee for European Reconstruction), and Rifat Tirana (Federal Reserve of New York). Further substance was added with the inclusion of Charles W. Taussig and H. Christian Sonne, two business figures accustomed to working closely with the administration. Taussig, president of the American Molasses Company, was an original member of Roosevelt’s ‘Brains Trust’ in the early New Deal and led the National Youth Administration during the 1930s. During the 1940s, Taussig promoted US foreign trade interests as head of the Caribbean Office of the Department of State and became the administration’s chief spokesperson for Caribbean affairs in the United Nations after the war.65 The Danish-born Sonne of Amsinck, Sonne & Company, became a leading figure in the NPA during the 1940s. He first worked for the Bank of England and moved to the United States in 1917 (became US citizen 1923). In 1940 Sonne founded with Cordell Hull the American-Greenland Commission to stop German control of Greenland. Sonne later recalled that he joined NPA as he recognized the ‘desirability of bringing major economic groups together to formulate well-conceived, long-range national policy’. He also believed that planning was as necessary in a democracy as it was in a dictatorship.66 The new steering committee held that the IPWG’s general objective was to establish ways to keep the economy going when the defence emergency passed ‘with special reference to the international aspects of reconstruction’.67 On 15 September 1941 the IPWG staged its public entrance at an informal dinner meeting of nearly thirty NPA members and guests that included representatives of big business, labour, academia and the press.68 The topic of the dinner meeting, snappily titled ‘Foreign investment in relation to post-war utilization of plant facilities and full employment’, highlighted the rising importance for the NPA of foreign economic policy in its strategy as the post-war potential of the US economy was steadily recognized. The underlying question the IPWG wished the gathering to consider was ‘to what extent could a foreign investment program fill the gap left by a decline of defense

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expenditures?’, and the IPWG leadership produced extensive notes to inform and guide the debate. The premise of the discussion was that the United States, thanks to the European war and the country’s economic commitment to back those fighting the Axis, was in a unique position to influence the post-war political and economic set-up. Specifically, a return to pre-war isolationism was not an option, a conclusion derived from cool pragmatism as much as latent internationalism. According to the ‘agenda’, the IPWG estimated that in 1942 US defence expenditures would be $25 billion, the national income would be $92 billion, and over fourteen million Americans would be employed in defence work or the armed forces. All this ensured the US economy would reach ‘new highs in industrial expansion, employment, and production’ which would stop dramatically at war’s end bringing the ‘nightmare scenario’ of depression unless full employment was achieved. This could be done, the IPWG believed, through action in a number of areas, with one of the most important being international trade and investment. This was because, thanks to the war effort – which had been running for barely a year – the US economy was now larger and even more intertwined with the international economy. According to the IPWG, the defence effort, through Lend-Lease, mass purchasing, credit, loans to foreign governments and investment in shipping, had assisted the US in ‘acquiring a vast stake in the post-war world economy’. In short, ‘We shall not be able to retrace the steps that have been taken or to undo all the changes the war has brought. It will not be possible to withdraw from the responsibilities and opportunities resulting from our heavy involvement in international trade and from the comparative losses of other nations.’ Post-war isolationism, like that which followed the First World War, was therefore impossible. The notes also stated that ‘it is necessary to arrive at a clear conception of American national interests, a conception which need not be in conflict with the long-term interests of other nations’. For them, national interest was better defined ‘in economic terms rather than in terms of sentimental abstractions’. In this way it was possible, ‘by the use of private and public funds’, to ‘protect its interests and contribute to a better world order’. When it came to itemizing the main constituents of a plausible overseas investment policy, the IPWG accepted tariff reductions and quotas would have to be adjusted in the post-war setting, but dismissed these measures as passive and that only with a ‘dynamic’ investment policy would increases in production be assured. The IPWG did not know what proportion of US investment should be loans, and if so for what purposes and under what mechanisms. The IPWG also recognized that while a forceful investment policy was paramount, there were several related measures of international policy that warranted consideration. These included post-war currency systems, multilateral and bilateral trading methods, maintenance of order, armaments and policing.69 After the inaugural September gathering, the IPWG planned seven further meetings up to February 1942 with the intention of collecting enough information to release a statement on post-war policy later that year. The steering committee broke down its initial study of post-war issues into development and investment opportunities in Latin America, Europe and the Far East, post-war trade, exchange stabilization and monetary controls, and shipping.70 This was quickly widened to include relief supplies, international monetary reconstruction and commodity trade, maritime and

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air transport and labour conditions and standards of living. Four special committees were created to make detailed studies of these areas, with each committee expected to release progress reports within thirty days, invite relevant experts and work informally with each other on joint issues.71 This broadening – or internationalization – of NPA minds regarding the place of the United States in the post-war world economy and how this influenced the relationship between domestic and foreign economic policy was still a work in progress. Yet it was surfacing not only in the dedicated IPWG but also in the regular work of the NPA. Though the organization still placed most emphasis upon domestic mechanisms for achieving post-war full employment, the international component of US prosperity was highlighted in the NPA Planning Pamphlet Guides for Post-War Planning released in November 1941. The pamphlet reiterated the NPA call ‘in time of war let us also organize for peace’ by mustering nationwide support for a post-war federal investment programme (in cities, transportation and rivers), to ensure markets for private enterprise. But under the heading ‘The International Scene’ the NPA stated that it was ‘not always realized that our domestic policies will have far-reaching repercussions upon the prosperity of the rest of the world’ and that ‘we shall undoubtedly have an important role to play in the post-war world. We need to be clear about what that role is to be.’72 Such references to America’s post-war responsibilities were still vague in 1941, but were becoming more commonplace in NPA discussions and literature. Indirectly, some clarity over America’s new role was taking shape in parallel discussions within the NPA about Britain. The greatest economic competitor of the United States prior to the war, the fate of Britain was of great interest, economically and politically, for Americans. In February 1941 the NPA released a collection of articles from the British magazine Picture Post that discussed Britain’s post-war plans. The publication was a deliberate effort by the NPA to stimulate similar inquiry about America’s post-war planning and ask ‘what kind of a country do we want to see emerge out of this crisis?’73 In June 1941 the NPA was asked by the American Committee for International Studies to write a memorandum on the ‘problem’ of Anglo-American relations.74 In elaborating why the NPA should study this matter, Coil made some insightful observations: ‘The war is scrambling up and reshuffling Anglo-American relations. If Britain is victorious with our help, our future relations will be either that of continued cooperation or of conflict. Many people seem to assume that the present cordial relations will continue but this con[sic] by no means be assured.’ Friction over world markets, Coil supposed, would revive unless moves towards collaboration were begun. After all, Coil determined, ‘it will be up to the Anglo-Americans, when the war is over, to direct a reconstruction of trade, to find markets and processes for primary products, to control shipping and shipbuilding’.75 Coil’s outline of the future for Anglo–American relations supplied the backdrop for a wider discussion among the membership held just weeks later. On 8 July 1941 the NPA held a dinner meeting to discuss Batt’s ‘British Commonwealth-American Relations’. The ‘notes’, which were circulated as a basis for the discussion, while in many ways rigidly deterministic and politically naïve, revealed the scope of NPA thinking and its willingness to embrace matters of foreign economic policy, in so

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doing raising several intriguing issues, especially given the time in which they were written and their anticipation of future developments. The central message of the notes was that the United States should begin planning for the post-war adoption of mechanisms of Anglo–US cooperation based on the already (by 1941) high level of economic coordination, centred on Washington, around war exigencies. In this regard the precedent of Lend-Lease (begun March 1941) had opened the prospect of a postwar economic arrangement based around the mutual exchange of goods and services without the intervention of finance. More notably, the NPA did not presume US military involvement in the (then) European conflict, only the obvious necessity of American economic assistance to help Britain win. If Britain lost the war, the notes claimed, then Europe would be ‘dominated by Nazi Germany’. Under such circumstances millions of British refugees would flock to the United States and the Commonwealth, and the ‘real problem’ of supplying wartime aid to Britain ‘might conceivably become a problem of organizing and assimilating the refugees in the reconstructed post-war economy of the Commonwealth and the US’. If Britain won, on the other hand, ‘the European order will be dominated by the United States and Britain in collaboration with friendly elements of the European population. Influence in Europe, from the Anglo-American side, will be primarily American’.76 These ideas were published in early August 1941 under the title United States’ Cooperation with British Nations.77 What is remarkable about these passages is that the NPA, as late as July 1941, did not assume the United States would become militarily involved in the conflict, or perceive that its domestic economic needs were inextricably tied to post-war collaboration with Britain or were necessarily ruined by Nazi domination in Europe. The one thing that the NPA had correctly anticipated regarding Anglo–American relations was made apparent just weeks later when President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill announced their war and post-war aims in the Atlantic Charter. Their August declaration included a commitment to collaborate in establishing a multilateral framework for post-war international trade and finance – an initiative recommended by the NPA five months earlier.78 The endorsement of the Atlantic Charter by the NPA was made in the September 1941 edition of the NRPB’s United States News. On Britain the article began by stating that ‘the “basic assumption of all planners is that the United States and Great Britain eventually will triumph over Nazi Germany,” ’ and that ‘a German defeat … would place upon the United States and the British Empire the responsibility of underwriting a permanent peace and founding a more satisfactory world order … with the initiative resting in the United States, since this country probably will emerge from war as the world’s greatest economic force’.79 In December 1941, just after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the NPA released its pamphlet Britain’s Trade in the Post-War World which reiterated the need for the Allies to plan for post-war international economic collaboration as ‘a task currently second only to that of defeating Hitler’.80 The NPA claimed the pamphlet ‘aroused international interest’ after the distribution of 3,000 copies to individuals and organizations overseas.81 By the end of 1941 the NPA believed it had the chance to become the nation’s pre-eminent planning organization. The admitted inability of government agencies to effectively bring together the key economic groups of industry, agriculture and

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labour presented the NPA, it maintained, with ‘the opportunity of being the keystone to this bridge’. The boost in attention it had received from government affiliates or agencies, such as the BAC and the NRPB, in recent months encouraged the NPA leadership to expand its national profile. On 12 November 1941 Coil told trustees that the NPA was ‘not merely talking about the need for post-war thinking, but are getting down to realistic work’ and for 1942 he intended to establish working groups in ‘key’ cities, not only Washington and New York. Indeed, the NPA was considered the best outfit for the task. The NPA listed New Deal faithfuls and Keynesian advocates Henry Wallace, secretary of agriculture, Harry Hopkins, special aide to the president, Laughlin Currie, NPA and CFR member and one of the earliest US economists to embrace Keynesianism when he worked on the Federal Reserve Board during the 1930s (he became the White House economist in 1939), Milo R. Perkins, executive officer on the Economic Defense Board, Leon Henderson, chief of the OPA and BAC member Donald M. Nelson, formerly president of the Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers and now chief of the priorities division, Office of Production Management, as persons that ‘in the past two weeks’ NPA members had ‘talked with’ and agreed with Coil that ‘the Association, because of its representative structure and its purposeful but objective attitude, is the logical neutral ground for constructive post-war preparations’.82 During 1941 the NPA had grown significantly in both size and stature. Inspired by the dramatic transformations taking place in the US economy now that the country was supplying the European war, the NPA was revitalized and recast as a primarily post-war planning organization. This entailed an integrated approach to domestic planning that acknowledged the relationship between defence mobilization and postwar conversion, a formal recognition of the importance of international economics to continued US prosperity, the reorganization and expansion of its national operations, and, with the stimulus of the corporate trio from the BAC and the encouragement of the NRPB, the adoption of the role of national cheerleader for post-war planning, a task which was generating increasingly ambitious visions of America in the world.83 What underlay these changes was an evangelical positivism about the ability of the economy to avoid depression after the war that featured prominently in NPA literature. Initial business reluctance to expand for defence out of fear that post-war collapse would dwarf that of the 1930s was denounced for not recognizing the full potential of the US economy to maintain high levels of productivity. ‘No matter how understandable’, the Guides for Post-War Planning began, ‘these fears must be dispelled’.84

The TCF becomes ‘visionary’ Close behind the NPA in post-war planning was the TCF. As with the NPA, the TCF was quick to recognize the importance of post-war planning for the United States, and began a wide-reaching public awareness drive to help prepare American business for the future. Unlike the NPA, which had a close relationship with the administration and more readily voiced its convictions through the organs it controlled, the TCF sought to uphold its long-standing principle of intellectual objectivity in its research

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and publications. Less specifically organized and less sharply focused in its post-war planning than the NPA, by the end of 1941 the TCF, nonetheless, believed it too was the right organization to explore post-war issues. The group’s first serious examination of the impact of the European crisis on the US economy was in April 1939, when John Fahey, president of the TCF, asked trustee members to each submit a list of the four economic problems that they considered to be ‘the most important and pressing’ for detailed study.85 The TCF was already heavily committed to surveys on standard domestic matters like collective bargaining, housing, power and short selling, but wanted to direct its efforts to the growing world crisis. The suggestions were condensed into a shortlist of headings that included foreign trade, world economic reorganization and control of the war boom. The topics of foreign trade and world economic reorganization were advanced by trustee Bruce Bliven, editorial director of the New Republic. Bliven wanted a study of foreign trade ‘as an instrument of national policy – how much is needed to support our national economy  – and how much we have to export to maintain our prosperity’. On world economic reorganization, Bliven suggested a survey of ‘possible economic bases for world peace’ taking as his lead proposals being advanced by ‘an influential group in England’, which was most probably a reference to the PEP.86 Nothing came of Bliven’s call for post-war studies for another year and until events across the Atlantic had significantly worsened.87 Unlike the NPA, the immediate impulse of the TCF was to focus on ways of better reorganizing the domestic economy for defence and not matters of post-war organization. When German forces completed their rout of French and British troops in northern France in May 1940 and Roosevelt urged Congress to fund US military preparedness, Evans Clark, formerly on the editorial staff of the New York Times and director of the TCF, called for a recalibration of the group’s research activity to better reflect the growing crisis. Given that the question of national economic integration and defence had become ‘acute’, Clark argued that ‘the Fund might do the kind of job it is best fitted for in the present emergency – a decisive new survey of some pressing economic problem which would help the government in the present crisis’. Clark cited strategic raw materials or some other aspect of national defence.88 Current TCF projects, Clark fathomed, could be reoriented or supplemented to accommodate national defence issues, such as housing and collective bargaining. This decision formed the basis for the only two substantial publications released by the TCF before December 1941, namely Housing for Defense and Labor and National Defense.89 The first indication that the TCF was beginning to take post-war studies more seriously was in June 1940 when Fahey asked trustee member Henry I. Harriman for his thoughts on a possible study of economic and trade changes resulting from the war. Harriman, who was director of the Boston Federal Reserve Bank, was a highly connected corporate moderate who, like Batt in the NPA, embodied the crossover between business groups, being a former president of the USCC and a member of the BAC, and became an important agent in internationalizing the work of both the TCF and the BAC. Harriman spoke plainly about America’s wartime economic prospects and his begrudging recognition that ‘we have come to the end of the road on the laissez-faire capitalism’ and that ‘one of the vital questions which faces us is whether

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government regulation can be made compatible with the undoubted efficiency of private enterprise’. Pointedly, Harriman chose to praise the TCF: I feel it would be of infinite value if a thoughtful and liberally conservative group like the Twentieth Century Fund could make an impartial study of some of the changes which will result from the war. I have used the words ‘liberally conservative’ with due thought, liberalism standing for the undoubted fact that change is a law of nature and conservative indicating the great need of preserving that which was good in the past.

Given his history with the conservative USCC and BAC, Harriman’s praise of the TCF, and his use of the clumsy term ‘liberally conservative’, is all the more noteworthy in illustrating the degree of overlap between the business planning groups.90 By the end of 1940 world events had shifted to such an extent that the TCF was obliged to take stock. The Nazi juggernaut had been stopped at the shores of Britain but reigned supreme over Western Europe. The political and economic hub of the world had been radically altered. For the United States, whether it chose to fight or not, this meant coming to terms with an antagonistic and autarchic order in Europe and reshaping its economic, as well as political, relations with the rest of the world. This was recognized at the annual meeting of the board of trustees of the TCF on 29 November 1940, which became a critical one for the organization. Fahey’s rallying call to members was direct: ‘The world with which we shall be faced during the next few years, even if Great Britain stands off Germany, is certain to be so different from anything we have had to face before, that almost every policy must be reviewed and revised – particularly in the economic field.’91 The November meeting was attended by eleven trustees comprising businessmen, lawyers, journalists, academics and government officials.92 The latter included Berle (State Department), the US attorney general Francis Biddle, James G. McDonald (Foreign Policy Association), and the TCF’s resident economist Frederic Dewhurst. Since 1938 Berle had been pulled away from the TCF to work more closely with the State Department as assistant secretary of state for Latin American affairs, a post he held until 1944 (when he was briefly assistant secretary of state for economic affairs until January 1945). Though less directly involved in its projects during the war, Berle remained a keen supporter of the TCF and exerted a powerful influence upon its leadership. Of most significance at the November meeting was a suggestion from Berle that would mark a historic shift in the work of the TCF. Berle wanted a radical new approach to the next major TCF research project that abandoned the ‘factual analysis and Committee report technique’ usually employed for its projects. ‘The time had come’, declared Berle, ‘to go into an exploration of some of the basic problems with which this country would be faced in the future’ that should ‘estimate probabilities and suggest policies’. Berle wanted a dreamer not a number-cruncher. As he put it: ‘An outstanding liberal, speculative thinker’ let loose on subjects such as finance, employment, and productive capacity: in short, ‘the problems of the United States being considered in relation to the rest of the world’. The end product, Berle advised, would be the responsibility of the author ‘with as much approval as the Trustees cared to give it’.93

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Despite some opposition, the trustees were convinced to break with the TCF tradition of empirically based research and move into the realms of speculation and policy recommendation. As Berle later recalled, some resisted the shift from ‘scientific to moral or aesthetic contributions’ but were persuaded by Berle that ‘an imaginative picture might give more direction than scientific analysis to post-war thinking’.94 Over the next few weeks, the idea of devoting time and resources to the big economic questions facing the country gathered pace as the Nazis extended their grip over southern Europe and strangled the British in the War of the Atlantic. In December 1940 Roosevelt edged further from neutrality by declaring the United States the ‘arsenal of democracy’ and pledged material support for those opposing the Axis through Lend-Lease, which began its passage through Congress in January. Ensconced in government war work, Berle still found time to elaborate his November suggestion for a new project in a memorandum to a special meeting of the trustees in January 1941 which sketched what he believed were the country’s main problems for dissemination in a series of pamphlets. The trustees agreed and began immediately to put together the staff to write the pamphlets. The trustees also accepted a proposal from Harriman that the TCF establish a ‘commission on postwar problems’ that might work with the NRPB, the chief vehicle of the government’s post-war planning. It was agreed that this idea, along with the Berle recommendation, would take priority over all others.95 Over the next two months Dewhurst, who headed the special committee to look into the new pamphlet project,96 met trustees Knauth, Lynd, Fahey, Berle and Biddle. The TCF’s link to the NRPB was made by including trustee Dennison (an adviser on the NRPB) in the post-war group. Dewhurst also met with NESPA chairman George Soule to discuss the new venture. However, the group never became formalized as pressure of other commitments meant that Dewhurst could not form a committee and only managed to meet trustees on 20 and 25 February.97 Still, by April 1941 the pamphlet series had taken shape and a total of eleven provisional titles were sent to trustees for comment. The headings, each with short descriptive paragraphs, indicated the breadth of the investigation the TCF was compelled to adopt in evaluating America’s economic prospects. They were the ‘Historical Roots of Future Change’, ‘Impact of War’, ‘Return to Normalcy?’, ‘Goals for America’, the ‘Role of Public Works’, ‘Government Relation to Industry and Labor’, ‘Public Policy and Agriculture’, ‘Fiscal Policy and Social Security’, ‘Credit and Monetary Policy’, ‘Savings and Investment Controls’, and ‘Foreign Trade and Finance’.98 The most noteworthy comments of the trustees were made regarding just four headings. From these notes it is clear that the TCF leadership viewed the changes in the national and international economy as no temporary aberration but as fundamental and irreversible upon the United States. In ‘Return to Normalcy?’, the pamphlet was expected to emphasize the fact that ‘irrespective of outcome, there will be further basic changes and an acceleration of past trends leading toward a “mixed economy” for which the central government must inevitably assume greater responsibility’. In ‘Goals for America’ the group placed the aim of full employment first on the list. In ‘Impact of War’, the group suggested that the pamphlet look constructively at ways in which the war effort might be managed to ‘facilitate our economic transition to the postwar world’. Most significantly, under the heading ‘Foreign Trade and Finance’, the group’s

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analysis turned to the ‘drastic changes’ that the US economy had already undergone and which ‘promise to be greatly accelerated in the future, irrespective of the outcome of the war’. Contributory factors included the breakdown of sterling and the imposition of international trade and exchange controls and the introduction of barter methods within regional bilateral relationships. Accordingly, the group wanted the pamphlet to forecast future trends that were inevitable and discuss those which seemed ‘probable under various assumptions as to how the war will end’.99 Now that the subject matter for the new project had been determined, the choice of Berle’s ‘outstanding, liberal thinker’ to actually write the studies was made. The person they chose was the consumer activist and New Deal enthusiast Stuart Chase. Chase made his name in the 1920s as a popular critic of corporate malpractice and champion of public accountability in government and industry with a passion for mass public education. By the 1930s Chase had built a reputation for writing simple, easy-tounderstand texts for a broad readership. In 1925 he wrote the internationally acclaimed The Tragedy of Waste after his collaboration with the economic philosopher Thorstein Veblen to bring greater fiscal and managerial integrity to government and industry. This was followed in 1927 with the best-seller Your Money’s Worth written with fellow consumer activist F. J. Schlink, with whom Chase co-founded one of the world’s first consumer protection organizations, Consumers Research, in 1929. These successes aroused the attention of presidential candidate Franklin Roosevelt who met Chase in 1931 and whose subsequent book A New Deal (1932) was credited with supplying Roosevelt both with the phraseology and the economic rationale for his programme for saving the US economy. Convinced that government was needed to rescue capitalism from ‘stagnation’,100 A New Deal quickly became the textbook for policy advisers in the Roosevelt White House. More of a writer than a policy bureaucrat, Chase was never a full member of the famous ‘Brains Trust’ of private advisers to the president, but was nonetheless an important part of the inner circle of economic confidants to Roosevelt along with Felix Frankfurter, Henry Wallace and Rexford Tugwell, a close friend of Chase and co-author in 1927 of an influential report on the Soviet Union. In 1937 the president remarked that Chase was ‘teaching the American people more about economics than all the others combined’.101 With such glowing credentials, Chase was considered the best fit for the TCF as he was ‘an outstanding observer and critic of economic affairs who could write vividly for a wide public’.102 Though not a member, Chase was in the orbit of the TCF through his former directorship with Clark of the New York-based Labor Bureau, Inc., a workers information service.103 Chase was approached by Dewhurst in March 1941 (at the suggestion of Dennison) and asked to prepare a memorandum on his thoughts about the new project for circulation to the trustees.104 Chase appeared keen to help: he was already under contract with another publisher to write a book on post-war problems but offered himself as sole author, either unanimously or under his own name, to write at least some of the TCF pamphlets. The trustees put aside $20,000 to cover the project’s expenses for writing the pamphlets under the titles described, and Chase was retained to write the first two or three manuscripts.105 Yet the trustees remained unconvinced about entering into a partnership with the controversial author. In May Clark informed Chase that although the TCF was

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‘delighted’ to have him on board, the trustees now wanted him to run two books as a trial before committing to a series, adding that he hoped the pamphlets would have a ‘genuine impact on the American mind’.106 By November 1941 Chase had completed his first draft manuscript for the TCF, a historical study of past trends inelegantly titled ‘The Curve We Are Riding’, and playfully uttered he was about to ‘leave the field of history and take off into the open spaces of speculation. We may crack up, but the adventure is well warranted’. His November memorandum to the TCF was the first taste of what was to come in the pamphlet series, an uncompromising ‘big government’ vision of the post-war US economy. Writing before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and as the Germans fought outside Moscow, Chase was loathe to make any assumptions about how the war would end and wanted policy recommendations about the post-war US economy to be based on the simple ‘framework’ of three possible outcomes: an Allied (without the US) victory, a stalemate or an Axis victory. An Axis victory over Britain, Chase warned, while ‘improbable … cannot be entirely neglected in postwar plans’. Each outcome logically would produce different effects, with ironically the worst scenario – as far as US employment was concerned – being an Allied victory: any other outcome would necessitate continued war production and full employment. All scenarios, nonetheless, envisaged the maintenance of government intervention in the economic life of Americans. Chase also wanted to organize the pamphlet series slightly differently from the way it was listed in the April memorandum, with a second pamphlet entitled A Postwar Budget for America, followed by Foreign Trade After the War, The Role of the Worker, the Farmer, the Business Man, in the Postwar World, What are we going to use for Money?, and A Program for Winning the Peace.107 The heavy role of government in setting post-war trends and its responsibility for directing the peacetime economy were the major themes for Chase: ‘Indeed, it is impossible to overestimate the importance of the controls now being set in motion at Washington as determinants for postwar adjustments. It follows that those who set them should have one eye on the peace which is to come. They are sketching in the outline of that peace now.’ This meant there would be no ‘return to normalcy’ and a lifting of controls like that which followed the First World War. ‘This is a different kind of war, a different kind of world,’ argued Chase, with no room for laissez-faire solutions: ‘The American economy in 1941 is much farther along the road to maturity, with declining opportunities for private investment, than was the case in 1920. … In a sense, the TCF is setting out to explore a new kind of economy altogether.’108 Other than prescribing a continued and leading role for government planning and direction in the post-war US economy, Chase did not elaborate what this ‘new’ economy might look like in his memorandum. As he stated, so much would depend upon the precise outcome of the war. This was especially true, Chase argued, when considering foreign trade. The content, volume and direction of trade would differ enormously according to which scenario, an Axis or Allied victory, prevailed at war’s end, producing any combination of variants from protectionism to internationalism. The principles of US foreign trade, however, as Chase admitted, would ‘not be so different’, and it is on this point that Chase is most vague. The relationship between foreign trade and the US economy, or the level of employment, is not mentioned in Chase’s discussion of the third pamphlet on foreign trade. In one regard, however,

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Chase was explicit: his rejection of free trade: ‘It will not be wise to spend much time speculating about the return of the world free market, 19th century-Secretary-Hull model, whoever wins the war. Foreign trade is going to be government-planned, if our trends mean anything at all.’ And already, in 1941, Chase presumed a major function for the United States in restoring war-shattered economies, such as in feeding and rehabilitating Europe, China, and ‘other shattered areas’, and what surpluses the nation would have to spare.109 Chase was no academic, still less an economic theorist. He was chosen by the TCF for his skill in translating complex ideas for popular consumption. Theoretical content was quality assured by a duo comprising Clark and the TCF’s resident economics guru, Dewhurst. In fact, Chase’s first manuscript, ‘The Curve We Are Riding’, was subject to ‘thorough and detailed criticisms … which had resulted in many changes, some of which were rather extensive’, at the annual trustees meeting of November 1941.110 The trustees confirmed their decision to break with the established TCF practice of statistical analysis and back Chase’s more discursive approach ‘with a view to provoking widespread thought and discussion about these important problems’. But this carried with it, of course, the dangers of generalization and oversimplification that were inherent in any effort to ‘popularize’ or otherwise broaden the readership of complicated theories and policies. In particular, the trustees thought that Chase had ‘passed too lightly’ over the subject of political and psychological factors that might feature at the end of the war and stymie structural change, possibly leading to what Dennison and McDonald feared might be a ‘terrific political reaction’. The trustees resolved to ask Chase to consider these factors in his next publication, but some trustees wanted their differences of opinion to be formally acknowledged within the Chase publications. This was rejected, especially by Berle, who carried the meeting when he argued that ‘we should make no apology but put it out with a shout’.111 It was understood that the trustees and the staff of the TCF ‘would not take a stand one way or another on the views he [Chase] expressed’.112 Clark pushed for trustee approval by heaping praise upon the first Chase effort: ‘I am convinced that this manuscript is one of the most brilliant, provocative and authoritative pieces of writing and thinking produced in the United States by the present crisis. It appears to have far better sales possibilities than anything else which the Fund has yet published.’113 This was the clincher. In a unique move, the trustees agreed with Clark that for the future the TCF should depart from its usual practice of pricing publications solely with a view to recovering costs and instead lower the price and ‘run the risk of loss, if in that way a wider market and audience might be reached’. The trustees decided not to wait for a second trial book and agreed to move immediately to publication of the first Chase manuscript, which would now form part of a series of hardback booklets (easier to sell than a pamphlet), each around one hundred pages in length and sold for as low as fifty or seventy-five cents.114 TCF publishing had now ‘entered a field new to our experience’.115 For his part, Chase had, according to Clark, ‘proven to be most cooperative and reasonable in considering and accepting criticism’.116 The partnership between Chase and the TCF was now sealed: it was a decision that would have farreaching implications for the national standing of the TCF. Within a year of the pivotal November 1940 meeting the TCF had made some radical changes in its research approach. It had relaxed its emphasis on scientific

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objectivity and tightly focused investigations and embraced more far-reaching, speculative forecasts wrapped for popular consumption. The TCF had also identified key areas for concern for the future US economy and recognized the association of wartime planning with post-war outcomes. The TCF was fast becoming an exclusively post-war planning organization, seeking to align as closely as possible the nation’s wartime actions with a vision (or version) of the post-war world, which in such early stages of the war were necessarily approximations based on certain assumptions about the US economy. The decision to widen the appeal of their message beyond a specialist audience and adopt a more awareness-raising, campaigning style of activity is further evidence of the TCF’s visionary turn. However, in an effort to supply more flesh on the bones of the Chase series, the TCF decided to embark on two more surveys of post-war problems, this time using the more familiar scientific method in the TCF tradition. The idea for the surveys was first introduced by Dewhurst and Clark in November 1941, just weeks before the pivotal events of December that would bring the industrial might of the United States fully into the conflict. One survey was to look at the financial and fiscal machinery that would ensure full employment and full use of resources and an adequate standard of living after the war. But it was the other, and largest, survey initially called the ‘Inventory of Needs and Facilities’ which would end up being ‘the most ambitious survey ever undertaken’ by the TCF.117 The reasoning behind the ‘Inventory’ was to provide a cool, objective appraisal of the nation’s economic needs to preserve an ‘adequate and decent’ post-war standard of living. In contrast with the upbeat message of the Chase series, this survey was premised on a grim forecast about the post-war economy. Dewhurst and Clark were adamant that answering these questions soberly was the central task of post-war planners. Their preoccupation was in managing the economic transition to peacetime production without losing the already increased productive capacity of the United States by providing defence workers with post-war jobs and defence industries with peacetime products. This required careful planning, Clark and Dewhurst argued, ‘since there is no likelihood that our economy will be allowed to lapse into laissez-faire and prewar “normalcy” ’. Moreover, there was the threat of political and social upheaval if planning failed: ‘It seems clear that the American people will not tolerate a system which fails to provide an adequate supply of the commonly recognized necessities of life to its population, and employment opportunities for everyone willing to work.’ This problem was not only an American one: it concerned the whole world: ‘Unless the scope and nature of the task can be outlined and inventive methods designed to meet the need, the United States and the world will face the greatest economic and social stagnation of all time.’ More interestingly, the authors based their predictions on two assumptions: one, that if the United States entered the war ‘it will not be defeated by Germany’, and two, the emergence, in any event, of a massive post-war depression to eclipse that of the 1930s. In short, what the TCF planners feared most of all was not the Nazi threat but what they perceived as the underlying frailty of the US economy.118 In this regard, at this stage the TCF analysts were more alarmed about the potential for a post-war economic crisis than the NPA, which did not consider the post-war period as especially troubling for the US economy, whether the Nazis or Allies won, provided the correct international collaborative mechanisms were in

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place. The trustees enthusiastically endorsed commencement of the two surveys and suggested Alvin Hansen, professor of political economy at Harvard University, to assist with the fiscal component.119 As a highly placed economist and NPA member, Hansen was a candidate of high pedigree to enlist on the TCF programme. Furthermore, as a ‘stagnationist’ Hansen shared the bleak prognosis of the TCF regarding the post-war US economy.120 Alongside the Chase series of broadly cast examinations of the post-war American economy, the TCF sponsored a general directory of post-war planning activity in the United States. This began as an exclusive guide for the TCF in its own programme of research to assess the field and avoid duplication, but emerged as a unique and widely utilized text in the sphere of post-war planning which helped put the TCF squarely on the planning map. In the spring of 1941 the TCF asked George Galloway, a field representative for the NESPA, to make a quick survey of research on post-war planning being carried out by other agencies in the country. Galloway’s first report for the TCF was circulated internally on 18 July 1941 and was so popular that an updated version was mimeographed for wider, informal circulation by the TCF on 29 October 1941.121 The success of the reports led to the decision in November 1941 that the TCF should publish Galloway’s survey and distribute it as widely as possible. Berle was particularly impressed, naming the book as ‘one of the most useful studies the Fund had ever done’ which would be ‘of the greatest importance to a great many agencies, both private and government, which are now interested in the postwar situation’. Biddle was so enthused he wanted the TCF to take the lead in this field and ‘integrate the whole business’. This mood was reflected in the TCF’s rejection of the idea to offer the Galloway manuscript to the NRPB for publication as it might receive wider circulation. The haphazard printing record of the NRPB was cited as one important reason, but no doubt the NRPB’s insistence that the TCF sacrifice authorship was also a factor in the trustees’ decision to go it alone with publication.122 This discussion over the best method for releasing the Galloway report was indicative of the determination of the TCF leadership to maintain a reasonable level of independence from the federal government, which it clearly believed was plausible despite the strong influence of Berle (State Department) and Dennison (NRPB) on post-war deliberations. This, coupled with the trustees’ decision to bury their concerns about the Chase partnership in favour of achieving popularity (and sell the Chase books at the lowest possible price), and the absence of any meaningful exchanges with other planning groups (beyond the slightest individual contact), supported the notion that the TCF, like the NPA, wished to seize ownership of the post-war planning debate. Indeed, through a series of key decisions taken in the twelve months before Pearl Harbor, the TCF had shifted from concentrating solely on improving the economy for defence to establishing itself, as its dynamic chief guaranteed, ‘in a position of real leadership in the field of postwar research’. With the imminent release of the first Chase book and the Galloway report this was an opportunity, Clark believed in November 1941, which the organization ‘should seize with both hands’. After all, Clark argued, the TCF was in a unique position to perform the task: The Fund has always been devoted to policy formation for the long pull rather than service in immediate emergencies. Just because it is free from the responsibility

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for waging the war and independent of government agencies which must, of necessity, be dominated by the war’s immediate crises and necessities, the Fund is in a strategic position to study and plan for the longer run.’123

The BAC gets ‘defensive’ For the BAC, the process of responding to the impact of the war and the embrace of post-war planning issues was quite different from that of the NPA and the TCF. Its traditionally narrow focus upon policies emanating from the administration and its unique, closer-than-comfortable relationship to the government through the Commerce Department both limited and slowed the BAC’s capacity to respond to the rapidly shifting circumstances of the global crisis. In this regard, the BAC shared the same symptoms of government inertia that so characterized this period. As a result, it took the BAC more than a year longer than the NPA and the TCF to appreciate the importance of war and post-war planning. And just like the other business planners, when it came the adjustment was profound. Until significant defence mobilization was forced upon the United States, the BAC remained focused on the domestic crisis arising from the sudden dip in the economy in 1937–38. Roosevelt’s decision to support Keynesian-style deficit-spending to lift the economy was met with the ire of the BAC which rejected further ‘pump-priming’ of the economy. The group was still struggling to find a comfortable medium in its attitude towards government policies.124 However, during 1938–40 the BAC slowly moved in from the cold in its relations with the administration. This was the result of a new ‘cooperative tendency’ within the BAC led by politically savvy W. Averell Harriman who became chairman in 1937. Harriman and others, such as Dennison (TCF), Leeds (TCF) and Ralph E. Flanders, president of the James and Lamson Machine Company, accepted a larger federal role in business affairs and cautiously embraced deficit-spending solutions in Toward Full Employment which they authored with Harvard economist John K. Galbraith in late 1938.125 The BAC also came out in full support of the State Department’s signature foreign economic policy, the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act (RTAA). In February 1938 the Foreign Trade Committee of the BAC concluded that the expansion of foreign trade ‘would aid in the solution of the unemployment problem’. The committee recommended that the BAC communicate to the White House that it endorsed Hull’s RTAA, and wished that the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce conduct a survey of jobs dependent on foreign trade, that relevant businesses be asked to encourage foreign commerce, and that the BAC be used ‘to enlist the cooperation of business leaders in a common effort’ to increase overseas trade. Henry Harriman (no relation), a keen promoter of international matters in the TCF and a member of the BAC’s Foreign Trade Committee, also suggested ways in which the government might improve international relations which amounted to expansion of the RTAA as well as an effort by the BAC ‘to bring business and government into closer cooperation in matters relating to both national and international affairs’.126 In May 1938 the BAC backed the conclusion of a trade agreement between the United States and Britain despite complaints from certain sections of American business as the ‘success of the program lies in its nation-wide results’.127

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This business advocacy for the administration’s policies naturally won the BAC important friends in Washington. As chief enthusiast of the RTAA, Hull later addressed a luncheon of the BAC General Council in January 1939 with several other State Department officials, four representatives of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce and Warren L. Pierson, president of the Export-Import Bank of Washington.128 Later, in June 1939, Roosevelt invited members of the BAC Executive Committee to spend an evening with him. The members included, apart from W.  Averell Harriman, John D. Biggers, president of Libby-Owens-Ford Glass Co., Carle Conway, chairman of the Continental Can Co., Gano Dunn, president of the J.  G.  White Engineering Corporation, James F. Fogarty, president of The North American Company, Charles R. Hook, president of the American Rolling Mill Co. (NAM), and Edward R. Stettinius, Jr, chairman of the US Steel Corporation.129 In January 1940 the BAC repeated its support for the RTAA when it came before Congress for renewal so as ‘to promote our foreign trade’ though astonishingly made no mention of the European war in its adjoining report.130 In April 1940 the BAC continued to back the RTAA as the ‘opportunities for trade and investment in foreign countries is now essential to maximum national prosperity’. What is more, in their eyes, rather than representing a fundamental challenge to the American way of life, the war in Europe made support for the RTAA even more crucial as an instrument to restore the pre-war economic order: In our opinion it would be disastrous for the United States at this time to abandon its leadership in the struggle against excessive economic nationalism. The problem of reconstruction to be faced after the war will vitally effect this country and the trade agreements program … will provide an essential instrumentality for the reestablishment of sound and constructive commercial policies.131

The BAC was therefore content that the war did not pose a serious threat to US prosperity, and that the post-war world would be left essentially unchanged to follow the rules of the pre-war economic order. With no serious post-war planning required, the BAC continued its focus on supplying a business opinion of government policy. This led to the BAC’s decision to ‘assist’ the government by entering into the controversial debate over the settling of Britain’s outstanding First World War debt to the United States through the acquisition of territories in the British Caribbean. The idea of ‘debtcession’ had been circulating Washington, DC for some time, but with Britain at war and decidedly against losing its colonies the matter was a highly sensitive diplomatic issue.132 The prospect of a land-grab united both isolationists and interventionists, and although the plan was eventually ruled out, the matter of bases sites in the British colonies became part of a historic trade between the two nations later in the year. Still, on 24 May 1940, as the routed British forces awaited evacuation from the French port of Dunkirk, the BAC wrote to the administration ‘at this crucial period for our national security’, urging that it ‘explore at once the possibility of acquiring by permanent lease both Atlantic and Pacific air and naval bases from the Allied powers’ which allowed ‘the possibility of settling the War Debts, in whole or part, by this method’.133 So far the BAC had defined its role during the early war emergency very narrowly, as a business spokesperson for the government, responding and interpreting

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government initiatives for business. As a largely reactive agency embedded within the Commerce Department, the BAC showed no interest in devising its own strategy for waging the war or for planning the peace. Its primary concern was to ensure the maximum involvement of its members in the defence mobilization process.134 This narrowly drawn view of the international crisis and its impact on the United States was highlighted in an address made by the assistant to the chairman, Walter White, just before the catastrophic fall of France in which he outlined his opinion on the impact of the European war on the United States. Speaking before the Associated Grocery Manufacturers of America on 14 June 1940, White began by making it clear that he shared the misgivings of farmers over the decade-long incursions on their industry by federal legislation and social reform and that because of the New Deal barriers had been placed in the way of industrial expansion. After so outlining his misgivings about the role of federal government in the economy, White nevertheless considered that the power of government over the lives of citizens and over the conduct of business ‘is going to be extended rather than relaxed’ as a logical and necessary consequence of the war. Even if the United States engaged in a ‘defensive’ war, say after a Nazi victory over Europe, taxation would rise and the cost of living would fall, and international trade relationships would be displaced: ‘Just how much of this sort of thing our capitalistic system can stand’, White moaned, ‘is problematical but in any event, it will be a serious strain on our economy and particularly on private enterprise from the political aspect.’ If, on the other hand, the United States became involved in the war offensively, on the side of Britain and France, ‘it will not be for any sentimental reasons but purely because our people become convinced that their ultimate welfare and the welfare of coming generations will be better served by such a move’. Offensive involvement would naturally introduce a ‘complete war economy’, however, in his judgement ‘the best that can be hoped for is a fairly long war in which the Allies will emerge victorious’, and though taxation and government debt would rise as defence spending increased, White conceived that ‘we shall have some prospect in the future of readjusting our internal and international situations on a reasonable basis, though it will be a difficult task’  – presumably through some beneficial post-war international economic settlement. White thus offered a bleak picture of temporary government interference in the normal lives of businessmen that would somehow be restored once the hostilities were over.135 As if to underscore the value of the BAC in primarily furnishing a business voice in government, White praised the inclusion of management executives in the government’s Advisory Commission to the Council of National Defense, which was headed by the BAC’s own Stettinius and William S. Knudsen. White believed this move was ‘significant on several counts’ as it represented ‘a very definite and positive rapprochement between Government and Industry’. It was also, White continued, a ‘hopeful augury that as long as business cooperates fully with the program which its representatives in Washington are developing, we may expect a minimum statutory Government control in the area of prices, production and investment as well as a check on Government-owned and operated plants’. After all, White concluded, ‘military success depends upon industrial organization backed by unity of command and purpose. … This is primarily a business man’s job and must be done by business management working in complete harmony with the political control of national policy.’136

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This statement by White articulated well the conservative BAC mentality, which was pragmatic in recognizing the need for government, especially during emergencies, but believed business should have a hand in guiding its involvement in the economy, which should be as limited as possible. For the BAC the wartime emergency thus represented a severe and worrying, if only temporary, incursion upon the ‘normal’ activities of business which the BAC sought to monitor very closely. It was not until the pace of economic change in the country threatened to radically alter the national economy that the BAC became more interested in the wider processes of the war and its post-war impact. This was a process of awakening the BAC shared with the NPA and the TCF at this time, but with differing and somewhat less optimistic conclusions. In short, the BAC feared more deeply for the future of US free enterprise and, unlike its more liberal counterparts in the NPA and the TCF, did not welcome the prospect of the country being unable to return to economic ‘normalcy’ after the war. As the United States accelerated its war production drive to raise its defences and supply what remained of the beleaguered Allies, the BAC became concerned that the national economy might be irreversibly altered and a return to pre-war economic conditions made less likely. This conservative perspective was summarized in a worried letter to Secretary for Commerce Jesse H. Jones on 10 April 1941. The thirteen-page document entitled ‘Recommendations on Economic Policy affecting the National Defense Program and Post-Emergency Conditions’ offered a detailed summary of the BAC’s anxieties about the country’s post-war economy. It had been put together by a special committee of the BAC and Jones was asked to ‘familiarize’ himself with the document as the BAC wished its contents be brought before the president. In short, the document emphasized the need to avoid inflation of prices and wages, encourage savings, drastically reduce (if not completely end) civil capital works projects, but maintain a minimum level of social security, pensions and unemployment relief. If not, readjustments to peacetime economy would be more difficult (and this was before the United States entered the war). Moreover, even at this pre-war rate, the scale of the US defence programme, even as the ‘arsenal of democracy’, indicated for the BAC that ‘there must be some reduction in the comforts and luxuries which make up our standard of living. An attempt to expand productive capacity to maintain this standard will create acute labour shortages for defense, will give the impression of a false prosperity and will complicate the subsequent readjustment to a better balanced economy’.137 Sent as one of his last acts before he resigned his chair of the BAC, it was likely frustration with the rigid outlook embodied in this letter that led to the ‘defection’ of William Batt to the more liberal-minded NESPA, which within a year he helped to fashion into the country’s leading post-war planning organization. The actions of moderates like Batt and like-minded leaders of the BAC occurred during a spell of deep introspection in the organization and possibly inspired it. In the summer of 1941 the BAC examined what its role, if any, should be in light of the growing world emergency, and whether it remained fit for purpose as a vehicle for business–government relations. After some discussion, at the General Council Meeting of 19 June 1941 it was ‘unanimously’ decided that the BAC should not be ‘disbanded or adjourned’, but should instead shift its emphasis to problems of

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defence.138 The new look BAC was announced in July 1941 following official consent from Wayne C. Taylor, undersecretary of state for commerce, to the creation of a special BAC committee to review the ‘Organization and Functions of the Council’. It signalled a major broadening of the BAC’s work, the most ambitious enlargement of the organization so far, and the adoption of a moderate tone towards federal involvement in the economy. The priority for the BAC still remained that of supplying a business voice at the highest levels of government, and retaining its close financial and administrative links with the Commerce Department. But the BAC reorganized its structure to fit the new priorities of government, dropping some standing committees in favour of creating new ones to ‘advise’ specific agencies of the government, such as the OPA and the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce. The special committee also called for a widening of BAC membership to include at least one person in each of the twelve Federal Reserve cities where the Commerce Department had a regional presence. In 1941 the BAC had no representatives in Cleveland, Richmond, Atlanta, St. Louis, Minneapolis or Dallas. It was also recommended that the BAC extend its reach into areas not represented in the organization, such as the Rocky Mountain states, the grain states of Kansas, Iowa and the Dakotas, North Carolina, Maryland, Georgia, Tennessee and Wisconsin. In addition, the BAC wished to recruit new members from a long list of ‘important industries’ not then represented, namely coal, tobacco, apparel, communications, rubber products, leather products, non-ferrous metals, bread and bakery products, agricultural machinery and tractors, flour and mill products, canning, breweries and distillery products. This unprecedented call for expansion was predicated, the committee reasoned, on the hitherto ‘unquestionably useful’ service the BAC had already delivered and recognition that ‘the concept of broad social responsibility in the management of private enterprise has been gaining ground rapidly in the past few years’.139 The summer of 1941 reorganization of the BAC was a watershed moment for the group. The pace of events, both at home and abroad, threatened to relegate the BAC to the sidelines of an emerging post-New Deal, defence-driven economy based upon larger doses of federal spending and rapidly changing machinery of government. If the BAC was to remain a meaningful doorway for business–government interaction in this new environment, and not be cast to the fringes of decision-making like the NAM and the USCC, then it had to realign its operations and revise its attitude towards the role of government in the economy. Hence, the BAC adjustment was indirectly inspired by the growing business interest in economic planning evidenced in the resurgence of the NPA and the TCF, and symbolized in the decision of Batt and others to join forces with the NPA – an act which, given its timing, clearly influenced the BAC recalibration. To resist change would be to hand the keys to the business–government gateway to the New Deal liberals of the NPA and the TCF who were working ever more closely with the NRPB, a body it felt ‘neglected business and industry’ in its post-war plans.140 The decision to remain useful to government seemed to pay off. Over the next few months, and when war was eventually declared on the United States, BAC members were drafted into several key mobilization agencies, allowing the organization to remain in step with similar postings from the NRPB. Indeed, the BAC could reasonably lay claim at this time to be moving within close proximity to the corridors of power.

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In 1941 both General George C. Marshall and Admiral James Stark were guests of honour at BAC luncheons. The committee listed several occasions when the BAC’s ‘constructive service’ had been ‘unquestionably useful’ over the years, and boasted that in recent weeks some thirty former or present BAC members had been ‘actively identified in responsible positions’ within various government defence agencies. ‘These opportunities’, the committee proudly concluded, ‘for men with business backgrounds in private enterprise to serve the Nation’ was ‘in large measure’ due to the growing ‘respect and confidence’ of the government in the BAC.141 But such privileged access to Washington departments did, however, subject the BAC to certain limitations on its freedom of action not suffered by other business organizations. This was recognized by the committee on organization’s summary of the BAC’s ‘quasi-official, though not a statutory relationship’ with the executive that meant the BAC was ‘thus limited in its freedom of approach to Congressional bodies and to the public’. Its policies were, therefore ‘not guided by an organized constituency of private interests, but represent the judgment of a group of public spirited individuals who are voluntarily associated together at the invitation of the Secretary of Commerce’.142 This reaffirmation of the BAC’s function as a ‘quasi-official’ body of the corporate elite within the Commerce Department meant the organization still prioritized the maintenance of a close relationship with the federal apparatus over freedom to devise independent plans of action. This stood in direct contrast with the TCF and even the NPA (regarding the NRPB), which cherished their ‘independence’ of action – however nominal – from the government. Another outcome of the watershed meeting in June was the recognition of what other business planners had already deduced: there was a very thin line between wartime and post-war planning. The meeting agreed that vice chair Marion B. Folsom, head of the BAC Committee on Economic Policy, should meet with economists in the administration ‘for an exchange of ideas on means of averting a depression in the post-emergency period’.143 Folsom, treasurer for Eastman Kodak, was a committed and innovative social reformer, having created the Eastman pension plan and the Rochester Unemployment Plan before being asked by Roosevelt in 1934 to join the Advisory Council on Economic Security. Folsom was a delegate to the International Labour Conference in 1936 and a member of the Advisory Council on Social Security until 1938. In 1940 Folsom worked in the Industrial Materials Division of the Advisory Commission to the Council of National Defense (of which William Batt was deputy commissioner). As Schriftgiesser, an early chronicler of the CED, maintained: ‘Probably few men on the Washington scene in 1941 were more acutely aware than Folsom of the problems that would face the postwar world.’144 As no record of Folsom’s meeting with government economists can be found, it is unclear whether the meeting actually took place. Still, some weeks later on 21 July 1941 Folsom’s Committee on Economic Policy circulated post-war planning topics for discussion at the next BAC meeting. The topics were placed into two categories, one dealing with the effect of current policies on ‘post-emergency adjustments’, and another looking at policies to be considered when defence production slowed. In both areas Folsom’s committee placed particular stress on the need to maintain the structure of free enterprise at all costs. Hence, while the committee accepted that the priority for

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defence measures was that they were quick and effective, where possible it was ‘wise to choose that method which will cause the lesser dislocation to our economy, to our social structure and to our democratic form of free enterprise’. As for post-war policies, the committee was less committal as it thought such policies would ‘depend very largely on the duration of the present conflict and the character of the international settlement which results’. The committee did, however, base their proposals on post-war matters on ‘certain basic assumptions’, namely that Germany would be defeated, that the United States would ‘have a substantial voice in the terms of peace’, that ‘capitalism will continue’ and, in a further affirmation of the continued presence of government in economic life, that ‘our form of democracy will be characterized by the American Free Enterprise System operating within the social and economic objectives which have become an accepted part of our national policy’ (italics mine). Still, the committee concluded its list of suggestions with a strong emphasis on consumer-led, private investment methods to maintain prosperity over those of government intervention: ‘To achieve the primary objective of full employment it will be necessary to maintain production by sustained mass purchasing power, continued investment of savings in new enterprises and some credit expansion. If this objective is to be achieved under the American Free Enterprise System all our policies must tend to encourage rather than penalize the incentive motive.’145 Official discussion of the Folsom Committee suggestions cannot be verified, but Folsom remained active on post-war matters right up until the end of 1941. In September 1941 White sent a memorandum on behalf of the Folsom Committee, asking members to answer some questions about how they were making preparations for the transition from war to peace. Members were asked if they were conducting research on new products for sale after the war, if they were already holding back products for later use, and if they were conducting any surveys into likely post-war demand.146 This request is telling, in that it revealed just how little contact the BAC had with other planning organizations, such as the TCF and the NPA, who were also embarking on surveys into business preparedness at this time and were busy collating data on, and communicating the wider necessity of, post-war planning across the country. This was despite the fact that joint membership of the TCF, NPA and BAC existed and included some high-profile figures, such as Henry Harriman (BAC and TCF), and, of course, Batt, who remained in the BAC while being chairman of the NPA board. The lack of formal acknowledgement by the BAC of the efforts of other planning groups during this period cannot be attributed to ignorance. It was more indicative of the latent anti-New Deal outlook of the organization and its clear desire to be (or for the faithful remain) the chief defender of private enterprise. However, to achieve this, the BAC was forced to acknowledge, almost begrudgingly, a larger role for government and adopt a moderated version of the mixed economy. Defence mobilization had awakened even the conservatives in the BAC to the necessity of government involvement in economic affairs, an idea that was achieving greater momentum among corporate activists, as evidenced in the ‘defection’ of Batt and Wilson. To remain relevant was, after all, one of the motives behind the decision of the BAC to continue in government service, and to tap the growing number of businessmen disposed to ‘broad social

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responsibility in the management of private enterprise’, hopefully converting them to the BAC’s version of moderated liberalism. The short-term focus of the BAC on defence-related issues and its preoccupation with staffing the mobilization agencies left little room for consideration of post-war matters, which had been much slower than in the NPA and the TCF. What little there was only reiterated the group’s traditional mantra about ‘private enterprise’ and was far less specific about the post-war terrain than the liberal planners. Serious contemplation of these matters, however, would soon take place as the BAC responded to the next phase in the country’s passage through the international crisis: a total war footing. In the uncertain period between the outbreak of war in Europe and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, US corporate activists filled the void left by federal agencies embroiled in the convoluted preparations for national defence. The NRPB, the only agency with any broad responsibility for post-war planning, was itself forced to reach out to the business groups for support in its promotion. By contrast, outside of government the corporate liberal groups were growing fast and had recognized early, earlier than key sections of the government, the implications of wartime mobilization on post-war prosperity. The near complete collapse of Allied forces to the German war machine during 1940 shocked business planners into a realization that the United States might have to contend with a Nazi-dominated Europe. Even the conservative-minded BAC had come to accept that a return to ‘normalcy’ was unlikely. Business groups began steadily to develop their ideas about America’s place in an inevitably altered post-war world. The still distant war forced major adjustments upon both the philosophies and the structure of the main corporate groups. By the end of 1941 the TCF, NPA and even the BAC had become post-war planners. In this regard the NPA was the first to undertake post-war studies. The outbreak of full-scale war in Europe in September 1939 and the progress of German forces across Western Europe prompted most Americans to consider more urgently matters of national security. Not so the NPA, whose grand ideas about ‘democratic planning’ were being showcased in the processes of war and were, they believed, a fitting answer to the problems of the international order. Following a major influx of BAC cadres, the NPA quickly confronted the economic consequences of mobilization and conversion to peace. It created a special unit of experienced personnel to attack post-war problems, had the ear of senior government officials, and with several publications on the topic by the end of 1941 the NPA’s claim to be the pre-eminent post-war planning organization in the country was highly plausible. The TCF, for its part, had made significant strides towards tackling post-war issues though in terms of organizational focus was still behind the NPA. The TCF promoted no single solution to the world crisis like the NPA but took a major step in that direction when it made the historic decision to launch a ‘visionary’ project alongside its usual ‘objective’ research programme. With the Chase series, the TCF hoped to proselytize the need for post-war study to an ever-widening audience. Even though they both were linked in some way to the NRPB, the independent status of the NPA, and perhaps more so the TCF, had so far enabled a more flexible response to the rapid changes affecting America. They were free to explore areas way beyond the strictures of practical defence planning. Their responses were highly

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positive and filled with confidence. In fact, the increased activism of government in defence mobilization blew fresh wind into the sails of the New Dealers, whose recipe for economic revival had been perpetually attacked and by 1939 was even being abandoned by a wary president.147 The dynamism that swept the United States as the European war unfolded, and which had so lifted the spirits of the NPA and the TCF, also spread to the BAC. Similarly, the BAC saw in the revival of federal activism an opportunity to influence policy. But its response was more functional and less excited, being partly motivated by a fear of losing ground to the more liberal business planners. The BAC’s attachment to the government through the Commerce Department was much more explicit than that of the NPA or the TCF with their natural bedfellow, the NRPB. The organizational, if not ideological, ties of the BAC to the government meant its response to the impact of the European crisis was no faster, or rather just as slow, as that of the government. Eventually, the expansion of federal engagement in the defence economy was so profound that the BAC was forced to decide whether the entire project of encouraging business–government liaison was worth continuing. The prospect of banishment to the sidelines of economic decision-making, with the free-market conservatives of the NAM and the USCC, was rejected, partly out of recognition of the rising business interest in planning matters (led by corporate liberal groups), and partly out of concern that business interests would be represented increasingly by a triumvirate of ‘big government’ advocates in the NPA, TCF and the NRPB. Most significantly, the combined pressure of the defence mobilization, the direction of the European war and corporate liberal activism on post-war matters led to a rationalization among the BAC leadership (a process reflected in the shifting of Batt) that in order to stay relevant to business and government the organization must accept a continued federal role in the economy. The tendency to moderate, and the influence of moderates, which occurred at the top of the ‘liberal’ NPA as well as the ‘conservative’ BAC, over attitudes towards the balance between public–private capitalism after the war, grew more pronounced as the United States became progressively entwined in the world conflict. As will become clear, an essential agent in the framing of corporate minds on this issue was later constructed in 1942, born of the desire to promote more forcefully the interests of private enterprise in post-war planning. So far vague on post-war affairs, the BAC, with considerable assistance from the Commerce Department, helped to create a new business organization designed exclusively for providing post-war economic policy options for the government that would, it was hoped, ensure the defence of US private enterprise. This was the most significant outcome of the BAC reassessment of the summer of 1941 and one that would have lasting consequences for the growing community of American post-war planners. The absence of an overarching national authority for post-war planning created opportunities for the business organizations to influence policy, but it also generated competition among the emerging post-war planning community, a phenomenon that intriguingly mirrored the way Roosevelt ran his administration. The business planners were a mixed bag of business, academic and government interests and personalities. There was shared and switching membership by certain individuals, even between the conservative-minded BAC and more liberal NPA. Batt, for instance, was centrally

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involved, both directly and indirectly, in the transformations of the business groups towards post-war planning. Individuals from different groups happily sat beside each other in many key forums. Yet so far there had been no formal recognition of the work of other planners, even where their methods and conclusions were very similar as was the case for the NPA and the TCF. The major planning groups acted almost entirely independently of each other, certainly with no formal communication or liaison between them.148 Different political allegiances and long-held grievances still loomed to separate the groups, in particular the more moderate BAC from the New Dealers in the NPA and the TCF. Even the liberal-leaning NPA kept its distance from the TCF. Even so, these differences seemed less ideological than technical in nature, chiefly over the degree of emphasis the groups placed upon private as opposed to government mechanisms for achieving post-war economic success. Indeed, the emerging crisis had brought all the planners to a similar level of consciousness regarding the economic problems and potentialities – if not yet the solutions – for post-war America. They had begun to make the link between wartime and post-war planning, with a steadily growing emphasis on how the country could best make the transition from war to peacetime production, whatever the outcome in Europe. Remarkably, despite European woes, business planners looked optimistically at the opportunities for US advancement and world leadership ahead, some recognizing early the international dimension in American prosperity when the hostilities ceased. Their approach was ‘purely business’, and did not openly advocate US entry into the war. But the importance of Britain to the US economy led some business planners to ask the government to relax its isolationist stance and lend a hand to the ailing British, even before Roosevelt did just that. In this regard, corporate liberals, moderates and even conservatives advocated policies towards Britain that closely matched those taken by the administration and sponsored by interventionists. Overall, the business planners spoke with confidence about the capacity for expansion of the US economy and of converting to peacetime production: only the ‘stagnationists’ in the TCF questioned this rosy prognosis, but even so its leadership chose to also identify with the chest-pounding optimism of Stuart Chase. Despite their differences, the role of government in managing this transition was recognized by all as vital. In this regard, while government involvement in defence remained inescapable, the corporate liberals held a ‘monopoly’ on the postwar planning debate. As the United States entered the war fully in December 1941, these early evaluations by the business planners, as well as the differences that existed between them, were tested in the full blast of a ‘command economy’ and a nation awakened to the potential for US advancement in the post-war world.

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Total War: Twilight of the Liberal Monopoly, 1942

Today, business should begin to think and plan, not just to solve the problems of peace, but to be ready to make the most of the great productive plant which we are building. That opportunity – the opportunity of making the American system operate at war levels in peacetime, should fire every man’s imagination. Jesse Jones, secretary of commerce, January 19421 Thus the people impose on business the task of mobilizing a great post-war increase in their supply of goods, in the nations’ total commerce. A severe penalty would be exacted for failure; the rewards of success should be the highest prosperity yet known. Carroll Wilson, director of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, January 19422 One of the great needs of the American people at the present time … is a picture of a postwar goal, as clearly defined as possible – something which will give promise of full-employment production to work for. Evans Clark, director of the TCF, May 19423 The year 1942 has begun to bring into focus many of the aspects of the world struggle heretofore unsuspected or dimly grasped. The need for clear thinking and for adequate planning was never greater. … The Association believes that Hitlerism can be permanently defeated and total victory won only by preparing now for a vigorous post-war program of employment, production, and international expansion. NPA, October 19424 The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 finally brought the United States fully into the global conflagration. The complete entry of the nation into the conflict removed all remaining shackles on American productive might as the country began mobilizing for total war. This was to be achieved by unleashing the productive power of US business, and especially big business, to make vast profits through government incentives like tax breaks, wage limits, price controls and cheap plant. With the government effectively underwriting the cost of industrial expansion, the earlier hesitancy of business to sign defence contracts evaporated in a bonanza of government orders for the larger industrialists and manufacturers, and for most other

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businessmen the promise of feasting on the national shift to military production and the raised incomes carried in its wake. Unemployment virtually disappeared as the armed forces expanded and industry grew as Roosevelt ordered huge increases in aircraft, tanks and shipping for 1942 and set even higher targets for the following year. This was now a ‘command economy’ of massive federal input on a scale that dwarfed that of the New Deal.5 This spectacular increase in federal involvement in the running of the country naturally spurred those who viewed centralized planning of the economy as a model for the peace. It was, after all, increasing doses of deficit-financed government spending on the military that was slowly reviving the economy. But the administration’s commitment to rely upon the unbridled might of private capitalism to drive war production, and the numerous concessions made to big business to ensure it, meant that forces unsympathetic to ‘big government’ also took succour from the mobilization. Indeed, earlier problems of federal coordination and management of war mobilization were only magnified. Conservative business concerns and their political counterparts, already piqued by a decade of New Deal initiatives, sought to limit the hold of government on the mobilization effort.6 After Pearl Harbor, more and more business professionals were drawn into Washington as the administration looked to staff the numerous agencies supporting the war effort. This reliance upon the ‘dollar-ayear-men’ (a mechanism by which they retained their corporate salaries while working for the government) shifted the balance of influence within key departments away from those with low, New Deal-era assumptions about business towards a more probusiness outlook.7 Roosevelt sought to dilute big business control of the mobilization by introducing new layers of bureaucracy with overlapping responsibilities, providing fresh avenues of involvement for corporate activists. In January 1942 the War Production Board (WPB) was charged with managing production and directing scarce resources efficiently towards agreed targets. Its leadership was drawn directly from the top sections of the BAC and the NPA. The BAC’s Donald M. Nelson, formerly chief of the Priorities Division, Office of Production Management, was appointed to head the new agency, along with recent NPA entrants Batt, Wilson and Golden as vice presidents. Soon three-quarters of the WPB executives were from the business sector.8 The WPB offered post-war business planners another precious channel through which to influence government policy. This facility became even more valuable as the capacity of the government to act beyond the strict confines of war mobilization continued to limit the president’s freedom to plan ahead. Problems, both military and political, continued to frustrate executive coordination of the war. The nation’s first full year of belligerency did not go well, with losses to the Japanese in the Philippines and several islands in the Pacific, and only minor setbacks for the Third Reich in North Africa and on the eastern front.9 These poor results overseas only compounded Roosevelt’s political difficulties at home. Already, improvements in the economy from the limited mobilization helped solidify a conservative coalition of Republicans and anti-New Deal Southern Democrats in Congress that was suspicious of unrestricted increases in government control of the commanding heights.10 In 1942 emboldened conservatives were able to vanquish two trademark agencies of the New Deal, the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works

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Progress Administration, on the basis that work programmes were now redundant in light of the war mobilization. Fear of alienating Congress and of weakening the war effort, which had so far framed Roosevelt’s scant commitment to post-war planning, became heightened during 1942 putting more pressure on the under-resourced NRPB, the last remnant of the New Deal and default post-war planning agency for the White House. The cross hairs of the conservatives were now zooming in on the last redoubt of the New Deal liberals. Wartime mobilization revived the fading captains of capitalism and fuelled the forces of political reaction in the United States. But American mobilization was contradictory in its effect. It also unleashed a wave of excitement among post-war planners and attracted increasing numbers of businessmen to the state-centric propositions of the NPA and the TCF. Activity rose and numbers swelled, while adding fresh impetus and greater clarity to those post-war goals and ambitions roughly formed in the preceding months. Now planners could dispense with speculation about a post-war order based upon a return to ‘normalcy’ at home or the ‘old’ principles of European dominance on the world stage. America’s supreme productive power would now be fully realized under federal leadership behind the nationally accepted goal of ‘full employment’ and matched with a similarly dominant presence overseas that would enable a more profound reshaping of the international order. These were the common principles upon which the main post-war business planners increasingly based their formulations. For two years the NPA and the TCF had ridden the wave of enthusiasm for centralized planning generated by the dynamics of organizing for war. This wave would peak in the first year of total war, the height of the corporate liberal ‘monopoly’ over post-war planning. Yet the steep rise in business involvement in war mobilization, and the tentative response of government to postwar matters, fuelled a mounting conservative challenge to the liberal reformers in the NPA and the TCF who so far dominated the national debate about post-war planning. A clash between these two tendencies seemed unavoidable. The creation at the end of the year of an organization specifically designed to champion private enterprise after the war meant that the planning terrain would thereafter become an increasingly congested, and contested, domain.

BAC hands over post-war studies As noted, the rising activity of the NPA and the TCF and the growing national interest in post-war matters during 1941 had already begun to nudge the BAC towards a moderate centre ground and recognition of the merit in devoting resources to postwar study. The impulse was such that former chairman William Batt, along with other BAC loyalists, had chosen to indulge their passion for post-war studies in the NPA, and not the BAC. Similar forces were at work on the BAC’s paymasters, the Commerce Department. Leading sections of the Commerce Department had grown steadily aware by the end of 1941 of the need to begin post-war planning, not just to avoid depression but also to advance the economic potential of the country. This longer-term, optimistic character of their thinking the Commerce Department officials now shared with other

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business planners. Yet the enthusiasm of officialdom was tempered by an equally motivating conviction: that private business interests, and perhaps ‘private enterprise’ itself, was in danger of being overshadowed by the involvement of federal agencies and liberal-minded groups in the organization of post-war prosperity. A poll of business executives taken by the conservative business magazine Fortune in November 1941 indicated that nearly 93 per cent of respondents expected government would further infringe on property rights after the war, with over 40 per cent anticipating government domination of the economy.11 By the start of 1942 this combination of motivations inspired the conservative-minded leadership of the Commerce Department to intervene swiftly in the arena of post-war planning. With the help of the BAC, by the end of the year there stood a new, purpose-built post-war planning organization designed to protect and project the interests of private enterprise. Since September 1940 the Commerce Department was headed by the plaintalking pragmatist and Texan Republican Jesse H. Jones, considered by many to be an ultraconservative on economic matters but respected by businessmen everywhere, with contacts across the country. Jones made his fortune in lumber and real estate, and later as owner of the Houston Chronicle. Jones began his senior government career in 1932 as chief of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, originally created by President Herbert Hoover in response to the Great Depression but retained by Roosevelt to disburse funds for the New Deal and the war effort. Jones replaced the unwell Hopkins as secretary for commerce in September 1940, which coincided with the departure of several New Deal, pro-Keynesian economists from the Commerce Department to staff the new war mobilization agencies.12 The ideological shift in the top echelons of the Commerce Department was significant, but was not the primary reason for what followed. A major impetus for Commerce Department dynamism in post-war planning was the increased interest and activism of businessmen in the war economy. Towards the end of 1941 Jones and others in the Commerce Department, namely Carroll Wilson, chief of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce and M. Joseph Meehan, chief of the Division of Research and Statistics, became convinced that after the war the private sector could take up the slack in production but that a ‘businessman’s organization’ must be created to work with government to ensure this would happen. They were concerned that, while the few more enlightened business leaders may appreciate the gravity of the problem to come, there was no effective preparation being made for its arrival. While countless businesses occupied themselves in the feeding frenzy that surrounded the seemingly limitless wartime government contracts, the longer-term perspective for private interests was in danger of being neglected, especially, they thought, by the liberal planners.13 The first official call for a business-only effort in the planning of the post-war economy was made by Arthur Upgren and Richard M. Bissell, Jr., both analysts for the Commerce Department working in the National Economics Unit, a section of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce created in August 1941. Upgren, an economist from Dartmouth and Minnesota universities and a member of the CFR, headed the unit. Upgren’s moderate perspective, which gained prominence in the CFR, on keeping the level of public involvement in the post-war economy to a minimum

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was no doubt behind his plea for the private sector to take up the slack. In their first report, A Program of Postwar Planning in January 1942,14 Upgren and Bissell suggested two simple ways in which the private sector could work with the government. First, each business should produce a forecast for post-war demand of consumer goods and private investment based on assumptions of current levels of national income. Second, each business should prepare for readjustments and capital expenditures to meet those forecasts. In short, they were requesting that business itself take immediate steps in preparing the necessary projects that would maintain the wartime levels of production and consumption after the war. Upgren recommended that the bureau immediately set up a committee to ‘stimulate and, in some measure, direct’ an investigation of post-war private investment opportunities. It fell to the Commerce Department to initiate such a committee as Upgren believed there was ‘no other organization, public or private, prepared to take the lead’.15 Dismissive of existing planning groups, such as the NPA and the TCF (presumably for their New Deal background), Upgren was convinced that ‘impartiality’ of the committee was paramount, but this was going to be a difficult trick to pull off. If the new committee was viewed as being too close to government, it would be branded by sceptical businesses and their ‘official’ spokesmen such as the NAM or the USCC as just another New Deal organization tinkering with their freedom of action. On the other hand, if the committee was too close to business, it may fall prey to sectional interests and its recommendations dismissed by all as too narrow and partisan. This meant avoiding the NAM and the USCC. Wayne C. Taylor, undersecretary of commerce and former president of the Export-Import Bank, was alert to this problem and wanted the committee to have ‘quasi-independence’. The department would provide technical and administrative assistance, but the main personnel and work of the committee would be supplied by the business community.16 The out-of-hand rejection of the wellestablished (and growing) planning groups of the NPA and the TCF reflects the rigid identification of the Commerce Department with private enterprise over that of public economic activity – despite the avowed recognition of both the NPA and the TCF of the imperative of a healthy private enterprise capitalism after the war. The postwar business planning community was still clearly differentiated along political and ideological lines reminiscent of the 1930s. An obvious starting point for the Commerce Department in creating the new group was the BAC. Despite its uneasy past, there were recent signs that the BAC was proving useful again for the White House. At the Labor-Management Conference called by Roosevelt after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the task of selecting business members was given to Batt, who had recently been appointed director of the Materials Division of the Office of Production Management. Batt promptly filled the meeting with fellow BAC activists, which was viewed as an outright snub by the NAM and the USCC who would have ordinarily been called upon to appoint members to such an event. Roosevelt was clearly confident that the war emergency granted him the leverage to deny the country’s leading conservative business leaders a consultative role in framing labour policy, further casting the NAM and the USCC into the political wilderness.17 Still, even though it was quasi-independent and staffed by the right combination of conservative-moderate businessmen, the BAC was an awkward fit for the requirements

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of the new group. As the Labor-Management Conference showed, the BAC was still too closely associated with the government and, although its relationship with business was good, had suffered from this association during the Roper, and recently, Hopkins, leadership spells. Any expansion of the duties of the BAC might be construed as a New Deal ‘ploy’ and fail to win the trust of the wider business community.18 Besides, the BAC leadership indicated that it preferred to concentrate on domestic economic matters, offering a ‘useful channel’ for business–government cooperation over war mobilization while the new group was expected to deal exclusively with post-war issues and needed to be convincingly ‘independent’ of government to work.19 In a flurry of activity after Pearl Harbor, the Commerce Department laid out the arguments for a new organization before the BAC and sought its help in generating support for it among American business. At a meeting on 30 January 1942 both Jones and Wilson addressed the BAC forcefully on the need to organize private enterprise for post-war eventualities as a matter of urgency. Their pleading was laced with optimism and anxiety over the future of private enterprise. Jones therefore ‘urged’ the BAC to work with the department ‘to create a rallying point for the yet unorganized forces of business  … the greatest potential force for the winning of the war and saving of the peace that exist today’. Jones firmly believed that America’s economic capacity should not go untapped: ‘Our opportunity to win a lasting peace [as in 1919], will come again. We can produce enough to win it. We can be strong enough to insure it. But we also must be able to sell and distribute the tremendous volume of goods which we will be able to produce.’ To this end, Jones argued that ‘Today, business should begin to think and plan, not just to solve the problems of peace, but to be ready to make the most of the great productive plant which we are building. That opportunity – the opportunity of making the American system operate at war levels in peacetime, should fire every man’s imagination.’20 Elaboration of this theme came from Wilson, who was most directly responsible for managing the BAC for the department. After recommending that post-war planning ‘be undertaken jointly by private enterprise and the Department of Commerce’, Wilson’s assessment of the imperative of post-war planning was stark and, in common with other business planners, recognized the considerable potential for US economic advancement after the war: Private enterprise, individually and collectively, is confronted with no more pressing problem than that of laying plans for the period after the war … fear is widespread that when military expenditures are curtailed and men are released from the armed forces, the country will face a major depression and growing unemployment. … However, side by side with this fear of what might happen after the war, the conviction is growing that the business community itself can and should plan a more favourable outcome. … In other words, ample opportunities for private business will exist, if only plans have been made to take advantage of them.21

Wilson’s simple prediction was that US ‘private enterprise’ faced a watershed moment in the post-war period. His thesis was that, once the primary task of winning the war had been achieved, Americans would demand full employment which, if not met by the private sector, would be sought through an expansion of public services using

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their collective power in the organs of labour. According to Wilson, the choice for American capitalists was therefore simple; step up to the challenge or fall: ‘Thus the people impose on business the task of mobilizing a great post-war increase in their supply of goods, in the nations’ total commerce. A severe penalty would be exacted for failure; the rewards of success should be the highest prosperity yet known.’22 To be sure, the Commerce Department was becoming increasingly aware of the level of that prosperity. In a memorandum released in February 1942 entitled ‘Outline of the United States Economy Mobilized for Total War’, the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, after eleven pages of detail, finished with this crusading conclusion: In the end, every citizen will either learn or re-learn a philosophy that has received too little attention in recent years; that the welfare and interests of the United States come first … we shall lose much of the colloquialism that has acted like blinders to restrict our vision of world affairs. As we follow the fortunes of the Armed Forces in many different parts of the world, we are going to rediscover many foreign lands and their peoples. In short, we shall grow up as a world power. We shall ignore many of the hardships, privations and sufferings of the war in the expansion of our horizons to include the entire world.23

Little wonder that Wilson urged that it was ‘imperative’ that business promptly develop plans for after the war. Wilson stated that the department was prepared to assist business in obtaining the necessary information and in overcoming the many ‘hazards and obstacles’ they will likely encounter in breaking new markets, problems Wilson conceded may be so large that government would have to provide ‘special inducements to insure final action by managements’. Wilson recognized that the department lacked the adequate manpower for such a ‘gigantic task’, which required ‘strong leadership’. Wilson, therefore, wished to create a permanent committee ‘to head the movement’ composed of ‘outstanding business authorities who are also foresighted, public-spirited citizens’. Wilson offered department sponsorship of the committee, active collaboration in its work, and a suggested minimum budget of $50,000 for the first year. As for possible hosts for the committee, Wilson rejected offering the work to the ‘national business organizations’ – presumably the NAM and the USCC – as he believed it was ‘strongly preferable to vest leadership in an independent, specially designated committee’.24 In fact, there is evidence to suggest that the NAM and the USCC passed up on the offer to organize for the post-war. According to William Benton, a joint founder of the CED, Jones (at no specified date) invited the NAM and the USCC to ‘discuss’ post-war employment issues and they agreed that a ‘new’ group should be formed as the issue was ‘so urgent that no present business organization was equipped to do justice to it’.25 Instead, Wilson offered only two suggestions for possible hosts: the Social Science Research Council or the BAC. The research council was formed in 1933 by Charles E. Merriam and became renowned for its groundbreaking analysis of the social impact of the Great Depression. Wilson concluded his report with a plea for urgency and a complaint that ‘considerable valuable time is being wasted in loose, general discussions on the subject’.26 As these excerpts show, the heavy intervention of Jones and Wilson into the postwar planning debate resulted not only from their sudden acknowledgement of the importance of smoothing the economic transition and of seizing the opportunities

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for prosperity that would follow, but of a concern that the dialogue about how that journey might be managed would become dictated by the liberal planners in the NPA and the TCF.27 With the liberal NRPB mostly ineffective and distant from the wider business community, the officials at the Commerce Department correctly judged that the conditions for post-war planning were positive but lacked overall coordination and leadership, certainly from government, and was open to a strong, guiding hand. Here was an opportunity for conservatives – the ‘rightful’ voice of free enterprise – to wrest leadership from the liberals. A new group, nominally ‘independent’, would also ensure some departmental control over its direction. Given these parameters and the context of the meeting, it was obvious that Wilson was, to all intents and purposes, asking that the groundwork for the new group be laid by the BAC. The BAC quickly sprang into action. Folsom’s Committee on Economic Policy began an investigation into forming a post-war planning group soon after Wilson’s visit, which was first officially revealed to the BAC leadership on 5 March 1942.28 On 13 March the BAC informed Wilson that Folsom was busy working on details for a ‘study group on post-war plans in the private enterprise field’,29 and by the end of March, premised on the ‘understanding’ that the BAC and no other would be asked to establish a post-war planning group, a draft of Folsom’s report was sent to Wilson for comment.30 From the outset, and in line with Wilson’s call for ‘joint’ planning, Folsom’s report intended that the new organization would not only promote readiness among the country’s business elites, but would seek to reconcile the plans of the private sector with those emanating from Washington. The Committee on Economic Policy agreed that such an organization be established ‘at once’ with the aim of developing a practical programme for business and industry to follow after the war and that this programme be coordinated with the plans being developed by government.31 The belief that the currently loose field of post-war planning was primed for leadership was shared by the committee, which noted that ‘many’ post-war committees were being created by the government and business but they were ‘fearful, however, that without leadership there will be no well coordinated plan for business when the war is over’, providing the opportunity for a new organization under the auspices of the Commerce Department to ‘serve as the focal point of these efforts and bring about necessary coordination between private and Government efforts’.32 There was little doubt that the primary duty of the new organization was to insert as many private business interests as possible into the post-war planning process, federal or otherwise, thus tipping the political balance to the right. The provisionally titled ‘Institute of Business Enterprise’ would ‘encourage’ the formation of post-war planning committees in leading business, industrial and trade organizations, and ask the heads of two hundred leading companies to appoint a ‘well-qualified executive’ to lead their post-war planning and serve as a ‘liaison officer’ with the institute. The institute would serve as a ‘central clearing house’ for plans and would produce a manual as a guide to individual companies, and encourage local committees to develop an overall programme for their community. The institute would be the ‘spokesman’ for business and industry in conferences with government departments on post-war matters, as well as in hearings before Congressional committees, and would endeavour to include business representatives in any group set up to develop an overall programme by the government. The committee recommended that the institute be funded by

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contributions from business itself (limit of $5,000 per organization and $2,500 per individual), to an estimated annual budget of $100,000.33 The BAC was now primed to begin forming the new group. Responding that the draft ‘conforms substantially’ to his own understanding of what was needed, Wilson offered only minor changes that did not alter the substance of the BAC proposals.34 News of the BAC’s enthusiasm for taking charge of the new planning group spread to Jones, who followed up on Wilson’s efforts with a letter to the president of Procter & Gamble, R. R. Dupree (who had replaced Batt as BAC chairman) on 4 April 1942, in which he expressed his ‘hope’ that the BAC ‘will actively support’ the department’s efforts to promote post-war business, and as a first step suggested that a sponsoring body be created to ‘secure wide participation by the nation’s business managements’ in post-war planning.35 Formal confirmation that the BAC had now been directly ‘asked’ to form a planning group was contained in Folsom’s final report that was approved by the BAC on 9 April 1942.36 The Commerce Department had responded decisively to mounting concern over post-war affairs. This response had been motivated by at least three factors: a general rise in national interest in post-war issues, a mounting awareness of the potential for tangible national economic advancement in the post-war period and an explicit concern that private economic interests were losing ground to more liberal post-war planners who favoured greater federal involvement in arrangements for after the war. In what was plainly an effort to wrest the initiative from the liberals, the Commerce Department embarked on an ambitious project to construct a grand, independent national coordinating body which, unlike the NPA and the TCF, would specifically articulate and safeguard private business interests in discussions and decisions about post-war planning. That its intervention took this particular organizational form rather than simply assisting the established business groups was the product of the Commerce Department–BAC ‘middle-ground’ outlook that lay somewhat uncomfortably between the ‘big government’ prescriptions of the NPA and the TCF and the purist free-market solutions of the employers associations, the NAM and the USCC (which were not engaged in the planning debate). The BAC was the stompingground for businessmen attracted to this credo – Wilson’s ‘foresighted, public-spirited citizens’ – which accepted limited federal involvement in the economy and had tried, with partial success, to uphold it in correcting the excesses of the New Deal during the 1930s. Now these moderating principles were again under strain. The problem for the Commerce Department and the BAC was that post-war discussion was currently being dominated by the liberals, and the free marketeers seemed content to shout from the sidelines as their supporters feasted on the war drive. It was a bold undertaking that took several months of detailed preparation before an organization emerged that resembled something close to that envisioned by Jones and Wilson.

The CED is born It is notable that for all the rallying calls to private business to step up to the challenge laid down by the New Dealers, the new post-war planning organization, despite Jones’s obsession with it being ‘independent’, was in the end created from a nucleus of existing

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BAC members and a coterie of planning enthusiasts working within its orbit. What made the ‘new’ group plausible to outsiders – principally conservatives – was the introduction of several different faces to front it. A key figure in this regard was recent (February 1941) BAC trustee Paul G. Hoffman, president of the Studebaker Corporation, whose association with corporate activists and academics outside of the recognized BAC faithful helped the group to acquire a credibly ‘independent’ flavour. Foremost among these figures was William Benton, a partner of the advertising firm Benton and Bowles and owner of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, who as vice president of the University of Chicago had been trying to organize a scholarly forum for businessmen since 1939. He wanted to expose the country’s top businessmen to the country’s top economists in a series of weekend classes to foster solutions to the most urgent economic problems, but was delayed by the outbreak of the war in Europe. Benton had already approached the Commerce Department to sponsor such a meeting, but was refused by Secretary for Commerce Hopkins out of fear that government involvement would look suspicious to business. The idea was rekindled in spring 1941 when he met fellow enthusiasts Dr Robert M. Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago, and Hoffman, then a university trustee. Together they planned to establish a group of businessmen and scholars who would together ‘clarify the basic principles of a free society’. They intended to call their group the American Policy Commission that would be loosely formed around the Fortune magazine’s ‘Round Table’ of economists and businessmen created in 1939.37 The initial membership list comprised notable moderates including some that would become important figures in the planning community: Ralph Flanders, Beardsley Ruml, Thomas McCabe (president of the Scott Paper Company), R. R. Deupree (Procter & Gamble), Ray Rubicam (of advertising firm Young and Rubicam), and newspaper mogul Henry Luce.38 Yet again, the spreading war put a temporary halt to Benton’s efforts when the United States was brought into the fight in December 1941. At the prompting of George Galloway (NPA and TCF), the focus of Benton’s small pack of activists shifted to post-war issues, namely the prospect of longer-term unemployment once war production ceased.39 In May 1942 Benton met with Folsom, who had become the central official in charge of forming a new business group for the Commerce Department. Benton suggested that his academic team be combined with this new organization, and Folsom liked the idea of uniting the two groups, but was not as enthusiastic as Benton and Hoffman of the need for long-range research in what Folsom believed was primarily a propaganda machine to urge business to plan for after the war.40 To further press their case, Hoffman and Benton sought a private audience with Jones. As the director of car manufacturer Studebaker, which in 1940 received one of the first defence contracts from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation ($50 million), Hoffman and Jones were already ‘well acquainted’.41 The duo told Jones that they would be willing to be part of the new organization only if he agreed to it being a ‘two-headed operation’ with research having equal status and funding as the field programme.42 When asked by Jones what it was they proposed to study, Hoffman replied: ‘a program challenging policies of labor, business, agriculture and government which work against the attainment of high levels of employment and production’. No doubt impressed by the combative spirit of the programme, Jones simply uttered ‘All right, go ahead’. Benton later claimed it was ‘our easiest sale’.43 Jones immediately sprang into action and

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took control out of the hands of Folsom and the BAC and began the detailed creation of a national organization composed of businessmen and academics that would work entirely independently of government. Jones rejected calls for the organization to be a tripartite group of business, labour and agriculture (like the NPA), as it was always his intention to focus exclusively on the post-war issues of production and employment. Over the next few days, according to Schriftgiesser, the secretary ‘singlehandedly’ recruited the original line-up for the new organization, a fact Jones later confirmed.44 This was no mean task. There was no doubting Jones’s intention to maintain a firm organizational grip over the new group. But in order to recruit new blood from outside of the existing planning community, then so dominated by New Deal elements, Jones had to ensure the group could plausibly present itself ‘independent’ of government. Indeed, the Commerce Department was at pains to avoid the ire of conservative sections of business. In May 1942 the new organization’s ‘whole program’ was presented to the USCC and the NAM, and ‘was given their wholehearted approval’.45 Still, the NAM and the USCC were so worried that the new organization would rival their own that they later exacted a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ from Jones that the organization would concern itself only with immediate post-war problems, exist for the duration of the war and be dissolved thereafter.46 Using the twelve Federal Reserve districts as his geographical template, Jones appointed the first board of trustees. It was composed of a nucleus of BAC members. Alongside Hoffman it included BAC members Ralph Flanders; Thomas B. McCabe, president of the Scott Paper Company; Charles R. Hook, president of the American Rolling Mill Company (and a member of NAM); Harrison Jones, chairman of the Coca-Cola Corporation; and James Ford Bell, president of General Mills Incorporated. Members of other groups included Owen D. Young, president of the General Electric Corporation (TCF); Chester C. Davis, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St.  Louis  (resigned NPA to join); and chairman of the USCC, Eric A. Johnston, president of Brown-Johnston Company. The only government member was the cotton magnate and BAC member William L. Clayton of Anderson, Clayton & Company, who was then assistant secretary of commerce.47 As noted, the BAC was heavily represented on the board with the likes of Hoffman, McCabe, Hook, Bell and Clayton. Aside from the NAM and the USCC, there is no record of Jones making an approach to any of the other planning groups with details about the new organization, let alone asking them to join it. Still, with the inclusion of Young from the TCF, Davis from the NPA (from which he would resign in December 1942 due to the pressure of work), Hook from the NAM, and Johnston of the USCC, some effort was made by Jones in these early days to have the other business organizations represented at the highest level in the new group. This concession at least enabled Jones plausibly to claim this was a genuinely broad church, ‘independent’ organization and not a government front. In fact, there was concern that the inclusion of Clayton would undermine this endeavour. According to Wilson, Jones had suggested that Clayton be incorporated in the new group to ‘strengthen’ the standing of its research into international affairs. Hoffman was also ‘very enthusiastic’ about Clayton’s membership, as was Clayton himself. Wilson, however, advised caution given the ‘potential controversies that may develop when the research material is published’ and

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questions might be raised about having a senior government official in the group: ‘It seems to me that you [Benton] and Paul ought to think through on the implications of policy involved here, with the greatest care’. Wilson appreciated that his words of caution ‘were at the risk of being misunderstood’, but he ‘highly’ respected Clayton and hoped he could somehow become ‘identified’ with the new group’s work.48 This interchange was prescient given the central role that free-trader Clayton would later play in ‘internationalizing’ the scope of the CED. On 9 June 1942 Jones called together a small number of those concerned to agree the objectives and procedures of the new, as yet unnamed, organization. Using a simple, seven-question agenda and drawing heavily upon a memorandum by Hoffman of 5 June, the group, which at times was asked to vote, set about defining the new organization. Concurring on ‘the importance of foreign trade’ the assembled agreed that they would ‘avoid assiduously any tendency towards promoting the special interests of business itself as such’ and would ‘refrain from any implication that the Committee seeks to speak for the nation, or even to deal with, the public responsibilities or special interests of other groups in the economy, such as labor, agriculture or Government’.49 As for a name, the organizers agonized before settling on the unambiguous sounding Committee for Economic Development.50 An organizing committee of some of the new trustees along with Jones, Taylor and BAC leaders White, Folsom and R. R. Deupree was deployed to allocate staff within the structure of the organization.51 Their choice for chairman was based on a desire not to antagonize sections of the business community by choosing a nationally prominent figure that ‘would attract an exaggerated public attention and perhaps lead to unwarranted expectations’.52 This was more likely shorthand for wishing to avoid the appointment of figures closely associated with the New Deal. The desire to avoid conservative hostility precluded Jones’s first choice of chairman of the new group, trustee Owen D. Young, head of the General Electric Corporation, New Deal advocate and a member of the TCF. The high esteem Jones held of Young, and the authenticity of his desire to have the CED all-embracing, no doubt explained this somewhat surprising selection by the conservative secretary. This left the lesser-known Republican Hoffman as the next choice with Benton – on Hoffman’s insistence – as vice chairman. Another associate of Hoffman, Cyril Scott Fletcher, a salesman from the Studebaker Corporation, was asked to direct the organization’s field operations. Clarence Francis, president of General Foods Corporation, BAC vice chairman and close associate of Jones on the government’s Defense Plant Corporation (adjunct of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation),53 would run the finance committee with an annual budget of $250,000, five times that estimated by the Commerce Department to be adequate and two-and-a-half times that proposed by Folsom’s committee,54 to be raised from within the business community as a whole rather than through a few large corporate donations.55 As Alfred P. Sloan, Jr, put it, this would avoid the accusation of partisanship to the big corporations, as the new organization should be ‘a big broad movement on the part of business to attempt, through the scientific approach, to develop a plan which will really be helpful in the way of perpetuating free enterprise after the war is over’.56 However, the ‘broadness’ of the group itself was suspect, as the ‘great majority’ of the CED were, as Benton admitted, Republicans.57

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The work of the CED was based around two activities, research and field development, organized within ‘divisions’. Benton travelled across the United States, calling on universities, economists, businessmen and government officials to find suitable candidates to join the CED research effort.58 Benton knew that he would have to invite scholars with divergent views if conservative elements of the business community were to accept the legitimacy of the new group.59 And while Hoffman declared their objective ‘was to find men who had the highest standing for professional competence and intellectual integrity’, Benton’s initial blend of researchers reflected a pragmatic balance of ideological and professional opinion. To underscore the ‘non-aligned’ principle of the CED its by-laws allowed for the publication of dissenting views.60 CED’s research division was split into two sections: a research committee that would lead the research activity, and a research advisory board to oversee it. The influence of Keynes was marked from the outset. The chair of the research committee was Ralph Flanders. Flanders, head of the medium-sized James and Lamson Machine Company, was a BAC member who recognized early the significance of Keynesian theory when investigating unemployment in the mid-1930s and had worked before the war with the TCF. Flanders was also a member of the economic and financial group of the CFR, forming an important link with other corporate moderates and academics.61 Alongside Flanders was Theodore O. Yntema of the University of Chicago, who would work full-time for the committee as research director. He was described as a ‘moderately conservative economist of top professional standing who can talk business English’.62 During his time at the CED, Yntema acted as a consultant for the United States Steel Corporation and the Ford Motor Company. Yntema was regarded as a complement to the other lead researcher, Gardiner Means, whom many considered a controversial appointment but was chosen to provide balance. Means was a well-renowned New Deal economist, having previously worked for the NRPB and author of a major report on the US economy in 1939.63 Some businessmen even withdrew their financial support from the CED because of Means.64 Meeting every two months in New York or Chicago, the research advisory board was designed to bring together a wide selection of talents to direct the work of the research committee. The combination of the committee and the board, and the relationship they fostered, supplied a unique flavour to CED’s research activity that distinguished it from all other planning groups studying post-war issues. As Flanders later described, the ‘free give and take between those with academic and with business backgrounds has been one of the strengths of our research program’.65 The need to bring academics and businessmen together was the driving philosophy behind the Benton–Hoffman group and this aspect of the CED’s work was the most refined and well prepared.66 The first head of the research advisory board was Harvard economist Sumner Slichter, described as a ‘conservative liberal’ with a reputation for ‘objectivity’, meaning he was palatable to moderates and liberals. Schlicter was pro-labour but not a Keynesian, opposing government interference in the economy and a supporter of low tariffs. His expertise was in labour–management affairs. Of the remaining sixteen members of the original advisory board, ten were businessmen and six were academics, none of whom were renowned for their liberalism. The businessmen included

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pro-Keynes moderate Beardsley Ruml, treasurer for R. H. Macy and vice chair of the NPA Standing Committee on Business; Donald David, businessman and dean of the Harvard Graduate School; Max Epstein of the General American Transportation Company of Chicago; trustee Chester C. Davis, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; and S. Bayard Colgate of the Colgate-Palmolive-Peet Corporation. The six academics on the board were chosen not only for their expertise but also for their youth: they were all in their thirties or forties. They were Robert de B. Calkins of Columbia University; Neil H. Jacoby, Professor of Finance, University of Chicago; William I. Myers of Cornell University and TCF trustee; Ralph Young, head of the Department of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania; Theodore Schultz, head of the Department of Economics at Iowa State College (later University of Chicago) and chair of the NPA Standing Committee on Agriculture; and Harold D. Lasswell, director of War Communications Research at the Library of Congress. Hoffman thought it ‘highly desirable’ to have a representative of Catholic higher education on the board, but was initially unsuccessful.67 The research committee also wanted ‘an authority in the labor field and one recognized by labor as friendly to its objectives’. This was needed, it was claimed, more to help identify issues considered of value to labour activists rather than to ensure labour’s support.68 Ann Page of the AFL became the only regular union representative on the research committee. The research committee, as the working end of the research division, had two main functions: to decide projects for research staff and to prepare policy statements. Once projects had been determined and staff appointed, the committee’s responsibility was solely consultative and advisory, meaning the content of any resulting monographs were the responsibility of the author. Policy statements, on the other hand, were entirely the responsibility of the research committee. As Flanders later remarked, it was to be hoped that the reports and policy statements would throw ‘a “flood of light” on some of the great problems the country faces’.69 The NPA was the only post-war business planning group represented, and all could be classed as moderates. Along with Ruml and Schultz, the research wing of the CED added another NPA moderate, the ubiquitous William Batt (onto the research advisory board). Batt was becoming centrally involved in all the main post-war planning initiatives of the time. His invitation to join the CED, an organization devoted to postwar research in the manner Batt had fashioned the NPA, demonstrated the level of crossfertilization already taking place in the growing community of post-war planners. As a former chairman of the BAC, vice chairman of the WPB (and a US representative on the Combined Production and Resources Board of the Anglo–American war effort), a driving force in the NPA and a choice of the president, on post-war issues he was an obvious and well-known candidate and it was impossible to ignore him. A similar logic may have been applied in the invitation of Charles E. Wilson of General Electric, who was alongside Batt in guiding the post-war planning of the NPA. Wilson initially accepted membership of the CED research committee but, unlike Batt, resigned soon afterward to assume his position as executive vice chair of the WPB (September 1942).70 Simultaneously active in the BAC, NPA and now the CED, Batt would play an instrumental role in bringing these organizations together at the end of the war. In an apparent effort to provide balance, the research advisory board also included trustee

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Eric Johnston, head of the USCC. Johnston was undoubtedly the most amenable in the USCC to establishing links with groups outside of the traditional conservative fold.71 Overall control of the field development committee fell to the BAC’s Folsom, a central figure in forming the CED who, as indicated earlier, was more enthusiastic for propagating the CED ‘message’ to private business than for pushing its research effort. His task was to ‘stimulate planning on the part of business enterprises for their own future after the war’.72 Folsom, however, needed someone with the enthusiasm, drive and organizational skill to successfully ‘sell’ the message across America. For this task they needed an ace salesman, and found one in Cyril Scott Fletcher, a protégé of Hoffman at the Studebaker Corporation. Fletcher had a knack for selling and raised himself from used-cars to become sales director at Studebaker.73 Folsom and Fletcher had a core staff of fifteen that later grew to between thirty and forty, with the addition of volunteers, comprising business executives, newspapermen and economists often working for free. The field development committee had a simple pyramid structure with Folsom in New York filtering information down to ‘regional committees’ located in all twelve Federal Reserve districts, down to the smallest CED units called ‘community CEDs’ located in towns across the United States. Headquartered in New York City, it was hoped this highly structured national network of representatives would enable the CED to reach the leaders from the largest corporations right down to the small-town enterprises. There was no doubting that the Commerce Department was directly responsible for creating the CED. It was the Commerce Department that catalysed nascent ideas about forming a post-war planning organization exclusively for businessmen and which directly approached the business community to form it. Yet the urgency of Jones and Wilson to form a group of this character led to the creation, for them, of an imperfect organization. In Benton and Hoffman, Jones found two enthusiastic figures sympathetic to the economic outlook of Jones and the BAC, and who were connected and ready to move. However, Benton and Hoffman were more interested in economic research than policy advocacy and insisted on this point. Jones – most likely for expediency – was willing to concede on the matter of research, which for him too closely resembled the ‘visionary’ idealism and scientific approach of the NPA and the TCF. Benton and Hoffman, for their part, were able to realize their ambition to create a group by hitching themselves to the Jones agenda. This compromise at the heart of the CED would eventually prove crucial. As if to compensate, from the outset, the grip of the Commerce Department on the new organization was emphatic. Notwithstanding claims about its independence, all agreed that the CED should have ‘an effective, continuous, official, two-way connection with the Department’.74 To this end Jones ‘handpicked’ the first board of trustees to lead the group, and the Commerce Department ensured its personnel occupied key positions in the new organization. Wilson was released as director of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce to act as the group’s first executive secretary, and Folsom headed the CED’s field operations and publicity. Though not a formal member, Wayne C. Taylor was co-opted onto the original research committee (in 1945 he became a trustee). As Hoffman later recalled, ‘Jesse Jones initiated the CED idea but Wayne Taylor sat at the bedside and followed us into the world.’75 Richard Bissell, Jr, an originator of the CED ‘idea’ alongside Upgren

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in the Commerce Department’s National Economics Unit, was also enlisted in the research programme.76 Add to that five of the original trustees were members of the BAC, and the CED’s relationship with its ‘parents’ was more than implicit.77 Given the string of Allied defeats in the summer of 1942, it was judged inappropriate to go public with a new organization on post-war planning.78 Indeed, the CED was very cautious about its public perception and of ‘avoiding publicity for itself ’. This was mainly due to the CED not wishing to ‘distract the general public with post-war talk’, but also because the CED wanted to avoid being branded either a government stooge or a vehicle for big business. The CED was officially inaugurated on 3 September 1942, but the pressure to go public mounted and in November the CED decided to place an article in the Reader’s Digest ‘to present the Committee with due modesty’. Hoffman and Benton also met with representatives of Fortune (who had been supportive of Benton’s early efforts to form a business group) and discussed publicity with DeWitt Wallace, publisher of Reader’s Digest. Wallace made the novel offer to ‘lend-lease’ three writers to work exclusively for the CED for a year. Although CED member Walter D. Fuller of the Curtis Publishing Company argued ‘the Committee would make no arrangements on an exclusive basis with anybody’, Wallace’s unique offer was accepted, and it was agreed that a general press release be issued ‘covering the formation, objectives, and policies of the Committee’.79 Press reaction to the announcement of the CED was, according to Schriftgiesser, mixed.80 This was further evidence of the political divide so reminiscent of the Depression years that persisted in business circles between ‘conservatives’ and ‘New Dealers’ and now featured in debate over the future of the US economy. Hence the conservative business press, such as Business Week, Time and Newsweek were ‘impressed’ by the array of large corporations represented in the new organization. Conversely, these same corporations caused the liberal press, such as the New Republic and the Nation, to view the CED ‘with skeptical alarm’.81 The CED’s association with the Commerce Department, as well as sounding like yet another ‘alphabet agency’ of the administration, compounded public confusion over the new organization’s purpose. Whatever the initial perceptions, it was imperative that in order to provide leadership the new planning group become noticed. After all, the activities of business planners were reaching new heights and the debate over post-war planning had become even livelier as total war gripped the nation in 1942.

The TCF bursts forth The efforts of the Commerce Department to establish a post-war planning group during 1942 took place against a backdrop of intense activity among post-war business planners across the United States. This swell in planning activity, which had barely slowed since 1940, was, after all, partly responsible for the creation of the CED in the first place. In fact, the TCF and the NPA were so busy in 1942 that they failed even to register that a new group had been born. During 1942 the post-war programme of the TCF, which had already begun to take shape, gained fresh momentum, increasing in breadth, intensity and exposure. Projects

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begun at the end of 1941 became available for circulation and new ventures were embraced after two key gatherings in May and October 1942. At a special meeting of trustees in May 1942, the TCF leadership debated consolidating its research to heighten its impact. Clark wanted to widen the organization’s message by appealing to the concerns of the public. He sought approval to combine the group’s two major scientific surveys on post-war problems – the ‘Inventory of Needs and Facilities’ and a financial study by Hansen – under a single heading that he felt explicitly acknowledged the primary economic worry of the nation: ‘A Postwar Budget for America: A Prospectus for a Survey of the Possibilities of Full-Employment Peacetime Production’.82 The record-breaking acceleration of the nation’s productive capacity pushed to the fore the question of how to maintain the high wartime levels of employment on the arrival of peace. In 1942, full employment and the full use of the country’s productive resources, asserted Clark, ‘came to be accepted in all quarters as the nation’s number one postwar goal’.83 This raised some debate among the trustees. Fahey believed that merging the two studies only diluted what was for him the second, more important survey of postwar financial planning. Morris Leeds, chairman of Leeds and Northrup Company and former member of the BAC, questioned the logic of entering into such an ambitious project, and Biddle thought the Chase series was anyhow dealing with these issues. Clark tried to win them over with a passionate defence of the need to maximize their message to the American public: One of the great needs of the American people at the present time … is a picture of a postwar goal, as clearly defined as possible – something which will give promise of full-employment production to work for. Only the full-length picture, in this case, would do. … A picture of just what the needs of the United States after the war [are], and of other countries through us – especially if it turns out that we have the resources to fill them – would be a great factor in improving the fighting morale of the American people.

The matter of political, social and economic ‘pressures’ was raised by Columbia University’s Robert Lynd, who felt that such issues had not received enough emphasis in Clark’s survey outline, as they, ‘in the last analysis, will be the determining factors in any postwar pattern’. Biddle agreed with Lynd, and Taft observed that ‘the most important factor in the success of any postwar program was to find a motive equal to war which would operate in peace’. It was agreed that some consideration of practical elements in obtaining post-war objectives would be included in the last chapter of the proposed survey, and a compromise was reached whereby the two surveys could be published separately but simultaneously.84 Clark failed to win over the trustees on amalgamating their research outputs, but in other ways they made important strides in enlarging their post-war programme and projecting the organization. One of them was the decision to produce a special manual which, in an early sign of the growing public recognition of the TCF’s work on post-war matters, had been demanded by individuals and discussion groups. The education department of the TCF found a ‘great need’ from other organizations for a discussion manual that would give background facts and ‘formulate some of the central issues likely to arise after the war’.85 The idea was endorsed by the

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trustees at the May meeting, despite arguments against by Knauth and Leeds on the basis that the manual was ‘trivial’ compared to the other work of the TCF.86 Apparently some organizations, after seeing the TCF draft of the manual, chose to drop production of their own version and instead used that supplied by the TCF.87 The US Army had expressed interest in the TCF manual, and the TCF planned to explore the possibilities of utilizing its material for use by the OWI, the United Services Organizations and the Office of Civilian Defense. Clark anticipated difficulty in gaining access to these departments as he believed that government agencies had focused their main efforts on war measures and had ‘hesitated to give much attention to postwar problems’.88 The trustees also considered and rejected a request from the State Department, which had been related through Fahey to the trustee meeting in May, that the TCF undertake certain economic studies ‘that only a private agency could effectively carry out’. Fahey asked for specific topics and assured the State Department their request would receive ‘immediate and sympathetic consideration’.89 The timing of this approach by the State Department was especially significant given the furious activity then taking place in the Commerce Department around forming the CED. Yet the State Department appeal for help from the planning community was far more casual than that of the Commerce Department. There is no evidence that the State Department came back with any research suggestions for the TCF.90 However, the appeal from the State Department coincided with a suggestion from Dewhurst that the TCF pre-empt such requests by commencing short surveys of economic problems of the war period that could be ‘of great use to government agencies’. Dewhurst was ‘convinced that it was highly desirable to “funnel out of Washington” a lot of research which could be done much better by private agencies’. Still, the trustees remained uninterested in working any closer with the government and retreated from the idea in light of the heavy schedule of research to which the TCF was already committed.91 Three other proposals for the post-war programme were turned down by the trustees at the May meeting, primarily because they felt the TCF was busy enough. A request from the Progressive Education Association that the TCF jointly publish a school textbook on post-war problems was rejected because it would be too difficult to publish and distribute, would have to be released before the results of the TCF’s major survey would be available, and there was pressure on staff of other projects. The trustees also considered organizing a conference of agencies involved in ‘educational work in the field of postwar reconstruction’. This idea, which had been suggested to Clark ‘from certain outside agencies’ and was raised for TCF discussion without any recommendation, was rejected due to pressure from other projects and that a conference ‘was somewhat out of the regular pattern of the Fund’s activities’.92 Most significantly for later developments in the TCF, Dennison raised the issue of ‘international economic problems’ and wondered whether the TCF might engage in an additional survey on the matter. Fahey was supportive, but questioned whether the TCF was in a position to do anything more than it already had. The notion of conducting a second major post-war survey on international economics was therefore deferred on the understanding that the researchers give ‘special consideration to the international angles’ in the major project authorized.93

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The TCF felt unable to sanction large new investigations in May 1942, but later in the year was responsible for starting the most outward looking post-war project to emerge from any planning organization at this time. It sprang from the notion that ‘very few Americans have an integrated picture of the plans of their own future being developed by the countries with which we are allied and which, as a consequence, become part of the goals for which they are fighting’.94 Clark believed a survey of the post-war plans of the United Nations would ‘round out’ the work they were already doing on post-war planning and ‘fill an important gap in the Fund’s present coverage’.95 After consultation with Berle, who saw no reason why the State Department would object,96 in the fall of 1942 the TCF approached Lewis L. Lorwin, a renowned economist and founding member of the NESPA, to begin a survey of the government and private domestic post-war plans of each of the United Nations.97 Lorwin was known to the TCF through his contact with Dennison as consultants on the NRPB, and it was Dennison who arranged for the NRPB to release Lorwin on a part-time basis to work for the TCF.98 Lorwin was chosen because of his previous examination of problems of post-war economic reconstruction in his book Economic Consequences of the Second World War99 in 1941 and a 1939 report for the NRPB on Latin America called National Planning in Selected Countries. Since the summer of 1940 Lorwin had been writing about the need for a post-war international development agency on the model of the New Deal agencies. His argument for it foreshadowed much later discussion about US aid for the reconstruction of war-torn Europe: ‘They not only will provide a means for avoiding a post-war slump and for developing more effectively the resources of all countries, but also could supplement the activities of the United States at the end of the war in the relief and reconstruction of war-devastated areas and in building up closer InterAmerican economic relations.’100 After several conferences with Clark and Dewhurst and suggested ‘revisions’,101 Lorwin agreed to write a ‘systematic account’ of the extent and scope of post-war planning in the United States, Britain and the Dominions, the Soviet Union, China, the governments in exile and several Latin American nations.102 On a tight deadline of six months, the manuscript was finished on 28 May 1943 and Postwar Plans of the United Nations was ready for sale by 22 November 1943.103 The publications division of the TCF expected sales of the Lorwin book to reach ‘several thousand’.104 By the fall of 1942, mostly in response to a discernible rise in public interest, the TCF had expanded and refined its post-war programme of research and was preparing to launch it. In refusing to undertake projects suggested by the State Department, the TCF remained free to follow its own post-war agenda. The Galloway report and the book series by Chase (now re-branded the When the War Ends series) were primed and ready for distribution. Work on the major two-part survey on post-war objectives, ‘A Postwar Budget for America’, which the TCF hoped would supply the empirical foundations for a thorough appraisal of America’s post-war economic objectives, was underway. These, together with the Lorwin project and a post-war discussion manual, were the chief, strategic ventures upon which the TCF focused its resources and expertise over the next few months. Hence 1942 became ‘one of the most zestful and fruitful years in the Fund’s history’. With the launch of an intensive publicity operation involving press releases, radio broadcasts and conference exhibits unprecedented in

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the life of the TCF, its inaugural publications on post-war matters sold record amounts. The first book by Chase, renamed The Road We Are Travelling, 1914-1942, was released on 13 April 1942 and, thanks to a two-month long publicity campaign of press releases in newspapers and magazines, sold more than any previous TCF publication. By May 1942 almost nine thousand copies had been sold, winning the book a place on the New York Times ‘best seller’ list in Washington for several weeks – an historic first for a TCF publication. Complimentary copies were sent to around sixty-eight ‘leading public officials’,105 and promotional articles appeared in several leading journals, including the Journal of the National Educational Association (circulation 214,000), The Rotarian (171,000), The Independent Woman (73,425), Science Digest and Future (published by the US Junior Chamber of Commerce).106 A copy even made its way to Roosevelt’s desk for use in speeches.107 On 9 November 1942 the TCF released the second volume in the Chase series, Goals for America: A Budget of Our Needs and Resources, which sold 10,000 copies in two days and achieved leading article status in Harper’s magazine. By the end of November 1942 The Road We Are Travelling had sold 22,000 copies and Goals for America almost 12,000.108 Galloway’s Postwar Planning in the United States, released on 9 April 1942, also sold well with over 4,500 copies paid for by the beginning of May 1942 and almost 8,000 copies exhausting two extra printings by the end of the year.109 The Chase books were written for popular consumption, as was their aim, so offered only the general contours of a discussion over the post-war future of the US economy, and very little in terms of concrete suggestions for policy or planning. As Berle’s foreword to The Road We Are Travelling explained, the trustees ‘believe that Mr Chase’s explorations offer perhaps the best available method of crystallizing thought’ about post-war matters. Still, the overriding message that the war was a historic turning point for Americans as it stressed the power of a government-planned economy was inescapable. Although Chase’s conclusions were his own and were ‘not necessarily’ those of the TCF,110 the message Chase repeated was unapologetically ‘big’ government and followed closely the message being projected by the NPA and the NRPB. Between the two world wars, Chase asserted, laissez-faire capitalism was made redundant thanks to rising government intervention in the economy making a return to ‘business as usual’ not only impossible but also undesirable, especially given the obvious merits of government planning showcased by the war effort. Enlisting large sections of the 1941 NRPB report After Defense – What? as empirical evidence, Chase contended that by retaining the devices of wartime production Americans could enjoy massively raised living standards through full employment and full productivity after the war. The war had changed everything: ‘Win, lose or draw, we can never return to the world of 1928, or even of 1939. This may alarm many Americans but it does not alarm me.’111 The same advocacy of a continuing, large government role in the economy was repeated in Goals for America. Chase simply explained (without using figures) how the average American family would meet its basic wants, such as food, shelter, clothing and health, in a post-war economy based upon what he euphemistically called ‘community needs’, or what he later admitted was a planned, mixed economy: ‘One of the best things the war could do for us would be to break down permanently the habit

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of judging public or private enterprise as either all white or all black. … We are, I think, heading deeper into a mixed economy.’ For him that meant government had overall ‘responsibility’ for planning for full employment with private enterprise ‘sharing’ the field.112 The Chase books may not have provided much ‘flesh’ on the ‘bones’ of TCF thinking about how to achieve a better America. But they certainly raised the TCF’s profile. For a small, non-profit-making organization with a relatively modest national imprint these publication figures, which outstripped by more than twice the total number of books the TCF had sold in the last twelve years put together, were very encouraging. Even more so when measured against established business magazines like the conservative Fortune which, at around 150,000 copies and with the backing of a massive publishing empire, was selling barely twice the annual number of the much larger books and pamphlets of the liberal TCF.113 Moreover, while sales figures alone cannot entirely reflect the broader impact and worth of a publication, developments on the ground certainly can. The resolve to promote its new work more widely (despite their numbers and the slightly higher sale price of one dollar for the first Chase book and the agreed sixty cents for the Galloway book they still ran at a loss)114 meant the TCF was ‘able to interest publications, organizations and individuals that heretofore had shown little concern with some of the more specialized surveys of the Fund’. The good sales of the TCF publications were complemented by some notable organizational responses around the country. The US Junior Chamber of Commerce ‘informally adopted’ the When the War Ends series as its ‘textbook’ for working on post-war issues. The organization urged all its national units – 1,400 in all – to begin work on post-war problems and posted them a descriptive folder on the TCF series. The National Education Association agreed to publish a wallet-sized sixteen-page leaflet to accompany each Chase book (20,000 per release) to be sold for a penny each ‘for widespread educational use’. The TCF effort also attracted the attention of professional politicians. The Republican Post-War Policy Association hoped to gain from the TCF ‘some valuable material for combating the traditional isolationist trend reflected in party platforms’. The City Planning Commission of Los Angeles also approached the TCF for help in its post-war planning. The Overseas Branch of the OWI asked for copies of Goals for America for dispatch to England and Sweden, and the TCF was told that some of its news releases during 1942 had made their way into overseas broadcasts.115 The TCF was an avid user of the radio, enjoying the highest profile in this medium of any planning group. Beginning in 1940 the TCF ran two radio series featuring short talks by its members, the first being ‘The Next Step Forward for America’ (aired in the spring of 1940) when the popular planning emphasis was on defence, and the more successful ‘Defense and Your Dollar’, which began just before the attack on Pearl Harbor and ran for six consecutive weeks with fifteen-minute slots on a Saturday afternoon. ‘Defense and Your Dollar’ was designed to relate TCF findings to ‘some of the urgent problems faced by a country suddenly shocked into war and a program of all-out production’.116 The series received 50 per cent more calls after Pearl Harbor and was broadcast by ninety stations as against fifty-nine for ‘Next Step’, was heard in fortyone states (and the District of Columbia), and enjoyed an average audience response

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of 489 (against 320 for ‘Next Step’) which the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) rated as ‘exceptionally high for a public service feature’.117 The format for the radio broadcasts was quite involved. For the ‘Next Step’ series a ‘dramatized incident’ technique was used, but for the ‘Defense’ series a commentator posed as ‘an average citizen’ through which their personal problems caused by the war emergency were dramatized by a number of flashbacks. A guest speaker from the TCF then discussed ‘possible solutions to these problems in the light of the Fund’s research findings and committee recommendations’.118 The idea of transmitting radio broadcasts specifically to advertise the Chase series was first mooted in November 1941,119 and on 7 May 1942 Chase gave the first of several radio interviews to the NBC.120 On 28 May 1942 Chase debated the subject of his first book with Louis M. Hacker on the Blue Network (Station WJZ in New York), and on 22 November 1942 Chase again debated with Hacker, this time over Goals for America. Most spectacularly, on 8 November 1942 Chase debated with Henry Bunbury, head of the PEP in London, in an international broadcast for the British Broadcasting Corporation. Bunbury likened the content of  the Chase books with the ‘basic approach’ of the forthcoming Beveridge Report on British post-war social security measures.121 The media profile of the TCF so impressed the OWI and the CBS, that they indicated their desire to use TCF material in future educational programming and specialist broadcasts on post-war problems. The landmark decision to make a bigger splash with its work had clearly paid off as the post-war studies of the TCF exploded into the public arena. By the end of 1942 Clark, with some authority, could proclaim that ‘the Fund is now generally recognized as one of the leading agencies in the country concerned with this [post-war] field’.122 The TCF had established a public profile second to none among the business planners. With rising membership, the organization now had a sizeable war chest. Expenditure had been so low for the years preceding the war that the TCF had accumulated a healthy cash surplus by the end of 1942.123 The TCF also remained true to its principal of independence, if not complete objectivity, from government bodies. However, until the weightier scientific studies were completed, the organization’s message and its public image was being projected by the planning enthusiast Chase, whose ideas closely approximated those of the NPA and the NRPB. This did not seem to trouble the TCF, though for the time being it was less inclined than the NPA to prioritize the study of international economics in its research. And in not formally approaching the NPA for joint work or, for that matter, even acknowledging the creation of the CED, the TCF was obviously content that its methods were superior to those of the other post-war planners. But this huge commitment to detailed scientific research was placing an enormous strain on a small team. By the end of 1942 nine projects were being conducted by the same number of personnel intended to deal with just four. Add to this the additional demands of war work on leading members and the obvious result was delays, especially for projects not related to post-war matters started before the United States entered the war.124 Already facing challenges from some in its leadership, such as Clark and Dewhurst, the dedication of the TCF to laborious technical investigations into complex economic issues in the interests of ‘scientific objectivity’ was put under increasing strain by the dynamic impact of total war on the United States.

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The NPA as the ‘catalytic and energizing agency’ In common with other business planners, the entry of the United States into the war further stimulated the post-war research programme of the NPA. The stature of the organization was further elevated when senior members were drawn into the centre of the government’s war mobilization effort. Trustees Batt, Golden and Wilson became vice presidents of the WPB at the beginning of 1942. But this only briefly improved the potential for the NPA to exert influence upon federal plans for when the war ended, as the sights of Congressional conservatives honed in for the kill on the NRPB. Soon after the events at Pearl Harbor, the NPA’s claim to be at the forefront of postwar planning, and as the ‘independent’ arm of the NRPB the favoured group of the administration, was given an immediate boost. Two days after the Japanese attack, Coil met with special economic adviser for the White House, Lauchlin Currie, for an indication of government thinking. Currie was a top adviser for Roosevelt during the New Deal era and was instrumental in convincing the president to jettison traditional ideas about ‘balancing’ the budget and instead adopt Keynesian deficit-spending methods to stimulate growth. Coil took with him a group he considered ‘primarily responsible for the immediate direction of the government’s postwar thinking’, which included NRPB operative Luther Gulick (NPA trustee and president), Louis H. Bean, Department of Agriculture (office of the secretary) and member of the Defense Plant Corporation, and Mordecai Ezekiel, economic adviser to the secretary of agriculture. Currie and the group agreed that although interest in post-war issues would diminish in the short term (weeks or months), this was no bad thing. First, public interest in post-war matters was ‘snowballing too rapidly’ before Pearl Harbor and ‘was in danger of becoming overly publicized’. Secondly, those engaged in government planning at the highest level needed a ‘breathing spell’ to analyse concrete problems and clarify issues before the inevitable return of interest in post-war planning, which would be ‘even more thoughtful and serious’ than before because of the country’s direct stake in the war. Lastly, the temporary pause in attention upon post-war planning, Currie believed, allowed the NPA to nevertheless push forward with its work to provide suggestions for government war aims. ‘We must be prepared’, reported Coil, as ‘the President has clearly indicated that he wants competent work to proceed so solutions will be available when needed.’ The connection between war and post-war organization was also made explicit by Currie. As Coil put it: ‘We should act now not only in the light of immediate needs but also in the light of the postwar repercussions of emergency action.’ It was Coil’s understanding that Currie clearly indicated the NPA had ‘the responsibility of leadership’ of the planning programme and that Currie would be glad to meet with the NPA in a series of meetings in the new year. Coil was certainly boosted by these encouraging words from a leading voice in the White House. Even Secretary of State Hull expressed a ‘keen interest’ in the NPA and wished to join the board for dinner. ‘I believe’, Coil concluded, ‘that this meeting with Mr Currie helped to clarify the work and position of the Association during the war. Our tasks and responsibility have been increased by the events of the past week.’125 Over the next few months the NPA began formulating its post-war platform by steadily processing the findings of the various research projects instigated by the

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IPWG and other standing committees at the end of 1941. In February 1942 the report from the Sub-Committee on Labor Conditions and Standards of Living underscored the need for full employment after the war that was predicated on providing all the elements of a ‘full life’ such as health, security, respect and social justice for workers. This high regard for the plight of the worker reflected the input of organized labour in the NPA, but was also pragmatic: ‘Economic readjustment after the war must include proper safeguards for workers’ rights, if economic peace and prosperity are to result.’ In essence, the committee had written an ‘international charter’ for workers’ rights. The NPA’s devotion to protecting post-war labour and welfare rights overseas as well as at home was evidenced in a report on ‘Post-War International Investment’ of the same month that was even more revealing of the NPA’s domestic-first approach to prosperity after the war. The report outlined what even casual observers were fast recognizing as being inevitable after the fighting stopped, namely the commanding position of the United States. The dense, 24-page report demanded that the United States embark on preparations for its ‘decisive’ peacetime role as urgently as it organizes for war but, without apologizing for assuming such ‘responsibilities and opportunities resulting from our heavy involvement in international trade and from the comparative losses of other nations’, the United States should be a responsible creditor and not collect debts or expand sales overseas ‘unless other peoples enjoy, with our assistance if need be, increasing internal prosperity’. This could be achieved through either writing off wartime debts or expanding American purchases abroad. However, there would be no international growth unless the United States got its own house in order: ‘Our primary responsibility will be to maintain and to increase the volume of our own production and employment. Instability and depression in the United States would intensify unrest abroad and bring a tragic revival of nationalism and trade restrictions. The volume of our own output is the principal factor governing our demand for foreign goods and raw materials.’ The report also took a swipe at the free-trader demand for ‘full and equal access’ to raw materials after the war, a doctrine enshrined by the State Department in the small print of the Lend-Lease arrangements and the articles of the Atlantic Charter of August 1941. The term ‘access’, according to the report, ‘leaves much to be desired’, as access to the world’s raw materials alone did not guarantee they would be used productively. Such access as had prevailed before 1939, argued the report, had been squandered by Britain and the United States as they failed to raise the living standards of Europeans who, thanks to a ‘stagnant economy’, eventually turned to the dictators. ‘Our failure’, the report charged, ‘to establish a strong and prosperous world alliance against the Axis was not merely a failure of diplomacy or political vigilance; it was a failure of economic insight and imagination.’ Indeed, the report continued: ‘After the war we shall have to consider carefully whether we can afford to return to national policies that take no account of the real unity that runs through the entire world economy.’ The report logically called for the creation of ‘some kind of supra-national agencies’ to quickly erect mechanisms for post-war economic planning.126 However, as noted earlier, the predilection of the NPA for major federal solutions to the country’s problems was balanced by an equal recognition of the importance of the private sector in delivering those solutions. This was underlined in the first statement from the IPWG in the Planning Pamphlet When Demobilization Day Comes, published

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in July 1942. This was the first formal presentation of the NPA’s expectations for a postwar United States. Though very generally expressed, no doubt to avoid controversy and ensure a wide readership,127 there is a clear commitment to a public–private road to US post-war prosperity, and a desire to enlist other nations in the same goal. The chief aim of the pamphlet was to shift attention away from the longer-range objectives of post-war planning and towards the more practical problems of the transition period, such as reducing the armed forces, terminating war contracts and removing government economic controls, which the NPA believed were just as crucial. The NPA feared the problems of the transition were not only being neglected but were also being exacerbated by current war decisions that were daily narrowing the country’s freedom of choice at war’s end. For the NPA, the transition period was the critical route to a more prosperous America: ‘Demobilization is the tearing-down of the machinery of our society required to achieve a war victory. A post-war program, however, can not be merely negative in approach. … The synonym [transition] is indeed appropriate, even preferable, because transition implies moving from one set of goals to another set of goals … maximum peace-time production.’ This was the central post-war aim of the NPA, which it conceded was becoming an increasingly accepted national objective along with ‘international collaboration’ to ensure peace. The NPA’s recipe for achieving these goals, however, was only vaguely phrased: ‘A major part of the satisfaction of individual needs will come from the activities of private enterprise. Government will seek to fill other needs and at the same time keep the private and public economy functioning at something like full utilization of our resources.’ The NPA was slightly more specific about America’s international objectives. The NPA wanted ‘a prosperous, peaceful world seeking goals similar to our own’, and later opined: ‘If the war is worth winning and the peace is to be a peace, we can not wash our hands of the responsibility for insuring that other nations in the world set themselves upon the path toward economic prosperity and improvement of world living standards.’128 The conviction that it was America’s responsibility to raise the prosperity of the world was evidenced in the early recognition by the NPA – earlier than any of the major business planning groups – of the necessity for post-war relief. Coil was in a hurry to have relief questions broached as he was confident that by the end of the year the Allies would be on the offensive and territory would be acquired. A Special SubCommittee on Relief and Rehabilitation was created under trustee Clarence Pickett, executive chief of the American Friends Service Committee, and in May 1942 Pickett met with the IPWG to discuss relief and reconstruction problems together with a ‘few’ representatives of European and Far Eastern countries currently in the United States working on these issues.129 In July 1942 the NPA invited interested parties to a dinner meeting in New York ‘for the purpose of discussing the problem of training personnel for international relief and reconstruction’.130 In all, a dozen meetings were held in New York and Washington for the project ‘in which persons from government agencies, foreign governments and private relief organizations have participated’.131 When it was published as a Planning Pamphlet in December 1942, Relief for Europe: the First Phase of Reconstruction was ‘very favourably received, both at home and abroad, and widely used’. The NPA proudly noted that when it was constituted in December 1942, staff of the United Nations Office of Foreign Relief and Rehabilitation Operations

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‘pronounced this report the most useful brief document on the subject’.132 Over the next few years Pickett’s Committee issued several studies – known collectively as the Relief Series – dealing with mainly European, but also Chinese and worldwide relief issues after the war.133 As Pickett’s relief committee showed, the NPA was raising its profile in the seat of government. Relations with the NRPB remained good in 1942, receiving a mention in its report Post-War Planning: Full Employment, Security, Building America of September 1942. The report was a slight updating of the basic objectives listed in After Defense – What? a year earlier, and uttered the same, equally vague assurance that ‘postwar planning is by no means the task of governments alone, but also the opportunity and responsibility of private enterprise’.134 The heightening of its profile led to the ‘contracting-out’ of some of the NPA’s research services to other government agencies and private groups. Two studies entitled ‘The Changing Administrative Relations of Government, Labor, and Industry’ and ‘The Problems of Capital Losses and Capital Replacements’ were undertaken for the Carnegie Corporation, and another on the development of the economic resources of Alaska for the Oberlaender Trust.135 For the government, the NPA began a project on ‘Capital Adjustment Procedures’ under Dr Mark S. Massel, consultant on cost analysis to the WPB. According to the NPA, this study had ‘surprising repercussions’ in similar studies by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Treasury Department, and the National Bureau of Economic Research.136 Pickett’s success, however, was not replicated in the organization’s relationship with the State Department, which, despite Hull’s earlier expression of ‘interest’, was considered dismissive of the NPA. Coil was trying to negotiate a contract with the State Department for work on inter-American problems but was being frustrated by the attitude of Sumner Welles, undersecretary of state for Latin American Affairs, who Coil was told had said that the work of the NPA ‘does not amount to very much’. This remark is surprising given that Welles, a liberal with the ear of Roosevelt, was highly active in government planning for the extension of US post-war interests overseas, and would likely have led this drive had he not resigned in 1943.137 Coil became so exasperated by the attitude of the State Department that on 13 July 1942 he wrote IPWG member and State Department employee Charles Taussig and asked him to push the NPA: The point is that I don’t want the State Department to be antagonistic toward us, and I want them to participate in anything we do, just as other agencies. … Without any reference to Welles’ conversation … I wonder if you could not see that a good word is circulated in the Department, so that they will know that the difficulty of participation has not been our desire to avoid them, but their own difficulty in finding any time available.138

To bolster his case, Coil had Democrat Clarence Cannon (Missouri), chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations, send a message of endorsement which Coil relayed to Taussig: ‘I think you should not hesitate to have the Association to work on a contract basis for the Government, and likewise the Government should not hesitate to use your unique services.’139 A similar message was sent by NPA member

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J. B. Condliffe, an economics professor of the University of California working for the Board of Economic Warfare, to a sympathetic figure in the Department of Agriculture, Louis Bean.140 The pleading of Coil eventually paid off. The NPA was contracted to undertake a study of ‘Post-War Inter-American Economic Development’ for Nelson B. Rockefeller, coordinator of Inter-American Affairs at the State Department, and by the end of the year was ‘negotiating’ another contract for research on developing Latin American resources for the war effort and after the war worth an estimated $50,000. Despite the awkwardness of its relationship with the State Department, the NPA was nonetheless proud to have served it.141 The slowly mounting respect for the NPA in government circles was far outshone by its rising presence across the country. According to an article in the capital’s Evening Star newspaper, When Demobilization Day Comes was ‘the first concise analysis of the tremendous problems involved in the transition from war to peace’ and became one of the NPA’s best-sellers in 1942.142 In fact, and in common with the experience of the TCF, sales of planning material rose as general interest in post-war matters grew over the year. Currie’s anticipated ‘lull’ in interest in post-war matters following Pearl Harbor appeared short-lived and was not apparently experienced by other planners.143 Guides for Post-War Planning (November 1941) became one of the most successful NPA publications to date. ‘With this pamphlet,’ the NPA claimed, ‘for the first time, the Association began to reach beyond university and public groups to business and labor organizations.’ Previous pamphlets sold no more than 1,500 copies, but sales of Guides reached almost 4,000 by the end of its first year.144 Sales of the monthly Public Policy Digest had also increased over the year and a ‘greatly enlarged number of people’ used the Digest’s Order Service and Special Bibliographies.145 To match the rise in interest the organization significantly expanded in 1942. The permanent NPA staff in the Washington headquarters increased to ten with thirteen persons serving the various NPA projects, and the NPA opened a branch office in New York City.146 From April the programme of the IPWG was accelerated and extended,147 and in October 1942 the NPA announced its intention to establish within a year ‘Field Councils’ in the Federal Reserve districts to make available to the community the ‘growing vast reservoir of facts and opinion on post-war plans accumulating in Washington from many sources’. And in a move that mirrored the organizational pattern of the CED (which was yet to be officially launched), the NPA wanted a field representative to visit the chief cities and others ‘to help set up the councils which will be composed of representatives of industry, labor, business, farm groups, and PTA [Parent-Teacher Associations]’. This structural enlargement followed a parallel rise in membership. Between December 1941 and October 1942 the number of member-subscribers to NPA climbed by more than half (772 to 1,107), while the list of organizational and sustaining members, which were of ‘principal interest’ to NPA, also grew.148 The expansion in its activity and output since the war began for the United States led to a near doubling of spending by the NPA. Unlike the resource-cautious TCF, by the end of 1942 the growth in NPA activity was outstripping its financial resources. In 1941 total expenditure was $30,044, while in 1942 it was anticipated to reach over

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$74,500 when projected income only amounted to around $67,000. Of this amount, corporate subscriptions remained the largest source ($11,000). The budget target for 1943 was an even more ambitious $130,000.149 Still, the NPA had a productive 1942 and looked to continue that momentum into 1943. In its review of the year, the NPA made the case for its primacy in post-war affairs: The year 1942 has begun to bring into focus many of the aspects of the world struggle heretofore unsuspected or dimly grasped. The need for clear thinking and for adequate planning was never greater. … Because the Association is non-political and unofficial it has not been handicapped by intra-governmental bickerings. Because its work is built on the principle of joint participation of industry, labor, agriculture, and government, it is enabled to take an overall, rather than a single-approach. … Because it recognizes that this war is a global war it has sought to analyze problems of national policy in their world setting. For these reasons 1942 has been a year of emerging leadership.150

That ‘leadership’, it must be assumed, had sprung mainly from the NPA. There was no mention of any other post-war planners, such as the TCF or the soon-to-belaunched CED, in its end-of-year appraisal (especially as some NPA members were about to serve on the CED).151 This was despite its recognition that during the year interest in post-war planning had ‘grown and spread’ with a ‘concurrent increase in publications to serve this interest’. The TCF, which had been especially active in the public domain during 1942, had no items listed in the appraisal.152 The NPA had spent the year consolidating what it believed was its leading position in post-war planning by refining and expanding its proposals, enlarging its membership and establishing working ties with government departments outside its parent agency the NRPB, which now included the WPB and the traditionally cool State Department. Indeed, the NPA was very determined that it should be the country’s primary centre for post-war studies. Earlier in the year Coil expressed his anger at the decision of the Commission to Study the Organization of Peace to serve as a ‘clearing service’ for post-war ideas, which he thought they were ill-equipped to deal with and were anyhow duplicating the work of the Digest. The Commission, which had also grown in the wake of Pearl Harbor, was formed in 1939 by former League of Nations Association president James T. Shotwell to stimulate debate about post-war world organization (becoming a major popularizer of the United Nations), but focused little on economic matters and did not seek to represent business.153 Coil requested that Taussig use his contacts with the commission to ‘politely’ tell them it was ‘a waste of money on their part’.154 This mindset was underscored in the NPA’s closing plea to the Whitney Foundation for continued funding for 1943, a year in which the organization was ‘determined’ to enlarge its programme because it had a ‘unique role to play as a catalytic and energising agency’.155 The dynamic processes unleashed during the country’s first year of total war were registered in the organizations of the business planners. The war accelerated interest in post-war affairs among the business community and produced the first harvest of major publications on post-war planning from the main business planning organizations. Plans were now more refined and long term. And now the planners had gone public. This was a year of substantial growth for the post-war business planning community.

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Existing groups expanded their structures and research parameters and increased their memberships as academics, professionals, and more significantly, corporate liberals became increasingly attracted to state-centred solutions to post-war prosperity. Yet the wave of support did nothing to bring the NPA and the TCF together. The NPA maintained close contact, indeed actively sought it, with government, yet the TCF avoided closer contact by rejecting offers for government work. Still, Chase’s use of NRPB material (even though the NRPB did not mention the TCF) hinted to the high degree of commonality between the TCF and the NPA so far recognized only by those few holding joint membership and certainly not on an official level. Moreover, both organizations claimed leadership of this unprecedented boom in business enthusiasm for liberal post-war planning. And it was the specific character of this business interest more than its sheer volume that explained the assembling at the end of 1942 of a new, bespoke post-war planning organization, the CED. The CED was a significantly different beast from the other planning organizations. It did not spring from the ideological pool of the New Deal era, nor did it form organically from a genuine upsurge in interest from ‘conservative’ sections of private business. Rather it was cobbled together in the boardrooms of the Commerce Department to convince ‘private interests’ – namely, those businesses not disposed to liberal solutions – to grasp the urgency of post-war planning. Moderates in the BAC and the Commerce Department feared that private enterprise would be overlooked by the state-centred schemes of the NPA, the TCF and the NRPB in the planning of the post-war economy. They wanted to ensure private interests were heard in regional, national and governmental discussion on economic matters. The intervention of the Commerce Department in post-war planning was the most significant event during 1942 in planning terms, and its timing and earnestness is most fully understood against the backdrop of rising national interest in the solutions of the NPA or the TCF or the NRPB. Jones even ignored the president who, fearing a loss of control (and especially to a conservative), warned there was ‘a great danger of confusion’ in allowing the Commerce Department to form the CED, and that all federal planning should be channelled through the NRPB.156 There is nothing to suggest that an organization like the CED would have emerged ‘spontaneously’ had the Commerce Department not pushed for such an organization in early 1942 and the BAC had been left to its own devices. But the need for haste forced a most important concession at the heart of the new group: a commitment to scientific inquiry and not just rousing or ‘propagandizing’. The commitment to investigate and resolve economic problems meant that the CED not only resembled the liberal planners (who were looking at the same issues), but was also allowed to develop into something more than a simple ‘association’ (like the NAM and the USCC), much to the chagrin of its godfather, Jesse Jones. The post-war planning terrain was now more congested and even more contested. For all their early success, the NPA and the TCF still only appealed to a minority, liberal-minded section of the business community. What is more, the spell of liberal domination of the post-war planning debate was nearing an apparent hiatus. As the war progressed to its anticipated finale and the US economy approached its peak in productivity over the coming months, general interest in the future continued to rise

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but now the CED threatened to ‘cash-in’ and enliven interest in an even broader layer of more conservative- or moderate-minded business activists in post-war planning. Even more significantly, discussion about post-war matters took place within a national setting that was moving steadily rightward as material growth, business entrenchment and overall fatigue with government intrusion set in. The post-war business planners were entering a critical and ultimately defining period in their wartime journey.

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War’s Height: The Challenge of Conservatism, 1943–44

The more I think about the position in which people in this country now find themselves, the more deeply I am impressed by the historic significance of the point we have now reached. … The opportunities and responsibilities that lie ahead of this group, the Committee for Economic Development, and the members of its research organization, are tremendous. Ralph Flanders, chairman CED Research Committee, July 19431 [These speeches are] made by men who, however their first sympathies may lie with industrial management or with organized labor or with agriculture, are a unit in agreement upon the essential rightness of Free Enterprise as America’s basic motive power for the future. William Batt, NPA chairman, December 19432 It is not important to sell either the liberals or the businessmen. We must sell those who make the laws and whose opinions carry weight with them. Ralph Flanders, chairman CED Research Committee, February 19443 [TCF] emphasized the fact that Mr Chase was not advocating the overthrow of the private enterprise system but on the contrary urged the fullest use of existing business resources and institutions. TCF press release, October 19424 In 1943–44 the United States reached the summit of its war mobilization efforts, supporting the entire Anglo-American war drive and providing nearly half the armaments of all the Allies by the middle of 1944.5 Victories on the battlefield turned the war decisively in favour of the Allies in 1943. On the eastern front the Germans suffered their first major defeat at Stalingrad in February and lost the offensive to the Red Army for good at Kursk in July. In the Pacific the advance of the Allies was confirmed by the recovery of New Guinea, Guadalcanal, the Solomon Islands and Tarawa from the Japanese, and a western front in Europe was finally begun when Allied forces invaded Sicily in July. Preparations for a large-scale invasion of France quickened.

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Given the trend of war overseas, and the high tempo of production at home, American attention began to drift inexorably towards peacetime conversion as a foreseeable end to hostilities approached. There was, according to one contemporary observer, already a ‘phenomenal development of popular, official, and professional interest’ in planning and a ‘current proliferation of plans for the post-war period’.6 One industrial representative claimed interest in post-war planning had reached ‘epidemic’ proportions.7 Wartime opinion polls suggested that economic readjustment was considered by Americans as the most important post-war problem, and after 1943 books and articles on the subject of employment flourished.8 The consensus among the post-war business planners was that sometime during, or at least shortly after, 1944 the war would end meaning that plans for the transition must already be established. Most would have agreed with the leader of the CED when in December 1943 he remarked: ‘I am assuming that the country must complete its reconversion and its initial expansion two years after the German armistice.’9 However, the progress of the nation’s post-war planning for the next two years was no straightforward matter, as business planners came to terms with, what was for them, the most significant development of the year: the revival of conservative opposition in the United States. This directly challenged liberal authority over the post-war planning debate and further weakened government control over the mobilization and reconversion processes.10 The first victim of the conservative advance was federal planning. During 1942 it seemed the country was moving closer to having a centrally coordinated post-war planning agency, and it was certainly the belief outside the White House that the NRPB was the logical agency to perform that task.11 Also, an ‘understanding’ appeared to have been reached whereby the State Department and the Board of Economic Warfare would concentrate their post-war attention on international questions and the NRPB ‘primarily’ on domestic problems of post-war planning.12 This situation changed dramatically at the end of 1942. The slow progress of the war heightened the anxiety of the general public and raised the level of scepticism about the way Roosevelt was conducting the fight, leading to conservative gains in the midterm elections of November 1942. Trying to wage a war in the short term and seeking a fourth term in the long, Roosevelt was careful not to alienate the public or Congress, and ‘Dr. New Deal’ was replaced by ‘Dr. Win the War’. As the Congress sought to prohibit spending on anything not immediately war related, the NRPB was an easy target, and Roosevelt offered no resistance when Congress voted to kill this ‘sacrificial lamb’.13 The NRPB was not shocked by the decision. Despite his apparent defence of the agency against his conservative commerce secretary, Roosevelt had already begun to detach himself from the NRPB, which he met only twice during 1942 instead of the usual once per month. In an act of frustration, at the end of 1942 the NRPB relaunched its manifesto on the goals for America and made a further plea for concerted national action on post-war planning. Its long report, A Post-War Plan and Program for the USA, was a full-blooded, unrepentant liberal manifesto for increased government management of the economy. It was passed to Congress in March 1943 with no explicit backing from the president, who asked only that Congress ‘give these matters full consideration’.14 The NRPB continued to release reports until the end of 1943, refusing to temper its endorsement of ‘big government’ planning, but was unable to begin new projects. This last report of the NRPB marked the ‘zenith’ of New Deal planning and of ‘modern American liberalism’.15

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The termination of the NRPB was not only political in significance, but also structural. It was yet another illustration of the uncoordinated, ad hoc manner of the nation’s post-war planning effort and of the administration’s inability to provide clear leadership for the long term in these turbulent political, economic and military conditions. Congress was now monitoring closely any actions taken by the administration that had lasting implications. Although the government started to wind down its procurement programme and terminate many contracts for war work as early as 1943, in this politically fraught atmosphere it was months into 1944 before the pace of events, both at home and abroad, compelled key federal agencies to hastily upgrade their plans for the end of hostilities. Eventually it was the sheer scale of the problem that jolted those responsible to take the conversion more seriously. After another federal reshuffle by Roosevelt, the supervision of war production was placed under the direction of Supreme Court judge James F. Byrnes in the Office of War Mobilization (OWM) established May 1943. The OWM was an instant improvement on its predecessors, and helped vastly the success of US arms production, so much so that in 1944 executives in the war production agencies were panicked into addressing more closely the problems of conversion to peacetime output.16 The WPB (not disbanded) issued a series of reports just before the Allied landings in Normandy in June 1944 that estimated the level of acceptable cuts in war goods (40 per cent) that would allow unrestricted civilian production following a victory in Europe, and soon after initiated cuts in military production.17 When continued frustration with military-industrial intransigence led to the resignations of veterans Donald Nelson and Charles E. Wilson, Roosevelt transferred the job of reconversion to his new mobilization tsar Byrnes in the newly titled OWMR.18 The State Department, whose efforts at post-war planning had so far been largely subordinated to operational demands, was now under pressure to declare more forcefully on international post-war issues.19 An interview with Pasvolsky and others on post-war planning was broadcast in December 1943, and in January 1944 the department’s post-war operations began several phases of streamlining.20 In April 1944 a special committee was created to link up the work of the Departments of State, Treasury, Agriculture, Labor and other federal agencies on questions of foreign economic policy.21 A more activist Congress also took steps to oversee the reconversion process. At the end of 1943, two special committees on post-war policy and planning were established, one for the Senate and one for the House of Representatives, both led by Southern Democrats. They issued several reports between 1944 and 1947 (when they were disbanded), and gathered information for these reports by a system of public hearings which relied heavily upon the testimony of leading figures from the post-war planning community. The waking of Washington to the problems of reconversion seemingly offered several new entry points for the business planners to influence government policy. Federal departments and politicians were at last beginning to act in 1944. Yet by the end of the year the intransigence of special interests, the ‘conservative coalition’ in Congress and the tenacity of the Axis powers still exacerbated government planning for the transition. The surprise German offensive in the Ardennes in December 1944 strengthened the reluctance of the military and big business (on profitable contracts)22 to begin conversion and helped convince the WPB and Roosevelt that there could be ‘no official encouragement of civilian production’ before the Germans were

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categorically defeated.23 In an election year, it was even harder for Roosevelt in 1944 to press his will on a suspicious Congress that shredded his plans for an ‘Economic Bill of Rights’ to ensure adequate post-war housing, wages, education and certain welfare measures and overrode the president’s veto to force a significant lowering of tax revenues (from $12 billion to $2 billion) for the coming year. All that survived was a commitment to provide benefits to veterans only – a ‘GI Bill of Rights’ – which in a stripped-down version enjoyed extensive cross-party support.24 Republican hopes of winning the White House in November 1944 were high, but the persistence of war, which so frustrated post-war planning, granted significant political capital to the incumbent president and his administration. Roosevelt beat off a negative campaign by New York Governor Thomas Dewey to earn a record fourth term in office, despite Republican concessions on pensions, unemployment benefits and an internationalist foreign policy.25 Still, Roosevelt saw his 1940 majority considerably reduced and Democratic gains in the Congress were insufficient to diminish the conservative opposition. Roosevelt was also forced to ditch his radical vice president Henry Wallace for the moderate senator Harry S. Truman as running mate. Truman was a supporter of the New Deal and was a moderate free-trader, and as a senator attended the grand meeting of the NPA in 1943 (below).26 The rise of conservatism in the United States during 1943–44 had several consequences for the post-war business planning community. Most directly, the end of the NRPB severely dented hopes for an overarching federal body to take charge of post-war planning. Roosevelt was loathe to replace it while under intense scrutiny from Congress and with the war at such a critical point. The loss of the NRPB was a tough blow to the aspirations of the liberal post-war planners, especially the NPA. Mired in turf wars over the mobilization and unable to control big business and the military, the WPB was unable to provide inspiration, let alone an alternative home for those promoting forthright government planning. More importantly, the national shift to the right benefited the conservative-inspired CED, which in 1943–44 began to formulate an alternative solution for post-war success to the strong-state propositions of the NPA and the TCF. Even though they tried their best to ignore it, the CED posed a significant threat to the NPA–TCF monopoly over post-war issues. The pressure of conservative opinion also forced adjustments upon the liberal planners, in particular the accenting of the role of ‘private enterprise’ in their strategies for peacetime success. Indeed, that the NRPB was extinguished just as a new post-war planning group was being shaped – and one closely attached to the Commerce Department – was a coincidence not lost on the established planners. As the end of war approached, the direction of the post-war planning debate began to shift, albeit subtly, away from the highly state-oriented ideas of the NPA and the TCF and towards a more moderate characterization of the balance between public and private interests in the post-war economy.

The CED is unleashed Over the course of its first year the CED was obliged to cover a lot of ground, both physically and mentally. It dove headlong into establishing a local presence and began

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investigations into the central problems of the post-war transition. But as the ‘new kid on the block’ and arriving so late to the post-war planning discussion, the CED was obliged to rely on the established business groups for advice and borrow, in some areas quite extensively, from their considerable pool of knowledge and expertise. This made it difficult for the CED to find – let alone establish – its identity in these formative months as it tried to carve a niche between the ‘conservatives’ and the ‘liberals’. In fact, the CED was more agitated about defining its relationship towards the less-tolerant free-market groups of the NAM and the USCC than with the liberal NPA and the TCF. The process of determining what the CED stood for was long and often tedious, which resulted during 1944 in a recipe for post-war prosperity that opportunely combined the aspirations of both business and of politicians as the war drew to a finale. Well before its official unveiling in February 1943, thanks to the Commerce Department the CED was fully primed for action. Preliminary work on the CED’s field operations and research programme was well underway even before its inaugural meeting on 11 September 1942. With the assistance of S. Morris Livingston of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce and a handful of experts who had ‘done real thinking on the post-war problems of their businesses’, Folsom and Fletcher had prepared a draft manual on post-war planning for distribution to company executives.27 By December 1942, the handbook Preparing for High Levels of Employment and Productivity was ready for use in the field, and a handbook for use by smaller companies and a manual of community organization procedure was also under way.28 By June 1943, the CED’s field development division had produced five documents outlining ‘a simple yet effective procedure for each company to follow in tackling its post-war planning’.29 They were Target for Peace-Grass Roots Approach, a ‘slide-sound film’ designed to assist community representatives in advertising the CED; a Handbook for Employers which contained ‘four steps which individual companies may follow in their post-war planning’; a Handbook for Community Chairmen; a Speaker’s Handbook which contained two basic speeches for use in the field; and Markets after the War (domestic only) published on behalf of the CED by the Commerce Department.30 From the very outset the CED looked to establish itself as a ‘genuine’ national organization of businessmen and not just another business association (like the USCC or the NAM) or another academic think tank (like the CFR). This followed an identical move by the NPA to establish ‘field councils’ representing business, agriculture and labour at around the same time. In the autumn of 1942, the CED embarked on an experiment to test the potential for establishing a CED presence in all of the more than 1,000 US communities with a population greater than 10,000. The study became the first non-governmental survey and estimate of the nation’s post-war employment potential. The CED chose three towns considered ‘typical’ of representing the problems the CED would likely encounter in setting up local committees: Peoria, Illinois; Wheeling, West Virginia; and Reading, Pennsylvania. The case of Peoria, a Midwest manufacturing town of 122,000, became the most illuminating as the CED considered it best displayed in microcosm the same problems that would face the entire country in achieving peacetime conversion. In November the CED organized a local committee that asked the neighbourhood’s forty-nine manufacturers to each prepare a report on their company’s post-war plans, including the possibilities for new

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products and new markets. Most valuable for the CED, each company was asked to answer three questions on a ‘check sheet’, the answers to which would allow the CED to construct an overall impression of the post-war economic potential of the nation. The three questions the CED asked were ‘what was the company’s employment in 1940’, its ‘employment at the present time’ and its ‘estimated post-war employment’. The actual data that the CED pilot scheme unearthed was less significant than the process by which it was collected. To garner answers, some corporations even went so far as to write to servicemen asking if they intended to return to their home towns to work at war’s end.31 What the CED discovered from the ‘Peoria Story’ was two things. First – and most encouraging – was the revelation, based upon the checklist replies, that US business at least had the capacity to maintain the high wartime levels of production and employment in the immediate post-war period. The second discovery was less agreeable, and was what many had feared all along: the vast majority of employers were completely unprepared for the post-war transition. The CED now had solid proof of the need for a nationwide organization to stimulate post-war planning on a practical basis at a grass-roots level to achieve the necessary increases in US production and employment.32 One of the first hurdles the CED had to negotiate in order to establish a national presence was the considerable variation in the way local businesses had approached post-war questions. The CED found that in some towns and cities forward-thinking businesses had already initiated local committees of various sizes and compositions to tackle post-war issues. In Baltimore it was the local mayor, while in Rochester, New York, a ‘general post-war council of forty members’ had been formed of not only business but also ‘all important social groups’.33 The task for the CED was to encourage these local groupings and to integrate their activities within a nationally coordinated framework of policy leadership without the loss of local autonomy. As the CED was at pains to avoid accusations that it was just another government agency, ‘decentralisation’ became its motto. At regional, district- and community-level CED chairpersons were fully responsible for their activities. As Hoffman maintained, they were ‘autonomous – not subject to dictation from the national Committee which exists primarily to help him. The local committee is his committee.’34 The CED hierarchy spread itself widely and thinly to support local activists, as this snapshot of Hoffman’s 1943 visit to Seattle demonstrated. At 8.00 am Hoffman addressed the city’s leading businessmen, and at 9.45 am he met with Seattle’s labour representatives. At 1.00 pm Hoffman spoke to the combined service clubs of Seattle, and at 2.45 pm he made a tour of a war plant and spoke to a group of employees ‘just to cheer them up’. He visited another plant at 5.30 pm and met with officials, then at 7.00 pm lectured a large meeting of businessmen in Tacoma.35 Arranged by a local CED chairman, this busier than usual day showed how, like visiting dignitaries or state officials, the luminaries of the CED tried to promote their message and raise the national profile of the organization. Early on, CED began a monthly publication, CED News, which served as a vehicle to showcase grass-roots activities and impart CED policy. By April 1943 the industrial advisory board of the CED had distributed 5,000 copies of a Trade Association Hand

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Book to 2,000 trade associations, and sent a copy of the Handbook for Employers and the Commerce Department’s Markets After the War to the largest corporations.36 By the fall of 1943 the CED had distributed over a quarter of a million handbooks on various topics to a mailing list that numbered approximately 12,000.37 The CED expanded rapidly. By the end of its first year there were fifteen regional chairmen, 112 state and district chairmen and 822 county and community chairmen. Almost five hundred county and community chairmen were recruited between June and September 1943 alone.38 To deal with this growth, the board of trustees was expanded from eighteen to twenty-five members, and individual contributions to the CED, which had been capped at $7,500 to avoid domination by large corporations, were raised to a colossal $25,000 in June 1943.39 As one local organizer proclaimed: ‘This is unquestionably the most timely national business movement there is. It is so timely that it sells on sight.’40 Clearly, the CED had begun to tap a fresh layer of ‘far-sighted’ business people not attracted to, or yet reached by, the liberal planners. But the task of creating a ‘new’ national business organization alongside the ‘old’, such as the USCC and the NAM which reigned supreme in the localities, was not without its problems. The support of the ‘old guard’ for the CED was after all conditional on the understanding that it was a temporary group not out to replace them. The CED was at pains to maintain strict independence from all other groupings in the locality, but recognized that close work with long-standing groups was unavoidable. As others have emphasized, the field development committee was meant as ‘an organizational bridge between the business politicians on the [Research] Council and competing business organizations’ on the ground.41 The CED therefore adopted the role of ‘facilitator’ for existing business groups that sought to plan for the post-war, carefully spreading the CED message while neatly sidestepping accusations of ‘poaching’.42 This careful undertaking was flagged as an early problem in the establishment of the CED network, and was stressed by Hoffman in April 1943: ‘This combination of close collaboration with existing groups, plus the maintenance of independent responsibility, should be reiterated over and over again.’43 It soon became clear just how difficult this task would be when in mid-1943 the CED embarked on the ‘Albert Lea Plan’, a joint exercise with the USCC for establishing a post-war business plan in terms comprehensible for a small-town community. The test case, led by CFR economist Arthur Upgren of the Commerce Department’s National Economics Unit, was Albert Lea, Minnesota where it was intended to ‘develop a basis for direct comparison of the number of post-war work opportunities with the number of job seekers’.44 The survey was considered of great value, and found that those looking for work at war’s end would exceed job opportunities by around 10 per cent. Fletcher believed the plan provided ‘the first systematic approach to employment creation in the service and distribution industries’ and gave the CED its ‘first effective tie-in with local agriculture’.45 However, the CED became concerned that all this successful work would be hijacked by the USCC. Fletcher mentioned there were ‘difficulties’ with the USCC’s representatives in Albert Lea, who were ‘very anxious to rush into print with this report as their own work’ and launch the plan across the country as a USCC project. Fletcher’s comments to trustees in September 1943 ignited a lengthy debate among the trustees over the value of attributing ‘credit’ for local achievements and the nature of the CED’s relationship with other national organizations, specifically

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the USCC and the NAM. Hoffman acknowledged that ‘competition at the national level’ should not be allowed to spread ‘confusion’ at the local level, but when he strongly urged that the CED ‘forget all about it’ when it came to assuming credit, several trustees took him to task. Charles R. Hook, a member of the BAC and also a leading NAM activist, was most vociferous in arguing that the question of maintaining the CED’s unique identity and independence was ‘a real problem, and a very great one’ that he had expressly intended to have ‘thrashed out’ at their meeting. For him, the major selling point of the CED was that it represented a ‘new face’ among the various business organizations, and if it was ‘merely going to “pass the buck” ’ to other groups then the CED would have no chance of raising funds. Not surprisingly, Hook recommended, along with other trustees, that the CED ‘sit together and thrash out’ the differences it had with the USCC and the NAM. Morris Edwards replied to Hoffman’s modesty in more colourful terms: ‘In your self-effacing generosity do not go so far that you let the unique and very great value of CED get lost. The CED name is a fresh and shining emblem of hope. The old organizations all have spots on their reputations. Keep that CED trademark out in front.’46 At the crux of this unexpected and reasonably heated debate was the enduring problem, and one envisaged by its founders, of providing new, ‘independent’ leadership to business without incurring the wrath of the more established national and local business networks suspicious of government ‘planning’. The CED was, after all, transparently an ‘organ’ of the Commerce Department that was attempting to organize private businesses. Local businessmen and women would have been forgiven for mistaking early CED literature for very similar publications issued by the Commerce Department in its own drive to awaken private business to postwar planning beginning in 1943.47 Hoffman preferred to deal with the other groups informally and not make any binding arrangements, but was emphatic that ‘We most certainly must maintain leadership for CED in the creation of future employment – both national and local leadership by whatever means may be necessary.’ To offset such friction or misunderstanding, the CED had originally invited the chiefs of both the NAM and the USCC to sit on the first research panels, but only Eric Johnston of the USSC had accepted. It was agreed to again invite Fred Crawford, head of the NAM, to sit on the research committee of the CED.48 Enjoying a better local presence than the NAM, the USCC was more likely to encounter CED activists, and Folsom was directed to approach the USCC to stop them disseminating the plan.49 Though early signs were encouraging – there was a genuine national openness to post-war preparedness – the difficulties encountered by the CED in its field operations reflected the distance it still had to travel to convince small-town businesses of the urgency of post-war planning, especially given the long-standing presence and, in places, intransigence of the near-sighted NAM and the USCC. In the timescale involved, the CED had to find a way of working with them, a practical task muddied by the ideological ambiguity that shrouded this new organization. The rush to establish a local presence highlighted the need for the CED to offer more than practical advice and physical assistance to businesses. As the NPA and the TCF had already come to appreciate, it was easier to rally support for action when it was based on a set of longterm goals that promised change and betterment: in other words, a ‘vision’ of a future

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America. The clarification of what the CED stood for, rather than against (as was the stance of the NAM and the USCC), took place during several key debates over the new group’s research programme. By the time the CED was inaugurated, Benton had already consulted ‘between fifty and a hundred qualified persons’ on the content of its research programme, including ‘many important Government officials’ such as Secretary of State Cordell Hull, Secretary for the Navy Frank Knox, early Keynesian convert Marriner S. Eccles, chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and Stacy May of McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, NPA trustee, BAC member and chief of the Statistical Service of the Advisory Commission to the Council of National Defense.50 After extensive discussion at its first meeting, the research committee set out the ‘true objective’ of CED’s research programme, which was ‘to develop principles which would serve as adequate basis for public and business policy most favorable to development of the maximum number of productive jobs by business’. While it was agreed that the programme would necessarily stretch over two years, it was nevertheless considered essential that a large amount of policy material be released in the first year ‘in order to keep faith’ with supporters of the CED.51 No specific projects were agreed at this inaugural meeting, but the research committee did agree the general pattern of the programme which would fall within two major categories: projects ‘bearing on the immediate transition period after the war’; and ‘those bearing on the long-run contribution of business to a free society through the maintenance of high employment’.52 With only these vague contours to work from, it took a three-day marathon in December 1942, which saw ‘a remarkably free and uninhibited mingling of minds among the social scientists and business executives’ of the research advisory board and the research committee,53 to agree on priority for five CED projects in its first year. They consisted of a large pamphlet on the problems of establishing high employment in a free society to be completed within six months; a detailed survey of the problems of transition to peacetime operation to be completed within eleven months; a ‘fundamental analysis’ of taxation and employment’ (no time limit); a pamphlet on the ‘positive role’ of small businesses to be commenced ‘as soon as suitable talent can be secured’; and a study of the construction industry.54 Of these topics, the study of problems of the transition was expected to be the most consuming. Yntema divided this vast exercise into no fewer than eleven sub-areas of study that he ‘farmed out’ to scholars with ‘special competence in their respective fields’. Yntema undertook to investigate the general survey of conversion problems and ‘Lessons from World War I and its aftermath’. Herbert S. Swan (later A. D. H. Kaplan from the University of Denver) studied the liquidation of war production. Removal of wartime controls fell to John M. Clark, professor of economics at Columbia University. Monetary and banking policy in the transition period was passed to John K. Langum, assistant vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. C. E. Griffin, dean of the School of Business, University of Michigan, and Harold Groves, professor of economics, University of Wisconsin, studied changes in the tax structure in the immediate post-war period. Problems in finding researchers of the right calibre meant that four months later no one had been allocated to the remaining topics. By the summer of 1943, Charles Abbott, a professor of finance at Harvard Business School, had agreed to look at financing

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the reconversion and rehabilitation of businesses, the transfer of workers to peacetime jobs, and the provision for unemployed workers in the transition period. Post-war problems of agriculture had fallen to Schultz, and post-war problems of international trade and finance were investigated by Calvin B. Hoover, dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Duke University. Yntema estimated that reports from these studies would appear in pamphlet form by early 1944.55 Yet high-quality research takes time, and time was a resource the business community did not have. With the Allied invasion of Italy, American advances in the Pacific and the momentous downturn in Wehrmacht fortunes on the eastern front at Kursk, by the end of July 1943 the tide of war had swung dramatically in favour of a speedy conclusion for the Allies. Hoffman warned: ‘I think the problem of expansion or reconversion, if you like, will be upon us sooner than most people realize. It seems to me that when the war in Europe ends 80% of the effects of the war on industrial plant operations will be ended, and the need for reconversion will be upon us’.56 Yntema feared American business was not yet ready, and that CED activists in the field were desperate for guidance.57 The need for haste forced the CED into a steep learning curve over its recommendations for the transition that required a solution to the dilemma rooted at the core of its work, namely the role of government. Inevitably, estimations of the precise responsibilities of government in managing the transition were related to assumptions about the longer-term role of government in the post-war economy. For planners in the TCF and the NPA, organizations which assumed a larger role for government in the post-war economy, consensus on this question was generally easier to achieve. Substantial federal intervention was required both for smoothing the transition and for lasting prosperity. The same can also be said of the USCC and the NAM, whose members championed conversely a greater role for private enterprise and a shrinking of federal economic activity after the war. The attainment of a consensus for the CED was more problematic. Though it had been created to defend the interests of the ‘private’ sector against those of the public authorities (supposedly defended by the TCF and the NPA), in launching a comprehensive and highly scientific research programme that boasted members ‘with widely varying points of view’ seeking ‘the maximum possible area of agreement’,58 the CED was soon compelled – in the face of overwhelming empirical data – to offer practicable solutions to complex economic problems not served by simplistic appeals to the worthiness of private enterprise. This forced the CED to become involved in a punishing scurry back-and-forth across the uncharted ideological hinterland that existed between the two poles of the private–public debate to assume, what was for some, an uncomfortable centre ground which leaned in the direction of both liberals and conservatives. This journey towards ‘moderation’ began almost as soon as the organization gathered its first research findings over the major post-war questions. The debate about the role of government in the post-war economy first emerged over the most consuming issue of the research division in its early deliberations: the termination of war contracts. Even by 1943, many businesses had government contracts cancelled with no compensatory mechanism in place, and there was fear of the creation of ‘ghost towns’.59 The consensus within the CED was that the termination

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of government contracts should not be undertaken ad hoc but be part of a sensible, coordinated strategy by the administration to avoid needless unemployment. The new organization was also given an early invitation to inform government policy over this pressing issue. Hoffman was asked by the War Department, the government body charged with dispensing contracts, to head a special war contracts sub-committee, giving the CED a unique edge in driving home the businessman’s point of view. Precisely which contracts should be finished and which should be continued in another guise was not agreed, but during a debate of the issue in March 1943 two extremes of the argument were presented by the heavyweight figures of Batt and Taylor. As vice chairman of the WPB, NPA trustee and former president of the BAC, Batt leaned heavily towards support for continuing war contracts ‘in substantial volume’ to ‘maintain a militarily strong nation’. Taylor, undersecretary of state for commerce, argued the opposite: ‘The worst stupidity would be to manufacture war goods one day beyond the end of the war.’60 The existence of such irreconcilable views did not bode well for establishing a consensus among the CED leadership. It was decided to arrange some case studies to test these theories, and to invite James Cleary, who had been put in charge of studying the war contract termination problem for the War Department, to address a joint session of the research committee and advisory board. Cleary spoke of official wariness about compensation claims from business (the risk to government was nearly $500 million), which would weigh against the ‘rapid’ ending of contracts after the war. Hoffman, on the other hand, was dubious about the War Department, which he felt suffered from ‘widespread complacency’.61 When it appeared in October 1943, Postwar Employment and the Settlement of Terminated War Contracts closely matched the arguments of conservatives in Congress that war contracts should be ended fast and generously.62 As the CED’s first publication, members were pleased that their offering was in tune with government thinking. Trustee Thomas McCabe thought the pamphlet ‘comes nearer to what the Government is likely to adopt than any other program that has been published’. Likewise, John F. Fennelly, partner of the Chicago brokerage firm Glore, Forgan and Company, former employee of the WPB and executive director of the CED since May 1943, believed ‘there is a good likelihood the final action of the Government will be closely in line with our own recommendations’.63 In this first engagement, the conservative voices in the CED – and the Commerce Department  – held sway against the ‘liberal’ sounding tones of Batt. The voices of moderation were more influential in the second test of the freemarket credentials of the CED that came in September 1943 over the issue of removing (demobilizing) wartime controls which had been studied by Professor John M. Clark. In his report, Clark, a former adviser to the National Recovery Administration, the NRPB and the OPA, made no firm recommendations for complete removal, as advocated by conservatives, or partial removal, only that any controls imposed after the war would not be the same as any that existed before the war. The question was in what areas of economic activity, in order to achieve the CED’s core aim of high employment and productivity, should controls be retained? Flanders, who defended the ability of free enterprise to realize these goals, was sharply corrected by Hoffman and Ruml for not qualifying his assertion that the maintenance of high levels of

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employment could be done ‘only’ through free enterprise. They were quick to point out that ‘other systems’, which was a thinly guarded reference to fascism or communism, could achieve high levels of employment, but ‘you would not then maintain a free society’. Enunciating what was slowly emerging as a CED dictum, Hoffman continued: ‘What we really want is high levels of production and employment combined with maximum individual freedom.’ Hoffman hinted that controls – and thanks to ‘pretty drastic demands from labor’ some labour controls – would be a necessity. However, he was aware of the likely unpopularity of post-war controls: ‘Any program that CED offers will have to propose orderly liquidation. The public will not stand for a program aimed directly at continuing controls. The chances are very great that mass resentment of the people will explode the system.’ Edgar O’Daniel, a USCC guest, put it more explicitly: ‘The public must definitely be sold the belief that the cost to them of temporary controls will be less than the cost of removing these controls suddenly.’ Ruml, who had just lost his job as adviser to the NRPB, suggested that the CED and the labour unions work together on a special study of wage controls in order to correct the ‘many people who think CED is working only in the interest of business itself ’. Hoffman expressed reticence for working formally with organized labour, preferring instead to liaise with other business groupings, like the NPA and the USCC, on these matters. Though still lacking in clarity, Clark’s report was general enough – he only wanted to indicate he was not suggesting a return to the controls of 1940 – for the research division in September 1943 to sanction its release. At least the report, CED hoped, would make ‘a magnificent reference work for use by policy-makers. It will help them to avoid adopting any amateurish, half-cocked projects.’64 But disagreement over Clark’s findings was enough to merit the release of a CED policy statement on wartime controls alongside Clark’s study. Controls, whether of prices or manpower, were believed by the research division to be necessary for business to adapt in the immediate transition period.65 The first draft statement, written by John Fennelly in conjunction with Ray Rubicam (of advertising firm Young and Rubicam), went before the research division in July 1944, but the more the issue was debated the more remote became the possibility of a consensus being reached. Again, the main contention centred on the extent to which controls would be allowed to persist after the wartime emergency. Ruml was alone in consistently arguing the case for the permanent retention of certain controls, and was supported this time by Chester Davis who thought ‘the prospect of a stampede to break down all controls is the greater danger’ than keeping some of them. Hoffman, keen as ever to ensure the CED remained non-partisan and balanced, achieved agreement to a posture whereby the CED declare that controls be treated on their individual merit rather than push for their complete removal or partial retention.66 By the time that the final draft statement of the CED policy on ‘Postwar Employment and the Removal of Wartime Controls’ was completed on 1 September 1944, the issue of wartime controls was heating up in Washington between the new head of the WPB, Julius A. Krug, who wanted swift removal and the director of the OPA, Chester C. Bowles, who favoured a more gradual approach. The moderate Krug was unable to resist the conservative pressure to abandon controls despite some fierce resistance within the WPB.67 The CED draft statement was circulated to members of the CED

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but also to Krug, Bowles and General Lucius Clay. Fennelly received ‘constructive comments’ from the WPB and Clay, whereas Bowles ‘sent a long letter bringing out a very different point of view from what we have so far considered’. Fennelly did not elaborate what this point of view was, but he was roundly criticized by the division for producing a statement which sought too heavily ‘public acceptance’ by admonishing wartime controls and, in the words of USCC guest Emerson Schmidt, suggested ‘too much acquiescence in mob psychology’.68 It was, however, noted that public attitudes towards controls were not always negative, and that animosity had been tempered by ‘patriotic duty’. Ruml suggested rewriting the statement completely.69 The letter from Chester Bowles was later read out. No details were recorded, but it appeared that Bowles favoured a return to 1942 production levels, which Hoffman questioned due to the practicalities of adequately controlling production and prices during a period of great complexity, with supply shortages, a shifting workforce and ruthless competition. Hoffman’s worry was that prices would rise leading to pressure for higher wages, causing him to warn prophetically: ‘The great issue before the United States is going to be how to avoid civil war on the labor front. The answer to this will be for all parties concerned to foster and promote a high aggregate “take-home” pay.’ Page offered some reassurance to the troubled minds of the research division: ‘This may interest you. Within labor circles there are many today who are strongly sympathetic to the idea of foregoing further wage-rate increases; provided they could get some valid assurance that the price level would not rise. This is another point you should keep in mind.’70 It was April 1945 before the CED statement Postwar Employment and the Removal of Wartime Controls appeared as an accompaniment to Clark’s substantive report of January 1945.71 The statement agreed on the principle that controls should be removed as quickly as possible, and sided with Krug and the conservatives that all controls be rescinded within six months of the end of hostilities. This was especially the case for controls over production. On price controls, however, the CED echoed a major anxiety of business regarding the threat of inflation and leaned towards Bowles and the liberals in supporting a ‘middle way’ proposal of retention of certain price controls beyond the six-month cut-off if they were ‘plainly needed to hold inflation in check for the remainder of the transition period’.72 Over controls, the CED had crafted a position which combined elements of conservative and liberal policy – not unlike like that reached on this issue by the NPA, the TCF, and the late NRPB – that was against the immediate, unequivocal removal of all controls, that recognized the role of government and the involvement of labour, and downplayed the self-regulating capacity of the free market. In reaching this position the CED obtained advice from both the NPA and the USCC. The third major topic that exercised the private–public prejudices of the CED was how to deal with the ‘liquidation’ of war production. Originally begun by Herbert Swan (who resigned early in 1943), the project was resumed by A. D. H. Kaplan from the University of Denver. More importantly, Kaplan was assisted by NPA trustee Robert R. Nathan, who was then chairman of the Planning Committee of the WPB, and Albert T. Lauterbach, of the Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton, who had earlier written on the economic relevance to the United States of Britain in the NESPA’s Plan Age. The significance of this issue was in how the CED leadership weighed the liberal-leaning

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proposals of the Kaplan team against conservative opinion in Congress. In October 1943 the findings of Kaplan and his team were discussed by the research division. The analysts looked at both military and industrial demobilization with the objective being the revival of the civilian economy. One hundred and fifty government agencies were already being asked by the Bureau of the Budget to report their demobilization plans. The tenor of their report was highly optimistic of the country’s chances of avoiding a post-war recession. ‘The most likely prospect’, Kaplan deduced, ‘is that there will be a real need to control an extraordinarily heavy consumer demand. … The real problem in the transition period will be one of obtaining economic balance; not of combating general stagnation.’ However, the trio warned of ‘major shifts’ in employment in the first two years of the transition that public authorities had to be made aware of and convinced of its ‘temporary’ nature. Hence Kaplan asked for realism when the CED called for ‘full employment’ after the war: it may come, but not right away. In addition, Kaplan, presaging what would become a major component of US foreign economic policy, described another factor that might prove ‘highly significant’. This was the extent of ‘foreign rehabilitation’ – namely overseas aid – to which the United States might commit itself after the war: ‘If the urgent needs of nations abroad are going to call on us heavily for supplies which would otherwise become large surpluses, this may go a long way towards solving some of our problems.’ The research division reinforced the significance of the international dimension and asked Kaplan to devote a separate section to it in his report.73 The main problem with this examination was the gridlock it caused over the precise level of national, state, regional and local government involvement in the reconstruction period. Flanders, in his capacity as chairman, brought the lengthy debate to an end by reminding members: ‘It is impossible for any of us to over-emphasize the importance of stressing the broad perspective. I am reminded over and over again that it is vital for CED to keep hammering on our main objectives.’ As Kaplan underlined: ‘A very broad, generalized approach is the best we have a right to hope for here.’74 The group also voiced its frustration with what was a critical weakness affecting the entire post-war planning community: finding answers based on the unavoidably high level of speculation required of so many studies of this type. The issue of timescales, for instance, was crucial. Nathan was working on the assumption, based upon his personal contacts, in which the European war would be over by the summer of 1944. Predictions of future military involvement were also necessary, but naturally hard to be precise about.75 Talk about ending war production was re-energized by a series of congressional hearings that took place at the end of 1943. What emerged was a flurry of legislative proposals to create numerous agencies for dealing with different phases of the slowdown. This was what Kaplan feared the most: ‘In my judgement it is very dangerous to set up in advance specific agencies before the blueprint for a general over-all agency has been established. … If a series of uncoordinated separate authorities are established the country is going to have trouble.’ Kaplan, in common with demands by the NPA and the TCF, wanted the CED to put its weight behind the formation of a central policy-forming federal agency dedicated to the planned liquidation of war production. But the research committee would have none of it. Such an intervention in the legislative process might have dangerously compromised the

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political neutrality of the CED and alienated some of the ‘vested interests’ embroiled in the legislative skirmish. Fennelly was ‘strongly opposed’ to CED involvement, and Benton doubted that the CED ‘has any business attempting to deal with a situation of this kind’.76 Kaplan, the expert the CED had specially commissioned to investigate the problem, left the meeting empty-handed. The subject was clearly too controversial and politically loaded to merit the gentle stroke of expert leadership that the CED was attempting to cultivate as its guiding mantra in these early months. In February 1944 the matter of dealing with war production had developed into a hot political issue between congressional conservatives and the administration over control of the conversion. Conservatives wanted military production stopped immediately after the war with the best facilities sold cheaply to the private sector (especially small businesses) and the remainder scrapped. Kaplan believed this controversy had ramifications for the entire strategy of national post-war planning that the CED simply could not ignore. Speaking of his recommendations, Kaplan explained the background to government efforts to resolve post-war issues of this kind, in particular the ‘Baruch Committee’ formed on 6 November 1943.77 Bernard M. Baruch, who led the country’s mobilization during the First World War, assisted by John M. Hancock (both sympathetic to the CED),78 issued a ‘Report on War and Post-War Adjustment Policies’ to the Office of War Management on 19 February 1944. According to an analysis by the NPA, Baruch was ‘Convinced that there is no need for a post-war depression, the authors believe that “handled with competence, our adjustment, after the war is won, should be an adventure in prosperity”.’79 For Kaplan, the ‘strategic reason’ for producing the Baruch Report ‘was so that the Administration might avoid losing the ball to Congress’. The report was, in Kaplan’s estimation, little more than ‘an accumulation of earlier suggestions by Committees from major Government agencies’. Kaplan insisted that the Baruch Report was strong on recommendations for organization – it wanted to create two new government agencies – and weak on analysis of problems and policy. Wayne Taylor, however, believed the main difference between the Baruch and Congressional reports (dealt with below) was whether the task of liquidating war production was to be instigated by executive order or legislation. Anne Page of the AFL confirmed that US labour was opposed to the Baruch Report and backed a legislative route to post-war planning that allowed for labour representation. The shortcomings of the Baruch and Congressional reports, with their narrow focus on organizational questions, gave the CED a golden opportunity, Kaplan thought, to release a policy statement along the lines proposed in his own report.80 The CED took Kaplan’s advice, but not in the way he had hoped. Its policy statement Postwar Employment and the Liquidation of War Production of July 1944 backed the congressional conservatives in calling for the ‘immediate’ liquidation of production no longer needed in the war effort or required for post-war recovery and worthwhile plant sold at prices ‘within the reach’ of small firms.81 The fear of upsetting congressional conservatives clearly outweighed declaring support for a position which, despite Kaplan’s assurances, might be indirectly viewed as siding with the administration. The ideological yo-yo that so far typified the CED policy response was most seriously exercised in the debate over post-war tax reform. The most gruelling and meticulous of all the wartime debates of the CED, the end result was the most significant for settling

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the question over the group’s general stand on federal involvement in the economy. By 1943, the debate over post-war taxation was predicated on the assumption – commonly held among businessmen and academics of all hues – that there would be a massive rise in the national government budget after the war. This allowed for an easing of the harsh wartime tax regime and its moderation to ensure an expansion of production and employment. The underlying quest, therefore, was to seek an overall reduction in the level of taxation that would stimulate post-war business activity, especially new enterprises, and reach the additional goal of maintaining high levels of employment. The search for a viable and broadly acceptable formula that would achieve these generally agreed ends was another painful and elongated process for the CED. Debate centred on the relative flexibility of the scheme put forward, and whether it would allow for temporarily raised, or dramatically lowered, rates in the immediate transition period. Early in 1943 the research committee asked that a study of post-war taxation be undertaken by Harold Groves, professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin, Henry C. Simons of the University of Chicago and William A. Paton from the University of Michigan, with much of the writing being done by Harry Scherman.82 Groves’s approach stood on the basic principles of universality, no duplication, moderate rates and avoidance of all subsidies.83 Notwithstanding what they made of Groves’s findings, it was early agreed that the CED should issue a policy statement alongside the Groves report (as on the issue of the termination of wartime contracts) which would embody the essentials of CED thought on tax reform. But agreement, even over underlying principles, was hard to achieve. Hoffman, Benton and Fennelly preferred lowering, if not eliminating, capital gains tax as they thought it hurt employment. Benton stressed the importance for the CED in ‘designing the tax policy so that it will not encourage Government extravagance’. All agreed with the lowering of corporation tax, but Sumner Slichter, Lamont University Professor at Harvard University, was vociferous in putting the case for its complete and immediate elimination after the war.84 It was clearly a very technical and very impassioned topic that stirred deeply held prejudices among CED academics and businessmen. By October 1943 Benton conceded that over tax policy it ‘looks as though it will be too hard to get complete agreement on anything’.85 Benton was right. In response to yet another gruelling debate over the tax report by Groves the day before, on 10 January 1944 Ruml moaned: ‘These meetings are getting worse and worse. They are getting unmanageable.’ Ruml was also irritated by the comments of outsiders: ‘I certainly think that invited guests should keep still unless they are asked to speak.’86 The guests at the January meeting were Thomas Tarleau, a tax expert formerly of the Bureau of the Internal Revenue, and none other than Robert M. Gaylord, president of the NAM.87 At the next meeting of the research division in February 1944, Fennelly, who was decidedly conservative in his outlook, produced a draft statement on tax reform for quick dispatch by the CED which he admitted had proved ‘very unpopular’ among those who had read it. In the debate that ensued, Harold B. Myers, economist and staff member of the research advisory board, uttered bluntly: ‘As the statement stands, it gives erroneously and unnecessarily the impression of being a rich man’s program.’ And Benton, of the same draft, said the statement ‘sounds like a reactionary NAM program’. Only Folsom and Sidney J. Weinberg, a

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partner of Goldman, Sachs and Co., openly declared their support for Fennelly’s effort. In an attempt to rescue the debate and bring it back to a recognition of why the CED was taking a stand on tax reform in the first place, Taylor and Hoffman urged a more philosophical slant to the statement which echoed the CED mantra of high production and employment. Flanders believed the statement should be ruthlessly focused upon its target audience, namely Congress, and tellingly interjected: ‘It is not important to sell either the liberals or the businessmen. We must sell those who make the laws and whose opinions carry weight with them.’88 With no progress on a statement, the CED was forced by the pressures of the legislative calendar in Congress and by the demand to provide a clear lead for local activists to move towards publication of the Groves report, which was sent to publishers McGraw-Hill in March 1944. Any statement by the CED would be released simultaneously with the Groves report: to release it before might have exposed CED to ‘the reaction of the hostile critics’.89 Having failed to settle the matter after long deliberation in April, Harry W. Scherman, president of the Book-of-the-Month Club and member of the research advisory board, was asked to prepare a version of the policy statement on taxation for the division’s consideration in May along with Fennelly’s revised effort. However, opinion was still divided. The statement by Scherman was criticized for being ‘too obviously an effort to “sell” the program’, while that written by Fennelly was ‘not as readable and interesting as it should be’.90 The division agreed, after a convoluted procedure of motions proposed, seconded and voted upon for almost every aspect of the statement, that a single document based upon an amalgam of the two versions – but mainly that of Scherman – be compiled with the application of additional expert scrutiny by Ralph Young, head of the University of Pennsylvania Department of Economics and member of the research advisory board.91 The Scherman-Young statement on tax policy was placed before two meetings of the research committee specially put aside to finalize this issue. At the first, held on 7 June 1944, the main area of contention was the precise level of national income required to sustain what the CED had agreed was the nation’s post-war employment target of fifty-five million. Ruml argued against the assumptions of Scherman and Flanders that a figure of $120 billion (at 1943 prices) would be adequate and not lead to unacceptably high levels of unemployment in the region, he estimated, of six to seven millions. Ruml was adamant, and quite stubborn, that $140 billion was a more realistic estimate of what fifty-five million workers could produce. This also allowed for a federal budget in the range of $16–18 billion. These calculations were predicated on the continuation, but not increase, of government debt ‘over a period of years’.92 Ruml failed to convince, and the theme was continued at the second special meeting on 20 June. The research committee had before it two alternative propositions regarding the ‘Advantages and Disadvantages of Setting a Rate Structure that will Balance the Budget’ at $120 billion or at $140 billion. Ruml was alone in pressing the case for the higher figure, as any lower and tax rates would become more severe to supply a federal budget that would have to cope with the larger numbers of unemployed. Hoffman voiced optimism that unemployment would not be inordinately high at an initial national income of $120 billion that would build to $140 billion over time. He was confident that there was enough ‘slack’ in the economy to handle a steady

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increase, and was even willing to compromise the ‘Holy Grail’ figure of fifty-five million employed to a lesser fifty-three million in order not to appear too idealistic. Hoffman was anxious that local CED supporters might ‘get the idea that we are an optimistic group of starry eyed dreamers’.93 Despite Ruml’s objections, the lower figure was more agreeable to the research committee, but the group adjourned and pushed a decision back to a meeting of the research division on 14 July 1944. Production of Groves’ preliminary report had nonetheless continued, and was published in June with the heading Production, Jobs and Taxes under his own name.94 Still, the research division was again unable to agree a statement when it met on 14 July, and it was left to an executive session of the research committee the next day to bring the protracted debate on CED’s tax policy statement finally to a close.95 In early August 1944 the CED released A Postwar Federal Tax Plan for High Employment, its first major policy statement, which proposed tax reforms based on a lessening of excise and business taxes and a graduated income tax that in all would be enough, they believed, once full employment and production was met, to reduce the national debt. In the end, the CED position on tax reform was less pro-business than many in the CED expected, and, thanks to Ruml’s corresponding involvement in writing the NPA position on tax policy, was less pro-business than the NPA statement on the same topic released a month earlier (dealt with later in chapter). However, disagreements over precise figures aside, the CED policy statement on taxation, which was fully endorsed by the BAC as an ‘excellent document’,96 accepted a fundamental principle: that a balanced budget must not be sought at the expense of maintaining maximum employment and production. In essence, the CED was advocating, if necessary, a form of Keynesian ‘compensatory spending’ to ensure economic stability.97 As these early struggles to achieve consensus over the main post-war questions revealed, the CED was in desperate need to establish what it actually stood for. On every major question about the post-war economy unanimity, let alone clarity, was difficult to achieve, as evidenced by the wide-ranging opinions on display. Most manuscripts went through two to eight drafts before publication. A consensus was nonetheless taking shape in the organization around weak-state assumptions about the role of government in managing the transition – over terminating contracts, liquidating production and tax policy – which assumed the major source of the fiftyfive million jobs required to maintain prosperity after the war would be the private and not the public sector. As Hoffman told the BAC in November 1944, public works could only provide two million jobs and it was ‘the general feeling’ that reliance on public works ‘is a dangerous panacea’.98 In order to move beyond being more than a debating house – a bridge the TCF had already crossed – and fulfil its remit on policy advocacy, the CED was compelled to make some hard decisions over where it stood on the major questions about the United States in the post-war world, questions which often evaded definitive answers from scientific inquiry and were being increasingly contested in the political as well as the theoretical domain, whether in the administration, in Congress or in small-town America. The vacillating between liberal and conservative positions was an inevitable and essential process in the achievement of a viable middle ground that was satisfactory to the assortment of liberals, moderates and conservatives ranked across the CED leadership. Commerce Secretary Jones may have been clear about

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the purpose of the organization he created, but not so the CED. From its inception there had been public disquiet about the new organization’s role and confusion over its political loyalties. The CED leadership was not widely known, and on the ground CED activists were most commonly ‘conservatives’ (partly due to the local prominence of the USCC). During 1943 the New Republic and Common Sense criticized the CED for its closeness to big business, and even some trustees including Benton objected to the over-representation of big business on its board.99 Hoffman, chosen by Jones precisely because he was not closely identified with either the New Deal or the ‘old’ business associations, had struggled from the outset to keep the CED as broad-based and inclusive as possible by avoiding doctrinaire statements. Soon after the CED was launched Hoffman felt pressure from campaigners to devise a simple set of principles that would unite its activities under an identifiable banner and which differentiated the CED from the rest. Any statement had to be palatable to subscribers, activists and businesses, large and small alike, and correct mistaken assumptions about the CED, and especially its relationship to government. It also had to reconcile the unique blend of left, right and moderate business activists, academics and officials that both constituted the support-base and populated the leading echelons of the CED. Here the dual endeavour at the heart of the CED project – to provide an alternative vehicle for the defence of private sector interests after the war and to bring together leading businessmen with the top academic minds in a research-led, intellectual environment – was most directly tackled. This was a delicate undertaking, as Benton discovered when he embarked on the task to more precisely define the CED’s aims and objectives at the same time the major debates about policy were taking place. Benton struggled even to find a suitable title, settling initially on the clumsy ‘Declaration of Faith’. When his first draft was put before the research division in March 1943, several members, including Hoffman, took immediate objection to Benton’s use of the term ‘free enterprise’ in the document. This implied that the CED was, as Slichter saw it, ‘too strongly attracted by the urge to return to laissez faire’. As Calkins made plain: ‘Private enterprise can be made to work, but laissez faire cannot.’ Hoffman preferred to stress the phrase ‘free society’ over that of free enterprise, while Lasswell, Schultz and, particularly, Slichter aimed at a ‘middle-of-the-road course’ for the CED which emphasized the fact that business had ‘the responsibility for improving the business system itself ’. Flanders offered a more measured assessment of the duties of the business community, and of the primary focus of the CED: ‘Private enterprise has done a good job in this country on all but one count. The only place where it has fallen down is in the tendency to develop priodic [sic] unemployment. Otherwise the services offered through private enterprise are unparalleled and unmatchable in government.’ The group agreed with Hoffman that any declaration was premature as the CED had not yet established firmly enough in the public mind its focus on the creation of jobs: ‘Can we safely at this time extend our public statement beyond this specific goal?’100 In May 1943 the ‘Declaration’, renamed ‘Articles of Faith’, was again discussed by the research division. This time Benton was doubtful that his latest draft would get passed the trustees. One trustee in particular, Leonard Read, disagreed ‘violently’ with Benton’s latest effort. Once more, the sticking point was the degree of prominence given to the

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virtues of private enterprise over those of government. Slichter simply asked: ‘Don’t we take a middle position to the effect that private enterprise can do the job if government does its part?’ Gardiner Means, quoting Chester Davies, argued that the CED ‘must sooner or later take issue with those who merely think that private enterprise should be left alone’.101 All this equivocation about the CED’s attitude towards free enterprise and talk of ‘middle ground’ stirred the group’s creator to make it clear what he believed should be its main focus. In an address to the board of trustees in June 1943, Secretary for Commerce Jones stated: ‘I think we ought to be particularly careful to see to it that the Committee and all of its representatives stay right in the one groove of providing more jobs in private business after the war.’102 Benton returned to the drawing board, and in July 1943 put another draft of ‘Articles’ to the research division. Again, the primary concern among members was the respective emphasis to be placed upon the duties and responsibilities of private enterprise and those of government. Slichter was quick to draw attention to this critical point: I should like to raise a fundamental question here regarding the essence of the CED faith. … What is there that is really distinctive about CED? Isn’t the distinctive feature the belief that there must be some way by which millions of businessmen can assume responsibility for providing employment? The distinctive element is not the belief in private enterprise, but the belief in responsibility for business. … CED would do well to underline the fact they exist.

Lasswell talked of the ‘moral consequences’ that businesses must consider, and Ruml insisted that ‘without morals there can be no real responsibility’.103 Though more impressed with Benton’s latest effort, ‘Articles’ was deferred until September when it re-emerged before the research division with the more restrained title of ‘Statement of Principles’. Benton confided that he had shown this version to Joyce O’Hara of the USCC, who was most enthusiastic about it, and the newspaper magnate Henry Luce, who offered to publish it in Life magazine. While reservations remained, the research division recognized the time had come to stop deliberating and move to publication. But even this proved troublesome for some members. Hoffman confessed: ‘I have been the chief obstructionist. I must say the more I live with this the more my admiration for Benton grows. Generally speaking, I am allergic to credos.’ Remarkably, despite several months of deliberation, there was still strong resistance to ‘Principles’ being released as an ‘official’ document representing the position of the CED national leadership. Rather, it was suggested ‘Principles’ should be offered as a personal statement by Benton published at the request of the research committee.104 In October 1944 the ‘Principles’ finally emerged within an article for the pro-CED Fortune magazine entitled The Economics of a Free Society: A Declaration of American Business Policy.105 A ‘credo’ for the CED was born at last, and for all its trouble and delay in the making its release proved very timely for the organization (discussed in Chapter 6). As well as testing the stance of the CED towards the public–private paradigm, the complexities involved in writing the ‘Principles’ highlighted an equally perplexing contradiction at the heart of the CED mission: formulating policy options for government without appearing to be ‘political’. Members became testy about the

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wariness of businesses over the ‘political implications’ of CED’s programme, especially regarding questions which attracted ‘violent emotions’, such as taxation, free trade and tariff policy. Flanders defended the objectivity of the research committee and reminded trustees that this type of research was ‘an exceedingly delicate operation’ that invited the distrust of academia, labour, banking and businesses of all sizes. Flanders also warned that there was ‘a real possibility that some of our reports may contain results very disconcerting to some of our members. This is not only possible, but ought to be expected.’106 Benton added that trustees must prepare themselves ‘for the definite prospect of meeting severe criticisms. We are not carrying on this research program just to present both sides of the question. Our object is to present a sound basis for policy.’107 It had taken the best part of two years for the CED, with still-lingering sensitivities, to grope its way towards establishing an identity. Though it still baulked at commenting on issues that appeared too ‘political’, such as the liquidation of war production, and favoured detailed deliberation over quick-fire announcements, its first policy statements and Benton’s ‘Principles’ pointed to a ‘middle-ground’ between opposing ‘big government’ and free-market solutions. In arriving at this destination the CED had become gradually more inclusive, trying to embrace business concerns both big and small (the NAM and USCC were already regulars) as well as (after October 1943) inviting representatives of the CIO and the AFL to research committee meetings.108 Even though direct contact with other planning groups was absent, significant members of the BAC and the NPA supplied research input. On labour matters Hoffman favoured (though no documentary evidence can be found that he did) contact with the NPA. In the main, it was the commitment to scientific ‘objectivity’ and the increasing urgency of finding concrete solutions that drove the CED towards accepting a larger measure of government involvement in its proposals for the immediate post-war period than conservatives in the NAM and the USCC were then advocating, so much so that the early proposals of the CED on taxation, and to a lesser extent, on ending wartime controls, closely resembled those of the NPA and the TCF. Conversely, on the termination of war contracts and the liquidation of war production the CED lined up with the conservatives. What is more, growing numbers of business leaders, at first suspicious, began to warm to this new moderate grouping. An article in the conservative Newsweek of 12 April 1943, which also showcased the work of the NAM, USCC and the NPA, generously characterized the CED as having ‘undertaken the task of encouraging and acting as clearing house for all industrial ideas relating to peacetime reconstruction’.109 The CFR approached Benton about having a CED member sit in on its meetings about monopoly and ‘write a book on the subject’.110 In fact, such was the speed of its expansion that by April 1943 the CED’s financial requirements for the year had swelled from an estimated $340,000 to nearer $500,000, with an expectation that one million dollars would be needed for the period 1944 to 1945, considerably more than the other post-war planners. The CED relied entirely upon business donations, requests for which began in earnest in August 1942 with a mail-shot to 903 companies throughout the United States. By the time the CED was formed, eightyfour ‘contributors’ were on the books. However, its district organization was growing

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so rapidly in some areas that it was ‘in danger of out-running the ability of CED to produce and supply helpful material’.111 The CED was also becoming noticed in Washington, if discreetly. In June 1943 CED leaders were invited to tell Congress about their activities,112 and at the end of 1943 the CED was approached to staff a new congressional committee on post-war planning. Formed in January 1944, the Special Committee on Post-War Economic Policy and Planning of the House of Representatives was chaired by conservative Southern Democrat Congressman William M. Colmer (Mississippi), and was composed of ten Democrats and eight Republicans.113 The parallel Senate Committee was staffed by the Brookings Institution and headed by another conservative Southern Democrat, Senator Walter F. George (Georgia), who had been instrumental in closing down the NRPB.114 The job of director of the ‘Colmer Committee’ fell to none other than Marion Folsom, chair of the field development committee of the CED, with a team of two economic advisers, Kaplan (CED) and G. C. Gamble.115 By May 1944 the BAC reported that Folsom had ‘won the complete confidence of all Committee members’ and was performing an ‘outstanding service’ for ‘the future of free enterprise’.116 The CED backing of congressional conservatives on the issue of liquidating war production no doubt helped cement their relationship. At the White House, in August 1944 Jones forwarded the first four CED reports to Roosevelt. Given his earlier negative response to Jones’ business initiative, it was not surprising that Roosevelt, deep in election mode and daily assailed by political opponents, asked James Byrnes, his new secretary of state: ‘What is this all about and what do I do next?’ A bland presidential response to Jones was sent some days later that noted ‘I am very glad to have these publications which you so thoughtfully sent me. The fine work done by the CED is much appreciated.’117 Although Roosevelt maintained his customary distance from the post-war business planners, other corners of the administration were taking a direct interest in the CED. Nelson B. Rockefeller, government specialist in inter-American affairs and CED trustee, based his entire South American operations on the CED model. Rockefeller’s Inter-American Development Commission had identical membership to that of the CED’s Inter-American Committee formed in December 1942 to ‘collaborate’ with the commission given their ‘close parallel objectives’.118 This direct intermeshing of the CED with a government initiative clearly irked some trustees. Indeed it would be difficult to argue that there was any distinction in their activities, despite assurances from Hoffman and Benton that the Inter-American Committee received no government money and acted ‘purely as a liaison committee’ for the CED.119 CED literature was translated into Spanish and Portuguese for use by the commission, and the chairman of both bodies, Eric Johnston, head of the USCC and CED trustee, went on a trip through South America meeting local business leaders.120 By the end of 1944 the CED was fully engaged in the main issues of the postwar transition. It had issued five reports, expanded its research committee from ten to fifteen members and by November 1944 was dealing with its highest load of nine manuscripts.121 The CED also boasted a considerable national presence. Furthermore, thanks to bruising turf wars on the ground and the inclusion of liberal influences on the research programme, the CED had begun to shape its identity as somewhere in between the ‘old guard’ business groups of the left and the right. After long and arduous

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debate, especially over its tax plan, the CED had established its basic stance regarding federal involvement in the marketplace, which importantly drew the organization into closer proximity to business planners in the NPA and the TCF who were similarly being forced to revisit – even moderate – their positions on the public–private ‘balance’ in 1944. The rightward shift in US politics smoothed the entry of the CED onto the planning scene and posed a definite challenge to the NPA and the TCF over control of the post-war discussion, a tussle which showed no signs of abating as the end of the war came into view. As one CED operative noted, it was difficult getting unity on the ground ‘because there were so many different groups who wanted to take the lead’.122

The TCF revisits its principles The trend to conservatism in the United States posed a different set of issues for the liberal TCF. It tested the group’s commitment to a ‘visionary’ approach, as some of its leaders voiced continuing discomfort over their association with the New Dealinspired ruminations of Stuart Chase, a lightning rod for conservative rage. In his defence, the TCF was obliged to accent its support of private enterprise in its post-war plans. There was also mounting opposition to the widening net of activities sponsored by Clark designed to elevate the profile of the organization. The TCF also stressed more heavily its devotion to ‘impartiality’ by refining and updating its scientific research and boosting its major projects. These responses were subtle, but proved consequential for the months that followed. The mounting assertiveness of conservative forces in the United States at the end of 1942 soon registered an impact on the TCF, an organization traditionally highly sensitive to accusations of political partiality. It forced an uncomfortable discussion about the future of its relationship with its most successful venture to date. The TCF entered 1943 enjoying the highest public profile in its history, but recognized that much of that profile was owed to the populist writer Chase, a decision the TCF was once again beginning to question. The reputation of the TCF as a scientific research organization had taken some ‘damage’, as Clark put it, due to its close association with the musings of Chase, especially regarding his denunciations of private enterprise. The early decision by Clark and Berle to bury any misgivings the trustees had about the content and back the Chase books ‘with a shout’, led to the understandable assumption, Clark believed, by ‘some professional economists’ that Chase was the official voice of the TCF. This close identification with Chase understandably sat uncomfortably with an organization that listed the USCC, Rotary International, the American Bar Association and the American Management Association as organizations engaged in ‘continuing and major co-operation with the Fund’. Indeed, criticism of the first Chase book compelled the TCF to issue a caveat for his even more popular second book. A news release for Goals for America of 26 October 1942 ‘emphasized the fact that Mr Chase was not advocating the overthrow of the private enterprise system but on the contrary urged the fullest use of existing business resources and institutions’. In November 1942 Clark admitted to the trustees that the editorial safeguards he had installed to check any waywardness by Chase had failed: ‘Several statements he has

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made in them do seem to be open to serious question in spite of the vigorous criticism to which the manuscripts were subjected by Dr. Dewhurst before their publication.’ Indeed, according to Clark, it could have been worse. ‘The Fund’ Clark added defensively, ‘owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. Dewhurst for the removal of a good many questionable statements that did not appear in print’. It appeared the TCF had taken quite a gamble in deviating from its tradition when it put all its impartial ‘eggs’ into the populist Chase ‘basket’ in its quest for leadership in the national debate over postwar planning. Undeterred by this negative press, Clark stood by the Chase approach but offered nervous trustees a plan to ‘strengthen the Fund’s position’ and introduce some balance with the inclusion of the ‘constructive comments of three economists of differing points of view’ as an appendix to the next Chase volume.123 Not surprisingly the third Chase volume, initially called ‘The Dollar Dilemma’, was closely monitored by the TCF. Before he had even started writing, Chase discussed an outline of the issues he wanted to raise with Berle and the TCF leadership, as well as some highly placed government advisers outside the TCF like Milo Perkins, executive officer on the Economic Defense Board (known to the NPA), and Keynesian economist Marriner Eccles, chairman of the Federal Reserve (also consulted by the CED). The book was intended to contain, as agreed with the trustees, an appendix in the form of a discussion by a panel of three economists representing ‘classical’, ‘conservative’ and ‘radical’ viewpoints. This was in order to clarify the TCF’s motive in promoting the series as one intended to ‘crystallize thought and to provoke discussion, rather than to advance any particular doctrine or program’.124 However, this was not enough for some trustees. At their meeting in December 1942, the trustees discussed ‘at some length’ the relationship of Chase to the TCF. William I. Myers, of Cornell University and recently appointed member of the CED research advisory board, carried the meeting with his suggestion of writing a separate book at the conclusion of the When the War Ends series that would comment on all the Chase volumes. It was agreed that TCF members submit draft comments on the third Chase book, and claim the expenses for so doing, for possible release with the final manuscript. It is unknown whether any were published because none, in the end, were sent.125 The attention directed at Chase was in some contrast to that awarded to Galloway, whose message, though less colourful, was very similar to that offered by the New Dealer. Galloway was not inclined to chide or otherwise present private enterprise as negatively as Chase. In his second updated edition of Postwar Planning in the United States: An Organizational Directory (the first TCF publication of 1943), Galloway mused that ‘there will be no return to normalcy after this war’ and that ‘planned economy is the twentieth century concept destined to replace nineteenth century liberalism. The postwar American economy will be a mixed one in which private enterprise will be preserved as the largest single component, but it will be subject to certain minimum social standards and accompanied by larger doses of public ownership and management.’126 The differences that some in the TCF had with Chase were therefore less to do with sentiment than with presentation and packaging. As long as the ‘wilder’ musings of Chase could be controlled, trustees were content to ride this clearly popular train. Until its final release on 29 November 1943, Where’s the Money Coming From? (formerly ‘ The Dollar Dilemma’)127 was ‘subject to careful

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scrutiny by the Fund and several outside critics’ throughout the year which led to further ‘important modifications’. The fourth Chase book, provisionally titled ‘Farmer, Worker, Businessman: Their Place in Postwar America’, had to be ‘completely revised … in accordance with fundamental criticisms and suggestions’ from the TCF during 1944. Despite comments from moderate Beardsley Ruml (NPA and CED) that the manuscript was ‘exciting and significant’,128 the trio of Clark, Dewhurst and George W. Stocking, professor of economics and an expert on monopoly at the University of Texas, wanted the author to emphasize the dangers of political and economic ‘monopoly groups’ (it was eventually released as Democracy Under Pressure in January 1945).129 The TCF exercised closer scrutiny of Chase’s output, but he was still a fairly loose cannon. Clark complained when Chase neglected to reference the TCF when he wrote about his book series in Harper’s magazine, hoping the author would ‘correct the injustice which has been done to the Fund’.130 And though his power to stir debate was, after all, one of the chief reasons the TCF singled out Chase, the task of providing a reasoned interpretation of his arguments was often left to his paymasters. An example of this problem occurred in January 1944 after the New York Times printed a critical editorial of Where’s the Money Coming From? Clark was moved to write a complaint to The Times – a paper he once edited – over its ‘distortions’ of Chase’s position, which Clark wanted ‘prominent conservatives outside of the Fund organization [to] sign and send in’ to the newspaper. Clark wished to clarify that Chase did not argue that government spending could ‘cure all ills’, but that The Times headline should have read: ‘ “Mr. Chase Endorses Free Enterprise: Opposes Government Spending Except When Private Business Fails” ’.131 Indirect pressure from the revival of conservatism not only forced a questioning of the Chase-TCF union, but also a compulsion to reinforce the TCF’s devotion to impartial, scientifically objective research. This took place in a critical re-examination of ‘A Postwar Budget for America’, the second component of the TCF’s main post-war research programme alongside ‘Needs and Resources’. For six months the TCF had searched for the right person to direct this assignment, a task that proved more difficult than anticipated. The initial list of candidates, which had been intensely deliberated, were unavailable due to war commitments, so preparatory work on the first part of the project, ‘Needs and Resources’, was begun by the reliable Dewhurst and Galloway with an eye to obtaining a director for the second part on financial problems at a later date.132 By the December 1942 meeting of trustees, which coincidentally took place just one day after the inaugural meeting of the CED research division, only John M. Clark, professor of economics at Columbia University and just-appointed lead researcher for a CED project on the demobilization of wartime controls, had shown interest in becoming director of the survey on the basis that a ‘satisfactory understanding’ was reached over the ‘scope and setup’ of the survey.133 Yet the scope and set-up of ‘A Postwar Budget for America’ was far from understood by the TCF. Thanks to another radical intervention by Berle at the December meeting, the TCF was forced to reconsider the parameters for its major survey on post-war problems. In an obvious betrayal of his capacity as a top official in the State Department, and perhaps with an eye on recent developments in the Commerce Department, Berle’s challenge was that the TCF should broaden the

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scope of its research and, more controversially, list policy options for the government. The new director of the survey, Berle hoped, should make a report within a year on ‘the policies which the government and private financial interests should follow to meet the problem of the postwar period’, which for him included a far more expansive list than the TCF had envisaged such as demobilization, reconversion, federal debt and fullemployment production. Even Clark, whose enthusiasm for a progressive approach had so far fuelled much of the recent change in the way the organization worked, found Berle’s contentious submission hard to swallow. After all, the TCF baulked at being too closely associated with the government. An ‘extended discussion’ ensued which was postponed due to the ‘lack of certainty as to the nature of the proposed project’, leaving a ‘committee’ of trustees – and significantly not the executive committee – to consider the project with John M. Clark and report back to the board.134 In a clear illustration of how highly the organization cherished exactitude and impartiality, it was almost a full year before the TCF found an acceptable method for conducting the survey of financial aspects of the post-war transition. After John M. Clark declined the offer (most likely because he was then working full-time for the CED),135 the executive committee asked Paul T. Homan, professor of economics at Cornell University and editor of the American Economic Review,136 to become the director of the project and organize a ‘symposium’ of 22,000 word essays from six eminent economists with a wide range of viewpoints for publication in early 1945. This was a safer tactic for the TCF than commissioning an expert to write the entire survey and run the risk of being too closely associated, as it had in the Chase series, with the author’s conclusions. In not directly supporting policy recommendations the TCF parted with Berle. But in supplying a wide range of topics his requirements were partly satisfied. For the symposium, it was intended that Homan would only write a concluding chapter that identified the issues and the areas of agreement or disagreement in the collection. The group was charged with analysing ‘the public and private financial policies required to assure a healthy functioning of the economic system to provide high levels of production and employment’. Notably, the TCF brief did not use the term full employment, although the terms ‘full’ and ‘relatively full’ appear later in the document, nor did it suggest the economists look at ways of raising the general standard of living, only that the US economy be ‘healthy’. The experts were offered a selection of broad questions put together by Dewhurst as a general guide, the majority of which concerned domestic solutions to financial problems in the postwar setting. As for the selection of contributors, Homan and Dewhurst refrained from inviting an ‘outright’ representative of the financial community (such as a private banker) and an ‘outright radical’ economist because they sought to avoid ‘doctrinaire positions’ and enlist persons ‘of the necessary technical competency experienced in the range of discussion’ the TCF wished to cover.137 There were two individuals, however, for whom Dewhurst and Homan wanted the TCF to make a ‘special effort’ to acquire. Benjamin M. Anderson, professor of economics at the University of California, Los Angeles and former economist of the Chase National Bank,138 and the Keynesian enthusiast Alvin Hansen were ‘the key men’ as they were ‘the best available spokesmen of the relatively conservative and relatively radical positions with respect to financial policy’. The remaining four contributors in

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Homan and Dewhurst’s wish list were ranked ‘more or less’ in order starting with the ‘highly conservative’ (after Anderson) to the ‘strongly reformist’ (up to Hansen). Only one of those listed was a TCF member, and another was in the CED.139 After a detailed discussion, the Homan–Dewhurst memorandum met with the overall approval of the trustees at their annual meeting in December 1943. Biddle and Lynd queried the need for so many contributors and the likelihood of greater duplication, but Dewhurst defended the need for the symposium to have three or four representatives of the ‘middle of the road’ economists as well as the extremes. There were two areas of the project, however, that the trustees wanted bolstered. The first was that, again due to an intervention from Lynd, the contributors be urged to consider the ‘practical political possibility’ of their theories being carried out and not simply their ‘theoretical validity’. The second was an informal agreement that the contributors consider ‘international nonfiscal problems’ such as cartels and tariffs in their list of outline questions.140 The gentle fine-tuning of the financial problems symposium presaged more comments from trustees about foreign economic matters. In fact, international economics was the main concern of trustees at the December 1943 annual meeting, even though Clark and the executive committee had neither mentioned the subject prior to the meeting nor tabled the item for debate. The imminent arrival of the manuscript for the fifth Chase book on the issue of foreign trade (for release in 1945) helped focus the mind of trustee Charles P. Taft, working under free-trader William Clayton at the Commerce Department, who wanted a ‘major survey’ on the topic, and Biddle’s proposition that the TCF conduct one or more surveys ‘in the whole field of foreign trade, including international cartels’ met with the ‘unanimous approval’ of the trustees. Clark agreed that a project on international cartels would be ‘one of the most important and timely ones for 1944’.141 The volume of fresh ideas for research topics was such that the trustees required two meetings to debate them. At their annual meeting in December 1943, the trustees eliminated only those projects of ‘doubtful value’ from the list, leaving discussion of the remaining ten, and any others that might be suggested in the meantime, for consideration at a special meeting in January 1944. The two projects rejected by the trustees were a broad survey of the effects of post-war ‘relief and rehabilitation’ on the US economy and a study of ‘women in postwar industry’. The latter suggestion was the most novel recorded of any planning organization during the war, and no explanation was offered for its ‘unanimous’ elimination by the trustees. Apparently, a study of women and work was needed because ‘the future of the vast number of women, who have been drawn into gainful employment during the emergency, poses a central problem in postwar reconstruction’.142 Interestingly, there was no presumption that women would be automatically obliged, or even intend, to leave the factory for the kitchen. At the special meeting of the board of trustees in January 1944, a further eight new projects were added to the existing ten held over for consideration from the December 1943 meeting. The list of projects reflected the range and complexity of economic concerns as an end to the war came closer into view, including a growing number of international topics, such as foreign economic relations. The list of topics

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was impossibly long, but trustees were anxious to focus their efforts only on projects that would see fruition before the autumn of 1944 when, as TCF treasurer Percy S. Brown, president of the Consumer Distribution Corporation asserted: ‘The machinery for conversion must be in effective operation.’ Besides, as Lynd saw it, ‘The big problems we face are beyond “facilitating conversion”’. The trustees therefore discarded issues relating to war contract termination, the disposal of government property, the demobilization of war workers, and reasons for the necessity of government subsidies, topics which continued to fascinate the NPA and the CED. Instead, the trustees chose what Dennison described as the four ‘most important’ subjects for TCF to investigate in the coming year. These were a combined survey of the monopoly problem with international business controls which had been informally approved at the trustee meeting in December 1943; a further study of taxation; government–business relations; and foreign economic relations.143 In choosing to drop issues that related to the practicalities of the conversion process, either because they were deemed too late or were of no lasting importance, the TCF set itself apart from the other post-war business planners who were much more preoccupied with providing business leadership and directly shaping government policy. The adoption instead of longer-term subjects for investigation, particularly relating to international economic problems, further reinforced the research-based ‘think-tank’ values of the organization over those of policy advocacy, always a sticking point for the TCF. Nevertheless, the TCF may have reaffirmed its principles regarding scientific research, but it continued to walk a fine line over ‘impartiality’. This was shown by the inclusion of some heavyweight government advisers to join a special committee to oversee the combined study of ‘International Cartels and Domestic Monopoly’ begun in July 1944 under the charge of George W. Stocking, professor of economics at the University of Texas, and Myron W. Watkins, professor of economics at New York University.144 The special committee also had a distinctly moderate composition. It included BAC member Donald M. Nelson, chairman of the WPB (until September 1944) and fan of the CED;145 and TCF member and CED-adviser Jacob Viner, distinguished service professor at the University of Chicago, a leading authority on international financial relations, former adviser to the League of Nations and assistant to the secretary of the Treasury. Others on the committee were Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., chairman of General Motors Corporation (BAC); J. Raymond Walsh, radio commentator, director at large, National Bureau of Economic Research and former director of Research and Education at the CIO (NPA); James M. Landis, former dean of Harvard Law School and acting chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board; Frank M. Surface, consultant to the Management of the Standard Oil Company; and NPA founder Marion Hedges.146 This latest bout of introspection left the TCF research programme broader and deeper in 1943–44. This was undertaken at the expense of releasing shorter surveys on reconversion topics at a higher volume. The only publications by the TCF in 1944 related to post-war housing and the power industry, and a third edition of Galloway’s Directory on post-war planning in the United States.147 This allowed the TCF to avoid becoming entangled in increasingly bitter rows over policy courtesy of a revitalized

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conservative opposition. In fact, the TCF made a determined effort to downplay its liberal bent and appear ‘impartial’, recruiting known moderates from the business and academic world to front its new research projects. And despite a reluctance to become too closely associated with the administration as per the Berle request, the latest survey on international cartels incorporated significant government expertise in its supervision. This practice would continue in the formation of the large surveys on international economics (next chapter). Indeed, there was an increased leaning towards foreign economic questions, courtesy of internationally minded trustees Berle, Biddle and Taft, the latter providing access to the backrooms of the State Department and its confidential ruminations on foreign policy. The turn away from overtly domesticoriented problems and towards international questions would eventually consume the bulk of the organization’s energy over the next few years and lead to a firm and sophisticated TCF commitment to promoting US interests in the new global post-war economic order. The deepening of its research programme, the cherished modus operandi of the organization, was matched by an intensification of the TCF strategy to raise its national profile. In February 1943 Clark held the first monthly meeting of his PostWar Education Group, what became the only venture of its kind in the planning community. The group was organized by Clark to facilitate the services of the TCF through meeting and cooperating with other ‘leading’ agencies of post-war planning. These included the NPA, the Foreign Policy Association, the Commission to Study the Organization of Peace, the United Services Organization and the YMCA.148 A notable exclusion was the CED, which was admittedly still new to the post-war planning scene. Outside of the NPA, the other groups listed were in no way ‘leading’ agencies in postwar planning. Hence, it was in the joining of the major groups of the TCF and the NPA that this initiative was most significant for the US post-war planning community, which heretofore had comprised a small number of forward-thinking yet fiercely independent organizations that made no effort to combine forces or pool resources beyond that of individuals holding multiple memberships. It was also perhaps the least surprising union, given that the outlook of the TCF and the NPA was after all the closest of all the business planning groups. Yet it was evident from the start that the expectations, of the TCF and the others, for the group were limited and were in no way intended to develop wider unity across the planning community. Rather the group was another expression of the desire and belief of the TCF that it was the rightful leader of post-war planning. The first product of this unique grouping was a somewhat innocuous post-war discussion manual that reached fruition in 1943 and achieved considerable success. As in the case of the Galloway reports, the manual had grown into an altogether bigger beast. What began as a 32-page pamphlet of brief outlines of the most important questions grew into a much larger work that sketched ‘the titanic changes in our economy’ that took place during 1942–43. The manual, released on 24 May 1943 as ‘Wartime Facts and Postwar Problems’, covered eleven areas for study: international relations, industry and business, transportation, finance, agriculture, labour, public works and urban redevelopment, housing, health, education, and economic security.149 At fifty cents a copy the manual sold well over 10,000 copies by the end of the year.150

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Expectations aside, the success of the manual was further evidence of the continuing grass-roots interest in post-war planning and of the thirst for knowledge about future potentialities. This was catalogued in the latest issue of Galloway’s Directory and analysed by the author in a January 1943 promotional article for his book. Though upbeat, it was a cool evaluation of the level of the nation’s post-war preparedness, which for Galloway still had a long way to go. He noted the ‘scores of public and private agencies’ carrying out research, education and action in the United States which had increased from twenty-five in June 1941, to one hundred in December 1941 and around one hundred and fifty in December 1942. Galloway estimated that of this total, thirty were governmental agencies and one hundred and twenty were private organizations working in twenty-four main areas of post-war interest. However, despite the national commitment to post-war planning being ‘beyond recall’, for Galloway it was still in the ‘formative stage’ and no more than forty agencies were doing ‘really fundamental, systematic and constructive work’. For him, the planning scene revealed ‘a host of problems and scores of agencies wrestling with them; many proposals and programs, but few clearcut blueprints or fully matured plans’. The ‘path to victory and lasting peace’, Galloway maintained, ‘will be a laborious and painful one’.151 Such assessments encouraged Clark to expand the exercise in collaboration and include even more groups, underlining the populist character of the enterprise. In January 1944 Clark sought the permission of the trustees for the group (renamed Post-War Information Exchange) to launch a monthly, four-page bulletin on the methods and materials available for organizations and individuals working ‘in the field’ to obtain a ‘wider audience’ for the fruits of the planners. Clark had thirty-two ‘leading organizations’ lined up to be associated with the bulletin and several that would regularly contribute. As a ‘collaborative’ venture it would be funded through subscriptions to avoid identification of the product with a single group. The bulletin was deemed urgent as the war neared its end, and emerged from what the exchange saw as an absence of information sharing in the planning community that might avoid duplication of effort and supply a ‘pooling’ of information and experience.152 However, several trustees expressed doubts over the effectiveness of the bulletin and the possible drain on the energies of the TCF staff by the project. McDonald had attended meetings of the exchange and thought that ‘not a great deal was accomplished’. After Clark assured them that those members who attended the exchange regularly were supportive of the idea, the trustees assented to funding the bulletin but for only half the amount Clark asked for and on the proviso that the rest was met by the other organizations in the exchange.153 The exchange experiment not only highlighted the existence of considerable enthusiasm for information about post-war planning but also the level of congestion that had arisen within the planning community. Clark’s exchange was an attempt to relieve this congestion. But Clark knew it was also a useful device for advancing the profile of the TCF. However, as the debate over the exchange revealed, there were limits to how far some in the TCF were prepared to go with Clark to promote the organization. These limits were again tested over the idea of sponsoring a TCF movie. At the end of 1942 it was suggested by Harold Sloan, director of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and TCF member, that Chase’s second book, Goals for America, would make an

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‘exceedingly good subject matter’ for a documentary film. This excited Clark, not only because the Sloan Foundation financed documentaries, but because he was also in touch with an ‘informal group’ of government officials and others interested in using documentary films ‘to describe American postwar objectives’.154 By December 1942 the idea had progressed and Sloan offered to finance and supply technical assistance for a fifteen-minute movie short. The trustees debated long and hard over this item, chiefly because it raised yet again the nature of the delicate relationship between the TCF and Chase, the public face of the organization. This was clearly still a very sore subject for some trustees who remained uncomfortable with the populist orientation of the TCF’s work and its association with some of Chase’s theories about the economy. Such was the feeling within the board that the trustees only assented to the film on the condition that Chase’s name was not featured in the documentary and that the script and the form of production was vetted by the TCF executive committee.155 By the start of 1944, the TCF was fully committed to ‘experimentation’ in motion pictures, and despite reservations about its effectiveness on public opinion or that it was a financial ‘bottomless pit’, trustees put aside $12,000 to finance it.156 In 1944 the TCF spent a ‘great deal of staff time and effort’ to develop its profile in movies as well as radio, and by the end of the year had produced a news short called ‘War Where You Live’ and a small feature entitled ‘Where Your Money Goes’. The news short was shown in twenty-five theatres in nineteen cities across the United States, and the feature film was shown in five theatres in New York City.157 The TCF tried diligently to reach the mainstream movie-going audience, having several meetings with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer about using TCF findings in its movies, and working with the government’s Commission on Motion Pictures of the American Council on Education on a pitch to Hollywood producers to make a full-length feature based on the TCF Housing Survey.158 The TCF interest in movies demonstrated the organization’s commitment to findings ways of reaching the wider public, despite its tetchiness over policy advocacy and aversion to political controversy. This was as much for the purposes of persuasion as it was for education. As Clark later explained: ‘The most important persons to reach are those whose decisions directly affect the course of events – the “control group”; but the general public is also important to reach – first because successful policies require a favorable climate of public opinion, and, second because the impact of the Fund’s findings increases with its prominence and standing’.159 And it was in the medium of radio that the TCF excelled. As mentioned, the TCF was quick to utilize the radio to project its message and fast became adept at it. Before long the TCF attracted the attention of the national radio networks and, thanks to a deal with a major broadcaster, 1943 became ‘the record year’ in the use of radio by the TCF.160 The TCF radio strategy was also another example of the willingness of the organization to collaborate with other groups to help circulate its work and its reputation. In November 1942 Lyman Bryson, director of Educational Broadcasting for CBS and Educational Adviser to the OWI, ‘expressed interest’ in using the TCF’s post-war studies as basic documentation for CBS broadcasts and for ‘educational activities’ of the OWI. Bryson wished to make a proposal to the TCF for information towards a new CBS radio feature on post-war problems.161 This initiative did not materialize, but the NBC, with whom the TCF

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enjoyed ‘always cordial relations’,162 made an offer in early 1943 after ‘some negotiations’ to merge the input of the TCF with another group to which NBC had committed, the Commission to Study the Organization of Peace, into a series of twenty-six weekly broadcasts on its Inter-American University of the Air. Entitled ‘For This We Fight’, the series of roundtable debates and audience questions ran from 5 June to 27 November 1943 for thirty minutes each Saturday evening. Split equally in two, the first batch of programmes on international affairs was organized by the commission, and the second batch on national problems by the TCF.163 Thanks to a strong effort by the NBC that included a ‘promotion kit’ of photographs, publicity information, biographies, posters and suggested advertisements, ‘For this We Fight’ opened in over 124 stations, the ‘largest hookup ever assembled for any public service program in the Company’s history’. The TCF, NBC and the commission worked hard together to build an audience well in advance of the broadcast of the series. At the suggestion of the TCF, three conferences – in New York, Washington and Chicago – were held to which ‘leading organizations interested in postwar questions’ were invited and urged to advertise the series to their members. Over 350,000 ‘descriptive folders’ were issued by the three organizations to promote the series.164 The ‘For this We Fight’ series was so successful that it was favourably compared to other more established radio programmes of the war era, such as ‘America’s Town Meeting of the Air’, the ‘Wake Up America Forum’, the ‘University of Chicago Round Table’ and the ‘People’s Platform’. Indeed, the average audience response to the series, especially the half dedicated to the TCF, was sometimes higher than for the well-known shows.165 The weight of public interest, and not all of it positive, led the NBC to add another five broadcasts to the end of the ‘For this We Fight’ series to take the subject into 1944. The first was organized entirely by the NBC to ‘give voice to some “nationalist” speakers who feel that their point of view was not adequately expressed’ in the Commission–TCF series. The second looked at the work of existing international agencies engaged in post-war planning, such as the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, formed in September 1943. The third was an account of the work undertaken by the small town of Albert Lea, Minnesota, the subject of a CED project earlier in 1943. A Christmas Day broadcast entailed a discussion between Jewish, Catholic and Protestant clerics on the ‘spiritual issues’ of peace, and the secretary of state Hull spoke about US post-war foreign policy in the final session on New Year’s Day.166 The TCF published two pamphlets, Answers for America and Financing Postwar Prosperity, containing highlights of the radio series.167 The success of its collaboration with the NBC decided the TCF on an ‘ambitious’ project to run a continuous series of radio programmes to showcase its work on the network after the war, but in December 1944 the NBC pulled out.168 Experimentation was important to the TCF. But the most successful vehicle for promoting its message remained the written word. And the When the War Ends series by Chase was proving to be the organization’s greatest publicity triumph. Sales of Where’s the Money Coming From? (1943) easily eclipsed those of Lorwin’s Postwar Plans of the United Nations, also expected to sell well, released earlier the same year.169 This fact more than any other explained why the TCF buried its reservations over the Chase association, regardless of the amount of conservative fury his writings attracted. Despite mounting discontent with the author’s liberal prescriptions, scrutiny of the

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remaining Chase volumes was even relaxed as the war came to a close, and the author was asked to ‘quicken the tempo’ of his writing ‘in light of the probable speed of world developments’.170 The trend in high sales of the Chase series continued into 1944, which saw The Road We Are Travelling top the 30,000 sale mark, a landmark achievement for a TCF publication. Standing orders for TCF publications by libraries and individuals reached nearly 3,000 in 1944, its highest total ever. Rising overseas sales in 1944 reinforced the TCF inclination to focus increasingly on global affairs. Formerly selling mainly to Canada, Britain and Australia, TCF publications now reached Brazil, Chile, India and Palestine and fuelled expectations that ‘under the existing chaotic conditions, these promising sales encourage the confidence that the Fund’s findings will have an increasing international currency and influence after the close of the war’.171 The commitment to Chase proved that the TCF still cared about promoting itself. According to Fahey, 1943 ‘had seen the greatest achievement since the Fund was organized’.172 Regular broadcasts on national radio ensured the TCF remained in the public discussion about post-war matters. The TCF was the first planning organization (pre-dating the CED–USCC partnership in Albert Lea) to sponsor official collaboration with other like-minded groups through the exchange, although traditional allegiances and prized independence limited the liaison to an informal sharing and dissemination of planning information. In this respect the gesture was more an attempt to provide ‘leadership’ than to offer genuine collaboration through joint work, itself a symbol of how highly the TCF regarded itself in the business planning community. Still, the continued success of the TCF was a testament to the persistent interest of American business in post-war problems and its openness to liberal remedies. The TCF had weathered the conservative storm, but possibly at some cost. The organization had been forced to revisit its commitment to liberal values, in discussion over the Chase series and, more importantly, over the content of its prized research programme. The TCF decided to stick with the popular writer, but the organization had substantially unplugged itself from the conversion debate and was headed in a potentially more moderate direction. In forsaking policy advocacy and concentrating on wider, longer-term issues of international economics – the ‘bigger’ questions about the country’s future – the TCF opted out of the battle for leadership of the business community over immediate problems of the transition. The TCF also made important ideological adjustments in its research programme, handing leadership of its grand new projects to corporate and academic moderates, hopefully eschewing accusations of liberal partisanship due to the Chase association by highlighting scientific balance. Furthermore, this re-emphasis on thorough investigation substantially delayed the start of major projects. Its large post-war surveys finally began to take shape at the end of 1944, but the TCF was still far from unveiling its proposals for achieving hitherto vaguely described national post-war goals of ‘full employment and productivity’.173 With the transition period just around the corner, the trustees, in succumbing to conservative jibes about Chase and how this reflected on the impartiality of the TCF, made decisions that could potentially impact on the post-war influence of the organization. At the same time, in opting to remain identified with the Chase series, the TCF risked becoming sidelined in debates about the country’s future if the drift

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towards conservatism failed to pass or, worse still, intensified. If so, the moderate ‘turn’ in the outlook of the TCF would not have been made in vain.

The NPA rises as the NRPB falls As with the TCF, the NPA entered 1943 as boldly and industriously as it had entered 1942. The NPA remained convinced that the country would only survive the postwar transition if the government, currently unresponsive, assumed the leading role. In this respect the NPA was more vocal and forthright than any other planning organization. The loss of its main sponsor, the NRPB, so close to the presumed end of the war, therefore hurt the NPA more than any other group. However, the conservative resurgence also compelled the NPA to underscore, as had the TCF, the importance of private enterprise in its post-war schemes. In this, the impact of Batt on the organization, who was also now involved with the CED, was more evident in 1943. Batt also inspired the NPA to double its effort to become the leading post-war planning organization in the country. Working under the assumption that the war in Europe would end in the summer of 1944 and that with Japan a year later,174 the NPA worked harder than ever to publicize its message and impress upon a sluggish administration the merits of post-war planning. The organization most directly affected by the fall of the NRPB outside of government was the NPA. A stepchild of the NRPB, the NPA was the foremost champion of federal leadership in post-war planning. Worse still, the loss of a major advocate for post-war planning in the capital was compounded by a congressional stipulation that the duties of the NRPB could not be transferred to another agency. Nevertheless, the NPA remained steadfast. The NPA appropriated some of the duties of its former employer, assuming greater responsibility for national planning advocacy and even looking for a new route into the White House. Significantly, this renewed energy was accompanied by a subtle shift in emphasis within the organization on the role of private capitalism in the post-war economy. This latest turn in the NPA was evident in the most significant publication of the NPA during 1943, the highly publicized release in April of its grand Declaration of Interdependence: A Joint Statement by the Business, Labor and Agriculture Committees of the NPA.175 This was a signature proclamation by the NPA, being the first unified statement on post-war planning to come from the main standing committees. It stressed that after the war ‘private enterprise, with the support of government, should be the basis for a postwar economy’. The central role of private enterprise was emphasized throughout the document, but what the NPA highlighted was the necessity for a ‘new look’ capitalism based on the collaboration of the three economic groups: ‘If our private enterprise system is to go forward, there must be a new sense of responsibility for the welfare of all the people.’176 Nevertheless, it was the message of prosperity and the underscoring of the value of private enterprise which most fascinated the nation’s press when the Declaration was circulated. In the Washington newspaper Evening Star on 6 April the NPA was quoted as stating: ‘Postwar planning should start at home, but we should be blind to exclude the world in making plans for our own future security. … The rehabilitation of

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war-torn areas, the development of backward countries and a fair share of protective policing are in our own selfish interest.’ The New York Times of 6 April 1943 in an article entitled ‘Jobs are put first in a peace agenda’ quoted this extract from the NPA document: The basis of America’s postwar economy should be private business and industry and agriculture continuing to operate as the people’s primary means for providing jobs and producing goods and services; with government performing its constitutional function of establishing the rules of the game, acting as impartial referee, and effecting fiscal policies through taxation and expenditure porbrams [sic], such as public works, that will mesh with private undertakings.

Most notably, the conservative magazine Newsweek of the 12 April 1943 responded with a complimentary article entitled ‘Business Planners Concentrate on Free Enterprise and Turn Deaf Ear to the Cries for “Normalcy” ’. The NPA (with a photograph of Batt), was listed favourably alongside three ‘conservative’ planning groups – the CED, NAM and the USCC – and was described as ‘a forum in which industrialists as individuals sit with representatives of labor and agriculture in a nationally representative planning agency’.177 The publicity it generated convinced the NPA to authorize the dissemination of ‘several hundred thousand’ copies of the Declaration in 1944.178 The government response to the latest pronouncement of the NPA was less upbeat, and revealed something of Roosevelt’s continued distance from the national debate on post-war planning, to which he was even more sensitive now that his opponents on Capitol Hill had swollen in number. On receiving a copy of the Declaration, Lauchlin Currie, White House economic adviser and NPA member, passed it to the president with some gentle and illuminating advice on how to respond: The NPA is a liberal and constructive group and has been doing excellent work. It is being a bit overshadowed by the huge organization Hoffman is building up in the Committee on [sic] Economic Development. I should like, therefore, for you to give them a few words of encouragement. In case, however, you feel that this would constitute a bothersome precedent, I am enclosing another possible draft of a letter that I might sign.

Roosevelt heeded Currie’s advice, and immediately sent the following reply to the NPA, which most likely followed closely the Currie draft:179 It is very gratifying to learn that under the auspices of the National Planning Association substantial areas of agreement on basic post-war principles have already been blocked out by such representative business, labor and agriculture groups. I should appreciate being kept informed on the further recommendations of these committees. I think the National Planning Association is to be complimented for having taken the initiative in organizing such post-war discussion groups and I wish it success in its further work.180

This transmission between Currie and Roosevelt was revealing in two ways. First, it highlighted the detachment of the president from the various planning groups, even liberals like the NPA which had been around for years and had argued in support of

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the New Deal. This distancing might have been especially marked at this time because of the identification of the NPA with the defunct NRPB. This raised questions about the extent that Roosevelt was informed about post-war planning, or even cared. Currie clearly believed Roosevelt might have easily declined sending a reply at all. Second, the remark by Currie on the CED was telling of the impact of the new organization on  the  existing community of planners. As far as Currie was concerned, the CED already threatened to ‘overshadow’ the long-standing NPA.181 Undeterred, the NPA continued to press the case for post-war planning on the White House and, it seemed, registered a breakthrough. Noting the administration’s continued lack of enthusiasm for post-war planning as a diversion from the war effort, and the termination of the ‘one government agency which worked intensively in this field’, the NPA business committee released in September 1943 a joint statement entitled Reconversion of Industry to Peace.182 The joint statement (the final report was not released until November 1943)183 was sent to Roosevelt and was charged by the NPA as being instrumental in the creation by the president soon after of a ‘post-war reconversion unit’ within the OWM.184 The NPA believed time was fast running out for making the necessary preparations for the transition, and there was an urgent need to awaken business and government to immediate post-war planning. The NPA was encouraged by the resolution put forward at the start of 1943 by Republican Senator Everett Dirksen (Illinois) that Congress set up a post-war planning body,185 but were unhappy with the government’s current ‘planning agencies’, the WPB and even the departing NRPB. They were criticized by the NPA business committee for ‘too much preaching, too little concrete programming’ as it was ‘urgent that we get to the blueprint stage’. In a discussion of the rescinding of the NRPB, the committee noted that the agency ‘had done some useful work’ but ‘had tried to do too much and had failed to accomplish what it should’. In particular, the NRPB had not worked closely enough with state and local bodies.186 Disenchantment with the NRPB, and the clear powerlessness of the WPB, damaged the hopes of liberals for effective centralization of national economic planning.187 In August 1943 Coil circulated to members a ‘Survey of Post-War Activities in Federal Agencies’ that provided a mid-war snapshot of the extent of government organization in the field and echoed the findings of Galloway’s Directory published earlier in the year for the TCF. The highly descriptive account recorded little activity and even less coordination, inter-agency working and much under-resourcing. Passing few comments, the survey noted that ‘little information’ about the post-war plans of key agencies like the State Department were forthcoming and the assorted data on post-war economics of the many units of the Commerce Department were not being engaged in practical planning. Significantly, the CED was mentioned only as a group assisting the Small Business Unit of the Commerce Department in stimulating ‘community management committees’ of local businessmen, school officials and labour groups.188 The critical state of government planning was underscored by the results of an NPA ‘reader poll’ that emerged as Public Thinking on Post-War Problems in October 1943, which revealed a clear mandate for a strong government role in the post-war economy. Despite ‘great optimism’ they would keep their present jobs (seven out of ten), roughly two-thirds of respondents doubted the ability of the private sector

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alone to meet the levels of employment needed after the war without the creation of government projects, with over half of respondents ‘confident’ that ‘cooperative national planning’ by business, agriculture, labour and government could eradicate post-war unemployment, though respondents were split over whether government or business should take the lead. The idea of a ‘Central Agency’ for the post-war economy led by government but including representatives of business, labour and agriculture was supported by 75 per cent of those polled.189 These results, coupled with the cool responses from Roosevelt, only added to the NPA’s fears about the lack of official preparation. The organization’s ninth annual meeting in December 1943 was a timely event at which to stage a very public plea for action. The meeting also provided space to trumpet the successes of the NPA to an influential audience similarly courted by other business planners, such as the dynamic new entrant, the CED. The occasion was also a telling snapshot of the wide clientele attracted to the NPA and the apparently solid level of interest in the organization, especially of government. The meeting was a deliberately grand affair in Washington, DC with invitations to over two hundred leaders in business, agriculture, labour, government and the professions to hear speeches from NPA leaders. Its staging in the capital was no coincidence, as it allowed a significant contingent from the executive and the legislature to attend the meeting, as well as a considerable number of business interests. Attendees included three senators (Joseph C. O’Mahoney, Robert A. Taft, Harry S. Truman), four congressmen (Charles M.  La  Follette, Jerry Voorhis, Gerald W. Landis, Christian A. Herter), one member of the cabinet (Paul H. Appleby, undersecretary of agriculture), two members of the Executive Office of the President and eleven heads of government departments and agencies. They included Francis Biddle, US attorney general (TCF trustee); Benjamin V. Cohen, assistant to the director and counsel, Office of Economic Stabilization; Mariner Eccles, chairman, Federal Reserve; Herbert H. Lehman, director general, United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration; Nelson Rockefeller, coordinator of Inter-American Affairs; and John Fahey, commissioner of the Federal Home Loan Bank Administration (President TCF). Notable big business representatives were Robert M. Field of the United States Steel Export Company and Claude F. Reynolds of the General Motors Corporation.190 The attendance of Leo Pasvolsky, special assistant to the secretary of state, was especially significant, as he was the chief coordinator of the government’s post-war foreign policy strategy and worked closely with the CFR which shared personnel with the main post-war business groups (though no CFR members attended the December meeting). To this gathering of the Washington elite the NPA asserted its ‘uniqueness’ and its ‘great contribution’ in framing the post-war planning debate. It also broadcast its core message: that private enterprise was central to post-war recovery, but that it was the government’s responsibility to establish a specific body to coordinate post-war planning and provide a coherent set of national policies. Of note was that none of the speakers used the fear of depression in their hyperbole about making the post-war transition. Speeches from the meeting – by Sonne, Wilson, Batt, Golden and Hedges – were afterwards circulated to 1,800 corporate leaders with a note from Batt declaring that the NPA ‘sought to look ahead to the next decade, in the course of which we

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shall learn whether this second world war will have really won anything for America’. Reiterating the core philosophy of the NPA, Batt continued that the main significance of the speeches was that they were ‘made by men who, however their first sympathies may lie with industrial management or with organized labor or with agriculture, are a unit in agreement upon the essential rightness of Free Enterprise as America’s basic motive power for the future’.191 It was in the speeches of Wilson and Batt that the leadership’s chief rationale for the NPA was most simply explained. Wilson stated: I believe we are stemming up, in this NPA organization to a period of real usefulness in helping to frame the economy of the future. … Ultimately some organization must be established to carry on this very important job that so obviously lies before us, of preparing a plan with which we will go into the post-war period. I think NPA is the kind of institution that can take these plans and, before whatever kind of an organization is finally established, sift them through a screen. Maybe it will keep us, by reason of the elements represented in NPA, from swinging too far to the right, as we feared in the 30’s that we would swing too far to the left.

To this endorsement Batt, who was in a prime position to make such an assessment as former chair of the BAC and on the research committee of the CED, added: So far as I know, there is no association, no organization in this field in this country, which combined the best resources and the best brains of labor, management, agriculture, and an association with government, and it is that unique quality which we claim peculiarly for our own. We think that gives us a considerable freedom from criticism which will attach to any group speaking solely for itself.192

The ‘shadow’ of the CED, which presently sought only to represent the interests of private business, was noticeable upon the NPA leadership. Wilson’s call for a designated government body to carry out the ‘very important job’ of post-war planning was not heeded. The persistence of conservative oversight in Washington throughout 1944 deprived the NPA of an organizational focus within, let alone a backdoor into, the corridors of power. Even Batt became marginalized in the WPB with its takeover in August 1944 by Julius A. Krug who was less inclined (or able) than Nelson to challenge the conservative bloc. Ironically, it was the CED-staffed Colmer Committee that offered the NPA its best opportunity to influence policy in 1944.193 This had the effect of further moderating the language of the NPA. Before the conservative-led committee, the NPA downplayed its support of federal leadership and emphasized its backing of private enterprise in making the transition. Speaking in his capacity as NPA chairman and not as vice chair of the WPB, on 13 April 1944, Batt started his long address (in which he praised the CED and ‘other groups’ for raising general public awareness of economic issues, but nothing else),194 by outlining the philosophy of the NPA and its policy on the full spectrum of national planning issues. Most of the questioning from the congressmen centred not on details but on the balance between the roles of the government and free enterprise in the post-war transition. Committee members, especially Orville Zimmerman (Missouri) and Jerry Voorhis (California), appeared very conscious of a post-war public mood for a

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significant retraction of government involvement in their lives. It was in his defence of the NPA’s calls for continued government intervention in the workings of the economy that Batt made it clear he was no rampant socialist, and that he was an advocate of allowing free enterprise to facilitate the transition as much as it possibly could, with government stepping in to the minimum degree necessary to enable success. ‘I just don’t believe government’, he added, ‘could do it as well’.195 Indeed, such was Batt’s confidence in the capacity of the domestic economy to absorb pent-up demand, which he estimated could last for as long as four years, that he was more worried apathy would set in to the business world: ‘There is the danger, it seems to me, if you don’t look ahead, that when this war is over there will be so much business in sight that the people of this country will say, “Well, what have we got to worry about? Everyone is busy. Look at the demand. My orders are higher this month than they were last month. Don’t worry about it”.’196 Facing a panel of glaring conservative legislators was no doubt an uncomfortable exercise for the NPA chairman and was perhaps behind these contorted amplifications. But the stress upon the importance of private enterprise in the transition was also made clear in the most important NPA publication on domestic policy of 1944. In partnership with fellow NPA member Christian Sonne (also of TCF), NPA tax expert Beardsley Ruml advanced a package of post-war tax reforms under the heading Fiscal and Monetary Policy. Ruml, who had recently failed to win over the CED (for whom he was also the tax expert) to his position on taxation,197 was even more extreme than the CED in calling for the complete abolition of income taxes on corporations.198 The NPA later judged that Fiscal and Monetary Policy ‘attracted more attention than any previous NPA study’199 and had ‘far-reaching effects and received nation-wide recognition’.200 In its policy regarding taxation, as elsewhere, the NPA was articulating positions of an increasingly moderate hue thanks to the increasingly conservative political environment and the crossover activities of influential moderates like Ruml. Overall the NPA had responded combatively to the conservative offensive. The demise of the NRPB was the most immediate and significant casualty of this offensive on the administration for the liberal business planners, and most specifically the NPA. Deprived of a vital channel through which to influence government, the NPA’s response was to launch an offensive on Washington calculated to promote the founding of what for many had been lacking since the war began: a dedicated post-war planning agency. The loss of the NRPB, which was anyhow a very unsatisfactory body, also gifted the NPA with an opportunity to advance its role as the primary post-war planning organization outside of the government, not as a replacement for the NRPB but as an indispensable partner of whatever replaced it. As with the TCF, the NPA entered the transition period with confidence, but even more urgency. Currie’s remarks to Roosevelt aside, there was no explicit evidence to suggest the NPA felt threatened by the CED, the formation of which barely registered with the NPA leadership, in its minutes or elsewhere. For instance, a basic outline of the CED (in the ‘Notes’ section of the March 1943 edition of Public Policy Digest) stated that the new group was primarily interested in ‘business and industrial firms and associations’ and ‘does not intend to act as an over-all post-war planning group, but is keying its activities to the one objective of helping private industry to find jobs for demobilized forces and war

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workers after the war’.201 The NPA noted that, even though its headquarters were in the Commerce Department, there was ‘neither an official or semi-official connection with the Department or any other agency of Government’. Neither did interest in the NPA dip. In fact, the NPA experienced a flood of new members in 1944 at a rate four times higher than in 1943.202 As Batt alleged in December 1943: ‘I have thought in the last few months of the extraordinary change in sentiment of the American people toward this subject of planning. It used to be a thing one was a little apologetic about in certain circles.’203 It was decided to enlarge the board of trustees from twenty to twenty-five members, and to increase the executive committee from seven to nine.204 Accordingly, the year 1944 ‘was the most productive, by many standards, in NPA’s history’, and by 1944 the NPA ‘had become one of the most influential and respected research institutions in Washington’.205 As with the TCF, however, the national swing to conservatism had a complex effect on the NPA. It forced the organization to highlight, more than it had in the past, the importance of private capitalism in its post-war plans for the economy. This was also an indirect response to the emergence of the CED that posed itself specifically as the arbiter of ‘private enterprise’. In this latest modification the touch of Batt and Wilson, both members of the CED, was in evidence. This shift to the centre was not only cosmetic: in its policy statements and research findings, the NPA featured the role of private enterprise far more prominently in the post-war set-up. The NPA was also becoming increasingly dependent on financial support from business, the sums from which having grown exponentially since war began. By 1944 fees from organizations (mainly business) totalled $106,334, nearly three-quarters of that year’s total membership income.206 The years 1943 and 1944 turned out to be the most expensive for the NPA, and several steps were taken to address the organization’s appetite for more funds. This included a financial campaign to raise $400,000 to cover the expenses of the NPA for the next two years headed by a new chair of the finance committee, James C. Willson, director of the Curtiss-Wright Corporation, who created ‘forty to fifty’ sub-chairmen to lobby the major industrial concerns for donations.207 It is impossible to determine how important the highlighting of private enterprise was in maintaining business interest in the NPA, somehow tapping the growing constituency of moderate corporate activists attracted to the CED. There was, after all, some crossover between the two groups at the level of individual membership (Batt, Wilson, Ruml), and their policy positions were not so radically different. But their relationship was complicated. In July 1944 Batt resigned from the CED research committee (no reason given), but retained membership of the CED.208 Ruml, having lost his argument with the CED over tax reform published an alternative plan with the NPA, for which he became a trustee in June 1944. And despite remarks to the contrary, the proximity of the CED to government must also have worried the NPA. A centrally coordinated federal body for post-war planning was exactly what the NPA was calling for most loudly during 1943. The loss of the NRPB to promote policies similar to those of the NPA gifted more openings for other business planners, like the CED. This renewed ‘openness’ of government to outside influences, now including the CED, combined with awareness of the fast-approaching transition period no doubt drove the NPA to push harder than ever for a post-war federal agency. As the CED

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widened its embrace of post-war issues beyond those of strictly business and industry (as the NPA reassured itself), the NPA found it was in direct competition with the CED over direction of the post-war debate and guardianship of ‘private enterprise’. The general shift to the right in the American population impacted on all the postwar business planners. Most of all, it altered the national discourse about the postwar US economy that had the effect of drawing all the business planners towards the ideological centre. The assumptions of the liberals were now readily disputed, and the battle for sponsorship of a ‘mixed’ economic solution would now be won by the champion of private enterprise, not of federal leadership. Gathering momentum in 1943, the conservative mood pulled significant sections of businessmen motivated about post-war affairs away from the orbit of the NPA and the TCF. At the same time, the CED, in framing its platform for post-war success, began to set itself apart from the free-market purists and other conservatives by adopting positions similar to those of the liberal planners. Key to this process was the establishment of the CED research programme which, by nature of its inclusiveness, provided openings for the participation and influence of the wider, and more liberal-minded, post-war planning community. This combination of factors led to the rise of a ‘moderate’ layer of corporate liberals for whom the CED provided a voice, filling the gap between the ‘big government’ solutions of the NPA and the TCF and the ‘free-market’ fixated conservatives. Its timing was indeed propitious. Jones et al. therefore appeared correct in their assumption that private business was looking for a ‘new’ – that is more conservative and pro-business – form of leadership. But this was only superficially so. In the summer of 1942 such a pool of interest for free-market solutions did not exist, at least to the extent necessary to counter the swelling ranks of the NPA and the TCF. If demand for such leadership had existed in 1942 then Jones would not have had to directly (and hurriedly) intervene to provide it in the form of the CED. Even then success was not guaranteed. Jones supplied the institutional framework for that leadership, but it took the CED several months of painstaking debate to craft a set of goals that satisfied their moderate instincts and, more importantly, also appealed to growing numbers of activated businessmen looking for a ‘middle-ground’ between the NAM and the USCC, and the NPA and the TCF. The CED had ‘arrived’, but thanks only to a confluence of political, economic and social factors unique to mid-war America. The national decline in tolerance for larger and larger doses of government intervention in people’s lives naturally weakened the appeal of the liberals. The loss of the NRPB was certainly hard, especially on the NPA. Former NRPB official Marion Clawson later moaned: ‘The country as a whole had lost interest in the kind of planning the NRPB was set up to do and in the kind of programs it proposed.’209 Yet Clawson overstated the drop in business support for federal leadership in postwar matters. The actual experience of the liberal post-war planners was not as severe as one might have expected, with the attraction of liberal formulations still strong, an anomaly noted by Reagan: ‘Ironically, interest in domestic postwar planning increased among the public at large just as Congress fired FDR’s planners.’210 For the NPA and the TCF, the spell of interest in post-war issues that began in 1940 continued strongly into 1943, with membership climbing and publication sales booming. Neither organization experienced much drag on their momentum of the previous two years.

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Their confidence was such that their response to the conservative challenge was a partial, not complete, retreat from full-blown liberal proselytizing (certainly not for the TCF), which had the effect of only ‘moderating’ their decision-making. The continued appeal of the liberal business planners pointed to a general undercurrent of receptiveness among a significant section of the US business class for federal activism in the peacetime economy.211 Despite the wider antipathy for ‘big government’, there was nevertheless a rising awareness of the necessity for coordinated economic planning for the fast-approaching transition. Measurements of ‘public opinion’ are notoriously suspect (especially when they are drawn from data collected by self-interested parties), and generalizations must be cautious. In this case what can be safely deduced is that while most Americans were understandably anxious about the immediate impact of the ‘command economy’ on their lives, significant sections of the business community – whether drawn to the New Deal-inspired impressions of the Chase-TCF union, the ‘mixed-economy’, federal-leadership advocacy of the NPA or the ‘primacy’ of private enterprise under the CED – were becoming convinced of the need for some measure of centralized planning for the longer-term and were reaching out for advice. The volume of interest of far-sighted businessmen in post-war planning therefore remained high. It was the character, or political outlook, of corporate activists that had begun to change in an increasingly conservative environment. As we have seen, this fact was registered not only in the emergence of a moderate cheerleader in the CED but also in the moderating adjustments made by the NPA and the TCF, steps which seemed minor in 1943 but carried far-reaching consequences for both organizations in the years of transition that followed.212

5

War’s End: The International Question Brings Convergence, 1944–45

Circumstances have placed the United States in the position of world leader, and . . . we must get ready to meet the enormous responsibilities and take advantage of the vast opportunities which this position forces us to face. Will Clayton, CED, January 19441 International Trade is major. For whatever is done or not done toward creating workable trade relationships will determine the economic foundations (if any) of peace. William Waymack, TCF, January 19442 There is almost nothing that we could not accomplish in the field of international economic arrangements. This is more certain in that by and large our national interest in this field is consistent with world interests. NPA, October 19443 We take this position in the most unequivocal manner. The restoration of the world economy, which is essential to peace and prosperity, depends upon an expansion of world trade. NPA, March 19454 Up to 1944, the expected end of the war, the business planners had concentrated their energies on domestic economic preparedness for the transition from war to peace. Even so, as we have seen, certain of these plans developed beyond narrow treatments of domestic economic problems arising from the transition to embrace wider schemes aimed at sustained growth and overall improvement of the US economy after the war. As the war progressed, and US productivity and diplomatic leverage increased, such thinking increasingly turned to the international benefits that would flow from the superior position the United States would occupy in the post-war world economy. Many businessmen had come to realize that peace and prosperity were inseparable and an expanded role for the United States in world affairs was not only unavoidable but desirable. By 1945 all the business planners were engaged in the key national debates about the role of the United States in the new post-war economic world

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order. This chapter deals with the response of the business planners to the issues of liberalized world trade and the financial architecture established by the Bretton Woods Agreements. The backdrop to the general rise in the appreciation of international affairs for the post-war business planners was the improving fortunes of war and the diplomatic liveliness of the US government during 1944. As noted, America’s involvement in the war granted it considerable leverage in dictating the terms of the post-war world economy. The US government had been aware of this from the very beginning of hostilities in Europe, both in setting the terms for lend-lease aid to the Allies and in crafting the small print of the Atlantic and United Nations charters. Well before war’s end the US government sought to erect a framework of post-war international financial and commercial intercourse that suited US liberal economic aims. By mid1944 the Americans were helped in this goal thanks to decisive turns in the war. The US military was closing in on Japan and was now fully engaged in leading the fight in mainland Europe, with the collapse of the Third Reich seemingly imminent as the Allies pushed into the German heartland. Washington quickly pressed the advantage on the Allies by securing their agreement to a post-war multilateral financial and trade structure at the Bretton Woods conference in New Hampshire in July 1944. The liberal assumptions of the Americans, that international peace and security rested upon the freest possible flow of money and goods across the globe, dominated the proceedings at Bretton Woods, helped by the knowledge that the United States owned half the world’s supply of monetary gold and would soon be producing half the world’s manufactured goods. In what was essentially an Anglo–American affair, after three weeks of detailed negotiations, forty-four nations agreed to establish three organizations to restore world trade: IBRD, to provide assistance to war-torn and developing regions; IMF, to prevent currency crises that endangered international commerce; and a third institution, ITO, to liberalize trade practices.5 The negotiation of these far-reaching international agreements was a tremendous diplomatic achievement by the US government. Yet when the Bretton Woods Agreements were sent to Congress for ratification in February 1945, the administration ran headlong into the ‘conservative coalition’ and a bitter controversy ensued. A broad alliance of bankers, businessmen and congressional conservatives ranged against the proposals for varying reasons. Conservative politicians alleged they represented an ‘international’ New Deal that threatened to undermine congressional influence over vital matters of overseas lending and investment. Bankers and conservative businessmen, most notably from the USCC, worried that the strong US economy would be needlessly tied to unstable foreign ones. Others thought the functions of the IMF would better fall under the scope of the IBRD. They were worried that the IMF would be open to abuse and undermine US interest overseas, especially by the British who could use the IMF to maintain control over its Sterling Area – countries which traded using British currency and provided Britain with trouble-free markets for its goods.6 For the government, the stakes of Bretton Woods were very high. As William Clayton, now undersecretary of state for economic affairs, warned: ‘The whole basis of the Bretton Woods proposals is the conception of an expanding economy and collective security through common action. Unless we achieve a great expansion in

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world economy, and an increase in the levels of living of all people, the solution of the vast problems before all the nations may well be rendered impossible.’7 Into this controversy stepped the post-war business planners. On the question of liberalized trade, administration hopes rested with the ITO, whose creation followed a more convoluted route than the other products of the Bretton Woods meeting. The administration had already leveraged the British to make a broad commitment to eliminate trade barriers with the United States after the war, both in the Atlantic Charter of August 1941 and the Mutual Aid Agreement of 1942, which specified the terms for ‘making good’ on the materials granted under lend-lease.8 Even protectionists in business and Congress, excited at the prospect of finally breaking into British markets, softened their opposition to lowering tariffs in a series of battles in 1943 over the renewal of the RTAA which for Hull illustrated that Americans were converting to the creed of multilateralism.9 There was considerable agreement with the British on the necessity for expanded trade, and it was decided to convene again on the formation of a possible ITO sometime after the Bretton Woods meeting. The delay proved critical, but until 1947 – the year the ITO eventually went before Congress – the administration remained firmly wedded to a policy of the fullest possible trade liberalization. The opinions of the business planners on foreign trade were formed just as the ITO began its tortuous three-year conception. Instrumental in this process was the CFR, which already had an association with the business planners through individual contacts but now became a vital source of expertise in framing business attitudes towards international affairs. Drafted to assist the State Department in formulating its foreign economic policy, its deliberations had been largely ignored by Hull until the end of the war approached. After Hull resigned in January 1944, the Keynesian-inspired CFR became more influential. CFR members and close associates such as Hansen worked together with the Treasury and State Departments in drafting the Bretton Woods proposals.10 However, on foreign trade, the initial conclusions of CFR’s economic and financial group indicated early differences with the State Department over its obsession with reducing tariff levels, which the group felt was less significant than enhancing domestic industrial activity and consumer income. The CFR was for ‘free trade’, but differed with purist freetraders over the timing and the extent of reductions in world trade barriers after the war. The CFR, however, was not for New Deal liberalism. It envisaged overseas trade as a means for avoiding large-scale public investment at home as prescribed by many liberal planners, and so became a key moderating influence and, as it turned out, a binding force on the post-war planners as the transition unfolded.11 Dealing with the ‘international question’ clarified not only the attitude of the business planners towards multilateralism but also had the effect of bringing their theories into closer alignment with each other and with the administration, while at the same time, in terms of impressing the government, setting the organizations apart. As was the case for the national political shift towards conservatism, the issues raised by international economics made a lasting impression on the post-war planners, only this time it was the CED, and not the TCF or the NPA, for which this experience posed the toughest challenge. Indeed, this time around it was the liberal planners, and not the conservatives, who set the parameters of discussion about US foreign economic policy.

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Yet it was the CED, thanks to a special alignment of political factors, which emerged the stronger organization as a result.

The CED offers ‘synthesis’ Of all the planning groups, the CED was the most resistant to embracing the importance of international economics in its prescription for post-war prosperity. Its founders, including those in the Commerce Department, envisaged the CED purely as a business group interested in the domestic economic problems of the transition. Yet against these initial presumptions, by the start of 1945, the CED was compelled to acknowledge the influence of foreign trade and world economic organizations on the success of the postwar national economy. This realization was no straightforward matter for the CED. It took significant government intervention over a period of two years and several outside specialists to formulate the CED’s position on these issues.12 More importantly, during its journey of discovery regarding the importance of international economics, the CED took steps which became decisive in helping the organization gain the trust of the government and clinch lead status among the business planners during 1945. As with most of the important questions relating to the domestic transition, the CED endured a process of intense deliberation and soul-searching before it could settle on a stance with which it was comfortable regarding international economics. Again, this entailed a collision followed by a compromise between the wide spectrum of viewpoints attracted to this centre ground organization. In this instance, the clash featured ardent free-traders and trade expansionists on one side, and moderate multilateralists and domestic-first adherents on the other. An indispensable character in the adoption of an international economic perspective by the CED was Will Clayton. Before entering government service, Clayton ran one of the largest cotton brokerage firms in the country and, though a Republican voter, became a willing apostle of the Hullian mission to lower world tariffs and banish discriminatory practices from international trade. When Hull resigned in January 1944, Clayton became the administration’s leading free-trader and, by the end of the year, the country’s first assistant secretary of state for Economic Affairs. Clayton made several statements in support of multilateral trade during the war, but one that most clearly outlined his vision of America’s post-war role was made when he was still assistant secretary of Commerce in an address to the National Foreign Trade Convention in New York on 25 October 1943. Entitled ‘America’s Stake in World Trade’, Clayton pleaded for an internationalist approach to economic matters in a postwar setting where the United States would be centre stage: [America’s] huge production, added to that of our allies, guarantees that the fighting forces of the United Nations will, in due course, completely overwhelm our enemies everywhere and dictate the terms of the peace. The conclusion of the peace will find the United States in a world position of vast prestige and power, the full significance of which is perhaps better understood abroad than it is here. … Impelled by the events of the last 4 years, a revolution has taken place

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in the thinking and understanding of the American people regarding the physical position of the United States in this shrinking world. … The world today is passing through the greatest economic expansion of all times.

To ensure US employment, Clayton called for the opening of ‘great new markets abroad’ and for the United States to import more and invest heavily abroad: ‘Great areas must be reconstructed. Other areas must be developed, opening up resources, raising living standards, and providing new markets. … Unless we are prepared to take our proper part in this program, our own domestic employment problem will become acute.’ And to underline his opposition to the domestic-only thesis, Clayton insisted: No amount of post-war planning on a national level will provide productive employment in private undertakings for our millions of new workers if the rules surrounding the international exchange of goods continue so restrictive as to deny buyers the means of payment across political frontiers. The world has shrunk to a point where we can no longer sit in a small corner of it hugging our insularity and our riches to ourselves, unobserved and unmolested. … America’s stake in world trade means much more for us than a great expansion in peacetime production and employment; it represents a great new hope of peace for America and the world.13

Due to his increasing workload in the administration, as a trustee, Clayton was only intermittently involved in the detailed workings of the CED. However, during 1943 Clayton’s impatience with the CED’s lack of interest in international economic matters, and especially foreign trade, led to his weighty intervention upon the group. Clayton first raised the matter at a trustee’s meeting in April 1943 but failed to completely convince them of the relationship between foreign trade and the achievement of high domestic employment, the organization’s guiding aim. Still, Clayton’s intervention was enough to secure a study of international trade by Calvin B. Hoover, dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Duke University. Hoover was an interesting choice, as his predisposition was hardly objective or impartial. A prominent New Deal labour economist associated with Roosevelt’s ‘Brains Trust’, Hoover was an early convert to Keynesian economics, and, perhaps in an indication of the CED’s lack of enthusiasm for the project, was no specialist in international trade. Consequently, Hoover relied heavily on others in the CED and specialists from the CFR, the NPA and the Commerce Department. They were economist Jacob Viner (CED), professor of economics at Princeton University and the University of Chicago, Arthur Upgren (CED) of the Commerce Department, and another Keynesian devotee, Lauchlin Currie (NPA).14 All three were members of the CFR and borrowed extensively from a recent report of the Commerce Department entitled The United States in the World Economy that prioritized the achievement of stable domestic employment over that of liberalizing world trade. It was January 1944 before Hoover’s report was ready for scrutiny and, not surprisingly, was met with disappointment by Clayton and others in the CED who believed in the supremacy of free trade. This included CED executive director John Fennelly, who remained quite outspoken on the issue. Still, with a proKeynesian core within the research committee of Flanders and Yntema, a wavering

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Hoffman and a supportive White at the BAC,15 the free-traders failed to sway Hoover from his conclusions. Avoiding another stand-off with Clayton in November 1944 due to timetabling, as if to avoid further conflict with the now Surplus War Property Administrator, Hoover was allowed to publish his contentious study16 but the challenge of writing a statement of CED policy on foreign trade for release alongside it was handed to someone else. Yet the person chosen, the pro-Keynesian economist and former NRPB member Gardiner C. Means, was no less likely to endorse the Hoover report and, it seemed, only underlined the Keynesian prejudices of the research committee. This became apparent when the Means draft statement was examined in January 1945 by a contingent of government economists sympathetic to free trade who were there, in the absence of Clayton, to discuss foreign trade and the Congress-bound Bretton Woods proposals. They were Herbert Feis, long-time international economics adviser to the State Department; Leroy D. Stinebower, a disciple of Viner and a Clayton sympathizer and appointed by Hull to head post-war policy at the Division of Economic Studies; and Harry Dexter White, who as chief international economist at the Treasury Department had worked alongside Keynes on drafting a liberalized financial system at Bretton Woods. Yet the combined weight of these government experts was still not sufficient to alter the minds of the CED leadership on foreign trade.17 Released in May 1945, the policy statement International Trade, Foreign Investment and Domestic Employment was an unequivocal defence of the domestic-first Keynesian perspective on foreign trade.18 ‘The greatest single contribution which the United States can make to high levels of trade and employment throughout the world’, it recommended, ‘is to develop and to maintain a high level of employment, production, and consumption within its own borders’. The case for trade expansion voiced by the free-traders was conversely downplayed: ‘We recognize that the level of employment in the United States is not primarily dependent on international trade. … Those defending exports on the ground that they are indispensable to high employment misstate the case’.19 The free-trader Fennelly and a middle-ground position written jointly by Hoffman and Harry W. Scherman, president of the Book-of-the-Month Club, were allowed space in the footnotes. In its bruising encounter with the free-traders, the CED held fast to a domestic-first approach to post-war economic recovery. In so doing it reinforced the influence of Keynesian supporters within the organization, even strong-state advocates like Hoover and Means, and further cemented its reliance upon expertise from outside, primarily the CFR and the NPA – two other Keynesian-influenced groups. Benton had been attending CFR meetings for months, and in February 1945, Harold Myers suggested the CFR economist Winston Riefler (also working with the NPA), be asked to join the research advisory board.20 The CED was clearly not in thrall to the high priests of the State Department, and would not be bullied. Yet the recent level of interest in the CED from Washington offered the aspiring organization a chance to influence policy if, that is, it could prove itself useful to decision-makers. A powerful factor in convincing the CED to ditch its position of ‘neutrality’ and take a more active stance on policy questions was the mood of uncertainty that prevailed in Washington at the time. ‘The atmosphere here is cloudy with ideas and proposals,’ Benton observed of Washington in February 1945,

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‘each pushed by its own sponsor or group, but these are frequently inconsistent and conflicting. I have been unable to find that any combination of such ideas can be said to have definite or exclusive Administration backing.’ Benton judged that beyond a general consensus on the need for high employment after the war there was no agreement on how it should be achieved. This gifted the CED ‘an unusual opportunity’ to advance its proposals, Benton stressed, and ‘the group which is ready at the strategic time with a well thought through, consistent program will have a tremendous advantage in getting its program, or large sections of it, adopted’.21 Fortunately for the CED, the ‘unusual opportunity’ to influence the Washington elite soon arose when a bitter controversy erupted in February 1945 over the congressional ratification of the government’s Bretton Woods proposals. The controversy over Bretton Woods gifted the CED a moment of usefulness for the administration and an ideal opportunity to affect policy. Bretton Woods was first seriously addressed by the CED at the research division meeting of 20 January 1945. This meeting was attended by one of the architects of the Bretton Woods proposals, the Treasury Department’s Harry Dexter White. White was present at the meeting specifically to garner support for the government’s position on Bretton Woods. His task was not straightforward. The CED broadly agreed with the administration’s position, but had some sympathy with the anxieties of US bankers. The IBRD was less controversial because it was understood that it would be effectively controlled by the largest depositor, the United States, and be operated much like a regular bank. It would only offer loans to viable borrowers and would encourage private investment. But the IMF was perceived as being vulnerable to weak economies. The IMF was criticized by Means for lacking flexibility in dealing with governments that overvalued their currencies. In particular, they wanted more power devolved to the IBRD in dispensing funds than was currently envisaged; a position favoured by US bankers. White, of course, supported the regulations as they stood and wished only that the CED positively back the proposals as they approached Congress: ‘I would like to make the plea that you drop this technical issue. I would like to suggest that you say that the International Fund is a step in the right direction and we approve it.’ White was anxious to avoid upsetting the passage of the IMF as ‘any attempt to modify the Fund is to throw it into another international conference’. Means, however, held his ground. ‘Two parts of the document relate to jobs in this country,’ he stated. ‘First, the controlled flexibility in exchange rates; second, capital export. To take these issues as being of tertiary importance is not to face up to the issue. The future of free enterprise in this country may turn on these points.’ Although White pressed for the CED to resolve its differences over the IMF then and there, the matter was left open until the next meeting of the research division in February.22 After ‘considerable consultation’ with the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Bank, Ruml concocted a draft statement on the IMF that focused exclusively on economic considerations ‘leaving out the political and diplomatic part of the picture’ that White had stressed so earnestly in January. Over objections that the IMF ‘will contribute to hostile trading camps, such as the Sterling Area’, a statement was approved and designed for quick release which called for an increase in the authority of the IBRD, as originally put forward by Means, but at a later date so as not to derail agreement over the IMF.23

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In the end, the CED offered a ‘synthesis’ of the opposing viewpoints on Bretton Woods. A compromise by any other name, the CED proposal was crystallized in The Bretton Woods Proposals: A Statement on National Policy released on 19 March 1945, just as the proposals looked set for defeat on Capitol Hill. The administration now had its business champions for Bretton Woods. Folsom, working with the Colmer Committee, reported his impression of the congressional opinion: ‘The CED statement on Bretton Woods was very timely. The House Committee on Banking and Currency has referred to it many times. I would not be surprised if the CED recommendations were eventually accepted’.24 Both Flanders and Scherman were asked to appear before Congress to clarify the CED position, and later amended the legislation carrying the Bretton Woods proposals. In June 1945, the new president Harry S. Truman praised the support of the CED as ‘unequivocally … determinative in passing the Bretton Woods Bill’.25 Ironically, it was through international economics – the topic of least appeal to the CED – that the group ‘broke’ into Washington. Looking for business allies with no direct links to the administration or historical association with business conservatives, the White House saw in the CED a new and fittingly ‘neutral’ group of businessmen that was unconnected with the New Deal era and had so far remained aloof from Washington politics. As will be seen, these unique qualities vested the CED with advantages not enjoyed by the other business planners in the peculiar conditions of post-war US politics.

The NPA goes all out for the administration The NPA was the first business planning organization to formally acknowledge the importance of the world economy in the nation’s post-war success when it created the IPWG in July 1941. The topic of international economics was promoted within the organization at the close of 1943 by the forming of the Committee on International Policy as an additional standing committee to sit alongside the original three standing committees of Business, Labor and Agriculture. At the end of 1944 the NPA made the first contribution of any business planning group on the importance of foreign trade in US post-war prosperity and pledged its full support for the Bretton Woods Agreements. As the war came to a close, the NPA looked poised to make a significant impression on government policy towards international economics. The Committee on International Policy, or International Committee, brought together influential planning moderates from the CED, CFR and the NPA. It was led by the widely connected and experienced business planning activist Stacy May, of McGraw-Hill Publishing Company. May was an NPA trustee, BAC member, consultant for the CED and former head of planning for the WPB.26 May was assisted by a twentystrong party that included three academics who would also become instrumental in framing the international stance of the CED. They were economist J. B. Condliffe of the University of California who also worked for the Board of Economic Warfare; CFR economist Winfield W. Riefler of the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton University and minister in charge of Economic Warfare at the American Embassy in London; and agricultural expert Theodore W. Schultz, chairman of the Department of

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Economics, University of Chicago, chair of the NPA standing committee on agriculture and member of the research advisory board of the CED. Designed to consider questions ‘relating to contemporary and post-war American foreign policy, with a view to the eventual formulation of constructive recommendations’, the International Committee replaced the IPWG. May divided the International Committee’s work into two main sub-committees, one dealing with political factors and the other economic. While the economic group would be ‘concrete and statistical’, the political group would ‘of necessity be to a degree abstract and speculative’. The ‘close relationship’ between domestic and foreign policy was now fully recognized.27 By February 1944, the economic section of the International Committee was already preparing a report on projected US imports, exports and international investment activity after the war.28 The first draft was circulated in early June, a 106-page tome comprising few statistics entitled ‘A Budget of United States Postwar Foreign Trade’. The economic section reckoned that for full employment to be achieved a gross national product of $170 billion (or a national income of $140 billion) was required. These estimates matched those fiercely upheld by NPA tax expert Ruml in his post-war tax reform package.29 Projected against 1941 foreign trade levels the US economy would fall short of this target and therefore an expansion of foreign trade and investment was essential: ‘Our postwar goal of full employment calls for foreign policies which will expand, rather than restrict, the markets which we are tooled up to supply more cheaply than any other nation.’ Protectionism only served ‘special interests’ and must be abandoned in favour of opening markets for finished goods and ‘increased sources of foreign raw materials’. It was assumed that in the short term the United States would be able to export massively thanks to overseas reconstruction demands that would supply a ‘cushion against shock from contraction of our war-swollen heavy industries’, but ‘later we will reap additional dividends from their expanded purchases when industrialization has made them richer and their living standards higher’. Through the simple formula that the level of a nation’s exports was fatally bound to the level of imports that provided the currency necessary for their purchase, active foreign trade policies not only suited the United States as ‘the greatest industrial power’ but also improved the lot of others: ‘Recognizing that stable world political conditions are essential to increasing international trade, we believe that a high level of United States foreign trade and investment will contribute greatly to foreign economic and political stability.’30 The International Committee had articulated and fully endorsed the basic principles of multilateralism, that is a mutually balanced liberalization of commercial relations, but conspicuously refrained from using the term ‘free trade’. In this regard, the NPA qualified its support for State Department orthodoxy. In his lengthy address to the Colmer Committee just weeks earlier, Batt recognized the ‘intimate relationship’ of the US economy with the rest of the world but suggested that overseas trade be viewed simply in light of achieving a ‘balance’ of imports and exports. In fact, Batt chided the free-traders – and particularly Hull – for their political dogmatism and lack of sophistication in championing the necessity for increasing US exports after the war: It is not only vital, but it is dangerous constantly to think ‘How much can we export?’ without facing squarely up to the problem ‘How are these exports to be paid for?’ … It seems to us that it is a part of adult thinking to look at these

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problems now with more light and less heat, that a high tariff policy or a low tariff policy ought to be laid aside as political considerations. Those very important questions ought to be viewed as economic problems by serious thinking men.31

The basic assumptions of the International Committee draft were unchanged in the elaborated final version when it emerged after full consultation in October 1944. The overall tenor was positive, optimistic, confident – in hindsight perhaps overly so. The conflation of US interests with those of the rest of the world was also explicit, as the historically unprecedented economic and political power conferred on the United States in the aftermath of the war set the broad tone of the report. It was time, the economic section believed, for ‘America to come of age’ and to utilize its potential force ‘toward general world objectives rather than nationalistically narrow ends’. Although the United States was ‘a giant in world power, and an infant in world perspective’, the economic section insisted, somewhat presumptuously, that ‘there is almost nothing that we could not accomplish in the field of international economic arrangements. This is more certain in that by and large our national interest in this field is consistent with world interests.’ The economic section sought to marry this uniquely favourable juncture in world affairs with the nation’s ‘universally accepted’ goal of full employment. Indeed, the centrality of international economics to the attainment of full employment was heavily underscored, as was the economic section’s impatience with official efforts in this regard, which it considered as ‘piecemeal’, the product of ‘narrow-interest policy making’. For the economic section, a balanced approach to the export–import dilemma was the best means to achieve full employment: ‘It is in the national interest to expand imports of foreign goods and services, thereby increasing our own export opportunities and, through the effect of a higher American trade level, enabling multilateral trade expansion as an essential contribution to world economic prosperity and political stability.’ The reasoning for a post-war expansion of exports was straightforward and easy of wide support, but less conventional was the economic section’s call for increased imports at the expense of industries ‘whose function can be performed more efficiently abroad’. For the economic section’s simple export–import formula to work, certain US businesses would have to voluntarily give way to foreign competition, or as the draftees adroitly put it: ‘The national productive structure will have to be adjusted to make such imports possible.’ This would require the cooperation of business, labour and government to transfer the facilities of replaced industries into other areas of employment, a process of ‘readjustments, drastic as they are’, that would be helped, the economic section assured, ‘under conditions of full employment’. Specific policies to achieve these high goals or practical suggestions for their implementation were admittedly thin in the report, but moderate and selective tariff reduction was obvious, an extension of the RTAA (then up for renewal), use of the Export-Import Bank, support for the IBRD outlined at the Bretton Woods meeting of July 1944 and the United Nations organization then under widespread discussion, a proposed ‘Commission on National Foreign Trade Policy’ led by Congress and a ‘Foreign Investment Commission’ were listed. The need for government loans to foreign governments in the interim was recognized, as was US involvement in an international exchange stabilization mechanism (the IMF).32

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On 6 November 1944 the findings of the economic section were released as the International Committee’s first report under the heading America’s New Opportunities in World Trade, which was remarkable for two reasons. First, it advocated expansion of exports as essential to US recovery, some $10 billion per year by 1950 (twice that of 1941). And second, it identified a possible solution for overcoming the export–import dilemma of the trade expansionists. The idle capital accumulated after the war (some $7–8 billion a year) could be invested overseas to stimulate purchases of enough US goods to meet the shortfall from the $10 billion target (estimated to be $4 billion). The United States would be effectively financing its own export drive. This was no novel solution (a similar procedure was employed in financing European recovery during the 1920s by private banks), and the report offered no specific mechanism for achieving a trade balance other than stipulating that private enterprise was inadequate for the task and that the government should direct a $10 billion foreign trade budget that would both increase exports and imports, provide foreign loans and investments and enable the country ‘to take leadership in expanding world trade’.33 The report had an instant impact. It was given positive airplay on the popular Washington radio show Baukhage Talking, broadcast over the Blue Network on 29 November 1944. The show’s host, H. R. Baukhage, spoke of the ‘little red-bound pamphlet which has been well-thumbed in Washington this week’. ‘It is important enough’, he continued, ‘to have the New York Times make it a page one, column one story this morning’. Baukhage praised the NPA for offering ‘one of the most hopeful signs in the dark skies of our times. Its purpose seems to be a happy blending of those two great forces – democratic idealism and commercial realism, which have made America what it is.’34 Released just before the latest round of hearings by the Colmer Committee, the NPA was gifted an opportunity to expound its latest report to the House.35 Dean Acheson, then assistant secretary on Economic Affairs at the State Department, who was also called before the Colmer Committee, later commended the NPA on its work: ‘I think the report is a remarkably fine piece of work, and it is most encouraging that people of this calibre and breadth of representation are giving such detailed and thoughtful consideration to this tremendously important problem.’36 The work of the political section of the International Committee suffered a very different fate from that of its sister section on economics. It was launched in February 1944 with an unusually discursive eleven-page report by the International Committee’s vice chairman, Frank Altschul, president of Lazard Freres & Company and chairman of the General American Investors Company. He asked the NPA to suspend its customary scientific objectivity in favour of taking a more political stance. As a ‘confession of faith’ to engender debate, Altschul called on the NPA to reject extreme isolationist or idealistic interventionist notions with their ‘more or less unrealistic conception of the nature of the post-war world’ and instead ‘formulate a realistic conception’ of the possible alternatives for US foreign policy. Though Altschul was convinced that ‘the days of American isolation are gone forever’, he was keen not to leave foreign policy to ‘a small elite in the State Department’. Altschul was sceptical of the widely interpretative achievements of diplomacy to date, such as in the Atlantic Charter and the various Allied declarations, and wished the NPA to clear the ‘murky atmosphere’ that prevailed over post-war foreign policy by developing their own ‘working

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hypothesis of the probable nature of the post-war world, and thereafter to consider what orientation of foreign policy is most likely to serve our national interests in such a world’. With German forces barely out of the Ukraine, Altschul warned of the Soviet threat. The ‘cornerstone of an enduring peace’, he believed, had to be achieved through the ‘most sympathetic co-operation’ between Britain, France and the United States as ‘a counterpoise to the growing might of Russia’. This might involve retention of ‘certain aspects’ of the European colonial empires to preserve strategic interests and especially those of Britain ‘if the United States joins them in laying secure foundations for an expanding world economy’. Although Russia was ‘welcome’ to join in the ‘extension of human liberty, and justice under law’, Altschul believed that only from a position of Western strength and unity could this be ensured.37 Though few in the administration would have agreed with him in February 1944, especially regarding the need to retain the colonial empires – a pet hate of Roosevelt – Altschul’s sketch of future international relations was startlingly accurate. The political section’s focus on the Soviet Union was such that it became the subject of a special report first drafted in May 1944. Premised on the knowledge that the Soviet Union was ‘playing a leading part in the war and is likely to play a determining part in the peace’, improved knowledge of the country and its future intentions was considered essential for the United States. The authors were determined to avoid ‘emotional views’ being substituted for the ascertainment of facts about the Soviet Union, and sought to arrive at a more scientific appraisal of the country’s political and economic nature and the direction of its foreign policy, especially where Soviet interests ‘cut across’ those of the United States or ‘materially affect American political forms or spheres of influence’. The underlying purpose of the study was to recommend immediate steps for ‘promoting fullest possible cooperation between America, Britain and Russia’.38 Despite Altschul’s pleas, the International Committee never grasped the political ‘nettle’, and the work of the political section became subsumed into that of the economic section. The appraisal of US diplomacy and its relations with Britain and the Soviet Union, along with the special report on the Soviet Union, were dropped in favour of increased analysis of the post-war international economic reconstruction. Of the ten Planning Pamphlets released by the NPA during 1944, five dealt with European relief alone.39 In spite of its prescience, and even as the Cold War developed, the topic of the Soviet Union escaped specialist publication status. The NPA appeared too uncomfortable delving into wider international political problems of the postwar period, despite their apparent close relationship with the ‘strictly’ economic issues of the day. The NPA might have shied away from explicitly endorsing what they considered a ‘political’ viewpoint, but the extremely thin line between political and economic issues proved impossible for the NPA to navigate in such critical times. An early concession in this regard was made over the printing of ‘dissenting’ viewpoints. One member of the NPA who was less inclined to skirt the political aspects of America’s post-war economic situation was its ebullient chair, William Batt. Already, in front of the Colmer Committee in April 1944, Batt had expressed his views on US political interests after the war. On politics, as on other questions, Batt recognized that although the NPA trustees may not wholly agree with some of the conclusions of its researchers

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and prefer not to endorse them as NPA policy, it may still publish them based on merit. In August 1944 a debate took place over how the NPA dealt with such ‘minority viewpoints’ emanating from its committees. It was begun by Emil Rieve, president of the Textile Workers Union of America, who argued that all statements by the NPA should be jointly agreed and he did not favour committees ‘acting independently of each other’. However Batt, supported by Beardsley Ruml, emphasized that the NPA was ‘an educational institution’ and while the objective was to reach a joint agreement there were times when it was ‘appropriate’ to publish the views of a committee. Rieve was outvoted by the trustees thirteen-to-one.40 The sheer pressure of events inevitably swept aside any lingering reservations of the NPA hierarchy over too loudly endorsing government policy when they turned to scrutinize the government’s Bretton Woods Agreements as they made their way through Congress in March 1945. In its brief statement to the board that month, the International Committee fully endorsed the Bretton Woods instruments, citing Roosevelt’s depiction of a war-ravaged Europe and stressing America’s self-interested stake in its recovery: In the midst of such far-flung economic distress it is clear that our country could not long continue to prosper. Accordingly it is in our national interest to promote the rapid restoration of the war-torn economies together with the physical and moral rehabilitation of their peoples; and to provide the framework for the establishment of stable commercial relations between nations.

The International Committee accused the proposals’ main detractors, the American Bankers Association, of being ‘unimaginative’ with a ‘limited conception of the magnitude of the problem we face’, and by weakly applying normal standards of banking practice ‘to a situation without precedent’. In short, the International Committee believed that whatever the technical issues and wider misgivings that certain business sections had, the broader stakes of Bretton Woods in erecting a basic structure for post-war international economic activity were too high to overlook: ‘We take this position in the most unequivocal manner. The restoration of the world economy, which is essential to peace and prosperity, depends upon an expansion of world trade.  … We are convinced that the Fund and the Bank can make a major contribution in this direction.’41 The board of trustees voiced no disagreement with the general thrust of the International Committee’s recommendations, but preferred the NPA’s interjection to be as empirically based as possible. Hansen motioned that the International Committee make a report for public release, but the board was unhappy at the lack of precision in some of the committee’s conclusions. The party-political character of the national debate about the Bretton Woods proposals clearly worried the board, which ‘repeatedly emphasized’ to the International Committee that the NPA would not publish findings which did not clearly evidence that an examination of the facts had been carried out and that ‘the pros and cons had been considered’.42 The NPA used the veil of scientific objectivity as best it could. On 23 April 1945 the International Committee’s substantive report The Stakes of Bretton Woods was released. The wording of the Foreword followed closely that

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put before the board on 16 March 1945, but with added emphasis on the alarming implications of inaction on America’s ‘own’ interests. The committee acknowledged the continuation of certain restrictive measures in the early transition period, but feared that without the Bretton Woods instruments these temporary measures would remain and economic nationalism would be almost inevitable, and ‘the hope of an expanding world economy might be lost overnight’. The Foreword concluded by emphasizing – for the second time – that it was ‘in our national interest’ to adopt the Bretton Woods proposals then before Congress.43 Still, in an unprecedented move by the NPA, the International Committee allowed two dissenting statements from its ranks to be included at the end of The Stakes of Bretton Woods. Both statements were from the more radical free-traders unhappy at the ‘moderated multilateralism’ implicit in the Bretton Woods proposals, especially regarding the US concession over the IMF which allowed Britain to continue using exchange controls for a transitional period of five years. The first dissenting voice was that of the NPA Board’s legal counsel, Charlton Ogburn. He believed the proposal to launch the IMF was premature and should be postponed until US political aims had been negotiated and its tariff policy had been determined. As it stood the IMF, which offered the United States just a one-third voting stake, too quickly ‘disposed’ of American bargaining power. Further, Ogburn judged it ‘common sense’ to first determine US domestic policies regarding tariffs and employment and to approve a ‘multinational international convention’ that would implement non-discrimination in commerce and the reduction of tariffs already agreed to in the wartime lend-lease agreements. Robert H. Patchin, vice president of W. R. Grace and Company, BAC member and interested in international economics (he had attended a CED meeting on ‘International Trade’ in January 1945), objected to the ‘unqualified endorsement’ of the committee regarding the proposed IMF, which he believed would not herald multilateralism but instead permit the continuation of discriminatory exchange controls longer than five years. For Patchin, the IMF fell well short of enabling multilateral exchange after the war, especially regarding the despised British Sterling Area, which he feared would be strengthened or even extended in a transitional period which was vital to establishing the correct mechanisms for long-term free trade. Patchin argued that the IMF should be postponed, more power entrusted to the IBRD, and better devices found. Ogburn and Patchin clearly found the government’s interpretation of multilateralism too weak, especially regarding breaking open the Sterling Area, the bête noire of the free-traders.44 The press release alongside The Stakes of Bretton Woods urged acceptance of the proposals ‘as a necessary means for the re-establishment of multilateral, nondiscriminatory trade throughout the world’. The release emphasized the overarching need for cooperation between the United States and Britain, the world’s two most important economies. The Bretton Woods Agreements, it was argued, were a necessary compromise between two nations with quite different post-war requirements: immediate expansion of exports for the United States and temporary economic protection for Britain. Adoption of the proposals would not solve all of the problems of the world economy, the release stated, but would ‘encourage’ other nations to do so and ‘follow policies essentially favorable to America’s point of view’. To postpone a decision

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pending further amendment would be ‘very dangerous’, and another conference to hammer out a better deal ‘would not likely take place in the same atmosphere of collaboration and search for a solution that prevailed at Bretton Woods’.45 The NPA, therefore, believed this was the best deal the United States could hope for, and the time to strike was now and not to delay. The NPA had decided to come out in full support of the government over Bretton Woods. In arriving at this decision, the NPA had engaged in a similar process of introspection as the CED, with the airing of views similar in their opposition to specific elements of the proposals and, also for the first time, allowing space for dissenting voices in its policy statement, just like the CED. The NPA was confident that it was rightly articulating the temper of the US political class.46 Moreover, over Bretton Woods and foreign economic policy generally, the NPA had utilized the same expertise and adopted near-identical positions as those of the moderate CED and CFR. The convergence of the business planners had been accelerated over matters of international economics. But the NPA statement on Bretton Woods, for all its basic similarity with other moderates and allusions to scientific objectivity, was far less influential than that released by the CED. Not only was it released almost a month later than that by the CED, crucially it offered no ‘compromise’ solution to placate the anxieties of the bankers and their congressional sponsors. Actually, it was the NPA’s unqualified endorsement of the government’s position on Bretton Woods that weakened the impact of the NPA pronouncement and was, more importantly, the most likely reason why the NPA was ironically not courted by the State and Treasury Departments to win over sceptical business opinion towards the proposals. The ideological proximity of the CED to the conservatives – rightly judged or not – placed the NPA at a disadvantage in the eyes of an administration keen not to further inflame conservative reaction by associating itself with a business group linked to the New Deal era and the reviled NRPB. Timing, it seemed, was everything, and the political mood was continuing to drift away from acceptance of extensive and sustained federal involvement in the running of the economy.

The TCF casts the net wide and deep Like the NPA, after 1944 the TCF devoted increasing amounts of its research energy to understanding America’s role in the new post-war world order. However, delays over constituting the make-up of a suitable research team meant that the TCF studies began considerably later than those of the NPA (which released its first report on international trade in 1944). The delay also meant that the TCF was unable to initiate any studies of the Bretton Woods Agreements, which had been ratified before its experts had been assembled. Trustee Berle was greatly supportive of the Bretton Woods instruments in his capacity as assistant secretary of state, but did not relate any valuable information to the TCF for it to digest.47 At any rate, the absence of any TCF comment on the congressional debate over Bretton Woods was totally consistent with the TCF policy of ‘neutrality’, especially on such contentious topics. The TCF contribution to questions of

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international economics, therefore, appeared later than those of the NPA and the CED, so late that its findings are best dealt with in the discussion of European reconstruction in the following chapter. The manner in which the TCF approached the international question, however, highlighted more than any other group the converging and moderating nature of the subject upon the business planners. The process of investigating international economics for the TCF began in 1944. At the major January 1944 meeting to decide the principal post-war assignments for the organization, the topic which invited the most positive comment was that of foreign economic relations. William Waymack, vice president of the Des Moines Register and Tribune and trustee since 1942, was especially energetic in his support for this project. Waymack chaired the independent Iowa-based Economic Policy Committee (1941) that studied the effects of international trade on the domestic economy,48 and was very active in government service both as a member of the War Labor Board and consultant to the War Food Administration. He voiced in simple terms, and the first recorded instance in a TCF meeting, the critical place of international trade in domestic prosperity: International Trade is major. For whatever is done or not done toward creating workable trade relationships will determine the economic foundations (if any) of peace. In this country, as I see it, political isolationism is discredited but nationalistic economic restrictionism isn’t. … There is the most tremendous need of mass education in this country in the simplest elements of economics, particularly with respect to the international. … One can say that the thing is so vast as to be appalling, and that therefore we’d better ‘skip it’. But skipping the most important thing is hardly the way to be useful. So I favor putting this International Trade at the top of the list immediately, and figuring out what is feasible to do that won’t require a decade.

Waymack broke down the survey into an investigation of two basic needs. The first was to restate the case for foreign trade as the ‘foundation of prosperity locally, nationally and internationally’, and the second was a statement on how ‘world trade [can] be set on an expansionist course’? Waymack speculated that this topic might be ‘far too big and tough’ for the TCF, but, nevertheless, considered this was the primary issue.49 The case put forward by Waymack at the January meeting was fully endorsed. As Clark saw it, public education on the basics of foreign trade was ‘one of the crying needs of the moment as disclosed by public opinion polls’.50 The outcome was the launch of a major project on foreign economic relations that would look at foreign trade, investment, currency and exchange relations between the United States and the rest of the world. After a ‘long and in many cases fruitless negotiations’ the TCF leadership named two candidates to head the project: Leroy D. Stinebower, head of the Division of Economic Studies for post-war policy for the State Department, or Norman S. Buchanan, professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley.51 Of the two, Stinebower, who was the most closely identified with Hull’s free-trade philosophy, was the preferred choice of the TCF.52 It was a while before Stinebower eventually declined and, although it was several months before Buchanan said he could start work

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on the project, the TCF asked no one else.53 The loss of Stinebower is impossible to measure, but it left the project open to influences unsympathetic to State Department orthodoxy on free trade. Despite the impulse for haste, work commitments meant Buchanan did not start the project until the summer of 1945, some eighteen months since the idea was accepted.54 By December, Buchanan had drafts of four chapters available for TCF scrutiny and a summary of the material was intended for release in pamphlet form before the international trade conference met to discuss the details of the proposed ITO (which eventually did not take place for another year). Buchanan was greatly assisted by the academic and material input of the prestigious home of the CFR, the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton University and its famed economist Friedrich A. Lutz. The project team was located in a branch office of the TCF housed in the institute and enjoyed access to the Economic, Financial and Transport Department of the League of Nations.55 In December 1945 the trustees appointed a research committee to oversee the project and to write a report with recommendations for action. For their committee, and possibly to offset the absence of Stinebower, the trustees looked to appoint the widest cross section possible of international experts in American business, academia and government. It was by far the most inclusive list of candidates so far contemplated by any planning organization. Nominations for the Committee on International Economic Relations included members of the main business planners (NPA, CED), the CFR, the CIO and the AFL, government specialists Leo Pasvolsky (head of foreign economic policy research at the State Department), Nelson B. Rockefeller (chief of Latin American Affairs at the State Department), Amos E. Taylor (director, Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce), Claude R. Wickard (former secretary of agriculture), Gerard Swope (president, General Electric Company), John Foster Dulles (lawyer) and the esteemed Bernard Baruch (financial adviser). Even without government representation (they all declined), the seven persons who actually stepped forward to form the committee still represented the broadest collection of postwar planners yet assembled. Three were from the NPA, two were from the CED, two were from labour organizations and the CFR was granted a leading role. The members were Hoffman (CED), Schultz (NPA and CED), Kermit Eby, director of education and research, CIO, Robert J. Watt, international representative of the AFL and member of the NPA international committee, Percy W. Bidwell, director of studies of the CFR, and Joseph C. Rovensky, vice president of Chase Bank.56 Princeton economist Winfield W. Riefler, CFR and member of the NPA international committee, was appointed chairman of the TCF committee. None of the committee exhibited strong free-trade impulses. In fact, Riefler and Schultz, already central figures in the foreign economic policy planning of the NPA, the CED and the CFR, were of a more moderate hue on the issue of free trade.57 The approach was long-winded, but it paid dividends in terms of impact. The uniquely wide-ranging team took longer to consult and agree on findings, but they were able to integrate and anticipate changes in the domestic and global situation that followed the armistices in 1945. The moderate impulses of the experts proved no handicap when considering a suitable policy for altered circumstances. When it appeared in 1947, the TCF study of US foreign economic policy was the most

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comprehensive, insightful and timely contribution to the subject of all the business planning groups. By 1946, the first year of the transition, the business planners were no longer faced with prospects and possibilities. They had to contend with the stark realities of the post-war world. This entailed adjustments in both national and international prescriptions for surviving the transition and maintaining high levels of productivity and employment. In the domestic realm, these adjustments began in 1943–44 as the discourse over the public–private contribution to success shifted from liberal to moderate formulations. Now, in 1944 the business planners were compelled by the pace of the war and government initiatives to consider more seriously the relationship of the US economy with that of the rest of the world. In these discussions, which at the expert level involved considerable sharing of NPA, CED, TCF and CFR personnel, there was a distinct emphasis on the self-interested benefits of foreign trade for US business, as well as a considerable degree of commonality over the relationship between imports and exports, trade expansion, assistance in European recovery and US leadership of the primary economic organs established at Bretton Woods. This moderated multilateralism jarred with the free-trade agenda of the State Department then being pursued with considerable rigour in negotiations with the Allies. In this regard the business planners in the CED and the NPA openly diverged from the government. However, and more significantly, in the guise of the Bretton Woods proposals, the ‘international question’ presented a rare opening for the two most policy-oriented groups to impress government. The episode was a watershed moment for the CED, the NPA and the rest of the business planning community. Offering itself as a credible go-between for the warring parties over Bretton Woods, the CED effectively trumped the NPA as the most viable conduit between business and government, a post to which the NPA believed it was the rightful heir. The unconditional support of the NPA for the government over Bretton Woods did nothing to endear the group to the administration. Instead, quite the opposite happened, as the key departments sought the help of a group ideologically closer to the conservatives to save the day. The CED was now in pole position to usurp the NPA – and all other liberal planners – as the logical place for an administration, labouring under the weight of conservative demands, to take the temperature of US business. As long as these challenging political conditions remained, the CED was the business group most favourably situated to influence policymakers. As the war ended and the long-awaited transition began, the ability of the NPA to serve as the rightful champion of private enterprise would be sorely tested. The pressure to moderate its liberal tendencies continued, and the process of merging of the positions of the business planners accelerated, over national and international concerns. But it was over international economics, and via a platform provided by the TCF, that the NPA came closest to overtaking the CED in the race to influence the government. As the security of the US economy rested more and more on the fate of the economy in Europe, in the end, the contest for chief business representative in post-war America was decided in the pivotal national debate over the reconstruction of Europe.

6

Transition: The Arrival of a Moderate Consensus, 1945–48

These problems of reconversion from war to peace are in many respects more difficult than those which we had to meet in moving from peace to war. William Batt, NPA/CED, January 19441 I don’t think I am star-gazing when I say we have an extraordinary opportunity now – after World War II. I doubt – if at any other time – in the long history of our country, there has been such an opportunity to make the American dream come true. But it can come true only if we avoid both ignorant opposition to change and ignorant change. Paul Hoffman, CED, July 19462 Events underline more heavily every month the fact that the prosperity and wellbeing of the people of the United States are definitely tied to the economic state of the rest of the world. Similarly, the welfare of other nations is linked more closely than ever before with the workings of the American economy. Evans Clark, TCF, June 19473 There is a component of charity in the aid, but there is a much greater component of self-interest … the self-interest of the United States is well served by an investment in the recovery of Europe. Preservation of our own security must be the primary aim of the United States in international affairs. NPA, February 19484 The benefits [of Marshall aid] to us would be enormous in expanded trade, increased security, and, above all, greater protection to our free society. Such a program would be an intelligent use of our resources in our own interest. CED, February 19485 As the war drew to a close in 1945, post-war planning became ‘the national occupation’.6 Much as the post-war planning community had envisaged, there was a national clamour for guidance as the transition from a war to a peacetime footing began in earnest once the fighting in Europe and the Pacific stopped.

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But it was not yet clear how exactly the conversion process would be managed, and by whom. Federal measures to ensure a smooth conversion had suffered the same bureaucratic, military and political restrictions as the mobilization effort. Even the war itself played a part in frustrating the conversion process, as the resoluteness of the Japanese delayed the ending of the Pacific war, the official start date for the transition period. These difficulties continued, and in many ways became more exacerbated, during the testing months of 1945–46, as the administration and Congress engaged in a political struggle over executive leadership of the transition. The ability of liberals and the administration to more directly guide the conversion process was critically limited by a political and social climate – in the legislature, business, agriculture and large swathes of the general populace – which had grown progressively wary and increasingly hostile to federal intrusion in their lives. At the same time as vital matters of national recovery were being contested, problems in the international realm became precipitous and demanding of resolution. In an increasingly complex post-war environment, the battle over policy between conservatives, liberals and moderates was played out in all phases of the transition, domestic and international. An essential agent in this process of executive clarification was the business planning community, which strove to analyse, influence and guide US policy in a direction which best suited an emerging business consensus over the post-war needs and objectives of the United States. In the domestic realm two key battles were resolved; the removal of wartime controls and employment policy, which had a profound impact on the business planners and lasting ramifications for the post-war economy. In the early months of the transition, hardened conservatives, who had opposed federal intervention since the 1930s, were joined by larger numbers buoyed by the raised prosperity of the war effort and unhappy with the confusion over ending price and production controls and hangover pro-labour legislation of the war years, devices many insisted impaired the freedom of the marketplace. Small business, too, felt left out of the postwar market revival.7 The fifteen-year debate over the health of US capitalism had for most businessmen finally been settled in favour of private enterprise, and confidence was high.8 This rightward mood, which had been a permanent feature of wartime legislative politics, fed the ‘conservative coalition’ in its bid to pare back federal control of the economy now that the pretext of war exigency was removed. Congress forced President Truman, inadequately briefed and immersed in pressing diplomatic and military affairs, to concede to a fast-paced removal of production controls (virtually all terminated by November 1945), but he insisted on a slower lifting of price controls to prevent inflation – a stance which closely followed that proposed by the CED in April 1945.9 As president in charge of the transition, Truman made it clear he backed private enterprise when he pledged business every opportunity ‘to exercise its ingenuity and forcefulness in speeding the resumption of civilian production’.10 Using his experience of dealing with business from leading the senate committee investigations into the mobilization effort (Truman Committee), and his familiarity with the NPA (attended 1943 gathering), unlike his beleaguered successor, from the outset Truman looked to corporate moderates to smooth his relations with Congress.11 This became apparent over the matter of safeguarding employment, upon which liberals fared even worse. This issue represented a last ditch attempt by liberals to make an impression upon the

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public–private balance of the post-war economy. In his State of the Union address of January 1945 Roosevelt called on government departments to ensure the creation of sixty million jobs to give every American the right ‘to a useful and remunerative job’.12 In Congress, a group of liberal senators proposed a Full Employment (Murray) Bill drafted by Keynesian economists that carried an obligation on government to ‘assure’ the existence ‘at all times’ of job opportunities by intervening in the marketplace when private enterprise failed with such things as public-funded works. The Murray Bill represented an emerging consensus among economists and government advisers over the measure of government involvement required to steady the economy towards prosperity, and became a cause célèbre of strong-state activists and a crucial test of authority for the corporate liberal business planners.13 As it transpired, the Murray Bill fight turned out to be the swansong of liberal wartime ambitions, as congressional conservatives (supported by the NAM and the USCC) savaged the Murray Bill by reducing federal responsibilities for employment and axing the term ‘full’ (the Employment Act was born on 20 February 1946). Truman was able to veto the next bout of anti-union legislation when it appeared in mid-1946, but in November the Republican Party swept the midterm elections and dominated both houses of Congress for the first time in sixteen years. Conservatives gathered around the TaftHartley Bill of 1947 that sought to finally undo the New Deal Wagner Act of 1935 by banning ‘closed-shop’ arrangements, secondary boycotting and enforcing a ‘cooling off period’ for national strikes. The new Bill controversially required union leaders to sign affidavits that they were not members of the Communist Party. Despite strenuous reaction from unions and a presidential veto, the Taft-Hartley Act was passed as a potent symbol of the extension of the wartime conservative ascendancy into post-war US politics.14 The outcome of these liberal defeats was that from 1945 to 1947 private enterprise, and not the government, effectively steered the US conversion effort. The shrinking of federal involvement in the economy was precipitous. Of the 165 agencies created during the war, almost all had gone by the end of 1946.15 Between July 1940 and June 1945, one-third of corporate plant construction was financed by the government. In June 1945 the government owned 10 to 12 per cent of US industrial capacity.16 However, despite a $102 billion cut in government purchases, production by the private sector dropped by just $12 billion (3 per cent). This produced some dislocations but nothing to bring about the recession that some had feared. In the event, the post-war conversion was successful despite the lack of centralized planning and coordination. A combination of private sector activism helped by a better-than-expected level of pent-up consumer demand from personal savings, a large house-building programme, an $18 billion increase in exports (mainly to Europe and Japan), and federal activism in areas that included residual New Deal-era unemployment and social security benefits and the ‘GI Bill’ which helped smooth the entry of veterans into the economy, combined to ensure US prosperity.17 The gradual shift from military to civilian production that was already under way by the end of 1944 also eased the transition, as did the sale of government-financed plant at bargain prices, mostly to the big firms.18 The employment levels reached in 1947 were actually higher than the estimates of the CED (fifty-three to fifty-six million) and closer to those of the NPA (fifty-nine million).

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One area that was harder to control was inflation, which the business planners had earlier highlighted, as raised levels of buying caused prices to rise sharply in 1945, and some price controls were briefly re-imposed by a nervous Truman in July 1946.19 The persistence of inflation angered many Americans, even though the Keynesian planners had estimated the contours of the transition just about right. In the end, the economic transition from war to a peacetime footing was ably managed by a combination of freemarket expansion and gentle federal management of fiscal and welfare mechanisms: in other words, the type of mixed economy favoured by the corporate moderates.20 The business planners played an important part in bringing about this result. The political contest in Washington during 1945–46 over control of the postwar transition in the United States shaped not only the nation’s domestic economic policy but also its foreign economic policy. The rivalry between conservatives, liberals and moderates was returned over foreign trade and aid for Europe, issues which became ever more critical when the war ended. As all planners had recognized, the post-war transition for the United States, perhaps more than any other nation, was as international in character as it was national. The United States emerged from the Second World War as the most powerful nation in the world. Its armed forces were spread across all the vital centres of economic and political power on the globe, and its vastly expanded industrial and financial strength granted decisive economic muscle as the world’s banker and its chief supplier of manufactured goods. As anticipated, these assets bestowed considerable leverage upon the United States in shaping the post-war world order, as evidenced in the erection of the American-run financial and monetary architecture of Bretton Woods. But these instruments proved harder than expected to finalize and as the dust settled on war-torn Europe they were, as Milward expressed sourly, ‘more honoured in the breach than the observance’. The instruments of Bretton Woods, as many of its supporters had predicted, were riddled with so many compromises and exceptions they were a weak foundation on which to erect a liberalized post-war economic order.21 Gradually, the assumptions upon which the administration had planned the immediate worldwide adoption of a multilateral economic system were eroded. An unexpected cocktail of domestic and international factors combined to frustrate the carefully laid plans of the United States in creating a world economic order that would readily conform to American requirements. An early sign that the sand was shifting under the administration’s feet was the British loan request in September 1945. After Lend-Lease was terminated following Japan’s surrender, the British asked the United States for a loan but only after tough negotiations was $3.75 billion granted with strict assurances regarding the ending of the Sterling currency regime and the elimination of Imperial Preferences. Washington’s free-traders preferred a harder line towards Britain, but relented after British pleading about the worsening economic and political situation at home.22 Domestic politics in the United States was also making a greater impression on foreign policy, which had been easier for the administration to control during wartime. The internationalist sentiment of 1944, which had allowed renewal of the RTAA and passage of the Bretton Woods Agreements, gave way to pessimism as Americans, worried by the persistence of inflation and labour unrest, became inward-looking and disillusioned about foreign affairs. In June 1946 Truman, under pressure from conservatives to reduce federal

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spending, agreed to the disbanding of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration and ordered that financing of foreign trade must be swiftly put back into private hands.23 The mounting suspicion of congressional conservatives that had placed limits on the Bretton Woods Agreements now threatened to demolish the last bastion of free-trade hopes, the ITO. Emboldened conservatives who had resisted federal encroachments on the domestic economy also targeted internationalist policies. The strength of conservative forces in Congress, especially with the midterm victory of the protectionist Republican Party in November 1946, hampered negotiation of the ITO with the British who now doubted administration assurances that they could deliver reciprocal reductions in tariffs. What emerged at Geneva in March 1947, and again when the ITO Charter was signed at Havana in March 1948, was a compromise agreement over tariff reduction (the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)) born of mounting protectionist sentiment in both the United States and Britain, which under worse than expected post-war conditions was less inclined to entertain overseas trade competition. War necessity had obliged the British to sign up to American ideas about post-war economic liberalization but they now dug in to protect the crumbling Empire.24 This fatally hobbled Clayton’s chances of winning congressional backing for the ITO, which for conservatives was increasingly predicated on convincingly undermining the British Imperial Preference System.25 Lack of support from the business community was a major cause for congressional rejection of the ITO because it failed both staunch protectionists and moderates looking for serious inroads into world markets. Certain provisos attached at the insistence of the British, such as get-out clauses and full-employment obligations, rendered the ITO unsupportable by precisely those sections of US business most likely to benefit from it and which had only recently voted for Bretton Woods (represented for the most part by the NAM and the USCC). As Zeiler phrased it: ‘ The wartime aura of universalism that had effectively countered protectionism had disappeared.’26 This weakness, together with rising tensions between east and west and the debate over forming the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), were major causes for the ITO stalling on its journey through Congress in 1950 – just before North Korea invaded the South.27 In the immediate post-war period, American plans to liberalize the world economy had been dashed by political reaction, in Britain and the United States, to the economic frailty of Western Europe. As it transpired, a solution was crafted which remedied both United States and European ailments and resembled very closely the suggestions of the post-war business planners. The shift in US policy began in March 1947 with the announcement of large-scale economic assistance under the Truman Doctrine to bolster the Anglo–American presence in Greece and Turkey after Britain complained that it could no longer shoulder the burden alone.28 A reticent Congress was quick to vote financial support, but no troops, thanks to an emotive hard sell from Truman about the need to save ‘oppressed peoples’ from ‘totalitarian aggression’. As Eakins explained, the rationale for providing aid in this way may not be entirely explained by the unravelling of east–west harmony, but it was made ‘politically feasible’ with its ‘stimulus’.29 And it was a mixture of economic and political reasoning that led to the wholesale adoption by the administration of a programme to rehabilitate the

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struggling Europeans. Following a trip to war-ravaged Europe in April 1947, Secretary of State George C. Marshall announced a plan to rescue the continent from what he believed was immediate collapse by offering billions of dollars, mostly in the form of grants and not loans, to the most needy countries. Europe may have required help, but there were compelling self-interested reasons for the United States to intervene, such as fear of resurgent European protectionism, the rise of social forces anti-pathetic to capitalism (socialist or communist) and falling exports to Europe which jeopardized American recovery. Such developments would close markets vital to continued US growth and longer-term prosperity. As Hogan described, the Marshall Plan would assist the Europeans in joining the ‘flagging campaign for multilateralism’ and successfully ‘recast Europe in the image of American neocapitalism’: a free-market system with few government controls and liberalized trade.30 The United States was thus compelled to intervene, for self-interested reasons if nothing else, to ensure European reconstruction developed in ways sympathetic to long-term American economic interests. The justifications for US intervention in Europe were clear. But the administration faced a powerful conservative coalition that had just agreed millions of dollars to secure Greece and Turkey and was now being asked to sanction the release of government money – as grants – to the tune of billions of dollars. That Marshall was successful, after a nine-month battle with an isolationist Congress and a sceptical public, in winning almost $13 billion of reconstruction aid for Europe was in no small part due to the support and lobbying efforts of significant sections of US business spearheaded by the post-war planners. The campaign for the Marshall Plan was a defining moment for the business planners and established the contours of their relationship with government for years to come. The transition period for the United States was accordingly a complex social, political and economic landscape of generalized prosperity, ebullient private enterprise, labour unrest, heightened conservatism and creeping isolationism. Behind this scene was an equally complex and portentous backdrop of international tension and uncertainty. These conditions set the parameters of American life for at least two years after the war. At the outset of the transition period, the main business planning organizations had highly developed proposals for enabling the domestic conversion to a peacetime economy and, on the world stage, for securing US hegemony of the world’s financial and commercial architecture. As the transition actually unfolded, the ideas of the business planners, on domestic and international matters, were finally put to the test.

TCF leads from the rear The conservative challenge of 1943–44 had already decided the TCF of the correctness of its mission to seek answers through scientific inquiry and to keep its distance from the controversial machinations of policy advocacy. In 1945 the TCF redoubled its efforts to ‘inform’ Americans about the problems of conversion and ‘the even more difficult years that lie beyond’. The TCF’s gloomy prediction of ‘unrestrained war’ between vested interests in post-war American society seemed accurate as clashes

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occurred in 1945–46 between capital and labour, between business and government, between competing political interests in Washington and a myriad of groups over the direction of the country.31 The decision to remain aloof from these sectional fights may have weakened the hand of the corporate liberals in the contest for influence over decision-making in Washington, but the willingness of the TCF to offer a platform for contending areas of thought enabled the coalescing of ideas and the formulation of a moderate consensus among theorists on the key questions of post-war economics. In this capacity the TCF was instrumental in the development of two important contributions to the debate about both the national and international aspects of the transition. This first materialized in October 1945 when the results of the symposium on postwar financial matters, Financing American Prosperity: A Symposium of Economists, were published. Its findings revealed an acceptance among a broad spectrum of economists over the role of government in economic activity and of Keynesian methods in maintaining prosperity.32 All the authors agreed that it was the responsibility of government to ensure full employment was reached, engage public works schemes to offset depression and provide unemployment and social security benefits to ensure consumption. In addition, there was general agreement, even from conservatives, that deficit (or compensatory) spending was the right mechanism to enable government to perform these duties. Even the conservative economists, it seemed, conceded that the free market needed ‘back-up’ in case it failed to perform. The emphasis was still on a domestic-oriented recovery: Keynesian Hansen, who had relaxed his ‘stagnationist’ position, and the moderate Howard S. Ellis, consultant to the Federal Reserve Board, were the only experts to mention that international economics played any part in achieving and maintaining post-war US prosperity.33 By the end of 1945, Keynesian economists had reached broad agreement on how the transition should work. The role of government was to act purely as a balancing agent, ‘checking any temporary tendency toward an excessive boom’, as Hansen explained, but ‘be prepared to go forward with large federal expenditures’ to avoid recession. However, most were confident that civilian production would take off without too much federal intervention.34 A consensus had now emerged among leading economists, with many of them senior government advisers, around a ‘moderate’ version of government intervention (the centre ground of ‘compensatory spenders’ identified by Collins), which informed the contest between the administration and Congress over the most appropriate mechanisms for achieving a successful domestic conversion. The second contribution of the TCF in tackling the key problems of the transition was in international economics. During 1945 the TCF affirmed its belief in the association of national economic problems with international solutions. ‘Never before’, the TCF declared, ‘has the kind of work to which the Fund has been devoted been more urgently needed than now.’35 The major surveys on international economics (foreign economic policy and international cartels), and ‘Needs and Resources’, consumed much of the available resources of the TCF after 1945. At the end of the year trustees rejected a number of suggestions for further study to prioritize those already begun.36 As it became apparent during 1946, domestic demand was such that the economy would ably maintain high levels of employment and production and

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not plunge instantly into depression, the attention of the TCF was drawn increasingly towards questions of international economics: All the important postwar economic issues here in the United States have grown more and more to become parts of the one great central postwar problem – how to get the world on its feet again and to keep it there – and these United States problems have become more crucial as the dependence of the war-devastated world upon the economic strength of the United States has become more evident. All of this has focused attention on what might be called the American economic potential.37

As the dust began to settle on the world’s battlegrounds the tempo of decisionmaking over foreign affairs in Washington began to quicken. This placed additional pressure upon Buchanan and the team organized by the TCF in 1945 to complete its research and reveal its findings on foreign economic policy. The broad-based Committee on International Economic Relations, renamed the Committee on Foreign Economic Relations (CFER), had barely met when it was asked in June 1946 to issue an ‘emergency’ statement which ‘strongly supported’ the British loan request then making its way through Congress.38 In order to contribute to the London conference on the ITO scheduled for October-November, the Report of the Committee on Foreign Economic Relations was rushed to the press on 30 September 1946. The substantive survey was completed in June 1946 but was not due for release until 1947. Though later than hoped, the TCF aimed for the widest distribution possible for its views on foreign economic policy. To advertise the Report and the survey, the latter under the heading Rebuilding the World Economy, the TCF enlisted the sizeable resources of the Advertising Council, a non-profit organization of moderate business leaders in national advertising and the media which spent around $100 million a year on public service advertising for government and worthy private activities. Fortunately for the TCF, Clark was able to gain the Council’s agreement to advertise the survey through his chairmanship of the public advisory committee, an adjunct of the Council which approved private undertakings looking for assistance. A special pamphlet, World Trade and You!, based on TCF material, was published by the Council and distributed free of charge by the TCF. With the additional cooperation of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Program Information Exchange (which Clark also chaired), and the NPA, the TCF was granted free time and space to promote its findings on foreign economic policy in major outlets across the country.39 The Report was also distributed in the United Kingdom through the offices of the American Chamber of Commerce in London, with articles appearing in the Manchester Guardian, the AngloAmerican News and the British Export Gazette.40 The Report was a significant document in two ways. It was the first ‘composite’ view of the stance of the main post-war planning groups, the CFR and organized labour, on international economics.41 And it also challenged the State Department’s position on foreign economic policy. For this reason, and the remarkable foresight of some of its observations and recommendations, the Report is worth looking at in detail. In general, the CFER was ‘wholeheartedly in accord’ with the administration’s objective of establishing an international multilateral system of liberalized trade

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and finance. This was because it was ‘not merely a worthy end’ but because it was a sine qua non for a durable peace ‘blessed with prosperity under freedom’. The CFER differed, however, over the means of its achievement. In its mind, present government policy was not ‘sufficiently realistic or broadly based’ to reach its goals. A multilateral economic system, the CFER believed, would only be attained when two fundamental prerequisites were satisfied. The first was the economic rehabilitation of the warshattered economies, and the second was the achievement of political security. The foreign economic policy of the US government was failing, the CFER alleged, in the achievement of these prerequisites in two ways. First, the United States was wrong in its pursuit of universality in non-discriminatory trade as this was not essential, only the area covered by multilateral trade ‘be sufficiently large and varied to afford an adequate basis’ for mutually beneficial exchange and require only minor economic readjustments. This excluded in all practicality the Soviet Union and countries like it, whose internal system was so organized as to preclude membership of a multilateral trading system. While ‘in no sense inimical to the welfare of these countries’, the CFER admitted that such countries were ‘not naturally candidates for membership’ of a multilateral economic order. Therefore, the first prerequisite for a multilateral system, the CFER believed, was that the devastated countries which desired to join be restored to a ‘going concern’, namely that the war-torn economies of the former democracies be given time to restore their domestic economies until they were able to enrol on a workable multilateral system. To ensure this process, the challenge for America was to provide a ‘cushion’ against instability for the struggling nations by supplying capital investment and raising the level of imports into the United States. This was the second failing of current US foreign economic policy. The early post-war US loans to Britain (and France) were not enough. The CFER emphasized that ‘quite apart from moral or political considerations, rehabilitation aid, as distinct from relief, is basic to the reconstruction of a workable system of expanding multilateral foreign trade’. This investment was crucial to the building of a multilateral system and the CFER wanted the United States to continue to dispense aid on condition that the recipient nation ‘must desire to join a multilateral trading system, must be prepared to accept its responsibilities and must be in a position to do so’. Rehabilitation aid could take many forms, the CFER argued, but must primarily come from public and not private sources. If loans were extended, they should be treated differently from normal commercial loans and not on the basis of ability to pay. In this regard, the CFER felt that using grants was preferable to using loans for rehabilitation aid. The responsibility for providing the aid need not fall entirely upon the purse of the United States (such as the Export-Import Bank as preferred by the CFER), but may be shared by those members of the United Nations able to contribute, provided the aid did not come from the IBRD which the CFER believed was designed for longerterm assistance after rehabilitation was achieved. In either case, the CFER wished that the US government proceed to ‘finish the job of foreign rehabilitation promptly’ and ‘alone if necessary’.42 On the issue of political security, a more basic obstacle to rehabilitation for some countries, the CFER pointed to the existence of political tension in areas of the world that made it ‘impossible’ for several governments ‘to relax their agencies of economic

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management enough to permit a multilateral system to function’. Indeed, the success of US foreign economic policy, in the minds of the CFER, was ‘completely dependent’ on the achievement of a durable peace and that there should be ‘no doubts in the minds of the American people on this point’.43 Once rehabilitation and political security had been achieved, the CFER reasoned that multilateralism was possible.44 One crucial way in which the CFER believed the United States could win genuine European commitment to multilateralism would be to relax its attitude towards imports. The CFER wanted the US government to more actively encourage a sufficient increase in imports to maintain the balance of payments in the country as well as abroad. This required a serious attack on the US tariff, the resilience of which, particularly in regard to agricultural products, had for years been viewed internationally as the Achilles’ heel of the United States in its attempts to foster liberalized trade abroad. This failing, the CFER warned, was especially damning for US credibility overseas: ‘To put the matter bluntly, they have created doubts of the quality of economic leadership that the country will provide in the postwar world for the multilateral trading system that it espouses.’ The CFER recommended that the US government immediately execute reductions in its tariffs through the powers granted but as yet unused in the much strengthened RTAA of 1945. And the CFER put great stock in this tactic: ‘This action more than any other would signalize the quality and responsibility of the economic leadership that the United States is willing to assume in the postwar world.’ The CFER also noted that such measures were of mutual advantage, and that classic economic theory dictated that imports actually stimulate exports rather than depress them. In fact, increased imports and heavier intervention to create stability in world markets for raw materials and prime commodities would counteract the inflationary trend in the United States caused by pent-up consumer demand, restrict further rises in living costs and increase the availability of consumer goods to Americans. Though not a panacea, the unilateral reduction of tariffs ‘at this propitious moment’ would promote the ‘adaptation of the American economy to the new conditions that will be basic to peace and prosperity in the postwar world’.45 It was on the matter of imports–exports that the CFER delivered its most direct rebuke of the free-trade purists, such as Clayton, then occupying high office in the administration as undersecretary of state for economic affairs: There is a danger that our public authorities … may harbor the misconception that a hard-driven bargain that opens the markets of a particular country to a particular American export will expand our exports in general and will contribute to employment, welfare and prosperity in this country. … Under the circumstances that prevail today such export promotion does not expand our exports in general nor contribute to the well-being of the American people.

The CFER based its critique on the premise that it was the shortage of dollars in foreign countries to pay for US goods that stymied exports, not the failure of government to secure aggressively market openings overseas. Only through imports can other countries obtain the dollars necessary for them, in turn, to purchase US exports.46 The fear that rising protectionism would deny American opportunities was clear: ‘Time is running short. There is hesitation in many nations committed to the principles

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of freedom but compelled to practice the reverse. They will not remain long in this position.’ Hence US leadership was key. ‘There is no policy advocated in this report’, claimed the committee, which would have a chance of operating with success anywhere, in any area of appreciable size, without the wholehearted participation of the United States. Our economic potential is too large, our foreign economic interrelationships are too pervasive, to permit a multilateral system to function effectively without us … we must assume, in addition, the initiative required to bring it into being.47

The Report comprehensively responded to the emerging problems in US foreign economic policy after the war over how a multilateral economic system could be realized under conditions of rising national and international protectionism, domestic political conservatism, creeping isolationism and uncertainty about the Soviet Union. In this climate, the CFER projected a reasoned case for a moderated multilateralism that emphasized the interconnectedness of the US economy with the rest of the world and the relationship between foreign trade, national prosperity and higher standards of living. In so doing, the CFER challenged the prevailing Washington view of foreign economic policy as it stood in late 1946 and offered an alternative route for policymakers that presaged epoch-making decisions taken by the US government only months later. The CFER critique was fourfold. The first was in its appraisal of US tariff policy, the country’s long tradition of protectionism and theoretical presumptions about the relationship between imports and exports. Trade expansion was not essential to US prosperity. In fact, the American economy would benefit, the CFER reckoned, from an increase in imports, not exports, in the short term, assisted by a unilateral lowering of the US tariff. The second was the priority the CFER gave to rehabilitation and reconstruction over reduction of trade barriers and immediate international application of multilateral instruments (or universality). Thirdly, the CFER interpretation of ‘political security’ was very broadly defined with no military dimension. In fact, the militarization of the economy was deplored as inimical to the proper functioning of a multilateral system. As such the CFER made no references to the worsening political climate between east and west that was taking place at the time the Report was being written. In fact, the CFER downplayed the importance of engagement with the Soviet Union, and adroitly, without being at all ‘anti-Soviet’, suggested that the United States might happily ignore the Soviet Union. The CFER recognized that Soviet compliance in a US-led multilateral world order ‘would be based more on reasons of prestige, or the pursuit of a cooperative foreign political policy, than on intrinsic economic benefits to be received’.48 Most importantly, and unlike the NPA report of 1944, the CFER offered a novel mechanism for reconstructing war-torn economies that would avoid repayment problems and solve the import–export dilemma: export capital as a gift, not a loan. Within six months of the Report, Secretary of State Marshall was recommending the US government do just that.49 The TCF contribution to the discussion about US foreign economic policy was a landmark achievement. Given the fact that the organization shied away from overtly intervening in policy debates and declaring partiality, it was in the promotion of US

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economic power on the world stage that the TCF left its most indelible mark during the 1940s. The product of a broad cross section of business planners, who were mainly moderates, under the guidance of a prominent figure in the CFR, the TCF project brought together views over foreign trade separately articulated by the business planners (NPA in 1944 and CED in 1945), and moulded them to fit the duties and responsibilities of the United States in the new dynamic and in ways unexpected world order that had begun to surface during 1946. The Report symbolized the merging of the chief business planning groups around a formula for post-war US capitalism that directly linked the successful performance of the domestic economy with the US-led reorganization of the international economy, not solely for the purposes of trade expansion but to ensure the continuation of imports–exports at the optimum level required to maintain US growth. This was predicated, of course, on the orderly functioning of a healthy world economy, and it was in its message that war-torn Europe might close its doors to US commerce – for reasons political or economic – that the TCF Report was most forceful. The plight of Europe had always been centre stage in US deliberations about the post-war order, but even with the Nazis vanquished, this troubled continent continued to threaten America’s future. The theoretical underpinnings of the Report and its observations on universality, rehabilitation and security became the topic of widespread debate in the difficult months of tense and precipitate decision-making that ensued after its publication. When it became clear just how devastated the European economies were, and as relations with the Soviet Union deteriorated further, the United States took direct action to shape European economic and political recovery. The call by President Truman in March 1947 to aid the British in controlling the crises in Greece and Turkey led the TCF to once again circumvent its more leisurely approach to publishing research. With its major survey of foreign economic policy, Rebuilding the World Economy, languishing in the printing stage, the TCF used the sympathetic Public Affairs Committee’s highly successful pamphlet series to summarize the chief findings of Rebuilding.50 Issued in May 1947, America’s Stake in World Trade was even more forthright in stressing the imperative for US leadership. Devised for popular distribution, the pamphlet appeared in the wake of a high-profile campaign to advertise the benefits of world trade run by the Advertising Council that had a steering committee composed of the TCF, NPA, OWM, State Department and Commerce Department (also PIE and Carnegie Endowment for Peace). The campaign was launched in September 1946 at the Waldorf-Astoria at a meeting of more than twenty organizations and government agencies.51 America’s Stake in World Trade highlighted more forcefully the self-interested nature of the plan to reorganize the world economy: The restoration of world-wide trade is of special advantage to the United States, just as it was to Britain’s interest in earlier days. American industry is in a strong competitive position in the world market today. Few countries besides ourselves can supply manufactured goods to the world market. The widespread fear that domestic investment opportunities will shrink makes foreign investment more attractive. A flow of foreign investment from more advanced countries to aid the development of more backward areas is essential if trade is to be increased substantially.

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Therefore, it was crucial for the United States ‘from a selfish point of view’ to foster the reconstruction of the ailing European and especially British economies and use its economic strength as ‘a bargaining weapon’ to bring about a reduction in world trade barriers. This would only work, however, if the United States took the lead in reducing its own barriers and raised the level of US imports, ‘the Number One priority’, the pamphlet claimed, in US foreign economic policy.52 Although the pamphlet recognized that the US economy was ‘less dependent’ on the rest of the world, and that ‘a decline in American foreign trade is not disastrous for ourselves’, significantly America’s Stake in World Trade went further than its parent publication in stressing the material and ideological obligation of Americans to intervene on the world stage. Written after the enunciation of Truman’s plea to Congress to finance the British expedition in Greece and Turkey (his ‘Doctrine’), but a month before the announcement of Marshall’s campaign to fund a plan to aid the whole of Europe, the final passage of America’s Stake in World Trade was a rousing and far-sighted appeal for public support for US leadership worldwide. It was also the only explicit acknowledgement in the pamphlet of the political dimension of the economic objectives considered so imperative to the future prosperity of the United States. Writing of Truman’s ‘momentous decision’, the authors felt his act of financial assistance raised, ‘all political questions aside’, the vital question for Americans of ‘to what extent we want to become the economic bulwark of the non-Communist world’. The pamphlet continued: For a long time the existence of the British Empire with its world-wide bases and military outposts kept the peace. Our way of life seemed serenely unchallenged. All that has now changed. The British Empire is breaking apart and Britain itself has been so weakened by two world wars that it can no longer carry the burden. Only the United States can assume it. The real question for us, therefore, is whether we shall ultimately be the only free economy in the world – and whether we ourselves can be free if hemmed in on all sides by controlled economies. Time is running short. Many nations … are looking for responsible leadership. … Our whole way of life may be at stake.53

By the time the main survey Rebuilding the World Economy: America’s Role in Foreign Trade and Investment was available in October 1947, the international situation and US foreign economic policy had changed so dramatically that its findings were unremarkable.54 The TCF had tried its best to influence debate with a three-part phased release to the press of sections of the main survey that began in September with ‘patterns of world trade’ and ‘international loans’ and ended with a call upon the United States ‘to take the lead in rebuilding a multilateral system of world trade’ on the day the full report was published.55 A two-reel film on world trade entitled ‘Round Trip: The USA in World Trade’ was produced by the TCF in association with the World Today, Inc., to coincide with the release of Rebuilding the World Economy. According to the TCF, this film ‘reached an unusually large audience throughout the country’.56 The TCF also exhibited its world trade publications at the International Travel Exposition at the Grand Central Palace, New York City in May 1947.57 Yet much had transpired in US foreign policy before Rebuilding the World Economy reached the bookshelves.

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The US government had become aware of just how economically devastated and politically fragile Western Europe had become, and a proposal for a massive injection of aid composed mostly of grants – one of the suggestions of the TCF Report – was being pushed through Congress. Nevertheless, Rebuilding the World Economy was released just in time for the finale of the ITO conference in Havana (which had been deadlocked since April), the debate in Congress to extend the RTAA and when public fascination with the Marshall Plan was high. Authored by Buchanan and Lutz, Rebuilding the World Economy was nonetheless the result of a team effort, with expertise drawn principally from the Economics Department of Princeton University which included professors Walter W. Stewart, Robert B. Warren and committee chairman Riefler, as well as the University of California’s J. B. Condliffe (NPA) and the Keynes-sceptic Howard Ellis.58 Rebuilding the World Economy supplied considerable flesh-on-the-bones for the earlier Report, comprising over four hundred pages of tables, charts and commentary on the US economy and its position in the world, with appendices reproducing the texts of the Bretton Woods Agreements, the British loan of December 1945 and the State Department’s proposals for an ITO. The authors drew extensively on the government report ‘Proposals for Expansion of World Trade and Investment’ written by the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce in 1946. Completed in June 1946, Rebuilding the World Economy was unable to comment on changes that occurred in the sixteen intervening months before publication, such as the rise in US inflation or the deterioration in the European economic and political situation. However, in his foreword to the volume (written on 26 June 1947), the validity of the survey was emphasized in Clark’s passing reference to the rapid and portentous shifting of international relations: ‘Events underline more heavily every month the fact that the prosperity and well-being of the people of the United States are definitely tied to the economic state of the rest of the world. Similarly, the welfare of other nations is linked more closely than ever before with the workings of the American economy.’59 As its studies on foreign economic policy had shown, the TCF had articulated to a high degree of complexity and accuracy a conception of US national interests in the shifting sands of the post-war world. However, the slow pace of research on the major economic questions had clearly frustrated the TCF as the all-important transition period began. As Berle later admitted, TCF studies were ‘not infrequently … overtaken by the rush of current history’.60 The huge ‘Needs and Resources’ survey consumed much of the organizations energy yet was still two years from publication. The same fate befell the parallel international study on cartels, which emerged as two publications. The first report, Cartels in Action, did not surface until 1946, and it was 1948 before the second report appeared as Cartels or Competition?61 On the positive side, the latest volumes of the When the War Ends series by Chase, Democracy Under Pressure and Tomorrow’s Trade, were still proving very popular. Released on 15 January 1945, Democracy Under Pressure had sold 29,305 copies by November.62 Tomorrow’s Trade was published in November 1945 after receiving ‘critical comments’ from Buchanan and Leroy Stinebower of the State Department. A simple reiteration of the domesticfirst, moderated multilateralism consensus of the business planners, Tomorrow’s Trade completely sold out its first run of 10,000 copies within a month.63 To help research for his fifth and final book in the series, entitled For This We Fought (released in the spring

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of 1946), Chase was granted access to ‘a mass of unpublished War Department service polls material’ to gauge the ‘real picture of the veteran’s mind’.64 Berle later claimed that For This We Fought ‘stated the issues of a period of unprecedented potential perhaps as well as any book published at that time’.65 During 1947 the TCF admitted it had ‘tried to keep in close step with the rapid march of national and international affairs’, the principal development of which being ‘the ominous deepening of the differences between the East and the West’. The TCF believed this phenomenon, as well as raising political questions, called for ‘a heightened understanding by the American people of their own economic system’. Indeed, in its annual report of 1947 the TCF identified in the country ‘a remarkable increase of activity in the field of public affairs education’ since the end of the war, and Americans were ‘now engaged in a great national movement to inform themselves about the problems which confront them’.66 In a stroke of fortune for the TCF, its ability to educate Americans about their economy was greatly boosted in 1947 with the imminent release of its vast survey of the country’s ‘Needs and Resources’. By far the most acclaimed contribution by the TCF on domestic economics, the impact of this mammoth study under the title America’s Needs and Resources, unlike its international counterpart, was little diminished by the delay in its release. Completed in May 1947, a full year after reaching the printers, Resources was launched with great fanfare. It had, after all, been the organization’s largest and most ambitious project to date. The survey had taken Dewhurst and his team of twenty staff three years to complete this survey of the performance of the US economic system in the past and for the future.67 Framed in the context of the transition period and the arrival of a consensus on the precise character of the mixed economy, Resources echoed the positive messages then emanating from business and official circles about the prospects for US prosperity. It was very well received by a population fascinated by and hungry for knowledge about their economy. Over 850 newspapers passed an editorial comment on Resources in its first year, the Associated Press ran a series of five illustrated articles and the New York Times issued three ‘Sunday features’ on the survey in 1947. The respected magazines Life and Fortune (long-time supporters of the CED) also ran features on Resources, and CED economist (and TCF consultant) Sumner Slichter described the work as ‘monumental and exceedingly useful’. On radio, an hour-long programme based on the survey (and dramatized using Disney characters) was aired by the American Broadcasting Company in September 1947 to an audience of two and a half million.68 The TCF was proud to announce that the survey attracted ‘considerable interest’ from abroad. This was helped by the ‘extensive use’ of the survey’s findings by the government’s Overseas Information Service, which also printed a summarized version in its Russian language magazine Amerika for circulation in the Soviet Union.69 Copies were also sent to the heads of state of the ‘leading’ foreign nations, including Josef Stalin. Excerpts from the main report were brought to the attention of ‘hundreds of thousands’ in a booklet called The Miracle of America distributed by the Advertising Council, and an illustrated 32-page pamphlet named Power, Machines and Plenty written by Dewhurst and Gloria Waldron, chair of the Public Information Committee of the Film Council of America, sold 20,000 copies in six months. By December 1947 Resources was easily the year’s

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best-seller for the TCF with 14,445 copies sold, reaching almost 20,000 copies by the end of 1948.70 As the TCF saw it, 1947 was the year of Resources, which in size, scope, level of attention and ‘significance of its findings’ easily ‘surpasses anything the Fund has ever done’.71 It was decided to embellish Resources by issuing a short illustrated volume for a wider audience, and Rudolf Modley, former president of the Pictograph Corporation, was commissioned to help develop a pictorial, one hundred-page ‘graphics’ version of the survey along with Thomas R. Carskadon, former associate editor of the New Republic and staffer of the NBC, for sale to schools, large businesses and general readers.72 Published in July 1949, USA: Measure of a Nation became the largest selling title issued by the TCF to date reaching nearly 70,000 copies by the end of its first year after a promotional drive overseas.73 In October 1946 the TCF took another radical turn in its operations. For the first time in its history, the TCF embarked on a survey outside of the United States. Once more, this novel turn in the direction of TCF research was instigated by Adolf Berle. Before the Cold War became an established fact of international relations, and the prospect of a workable arrangement between the United States, Western Europe and the Soviet Union over the global order was not completely off the agenda – a reference to which was made in the Report of the Committee on Foreign Economic Relations at around the same time – the TCF was asked to contemplate a completely new study. With east–west relations already turning cool, in October 1946 Berle, former assistant secretary of state for economic affairs, suggested the TCF begin a survey on the ‘Economic Policy of Two Nations’. His idea was premised on the fact that the United States at best must live between a Russian dominated sector and a sector in which American influence is the main factor. The relations between these sectors will not be cordial and America’s economic system will be under steadily increasing attack. … The United States must also consider the possibility of using her economic power to fulfill the pledges in the Atlantic Charter.

It was incumbent on the United States, Berle continued, to endeavour to make these measures of economic activity not only raise standards of living but to engender greater contact with the Soviet Union. ‘At a minimum,’ Berle insisted, ‘the program ought to win friends and influence people; at a maximum, it ought to produce a desire to cooperate on the Soviet side.’ In order to demonstrate how such economic intervention could work, Berle wanted the TCF to propose a simple economic programme for the United States to carry out in two countries, such as Brazil (Berle was finishing a term there as US ambassador), where the United States had ‘ready access and where something could be done without undue international complications’, and a country such as Turkey ‘on the periphery between the two sectors’.74 The trustees were again won over by Berle’s fervour and agreed to study the possibilities of US loans and investment to aid industrialization and raise the standard of living in Turkey and Brazil.75 In addition, and well before Truman’s announcement of aid to the country in March 1947, the trustees approved the selection of a research team to visit Greece and investigate the country’s social conditions. This was a reconnection for the TCF with its pre-war, ‘progressive’ interest in wider social matters which had been subordinated by the stress on economic problems of the war period.76

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The single-country studies, the TCF argued, would supplement the general survey Rebuilding the World Economy with ‘close-up views’ that ‘might make an important contribution to the general conduct of American foreign economic relations, both public and private’. This discussion, as with that of the CFER, was significant as it took place when the broad instruments of international economic and political order – of Bretton Woods and the United Nations – were in their infancy. Within six months of Berle’s intervention, the Truman Doctrine was enunciated, making the study of Greece all the more pertinent. The Report on the Greeks became an ‘objective’ view of the ‘characteristics and occupations’ of the people and the reconstruction needs of the war-torn country, and appeared at the end of 1948 just as aid from the United States became effective. The TCF was later able to claim that it chose to study Greece and Turkey because they were ‘strategic bastions on the battle lines of the “cold war” ’.77 Turkey: An Economic Appraisal (part-written by George Soule from the NPA), and Brazil: An Expanding Economy emerged in 1949 and were solely economic appraisals of those countries.78 Fascination with international affairs grew within the TCF as its leaders tried to make sense of the new global order that was rising from the ashes of the old. In 1948 the TCF decided it wanted to make a significant contribution to the international debate about the place of the Soviet Union in world affairs. By way of a massive study, some eight hundred pages in length and a selective bibliography of seven hundred and fifty titles, the TCF wished to produce a ‘factual, dispassionate and primarily descriptive account’ of the Soviet economy and its ‘promise of production’. This was no policy document for government specialists, but a major historical text designed for wider consumption to ‘permit the educated American public to assess the present and potential roles of the USSR in world affairs’ with a secondary usage as a college reference book. The chief areas of interest for the TCF were evident in the conclusions of the study, which tried to answer the questions of whether the Soviet Union was ‘a great power’, a ‘bellwether of economic progress’, whether it was significant to world economy and what was its capability for ‘aggression or internal development’. As the accumulation of primary data on the Soviet economy by means of field studies could not be ‘seriously entertained’, the survey would be dependent on what the TCF considered was an adequate amount of sources to be found in the United States, especially the foreign language reports held at the Library of Congress. The TCF recommended a research committee to oversee the project led by Dewhurst with the substance of the book written by several academic contributors (for a fee of $2,000 each) at a total estimated cost for the survey of $120,000 over three years, the largest spent on any TCF project.79 However, the devotion of the TCF to original, scientific research meant that, after some deliberation, it was decided to drop the idea of a Soviet survey as its ‘practicability is far too dubious’ as it would be too heavily reliant upon existing literature. The steep decline in east–west relations, signalled by the Berlin blockade of 1948–49, no doubt aided the decision to bury the project.80 In 1948 the TCF initiated another mammoth survey of economic needs and resources, only this time of all the nations of the world outside the United States. ‘America in the Changing World’ was a four-year commitment as part of the continuing mission of the TCF to analyse the economic power and potential of the post-war US economy

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and spread ‘realization’ to US foreign economic policymakers ‘of the proportions of this new American stature, and its implications for the world of today and tomorrow’. The project was supervised by a team led by Dr and Mrs Woytinsky of the TCF and financed until November 1950 by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. The project team, located at Johns Hopkins University, was instructed to focus on the main areas of world economic activity and their relation to the United States, including field trips to Europe to measure the advancement of post-war reconstruction.81 The survey underwent considerable revision during the four years it was researched, growing to eleven main sections subdivided into fifty chapters before it materialized as World Population and Production in 1953.82 Alongside a broadening of its research agenda the TCF continued to experiment after the war in the marketing of its findings. The TCF made advances in promoting its work through a variety of media outlets during the immediate post-war period. The TCF was asked by the National Education Association to establish a regular section in the Association’s Journal, and in the autumn of 1945 the TCF published its first quarterly Newsletter.83 The organization’s flirtation with motion pictures that began in 1944 failed to charm the moguls in Hollywood but elsewhere achieved considerable success.84 An agreement was signed in 1945 for the joint production with Encyclopaedia Britannica Films of a programme of ten-minute shorts, the first two films based on the TCF surveys of distribution costs and of housing appearing in 1947 and a third entitled ‘Productivity, Key to Plenty’ which was released in 1949.85 These films were intended for circulation to schools and libraries and interested business and labour audiences. An educational short on collective bargaining was planned with the Commission on Motion Pictures of the American Council on Education and a film on the same subject with the pro-TCF public affairs committee for 1946.86 In 1948 the TCF planned to disseminate the message of its labour study Partners in Production: A Basis for Labor-Management Understanding in a motion picture made in association with Eddie Albert Productions for release in 1949.87 Also in 1948, the TCF was the first planning organization to branch out into a new medium of mass communication, television. Two of the TCF’s film shorts were televised that year on a number of networks across the United States.88 The format of the 1949 Annual Report was also upgraded. It departed from the formal, list-fashion factual reporting of earlier reports. It was published in colour, and written using modern techniques of popular distribution, with less textual detail and far simpler language, and using photographs of TCF members, colourful graphs and pictorial charts. A measure of the publicity effort by the TCF was its book sales. Between 1940 and 1947 the TCF sold 281,222 copies of its publications, compared to a total of 35,652 publications sold over a similar timeframe in the previous decade (1932–39). However, the When the War Ends series by Chase alone accounted for 182,892 of this total, with the biggest seller, Democracy Under Pressure (1945), topping the chart in 1947 with 38,019.89 This was a testament to the wisdom, in hindsight, of enlisting the skill and reputation of Stuart Chase to popularize the TCF ‘message’. The TCF appeared to flourish in the new and exciting context of post-war international relations and the fresh challenges it posed for the United States. The TCF, much to its frustration, had been unable to offer quick-fire responses to the rapidly

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changing conditions of the post-war transition. Vitally, however, the TCF supplied a platform upon which the business planners were able to discuss the relationship of the United States with Europe and other nations in its Buchanan project, the publications from which were coincidentally very timely. Crucially, the TCF facilitated the shaping of an academic consensus around a moderated view of the roles of federal and freemarket capitalism in the post-war transition, and enabled the convergence of the major business planners over foreign economic policy. This convergence soon dovetailed with government schemes for Europe, a process that received its greatest expression during the ferocious national debate which followed Marshall’s announcement in June 1947 of his proposal to intervene in the economic reconstruction of Europe.

NPA finds solace in Europe The NPA entered the transition period convinced it was the right organization to communicate business opinion to the government. Despite being bypassed by the administration in favour of the CED over the Bretton Woods deadlock, the NPA continued to push for recognition. At the end of 1944, work began on another grand public initiative to urge government action and raise the profile of the organization. Unfortunately, 4 for 4: Questions for National Action was not ready for release until October 1945, missing several opportunities to stimulate national debate. A copy of 4 for 4 was sent to Truman for his endorsement as the NPA believed the president, who as senator had attended the grand NPA annual meeting of December 1943, would ‘concur in our aims and approach’.90 Unlike his predecessor (and without the prompting of Currie), Truman wrote a considered reply: This report and your projected action represent an encouraging example of the kind of non-partisan, citizen enterprise that is essential if our country is to maintain its democratic institutions. I fully agree that cooperative planning by agriculture, business, labor and government is necessary of we are to realize our opportunities for steadily improving the national standard of living. … I hope that those in public service will examine the questions you raise which bear on government policies. Any recommendations which you or others working on this project may develop will be given careful consideration. I want every businessman, farmer, and worker to know that joint action in developing solutions to the challenging problems that lie ahead has my most sincere and determined support.91

Despite this heartening top-tier response, it was clear that the fundamental tenets of the NPA programme for the transition were as good as lost. There was no central coordinating body to steer the country through the transition, which had been effectively left to the private sector. Federal leadership was virtually non-existent with congressional conservatives winning all the major battles over the conversion. For his part, though more sympathetic to the NPA than his predecessor, Truman lifted nearly all wartime controls and was daily battling with a conservative coalition emboldened by a popular mood that wished for less, not more, federal involvement in their lives.

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Since the Bretton Woods episode, the NPA continued to emphasize the role of private enterprise in post-war recovery. In the debate over the Murray Bill, the NPA released a substantial report ‘for discussion’ on ways of achieving full employment. National Budgets for Full Employment, released in April 1945, affirmed what was emerging as the consensus view of economists assembled by the TCF for its symposium (published in October 1945). The NPA stated: ‘The basis of America’s post-war economy should be private enterprise, with Government acting as impartial referee and effecting fiscal policies through taxation and expenditure programs, such as public works schemes, that will mesh with private undertakings.’92 The NPA later claimed its report was ‘utilized’ in drafting the Bill and in the stipulation by Congress that a three-member CEA be created to study trends and recommend policies to the president.93 But these were paltry gains for liberals and labour campaigners from an encounter that resulted in a weakened federal mandate and diluted commitments to workers who were most exposed during the transition in what became the Employment Act of 1946.94 In June 1946 the board undertook a reappraisal of its post-war strategy that implied a discrete emphasis on the international component of domestic economic affairs. It was agreed that ‘the NPA should deal with the root problems underlying the maintenance of a free-enterprise system of continuing high production at home and the extension of multilateral trade and democracy abroad’. Poignantly, the board decided that the NPA ‘should be selective in its strategy so as to attain the maximum leverage from its efforts’.95 The choice of areas to obtain ‘leverage’ was easy, and resulted in by far the most noteworthy contribution of the NPA to the unfolding post-war situation. It came from a vigorous campaign to raise awareness over the problems of Europe that coincided with, and directly complemented, government thinking on the subject. Besides, this was less a case of the NPA adjusting its stance to match the government than it was the other way round. The NPA was one of the first post-war planning organizations to construct a detailed analysis of, and an argument for, European reconstruction. Beginning in December 1942 with the well-received Relief for Europe: the First Phase of Reconstruction under its Relief Series, the NPA had issued a total of five reports on Europe’s post-war needs, one on China and a study guide by the end of 1945.96 The studies were chiefly focused on basic efforts to alleviate shortages of food, clothing and shelter in the immediate aftermath of the war. But with the post-war picture clearer in 1946, and as conditions in post-war Europe became apparent to US leaders, the NPA logically believed it was in a strong position to inform policy. The NPA shifted its attention to the broader economic and social problems of reconstruction as the extent of post-war reconstruction was greater than the NPA had accounted for in its 1944 America’s New Opportunities in World Trade. The International Committee recognized that ‘aid through trade was not enough to repair all the damages which Europe had suffered during the war years’.97 In June 1946 the board approved a recommendation from trustee Clarence Pickett, who had led the Relief Series effort, that the NPA begin a study exclusively on ‘European Rehabilitation and Reconstruction’ and offered financial support from the American Friends Service Committee, of which Pickett was executive secretary. The International Committee was enthusiastic and wanted economist John K. Galbraith to direct the project.98 As co-author of the BAC’s Toward Full Employment (1938), former editor of the pro-CED Fortune magazine and wartime

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director of the price division at the OPA, Galbraith had considerable experience of wartime government and was now keen to contribute to the planning community. The enhanced commitment to the European problem helped persuade the board to make a fundamental alteration to the scope of the organization, the first of its kind since the NPA was created. In December 1946 the board voted to change the by-laws so that ‘in pursuing its objectives’ the NPA was ‘not limited to national problems but may also devote its efforts to international governmental economic and social problems’.99 Pickett’s call to address the broader problems of war-torn Europe was extraordinarily opportune. By the time of Marshall’s announcement of a plan to inject money into Europe in June 1947, the International Committee of the NPA had worked for over a year on the specific problems of European reconstruction. The first study to appear was Galbraith’s Recovery in Europe of October 1946,100 followed in February 1947 with The Big Four in Germany and in March 1947 by The Future of German Reparations. Of all the business planning groups in the United States, the NPA was the most prepared to loudly support the administration over aid to Europe. In fact, the NPA pre-dated Marshall’s call for government-supported capital investment in Europe by almost three years. Its 1944 report America’s New Opportunities in World Trade had identified the vast capital surplus that would exist after the war and its possible role in sustaining US productivity by exporting it abroad.101 The reputation of the NPA on European affairs was such that Marshall allegedly ‘took several dozen’ copies of The Future of German Reparations with him to the foreign ministers’ meeting in Moscow in March-April 1947 to discuss Germany.102 The first NPA release after Marshall’s announcement was America’s Vital Interest in European Recovery of September 1947, which aimed to counter the arguments against the Marshall Plan and strongly register the NPA’s support for the initiative. By December 1947 the NPA declared US aid for reconstruction in Europe an area that required its ‘immediate attention’ and established a Joint Subcommittee on European Recovery to study the Marshall Plan as it developed and propose ‘appropriate action’.103 In December 1947 the NPA released its substantive Joint Statement on the General Principles and Administration of the Marshall Plan following the endorsement of the main standing committees of the NPA at its annual meeting. The General Principles was prepared by Sidney S. Alexander of Harvard University and proposed steps to be taken for the immediate building of machinery to administer US aid for Europe.104 An abridged version of the General Principles was written by Alexander as a Planning Pamphlet in The Marshall Plan (February 1948) to describe ‘in simple terms’ the basics of the Plan. Aware of the need to garner support, the author was at pains to stress: ‘There is a component of charity in the aid, but there is a much greater component of self-interest’ and ‘the self-interest of the United States is well served by an investment in the recovery of Europe. Preservation of our own security must be the primary aim of the United States in international affairs.’105 The decision to throw the bulk of its post-war energy behind sponsorship of a government scheme to aid Europe appeared the right one when the Marshall Plan was eventually authorized by Congress. According to its official history, the Relief Series was ‘widely distributed and extensively used by, among others, United Nations relief officials’,106 and ‘most’ of the recommendations of the General Principles ‘were later

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embodied in the legislation approved by Congress and in the machinery adopted by the ECA [Economic Cooperation Administration]’.107 Alongside its profiling of European issues, the NPA continued to press for support of the administration over its foreign economic policy. In this enterprise the NPA relied on the expertise and considerable energy of J. B. Condliffe, who was instrumental in writing the first NPA document on foreign trade, America’s New Opportunities in World Trade (1944), and in 1945–46 represented the NPA in the unofficially collaborative TCF document Rebuilding the World Economy (not published until October 1947). Condliffe was asked by the NPA to write a short pamphlet on the United Nation’s Economic and Social Council that appeared in February 1946 (to coincide with its inaugural meeting), the main task of which he believed should be ‘to facilitate the efforts of national governments to achieve full employment, higher living standards, and progressive economic and social development’ through international cooperation which eschewed ‘national restriction to protect balances of payments’.108 In December 1946, Condliffe’s Obstacles to Multilateral World Trade was approved for publication by the board and published in April 1947.109 Obstacles was specifically released to encourage backing for the US delegation in the final bout of international negotiations for the ITO, and reiterated the core concepts of the TCF Report and the imminent Rebuilding. Written in general terms and with a populist emphasis akin to that taken later by Alexander in The Marshall Plan, Condliffe issued a simple plea for what he called ‘a positive economic policy pursued by the United States in its own best long-run interests. Such a policy could make it the center of a prosperous world of expanding trade and employment. The United States is in fact bound, by its historical development and by its present economic circumstances, to pursue such a policy.’110 The collapse of the ITO in 1948 at the hands of an isolationist, protectionist-minded Congress was an obvious disappointment to the NPA. Its replacement, the GATT, agreed at Havana as the preamble to the ITO, fell short of an ITO but, nonetheless, internationalized the mechanisms of reciprocity embodied in the RTAA. In forcefully promoting the concept of multilateralism to US business and more widely, the NPA had at least been successful. The drift of international events had presented the NPA with a prime opportunity to occupy a position of influence in Washington that it had little chance of achieving over domestic economic policy. The hitching of US economic interests with national security drastically improved the government’s chances of driving internationalist policies through an isolationist Congress but the support of corporate activists was especially important. The NPA was ideally positioned to maximize its impact on an administration keen for business support and as a consequence achieved its greatest notoriety in its promotion of European relief and its full-blown support for the Marshall Plan.111 The NPA may also have succeeded in actually influencing government policy. According to NPA at Work, the Marshall Plan ‘incorporated many of the recommendations made by NPA’s International Committee’ and the Congress in 1948 ‘strictly followed the administrative structure’ outlined in the General Principles when it established the ECA. Its ‘wholesale adoption’ also ‘reflected the respect that NPA commanded in postwar reconstruction efforts’.112 Official histories aside, and the awarding of a gold medal by the NPA to Marshall and Hoffman in 1948 ‘for

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outstanding community or national planning’,113 there was some evidence to suggest that the standing of the NPA had improved in Washington at this time. Early in 1947 Coil was ‘urged’ by the secretary of commerce (and former BAC chairman) Averell Harriman, and the chairman of the National Economic Council, Edwin G. Nourse, to extend its ‘original work’ on national budgeting, which the board approved.114 In December 1947, Will Clayton and fellow assistant secretary of state for economic affairs, Willard L. Thorpe, together with Nourse, now chairman of the president’s newly formed Council of Economic Advisors, made ‘off-the-record’ addresses to the NPA Annual Joint Meeting.115 Recognition, however, was still qualified. When in December 1947 Batt consulted with the State Department on a study of ‘National Policies for the Export of US Technology’, he was offered ‘cooperation’ but the department ‘urged NPA to undertake an objective inquiry’.116 The investment in international affairs not only sustained the organization in a testing  political environment for corporate liberals, it also managed to attract supporters. The year-on-year wartime expansion of membership continued into the post-war period, from 1,816 in 1944 to 2,218 by December 1945, and in 1946 experiencing a slight slowing of only a 25 per cent increase on the previous year. This included an additional twenty-two organizations bringing the total number of organizational members to ninety-nine.117 In June 1946 the executive committee was expanded from nine to thirteen, and the ceiling on the number of trustees was increased from twenty-five to a hefty forty.118 In mid-1946 the NPA opened a new, larger branch office in New York City.119 In 1947 NPA staff totalled twenty-four and included editors, personal assistants, statisticians, accountants, a librarian and a telephonist.120 By 1948, the NPA was a larger, more internationally minded organization. As in 1941, the altered political and economic climate once more led to structural change for the NPA. To meet the new challenges, in June 1948 the board formed a monthly, twelve-member steering committee composed of the NPA chairman and members of the standing committees. The steering committee was empowered to make brief statements for the NPA ‘quickly in the rapidly developing national and international situation’, provided they were consistent with previous policies.121 At the end of its first year the steering committee had developed a ‘master agenda’ (authored by Galbraith), that gave top priority to ‘survival in the “cold war” ’.122 The tortuous, risk-laden and conspicuously opportunistic experience of the NPA after 1945 was testament to the complex and volatile political, economic and increasingly global character of the transition period for Americans. As an organization, in making the transition, the NPA fared well. Despite a powerful conservative presence across the country, the moderated posture of the NPA on labour rights, federal leadership and internationalism found a significant audience after the war.123 The NPA had gone a long way in recasting itself, a process of continuous reappraisal which began in 1941. By 1949 the NPA boasted, in language it would have qualified during the war, that ‘the Free Enterprise System, as known and practiced in America, showed its practicability and effectiveness in the contribution it made to the winning of World War II’.124 Yet for many, its identification with New Deal liberalism, however much the organization had changed, was too powerful to ignore. In terms of fulfilling its central wartime aim of becoming the primary vehicle for relating business opinion to government, the

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NPA was unable to slow the rapid ascent of the CED to acceptability in Washington. And of all the areas that the CED was able to outshine the NPA, it was over European reconstruction that the CED was propelled into the official limelight. Support for the Marshall Plan may have been the NPA’s finest hour, but for the CED it was even finer.

The CED takes centre stage The post-war journey of the CED was unlike that of the other business planners. It was marked by a closer alignment of the organization with opinion in the Congress and the administration as the transition unfolded. As explained earlier, this was the moment of CED’s ascendancy to prominence among corporate activists. It was marked by a gradual movement towards the corridors of political power as the centre of gravity in Washington shifted increasingly rightward and the utility of the CED as the acceptable spokesperson of US business became apparent to the administration. Hence the vaunted neutrality of the CED was dropped as the organization publicly backed several bills in 1945–46. This decision paved the way for the CED to assume a commanding position when the government sought business community representatives to staff key post-war agencies such as the European Recovery Program (to administer the Marshall Plan), and the Council of Economic Advisers (established under the Employment Act of 1946). The assumption by the CED of authority and respectability was strengthened by the first formal recital of the organization’s basic economic philosophy at the end of 1944. Written by Benton and containing his twelve ‘Principles’, The Economics of a Free Society: A Declaration of American Business Policy was published in the October 1944 issue of Fortune and released separately as a supplementary paper by the CED in December 1944. Though not officially endorsed as a CED ‘statement’, the document nonetheless met with the informal approval of the CED leadership.125 In short, Benton assured Washington that US business was willing to accept the ‘new role of government’ in the major fields of fiscal policy, collective bargaining and social welfare  – activities established under the New Deal programmes of the last decade – but was unwilling to accept any further advances in these key areas. Hence what the CED proposed was using the prevailing status of federal engagement with the economy as the basis for a business–government rapprochement after the war.126 As later phrased by Benton: ‘CED took the view that government has a legitimate – and indispensable but a definable and limited – role to play in maintaining a stable, dynamic economy.’127 It was, however, one thing to declare, formally or informally, the CED philosophy on the precise balance of a post-war mixed economy. The event, however, which assured the post-war dominance of the CED was its intervention in the debate surrounding the Murray Bill. This decision was part of an expansion of involvement of the organization into concerns beyond those of strictly ‘business’ to areas traditionally the preserve of the NPA, which included agriculture as well as worker’s rights.128 The interest of the CED in employment legislation was linked to the evolving relationship of the organization with Congress, which had become steadily more intimate since Marion Folsom, chair of the field development committee of the CED, was chosen to direct the conservative-led Colmer Committee in December 1943.

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A year later and the influence of the Colmer Committee on the CED, and vice-versa, was beginning to show. As already discussed, the CED had first sided with Congress on the matter of liquidation of war production in the summer of 1944. Congressional influence was even more noticeable in a research division discussion of January 1945 over a report on ‘Demobilization and Reemployment in the Transition’. Folsom took issue with the report’s emphasis on government responses (through unemployment compensation), as the principal protection for the unemployed. Folsom directly cited the Colmer Committee, which found that the liquid savings of individuals collected during the war would reach $150 billion by 1945, with over half of these savings being made by persons with incomes of less than $5,000. These savings, the Colmer Committee believed, would provide the main cushion for workers against any decline in income or unemployment during the transition period. While agreeing that some government provision must be made for those with the lowest incomes, Folsom reasoned that it would ‘seem rather strange’ for CED to argue the opposite and place more emphasis on what the government should do and less upon the individual.129 The early reports issued by the Colmer Committee covered areas almost identical to research projects undertaken by the CED.130 In April 1945 Folsom relayed that the Colmer Committee was following ‘with the closest attention the work of the CED’, and Hoffman held a ‘recent dinner’ with sixteen of the eighteen congressmen on the Colmer Committee. Colmer said that ‘CED was doing an outstanding job. Mr Byrnes [secretary of state] has concurred in this view.’131 In a detailed report to the CED of his work for Colmer in July 1945, Folsom maintained that ‘Congress is coming to take more of a part in shaping public policy than they have done in the recent past’ and was in need of ‘pools of experts.’132 And for Harold B. Myers, member of the research advisory board, the Colmer report of May 1945 on US foreign economic policy ‘follows rather closely in many respects positions taken by our Committee’.133 The CED had already proved its worth in brokering a deal between congressional conservatives and the administration over the Bretton Woods proposals. The arrival of the Murray Bill into Congress in early 1945 offered the CED another opportunity to bolster its standing as the voice of moderation. The Murray Bill caused much polarized debate within the CED. Supporters of the NAM opposed the Bill, as did those from the USCC, although Johnston – a long-time member of the CED research committee – refused to speak against it.134 Hoffman had already clashed with former NAM chairman Henning W. Prentis at a meeting of the BAC in January 1945,135 but the crafting of a CED position on the Murray Bill began in April 1945 when the research division discussed a report they had commissioned entitled ‘High Employment Study – Background and Approach’ put together by a team led by Albert G. Hart. The division also considered a parallel statement by research committee member Donald David called ‘CED and the “Full Employment” Problem’, written in response to questions on the subject raised earlier in the division. Tabling of these items was directly related to the presence of the Murray Bill on the floor of the Congress. It was David’s intention to use the preface of the ‘High Employment Study’ as ‘testimony’ on the Murray Bill, as he was convinced that the matter of post-war employment was so topical the CED should ‘be prepared’ to give its opinion and keep an ‘open mind’ on the Bill.136 Hoffman, Benton, Ruml and Flanders were convinced of the need for some form of legislation to ensure post-war

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employment, even though they had doubts about the Murray Bill in its initial form. For them this was no proto-New Deal initiative but was a recommendation for some measure of federal involvement in the marketplace that cautiously used fiscal measures to help private enterprise ensure that high levels of employment were maintained. As Hoffman explained, and in a way which underlined the precepts contained in Benton’s Economics of a Free Society: ‘Apparently we are all agreed that private business has little to do with maintaining high levels of employment, and that there is little that local government can do. It follows, therefore, that the government must take certain steps if we are to achieve high levels of employment.’ It was this premise, and David’s characterization of the government’s duty to ‘promote’ high (as opposed to full) employment rather than ‘insure’ it, which effectively framed CED attitudes towards the legislation.137 Besides, as Schriftgiesser later recorded, for the CED the Bill was perceived as a ‘conservative measure’ and did not pose a ‘revolutionary’ threat to American economic life but left the ‘fundamental directives and arrangements of the free enterprise system untouched’.138 By the time the Bill came before Congress in the fall of 1945, its authors had already removed what they thought would be the most objectionable passages by forbidding government operation of factories, the compulsory assignment of workers to specific jobs, or the guarantee of markets, output, profits, wage levels or prices. These changes were still not sufficient to quell the conservative ranks, including many of the CED hierarchy, and it fell to the CED to offer a compromise solution when some of its members was invited to ‘testify’ before the congressional committees adjudicating on the Bill between August and October 1945. This was the first instance of the CED publicly speaking out over a piece of legislation still passing through Congress, an act technically forbidden under the charitable terms of the group’s status. The CED’s legal counsellor, M. T. Moore, had earlier argued forcefully against such acts as it was ‘most decidedly illegitimate’ for the CED to offer support or otherwise for any specific legislation.139 Hoffman, Flanders, Scherman and Ruml nevertheless testified, in both organizational and personal capacities, to the Bill, even though Hoffman warned Congress in advance that his testimony ‘would not be favorable’. Calkins rejoiced that the CED ‘was on the verge of making its greatest contribution’ to achieving postwar prosperity.140 The trio voiced their misgivings over the Bill’s use of the term ‘full’ employment (Hoffman used the expression ‘satisfactory’), and against the notion that there existed a ‘right’ to employment.141 The CED also tried to embed business representation more directly within the administration in its proposal for a ‘President’s Commission on Full Employment’ that would include economics and business experts (and presumably large numbers of the CED). The CED intervention, helped by the advance circulation to Congress of its post-war credo Toward More Production, More Jobs and More Freedom142 and Johnston’s influence on the USCC, was instrumental in satisfying conservatives that by removing the terms ‘full’ and the notion of ‘rights’ from the legislation the liberal character of the Bill was sufficiently watered-down to receive their approval. Any federal powers to intervene to ‘insure’ employment were stripped from the legislation and all that remained was the presidential opportunity to research and evaluate the economy through the proposed commission.143 Schriftgiesser maintained that the proposal to create this machinery, a standing CEA, was ‘inspired’

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by the CED proposal for a ‘commission’, although the NPA also claimed responsibility for this initiative.144 As over Bretton Woods, in the debate over the Murray Bill the CED made a definite impression on the decision-making process. The CED helped to rally other corporate moderates to lobby Congress and prevent any further extension of government intrusion in the workings of the marketplace. It directly assisted, by minimizing government guarantees to ensure ‘full’ employment, in satisfying conservatives that private enterprise would not be restricted by securing passage of a Bill that, now devoid of much of its liberal appeal, nevertheless underscored but did not extend federal responsibility in providing employment and underwrote the principle (if not the practice) that government was accountable for the overall well-being of the economy.145 And as Hoffman asserted, in the CEA, the CED had ‘a single place’ in the administration ‘where we can direct our research’.146 The urge to make an impression was evidenced throughout 1945 as the CED released ten research publications and policy documents, the highest number in its history. American Industry Looks Ahead appeared just after V-J Day and was the result of eighteen months of study by fifty leading market specialists, 1,406 manufacturers and 158 trade associations into the post-war capacities of the country’s top twenty leading industries. The group split the post-war transition into three periods: the transitional period, the intermediary period and a ‘self-sustaining’ period. It proclaimed that fears of a return of high unemployment were invalid, as it predicted a far higher number than forecasted of between fifty-one million and fifty-seven million jobs being created after the war.147 The research committee also worked fast to release its next study ‘Jobs and Markets in the Transition’, for which there were high hopes. Myers proclaimed that after meeting the ‘cream’ of government economists the report, if released promptly, ‘will have considerable influence on Washington opinion and legislation’. CED-sponsored publications were already selling well. By the end of January 1945 around 5,000 copies of Kaplan’s The Liquidation of War Production were sold, about 3,000 of Clark’s Demobilization of Wartime Economic Controls, and 5,700 of Groves’ preliminary report Postwar Tax Reform to Encourage Production and Employment. The publisher McGraw-Hill estimated that approximately 10,000 copies of these books would eventually be sold. There was also continued demand for the CED policy statement on tax reform beyond the record 200,000 copies already distributed. Most research monographs sold between 5,000 and 7,000 copies, while policy statements averaged 15,000.148 Some 250,000 people were receiving CED material by July 1945.149 The strength of its publications was reflected in a rise in participation. The BAC declared in September 1945 that the ‘CED message’ had been ‘carried to hundreds of thousands of businessmen’ which it boasted testified to CED influence on policy.150 By February 1946, Hoffman claimed in a press release that there were ‘more than 2,900 county and community CEDs with more than 70,000 businessmen as members’.151 The evident success and popularity of the CED made the discussion over ending the organization all the more difficult. The group had been formed by Jones with the singular task of providing a voice for private enterprise in preparing for the transition. Many, including members of the board of trustees, had always viewed the CED an emergency wartime measure. This was also part of the ‘gentleman’s agreement’ with the

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NAM and the USCC that ensured their cooperation at the grass-roots level. In midSeptember 1945 CED trustees battled it out over whether they should end the affair or continue it. There appeared no sustainable argument in favour of maintaining the field development division and its very effective national network. With the transition in full swing, its task was apparently over. But Fletcher, who had laboured so exhaustively to establish the CED on the ground with nearly 3,000 local committees, elaborated a plan to ‘transfer’ the field development division and its ‘know how’ over to the USCC by forming ‘Community Economic Councils’ under a special committee led jointly by the CED and the USCC, an idea supported by the moderate head of the USCC, trustee Eric Johnston. The BAC approved Fletcher’s plan but it was rejected in January 1946 by a rightward-shifting USCC executive when Johnston was absent. The USCC argued that it was not feasible to incorporate the CED ‘bodily’ into the USCC, and besides the CED scheme would duplicate its own expanded programme of community action designed to ‘solve the complex problems of the post war period’. The USCC somewhat patronizingly thanked the CED for its ‘invaluable service’ and hoped it would now join the USCC in achieving the ‘same objectives as those sought by the CED’. Hoffman admitted he should have been ‘keener in realizing the extent of the opposition’ in the USCC, and trustee Clarence Francis (BAC) suggested diplomatically that the CED had ‘stimulated’ the USCC to expand its operations and allocate more resources at the grass-roots level. The CED was left with no further choice but to dissolve the field development division.152 The research division was another matter, and its continuation symbolized the indivisibility of planning for the ‘transition’ with designs for the longer-term prosperity of the country. The CED was in for the long haul side by side with the other business groups. The research division was the engine room of the organization as originally conceived by Hoffman and Benton, who were anyway less enthusiastic about developing a grass-roots institution. They had long intended to establish a permanent business research outfit, but still needed to convince some of the war-weary trustees. After much debate, Hoffman and Benton, assisted by Flanders, Yntema, Ruml, David and Raymond Rubicam, managed to convince doubters of the need for continued research.153 Soon after, in a long speech before the trustees, Hoffman made it clear that the rationale for continuing the CED beyond the transition lay in the timely applicability of its programme: I don’t think I am star-gazing when I say we have an extraordinary opportunity now – after World War II. I doubt – if at any other time – in the long history of our country, there has been such an opportunity to make the American dream come true. But it can come true only if we avoid both ignorant opposition to change and ignorant change. It’s going to take effort on the part of all of us to bring that to pass. We in CED are very humble in our belief as to what the Committee can contribute. But what we can do, we should and will do.

Hoffman argued that in so doing they were properly completing the task set them in 1942 of perpetuating US capitalism and making it ‘function more fruitfully so more and more people will receive its benefits’. In this regard the CED, according to its chairman, had not solved ‘some of the very toughest problems that have to be

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faced – problems for which the nation has to find sound answers, or see its capitalistic system fail’. The war had still not resolved many lingering economic problems, such as taxation, wage-price policy, labour–management relations and fluctuations in the business cycle, but the evident capacity for the US economy to fill more jobs proved for Hoffman that the CED and American business could ‘really lift our sights’. The CED project must therefore continue for ‘at least two or three more years’.154 The valuable links with business won by the field development division across the United States would be utilized by an information committee under publicist Walter Fuller that would approach ‘regional’ contacts (and not ‘local’ in deference to the USCC or the NAM), to find ‘suitable ways and means for bringing our “product” … to the attention of interested groups and people’.155 Within three months the new committee was organizing a CED motion picture and the release of a new bimonthly magazine, CED Digest.156 The CED had made considerable headway in forming a bridge between business and government. It had been effective in smoothing their differences over the Bretton Woods proposals and over the Murray Bill. Truman had already shown a disposition for moderation in his stance on the removal of wartime controls, which matched closely that of the CED.157 CED personnel were being noticed and were regular visitors to the corridors of power, on Capitol Hill and in the cabinet. Benton was made an assistant secretary of state in August 1945.158 This body of success was enough to convince the CED that its mission was not yet over and positioned the organization favourably to assume a starring role in what became the CED’s crowning achievement in the postwar period: running the Marshall Plan. International economic questions did not seriously intrude on the organization until 1947, as the CED kept away from the debate which engulfed Washington after 1945 over the ITO and the GATT.159 The CED had made its opposition to the free-traders clear in its policy statement International Trade, Foreign Investment and Domestic Employment of May 1945.160 As late as July 1946 Hoffman penned a memorandum for the trustees that listed the three ‘very toughest problems for which the nation has to find some answers’. They were wage-price policy, labour–management relations and fluctuations in the business cycle (‘boom-bust’).161 A comprehensive review of the CED’s future research programme in October 1946 had as its main focus a High Employment Study.162 Of the thirteen reports published by the CED from May 1945 to the release of An American Program of European Economic Cooperation at the beginning of 1948, the only publications which dealt with international economics – an International Trade Handbook and Controlling World Trade: Cartels and Commodity Agreements – of April and August 1946, respectively, were concerned with offering basic knowledge about how trade works and with technical issues which faced businesses interested in overseas trade. This was consistent, of course, with the domestic-first philosophy of the CED that regarded national stability a prerequisite of successful international economic relations. The importance of the international dimension was part of the reasoning for obtaining some level of government liability for maintaining employment levels to buttress domestic stability in the Murray Bill debate.163 The watershed events of 1947, however, forced a new spell of scrutiny for the CED over international affairs. It was

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in championing American aid for the reconstruction of Europe that the CED’s shift towards a realization that US domestic productivity was more intimately linked to the international economy than hitherto realized was first apparent. CED involvement in European reconstruction began soon after the Marshall Plan was enunciated. As in the Bretton Woods proposals and the Murray Bill encounter, the CED had proved its growing acceptability within conservative ranks and was now directly employed by Truman as a means for gaining approval for the plan. After Marshall’s Harvard speech, Truman appointed nineteen ‘distinguished citizens’ to a President’s Committee on Foreign Aid, later dubbed the Harriman Committee after its chair, former BAC boss and now secretary of commerce, Averell Harriman. Eight of the nineteen members of the committee were members of the CED, including Hoffman, Chester Davis, John L. Collyer, R. R. Deupree and Calvin Hoover. The Commerce Department’s Richard M. Bissell, Jr, who was involved from the outset in research for the CED, was appointed executive secretary of the committee.164 Hoffman biographer Alan Raucher claimed that Hoffman was selected by Truman because he was a ‘prominent Republican business leader who agreed completely with the administration’s general outlook on foreign policy’.165 Hoffman worked hard to deliver on the president’s faith in him, as the full weight of the CED was thrown behind drumming up support for the Marshall Plan. In October 1947, Wayne C. Taylor was appointed head of a CED research group (which included Hoffman, Ruml and Rockefeller), on European aid charged with releasing a policy statement.166 In its first discussion of the Marshall Plan since forming the group around Taylor, the research committee listened to Hoffman as he related his recent experience on the Harriman Committee and tried to convince doubters within the CED, such as Yntema who confessed he was in a ‘big haze’ over the question, of the necessity for the United States to extend aid to the Europeans. Hoffman stressed the wider economic worth of extending help and the desire to achieve a better trade balance with Europe that he claimed was shared by the Harriman Committee.167 This reflected the emerging Keynesian business–government consensus over the export–import question that rejected free-trade arguments and embraced a ‘mixed’ economic model with public–private responsibility for economic stability.168 The danger of communist expansion if economic stability was not achieved was also stressed by Hoffman and others, but considerations of American gain were ever present in CED deliberations. Harry Bullis of General Mills Inc., an NPA and recent CED trustee, stated the case bluntly: ‘The question is, can we in this country be wise enough to suggest terms [for aid] that will help Europe help herself, and at the same time bring about a state of affairs that will be to our interest?’169 As Hoffman explained in trying to sway the doubters, the United States had a ‘vital interest, humanitarian, economic, strategic and political’ in helping Europe, and he was assisted in this cause by the widening awareness within the CED hierarchy of the close relationship between national and international economic stability.170 ‘In a word’, as J. D. Zellerbach of the Crown Zellerbach Corporation insisted to the rapturous applause of fellow trustees, ‘western prosperity depends upon national prosperity, and national prosperity is tied in with the international picture. … Although the problems to be met are big ones, we are confident that they can be solved and that continued prosperity can be achieved.’171 The CED hierarchy was also aware that a real opportunity to influence policy was at

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hand. As Ruml bluntly commented regarding the question of how the aid programme would be staffed: ‘I have been wondering whether the CED could not soften up the business community somewhat on this thing and pretty fast.’172 The corporate moderate message that Hoffman conveyed to the CED was revealed in the final Harriman Committee Report of December 1947. The committee recommended a total of $12–17 billion be offered the Europeans over four years. This aid was to be comprised of outright grants for relief purposes and loans (from the Export-Import Bank) for reconstruction. The committee wanted recipient nations to balance their budgets, encourage private enterprise and lower their trade barriers but alongside, and not preceding, the restoration of production.173 The CED’s Taylor committee report emerged in February 1948, three months after the Harriman Report and between the two NPA releases on the Marshall Plan.174 An American Program of European Economic Cooperation used arguments based on the principle that increased European productivity was ‘a powerful antidote to communism’, and used essentially self-interested reasoning like that used in similar publications by the TCF and the NPA to generate support for US economic intervention. If the aid programme succeeded, ‘the benefits to us would be enormous in expanded trade, increased security, and, above all, greater protection to our free society. Such a program would be an intelligent use of our resources in our own interest’. By expanding production and exports in order to ensure ‘the channels of trade are to be open’, and by encouraging the participating countries ‘further to reduce trade barriers’, the United States would assist in ‘reestablishing Western Europe as a going concern’. Crucially, in an inversion of the guiding principle upon which the CED had defended the prioritizing of domestic over international economics, the statement ended with the admission: ‘This is no easy matter. In the past the main focus of American growth has been internal. Yet today, national policy must concern itself with external affairs to an extent never before experienced. … World events will not allow us to live alone. Regimentation of international trade inevitably creates pressures for the regimentation of domestic commerce.’175 The CED had been centrally involved in crafting the rudiments of the Marshall Plan and declared unequivocal support for its implementation. Now the CED showed its usefulness once again in brokering a compromise solution over how the aid would be administered. In the months since Marshall’s appeal congressional conservatives were slowly convinced of the importance of Europe to the United States and businessmen of the need to put the broad economic interests of the nation before narrow material gain.176 Congress did, however, want businessmen to be directly involved in the allocation and management of funds. They disliked the preferred option of the administration that the plan be run directly or indirectly by the State Department, a unit which conservatives believed did not possess the right skill set for administering aid and which some thought had been too soft towards the advancing Communists in eastern Europe and China. Congress wanted a new federal corporation to be formed of equal status to the State Department and run by businessmen.177 The CED research division was asked quite forcefully by Hoffman to intervene on the congressional debate over how US aid to Europe should be managed. Hoffman, relating the ‘unanimous’ and ‘strong’ opinion of the Harriman Committee achieved after a long discussion in which views were changed ‘considerably’, was convinced that the Marshall Plan had

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‘not a chance for success’ unless it was run independently of government. Invoking the group’s successful intervention over the Bretton Woods controversy, Hoffman wanted the CED to ‘wait and see’ how the dispute over the Marshall Plan developed and, when the ‘policy issues’ were clear, ‘take action’.178 Over the ensuing months the CED became deeply involved in the Committee for the Marshall Plan, organized to drum up public support to influence legislators and comprised of three hundred persons, half of whom had business backgrounds, headed by former secretaries of war, Henry Stimson and Robert Patterson. Members of the CED, BAC and the NPA, along with the CFR and the Brookings Institution, were all represented on the committee.179 When help was needed in leveraging residual doubters, the moment for the CED to ‘take action’ arrived. Over half of the business witnesses appearing before the congressional committees were from the CED.180 Hoffman, who enjoyed good relations with the Republican chief of foreign policy Senator Arthur Vandenburg, suggested a CED-Brookings Institution middle-ground solution that was acceptable to both sides: an independent ECA which could work closely with the State Department. Staffing of the ECA with CED and BAC members assured Congress enough for it to pass the Economic Cooperation Act in April 1948.181 This episode was another illustration of how under the prevailing conditions of the post-war transition the ‘sophisticated conservative’ wing of the corporate community was able to find utility in bridging the gap between the administration and its conservative opponents. Republican Hoffman was now the logical choice to head the ECA, a person whom Vandenburg thought represented ‘the common denominator of the thought of the nation’.182 Hereafter, as one historian phrased it, US aid took on ‘a distinctly corporate tone’.183 Hoffman chose Baltimore industrialist and Democrat Howard Bruce as his deputy, with Averell Harriman, another Democrat and member of the BAC, the point man in Europe. William C. Douglas, a Republican member of the CED, was Harriman’s deputy.184 Douglas, who had written CED’s policy on small businesses, was the first of a succession of CED appointments that Hoffman made to the ECA in the next few months. Taylor and Batt (both also NPA) joined Hoffman and Douglas in what was becoming an almost exclusively CED-run agency.185 The politically motivated stipulations of Congress (and Vandenberg’s association with Hoffman) meant that it was the CED, and not the NPA, which benefited most from declaring all-out support for the Marshall Plan. This was despite the fact that the NPA had featured European relief early and prominently in its work, had helped by means of individual contacts in the framing of CED policy on European aid (Hoffman was an NPA trustee since 1946) and had lobbied passionately for public acceptance of the Marshall Plan on which the NPA held near-identical views with that of the CED. Over the Murray Bill and finally with the Marshall Plan, the CED was elevated to a position of influence and leadership of government economic policy, its ultimate reward. Across the country, more than eight hundred trade publications – nearly half the estimated total – had already signed up to advertise the material and spread the ideas of the CED.186 In May 1948 trustees voted unanimously to make the CED a ‘permanent’ organization, while CED members formed the majority within the CEA and the ECA.187 In May 1949 CED trustees were invited to the White House for a day-long, off-the-record session with Truman and his administration, a summons

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other business groups would have envied.188 The CED had become the trusted conduit through which post-war business opinion was transmitted to the government, a status originally granted to the BAC and the NPA in the 1930s, momentarily lost by these groups during the war, but reconstituted indubitably in the form of the CED. It had taken a complex synthesis of political and economic factors to weaken the hold of corporate liberals on policy and force the dislodging of the NPA from its mission since 1941 to become the business arm of the government and foster instead the conservative-minded CED. It was clear that in the face of an assertive conservative opposition and the apparent success of private business to independently manage the conversion, the trend to moderation which had already begun within the NPA and the TCF was accelerated in the transition period and further consolidated the authority of the CED. This process was most notable over the issue of labour relations, the litmus test of most liberals. By 1945, liberal press criticism of the CED had ‘faded away’.189 On questions of international economics, where corporate liberals and moderates had found a greater level of convergence and agreement, the business planners were able to make their greatest impression on the transition process. Their interventions in these key debates established the contours of their relationship with government for years to come. The Murray Bill was a decisive moment in the process of convergence that involved all the business planners. The TCF provided the intellectual backdrop for the Bill with its symposium of economists; the NPA brought additional statistical muscle in full support of its measures; and the CED directly intervened with suggestions that helped conservatives to pass a watered-down version of the Bill. Despite minor policy differences, both the NPA and the CED laid claim to having influenced its passage. After this point, such was the merging of the planning community that over the Marshall Plan, the second area of convergence for business planners, the positions of the major players were virtually indistinguishable. The level of symmetry between the positions of the business planners on international economics was assisted by a significant coalescing of leading figures within the planning community, which had been steadily increasing as the end of the war came into sight. Batt had long symbolized the binding force of moderation, and soon others were added to the widening circle of NPA, BAC and CED affiliates. Coil was a ‘guest’ of the CED’s inner sanctum, its research committee, in July 1945, and in December 1945 Sonne had ‘discussions’ with Hoffman over the ‘possibility’ of adding CED members to the NPA business committee. Within a year Sonne was elected onto the CED board of trustees and Hoffman was a trustee of the NPA.190 Also in 1946, Calvin Hoover (CED) agreed to be research director for an NPA survey of economic conditions in the south of the United States.191 Clayton joined the NPA as a trustee in 1947. The movement of the business planners away from the New Deal liberalism born of the 1930s towards a moderate blend of limited fiscal intervention and federal engagement (expressed in the rise of the CED) had been part of a nationwide process of transition. As historian James Patterson observed, for the United States ‘economic growth was indeed the most decisive force in the shaping of attitudes and expectations in the postwar era’.192 Despite the temporary loss of industrial jobs, most wages rose

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and a period of generalized affluence strengthened the hand of conservatives and further undermined any efforts at liberal reform. Private capitalism, thanks in no small part to critical interventions by the corporate moderates, proved very resilient.193 The 1946 Employment Act limited the power of government and labour, and European markets remained open for business thanks to the Marshall Plan. However, the robustness of the ‘free market’ was achieved with not a little assistance from federal funds. The provision of billions of dollars through the ‘GI Bill’ helped stimulate housing, education and consumer spending long into the 1950s, and the European Recovery Program (replaced in 1952 by the Mutual Security Administration), sustained national growth by generating demand for US exports while also fulfilling government spending targets that had been called for by New Deal liberals throughout the 1940s without increasing federal involvement in the domestic economy.194 The Marshall Plan also provided a convenient method for resolving the export–import dilemma, which centred on the export of capital, not goods, to stimulate US exports: a recipe that was roundly rejected by the CED in 1945. However, by 1947 the CED and other business planners had arrived at what Eakins described as a ‘composite view’ of foreign economic policy that recognized the vitality of an expanded foreign trade and the role of government spending overseas in facilitating its expansion. This realization in business and government dovetailed with the overarching political imperatives of containing communism and the Soviet threat identified in the Marshall Plan.195 Meanwhile, the government ensured US capitalism was well placed to maintain its domestic prosperity through its control of the instruments of the world economy. There was no ITO, but its compromise replacement the GATT was in essence a grand version of the American RTAA which bound together its signatories in a series of (highly convoluted) reciprocal deals that enshrined the principles of, if not the overarching machinery for, multilateral economic relations for the next twenty years. Coupled with the instruments of Bretton Woods, the United States ended the post-war transition in undisputed command of a new world economic order based upon US-style principles of economic liberalization within an, albeit compromised and fragile, architecture of international collaboration. The continued deterioration in relations between east and west after 1948 signalled the passing of the post-Second World War era into a new phase of international relations, the Cold War. This also marked the point at which the wartime schemes of the business planners had run their natural course and the business groups found themselves operating in very different national and international conditions than they had originally envisaged. From this point on they were no longer ‘post-war’ but ‘Cold War’ business planners, the topic perhaps of another study but beyond the focus of this one. In fact, the Cold War further solidified the hold of the corporate moderates on business–government affairs. The imperatives of national security were added to those demonstrating the superiority of free-enterprise capitalism over that of state monopoly, helped of course by huge doses of federal spending on the military. As Ruml declared in 1948: ‘Since peace has not come, and since business must continue to be productive and strong in a framework of world political instability, it has seemed inescapable that the CED should carry on, and that it should make its special contribution to national security and to the national welfare.’196 During the war the preoccupation was with ensuring high post-war

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employment and productivity, but in 1948 ‘the problems we are facing’, as Hoffman put it, ‘involve our very freedoms’.197 The politics of fear ensured the liberal-left was unable to loosen restraints on labour and welfare provision until the Great Society reforms of the 1960s. The CED, in alliance with the BAC (renamed the Business Council after leaving the Commerce Department in 1961), monopolized the business hotline to the White House through its packing of the CEA and the winning of key government appointments (Dwight D. Eisenhower was on the board of trustees in November 1950) right through to the Nixon presidency.198 In the decade after the war the NPA made the most of its profile over European reconstruction, winning a ‘Certificate of Cooperation’ from the government for its contribution to improving labour–management relations in both Europe and the United States.199 But despite reiterating its commitment to neither left nor right but ‘the great group in between’,200 the NPA was unable to lessen the stranglehold of the CED (or the BAC) on official policy, devoted more and more resources to research and joined the increasing number of American think tanks.201 Unable to sustain government research contracts or private endowments, the NPA folded in 1996. Suffering greater marginalization than the NPA, the TCF (now known as the Century Foundation) was ‘racked’, as Berle phrased it, by ‘a spasm of self-analysis’ in the 1950s which resulted in a shift away from studies of domestic economics and governance towards problems of overseas development and theoretical expositions on political science and philosophy. As Berle commented, the TCF was ‘groping’ with the multitude of problems of the modern world, but its ‘greatest operational lack was absence of a theory of politics’ to bring about practicable solutions.202 General improvements in profits, living standards and revived anti-communism therefore sustained the conservative coalition for several years after the war. It was too weak to remove the fundamentals of the welfare blanket erected under the New Deal, such as minimum wage law, social security and labour legislation, but strong enough to curb any extension of it – a condition neatly expressed by the CED. An important role in this decade-long, moderate recasting of the relationship between the public and private economic sectors after the turmoil of the Depression years, as well as the promotion and conceptualization of US power overseas, was played by the post-war business planners.

Conclusions

The activities of the post-war business planners took place within a widely accepted narrative of wartime America. A conservative revival frustrated executive control of the war mobilization, allowing a substantial business lodgement in the production effort that further strengthened resistance to liberal federal initiatives which appeared less and less necessary in a booming economy. By war’s end, New Deal liberalism was vanquished leaving only a residual government role in guiding an economy run by a loose alliance of political conservatives and corporate moderates. Viewed against this backdrop, the wartime journey of the post-war business planners followed a very similar path, and one which illuminated as well as reflected wider developments in the United States. The initial surge in business enthusiasm for post-war planning was captured by the New Deal liberals, who were ideologically and structurally better disposed to offer a long-range perspective and were greatly encouraged by the renewal of federal activism in the defence effort. There appeared a considerable appetite among businessmen for liberal answers to economic problems.1 Furthermore, thanks to the disjointed way the federal bureaucracy mobilized for war (as much a product of Roosevelt’s management style as conservative opposition), corporate liberals were able – indeed were invited – to assist in the government’s decision-making on post-war affairs. This area was left open by conservatives who did not take post-war planning as seriously. Just as big business (and corporate moderates from the BAC) became imbedded in the war production machinery, so too did the corporate liberals from the planning community hope to secure a role in the postwar planning process. Until 1943 the TCF and the NPA dominated the field, working in apparent synchronization with the administration (though only apparently), while the collection of corporate liberals and moderates in the BAC focused on staffing the mobilization agencies in an effort to improve their historically poor relationship with Roosevelt. The conservative gains of 1942–43 altered the political and the planning landscape. The direct intervention of the Commerce Department was, nevertheless, critical. Unable to revitalize the standing of his corporate champions, the New Deal-era BAC, in the eyes of Roosevelt or the conservatives, Secretary for Commerce Jones decided to create a brand new business planning organization to champion private enterprise and challenge the hold of the liberals on the post-war debate. Jones’ gamble paid off. Conservatives gathered strength and discontinued the NRPB, a vital link with the administration for corporate liberals. Henceforth debate within the planning community was forced rightward with an increased emphasis on the importance of private, as opposed to public, enterprise in the post-war economy. Liberal planners were obliged to revisit their approach, and for many, temper their

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outlook to gain the respect of an apparently rightward-shifting stratum of business activists and government officials. The drift towards a moderate centre ground among the business planning community was complete when the right-oriented CED adopted a set of liberal totems regarding employment relief, welfare and taxation and federal intervention in the market place with Keynesian-style spending to restore economic balance. This transformation occurred in response to a series of key clashes between American conservatives and liberals over the post-war economy that centrally involved the planning community. As they converged around the Bretton Woods proposals, the Murray Bill and finally the Marshall Plan, a consensus was reached among the business planning groups on the federal–free-market balance within the post-war mixed economy which meant that, on labour rights and taxation, but especially on foreign trade and European reconstruction, their policies were virtually indistinguishable. As the war drew to an end it was corporate moderates, and not corporate liberals, which had the ear of a conservative Congress and a new White House, guided by their brightest exponent: war-fashioned, war-hardened and non-New Deal tainted CED. A central aim of this book was to chart and to better understand the rise of the post-war corporate moderates. Above all, this account demonstrates that the triumph of the corporate moderates was no straightforward affair. It took years of gruelling debate and propitious timing for a centrist organization to assume leadership among corporate activists. At its core, the business planners had to settle on an agreeable solution to the federal and free-market impasse thrust to the forefront of discussion thanks to the trauma of the Great Depression. In essence, the arguments of the 1940s were a re-run of those of the 1930s. But with one crucial difference: thanks to the war they were taking place within the context of an economic boom, not a depression. The paradoxical effect this had was to encourage both liberals and conservatives that their solutions were correct. The war demonstrated the power of government to organize the national economy, which naturally excited the New Deal liberals. The level of support enjoyed by the liberal business planners in this account testified to this phenomenon.2 Yet the war boom raised profits and showcased the power of free enterprise, which enlivened those interested in free-market solutions: capitalism worked and looked good. Private interests now had ‘less to feel guilty about’ and could finally shake off the pessimism of the Depression years.3 But the war boom mostly worried private interests about the prospect of an enhanced role of the government in the economy after the war. Big government was tolerable during the war emergency, but could it be trusted to retreat when the fighting stopped? Key agents in reconciling these two positions were the corporate moderate planners. They offered a platform, or a ‘training ground’,4 which enabled free-market campaigners to acknowledge the role of government, and New Deal liberals, the power of free enterprise. The war created the basis for a compromise among corporate protagonists, but the erection of a ‘platform’ to facilitate their agreement was no certainty. As explained, the national trend to the right after 1942 was an essential ingredient but it took the direct intervention of the Commerce Department to provide the organizational link – whether it intended so or not – between corporate liberals and moderates in the planning community (like Batt and Hoffman), and the mass of businessmen embraced by the conservative NAM and USCC. The CED became the ‘stage’ upon which a

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moderated solution was thrashed out by conservatives and liberals between 1943 and 1945, as evidenced in the string of debates about the conversion, such as taxation, ending controls and liquidating war production. As McQuaid observed, the CED ‘allowed businessmen to enunciate “positive” responses [to peacetime conversion] that did not ignore the reality of expanded federal power’.5 And the acknowledgement of federal power by enlightened business was, as this study shows, surprisingly robust throughout the war period. Indeed, the quantifiable hold of liberal ideas upon US business, as traced in this account, is overshadowed by the powerful narrative of wartime conservative ascendancy. Support for the NPA and the TCF, in terms of membership numbers, publications sales and media interest, revealed substantial and continuous sympathy for their liberal messages alongside the upward national trend in conservative opinion. The corporate moderates, and the CED in particular, thus articulated for the businessman what was developing into a wider popular understanding after 1944 on the role of public–private capitalism which married conservative and liberal anxieties. ‘By 1945,’ Patterson explained, ‘the majority of people accepted the once heretical ideas that government had a responsibility to fight unemployment’ and, for their part, ‘many liberals, too, lowered their sights, hoping that fiscal tinkering – adjusting spending, taxes, and interest rates – would be sufficient to fine tune the economy and assure expansion’.6 In this context the CED was able to cast itself as the natural ‘middle’ choice. As Benton reasoned: ‘CED is not reactionary, CED is not liberal. We are trying like hell to be responsible.’7 The programmes of the NPA, and to a lesser extent the TCF, were therefore moderated for fear of upsetting private interests and progress of the increasingly tangible post-war boom. The liberal manifestos were not so radical that they could not accommodate a fine-tuning that emphasized free enterprise. American liberalism was therefore ‘channelled’ into a ‘new, less confrontational direction’ by the processes of war.8 The vehicle that arose to channel corporate liberalism in a moderate direction was the CED, the most celebrated of the business planning groups. As mentioned, it was the scholarly overemphasis on this organization that most inspired the writing of this book. Yet new archival research, of the CED as well as the other main business groups, has revealed that the rise of the CED to post-war notoriety was genuine but cannot be explained in isolation from the business planning community of wartime America. Though it was created by government, the CED owed its subsequent progress to individuals, groups and wider developments in the pre-existing, indeed flourishing, post-war business planning community. It was in the level of cross-fertilization and convergence between the liberal business planning groups and the BAC (or the CED) that this study offers its most valuable contribution to our understanding of the post-war dominance of the corporate moderates. Jones wanted a pro-private interest group that could rally the private sector, and in Benton and Hoffman he found two enthusiastic and ready-to-go sympathizers. Benton and Hoffman were more interested in research, and may well have created their group without Jones, but saw an improved chance for success by hitching their group to the Jones agenda. On the matter of research, the pair were insistent, and Jones was compelled likely for expediency, to compromise on the research component of the new group even though this closely resembled the liberal groups (NPA and TCF). This compromise proved

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crucial. In order to quickly build its research programme, the CED was required to tap the experience and resources of the liberal planning community. It was out of these discussions that the CED was pulled towards solutions similar to those of the liberal groups and eventually fashioned its identity. The limited version of Keynesian fiscal intervention (compensatory spending) that the CED later championed was, no less, derived from a broader consensus among business planners that emerged just as the transition dawned.9 On international matters, too, the CED was hugely influenced by other planners, and not only the CFR. The CED shared experts with both the TCF and the NPA on a range of issues, both foreign and domestic. In short, corporate liberals as well as moderates in the TCF and the NPA were as critical to the moulding of the CED as Jones, Hoffman or Benton. The arrival of a corporate moderate consensus by the end of the war was clearly the result of a complex process, and one which relied directly on the prior existence and considerable input of a wider post-war business planning community. Yet the development of a post-war business planning community was itself a highly involved affair. By 1942 post-war planners were numerous but hardly coordinated and barely united. They all maintained structural independence of one another, for reasons of ideology, politics or tradition. This was particularly true of the period up to 1944 when there was an undeclared contest between the business planners regarding leadership of the planning community and over influence of government policy. A loose-knit ‘community’, therefore, best described the post-war planners for most of the war than a ‘coalition’ or a ‘network’, which implied closer ties, better communication and coordination.10 There was clear symmetry in the work of the groups, they were after all tackling the same problems, but this was neither deliberate nor encouraged. There was no official contact (that the author can trace) between any of the groups until after the war. Indeed, the very nature of competitive capitalism precludes, or certainly limits, the ability of business groups to organize collectively outside of the coordinating hand of the central state. McQuaid also blamed the ‘planned divisiveness’ of US politics for working against the formation of a ‘well-integrated corporate community willing and able to formulate wide-ranging policy statements – and able to fight for them’.11 The fragmented nature of US business organization so characterized was certainly reflected in the business planning community, and affected the way the business planners went about their work and how they related to one another. As we have seen, there was always a measure of overlap, sharing and cross-fertilization within the planning community, but this was mainly of individuals and not groups. The ‘networking’ of key individuals was therefore highly important in achieving any measure of integration between organizations. In this regard the importance of William Batt in bringing liberals and moderates together has been overlooked in the literature. A leading industrialist and a classic ‘sophisticated conservative’,12 Batt expressed the moderate transition within the planning community more forcefully than the quiet Ruml or the late-developing Hoffman, the latter hogging much of the scholarly limelight since the war. Batt exerted a conservative influence on the NPA and a liberal pull on the CED. He went from leading the BAC to reorganize the NPA, where he was instrumental in pulling the organization towards the centre ground and its coupling over major policies with the CED, of which he was also an original member.

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Batt was also in close touch with the wartime administration and Congress, serving in high positions in the mobilization agencies for most of the war and testifying several times on Capitol Hill. After the war, Batt enjoyed continuous service as a business representative in government, in the ECA, the United Nations and NATO. No business planner during the war better personified the business–government nexus than Batt or was more instrumental in shaping the planning community.13 The interchange between groups became more pronounced and significant in the immediate post-war period as the business planners began to converge around high-profile national issues and a consensus was formed. Even the TCF, the more liberal but also the most broad-minded of the business groups, played a key role in bringing together corporate moderates and enabling an academic consensus. The convergence of all the planning groups over support for the Marshall Plan triggered a spell of merging of the groups along not only individual but also organizational lines. In 1948 the NPA planned a two-part study in ‘cooperation’ with representatives of the CED, TCF and the Advertising Council to draw-up ‘an analysis of the positive programs, private and public, needed to build a better America’. The board recognized the delicacy of entering into such a vast and problematic enterprise, but were convinced the NPA could play a crucial role in advancing the debate and ‘widen the area of agreement by acting now’. Further, NPA could ‘demonstrate in terms of a concrete situation’, as Charles J. Symington put it, the role of private industry and venture capital in reviving the economy.14 The merging of the leading planners was made explicit with the January 1948 expansion of the TCF board of trustees. Five new members were added from the top echelons of the planning community. Most significantly for the TCF this included none other than the chairman of the CED, Paul Hoffman, H. Christian Sonne, chairman of the NPA, and some former government officials in the shape of Chester Bowles (OPA), and Benjamin Cohen (Office of Economic Stabilization). Indeed, the TCF was now offering its support directly to the State Department. In 1947 Dewhurst was given permission (TCF paid his salary) to act as a consultant to the Caribbean Committee of the State Department headed by Charles Taussig (NPA).15 For the CED, its association with the CFR would strengthen as the pressure to supply answers to the pressing international questions of the Cold War era mounted. It was in the realm of international economics that perhaps the greatest convergence of the business planners took place, and out of which the post-war dominance of the corporate moderates and especially the CED was confirmed. This was all the more surprising given the slow recognition of the CED of the relevance of international economics to US post-war prosperity. That the CED would assume prominence on the issue of European reconstruction over the NPA, an organization which was quicker than all other business groups to recognize Europe’s post-war significance and which dedicated considerable resources to promoting that belief, was testament to the stifling anti-liberal atmosphere that prevailed in post-war America. It seemed that, if not in the presentation then at least in the content, the liberal planners were successful in promulgating the assertion of US power in the international realm, and more successfully than they were at convincing Americans of the need for an enlarged state at home. The main business planning groups were united in their rejection of free-trade

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purism and called for the adoption of a domestic-first orientation to achieving high post-war employment and productivity: a stance which also sat well with pro-tariff big business and protectionist conservatives. Hopes for exercising US economic power on the world stage rested in the new architecture established by Bretton Woods, for which all the major business planning groups were combined in their support. Here, business planners were influential in winning broad support for a moderated form of multilateralism that did not require too heavy a sacrifice from US exporters but which still promised a significant expansion of US trade abroad. As the wartime boom made the US business class aware of the need to ensure some measure of regulation of the domestic economy, at least for the transition and even beyond, there was also recognition that the international economy need also be regulated. In fact, failure to do so might have resulted in the return of heavy regulation at home. Through Bretton Woods it was expected that the continued prosperity of Americans would be secured by locking Western Europe into closer economic relations with the United States. But confidence in the domestic-first approach was undermined when war-torn Europe threatened to de-stabilize US conversion plans and shatter the nascent goals of Bretton Woods. None predicted the level of devastation wrought by the war upon the world economy, especially that of Western Europe, the US’s main trading partner. The world was too ravaged to immediately assume liberal trading practices, rather it needed emergency rehabilitation and assistance if economic collapse, or worse still communist takeover, was to be avoided.16 The domestic-first business planners were right about the ability of the United States to avoid economic collapse on its own (the United States did not lapse into depression once the fighting stopped), but the business planners and the administration eventually realized that American longer-term survival would be jeopardized by the loss of European markets to creeping protectionism and was compelled to intervene to restore its economic competitors regardless of the threat of Soviet expansion.17 Corporate liberals who had failed to convince on the need for greater federal involvement in the domestic economy, thanks to the weight of conservative opposition and an underestimation of pent-up consumer demand, were able to rally around Marshall’s plan for aid to Europe. As Eakins phrased it, ‘foreign aid emerged to provide an elegantly symmetrical answer to several dilemmas’ about the future of US capitalism, namely avoiding the revival of New Deal expenditures at home, sustaining the private enterprise system, providing more investment opportunities overseas, and checking the communist threat to capitalism – and US economic interests – in Europe. Fundamentally, Marshall aid solved the export–import dilemma that had so perplexed economists (and the business planners) for decades.18 It is on the matter of aid to Europe, and this alone, that the influence of the NPA is noted by scholars alongside that of the CED.19 Beyond the core themes outlined at the beginning of this book – federal versus freemarket solutions, foreign trade and the national economy, and business–government relations – this investigation of the post-war business planners offers a number of other insights into wartime America. The involvement, however indirect and patchy, of the business planners in the development of the country’s post-war programme attests, among other things, to the remarkable incoherency of the US wartime government. All federal departments were

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left to make plans themselves. Hard-pressed for resources, they were compelled to look for outside help, offering a ‘great challenge and opportunity’ for corporate liberals.20 As this study revealed, far-sighted businessmen were the first to articulate and to stimulate post-war planning across the country. The narrative of government efforts at postwar planning closely parallels that of government management of war production. Dogged by conservative resistance to any federal enlargement, and compounded by Roosevelt’s penchant for competitive delegation, it is little wonder that the president had difficulty looking beyond the immediately pressing matters of waging and winning the war. Indeed, beyond the broad-brush international objectives secured through the unforgiving application of US diplomatic leverage, Roosevelt, along with Secretary of State Hull, was uninterested in the mechanics of post-war planning. Roosevelt showed meagre interest in the business planners, especially those of the BAC, and put his faith in the clutch of loyal New Deal liberals huddled together in his beleaguered New Deal orphan, the NRPB. This was the only federal agency given any coordinating role, which it obtained largely by default and through the determination of its staff to keep the organization running. Thus the under-resourced and under-valued NRPB continued in this vague role as Roosevelt’s principal post-war planner and bastion of liberal pretensions until it was shut down halfway through the war. Even then, always the pragmatist, Roosevelt ditched his loyalists when they became political liabilities. The NRPB therefore played a largely token role in post-war planning. After 1943, with the loss of the NRPB and Roosevelt in fourth-term election mode, together with setbacks in prosecuting the war itself, it was not until the final year of the war that the post-war plans of the government became more defined. Between 1943 and 1945 it was the business planners, and not the government, which maintained the national dialogue about post-war affairs and developed the agenda and the framework for supplying answers to the most pressing post-war economic questions. Only the secretive CFR, which had close ties with the business groups, was as active in promoting debate through its journal Foreign Affairs, albeit more narrowly focused upon foreign policy.21 The NPA and the CED, the two groups most concerned with influencing policy, and to a lesser extent the TCF were henceforth engaged in an undeclared contest for leadership of the post-war planning debate. The arrival of a ‘moderate’ consensus out of this contest in 1945 meant that a besieged Truman, who was more in touch with business concerns (in the Truman Committee and familiarity with the NPA) than his predecessor, was able to lean on an increasingly confident layer of moderate corporate leaders for support in winning legislative backing from a conservative Congress during the critical transition phase. Hence it is more instructive to look at the activist business class – corporate liberals of whatever hue – and not the political class or its executive to judge the temper of Americans regarding post-war matters as they presented the most comprehensive narrative on the subject. Another important message from this account of the post-war business planners is that triumphant optimism overrode all but lingering pessimism about the return of economic depression after the war. In other words, significant sections of the US business elite were less concerned with avoiding a bad economic situation after the war than making the most of a good one. As Harris observed, corporate liberals were not ‘worried men’.22 This challenges the oft-repeated adage that US capitalists during

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the 1940s were driven by blind fear of another economic crisis. Liberals, in particular, were accused during the war of being (even deliberately) overly pessimistic about the chances of post-war economic recovery without, of course, necessary doses of federal spending. The evidence, certainly of this account, points to quite the opposite. Farsighted businessmen of nearly every variety and disposition were supremely confident (to the point of arrogance) about the prospects for post-war prosperity and were more anxious about how the anticipated abundance in profit would be best realized. As for big business and the wider private sector, they were far more anxious about the loss of market freedom to government regulation than the post-war return of depression. The government had, after all, stimulated and financed the private sector for the entire war effort. The conservative agenda and the founding of the CED were testament to this resolve. The war indeed lifted the spirits, as well as the profits, of the capitalist class and significantly eroded the pre-war pessimism about the longevity of free-enterprise capitalism.23 Those ‘forecasters of doom’ that did exist have been dismissed by moderates as biased liberals pressing for higher government spending after the war because it suited their political animus.24 Based on what the business planners in this study actually said, liberal ‘doom-mongers’ were certainly not in evidence. Only Stuart Chase, perhaps the most left-wing of the ‘stagnationist’ school, fitted this category, but as a populist writer instinctively swapped pessimism for ebullient optimism.25 The war, more accurately, brought about the ‘transformation of economic expectations’ for US capitalists who were buoyed by the prospect of ‘genuine’ economic recovery after the war.26 Establishing to what extent the business planners were effective or influential – their impact – can be approached in two ways. The first relates to government policy. Roosevelt, as we have seen, was at arm’s length towards the business planners, and outside of the Marshall Plan there is precious little mention in government documents of the research findings of post-war business planners directly influencing policy. Despite the best efforts of the business planners and some in the administration, the establishment of a centralized mechanism for proper collaboration between business and government was never realized. Even the post-war CEA failed to live up to expectations.27 This experience corresponds to McQuaid’s thesis that the fragmented US political system promotes ‘loose alliances’ over institutional collaboration between the country’s political and economic elite.28 Studies by Milward and Klausen have also pointed to a general wartime problem in democracies over centralized planning as it was ultimately ‘incompatible with interest group autonomy’.29 Moments of close ‘alliance’ and significant collaboration, such as over the Bretton Woods Agreements, Murray Bill and Marshall Plan were certainly noteworthy but more so because they were rare. Beyond these verifiable cases, however, the influence of the business planners may still be inferred. The high-level involvement in the planning community of important government officials, such as Clayton (CED), Berle (TCF) and Wilson and Batt (NPA), at the cabinet and sub-cabinet levels throughout the war testified to the de facto influence and cross-fertilization of the ideas of the business planning community with government policy. Significant government actors were not merely orbital to the planning community, but were intimately involved in its core research and decision-making. Jones, Wilson and Taylor of the Commerce Department were central figures in the BAC and the CED. Gulick supplied the link between the NRPB and

Conclusions

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the NPA; Biddle and Taft for the TCF. Academics influential in the planning process, such as Upgren, Viner, Schultz, Riefler, Schlicter, Dewhurst, Hansen and Galbraith, moved within and between planning organizations and government departments. The interaction of the business planners with the CFR, which was uniquely situated at the heart of State Department decision-making, was another mechanism of indirect corporate impact on policy. At the congressional level the involvement and the impression of the CED was especially marked. In his role as director of the Colmer Committee, Folsom later confessed he ‘wouldn’t have gotten anywhere at all’ without guidance from CED recommendations.30 Washington was weekly showered with planning literature, and on an informal level, there were countless lunch meetings, bar chats, telephone conversations and face-to-face encounters in the boardrooms and banquet halls between planners and officials. Nationally, sales of business planner publications numbered the hundreds of thousands both during and immediately after the war, including the liberal tomes of Stuart Chase, which far outsold any comparable monographs released by the NPA or the CED. Taken as a whole, however, the post-war business planners granted space for enlightened capitalists to ponder their options and hone their arguments, quickly accumulating a body of expertise which questioned, examined and filtered the vital questions facing the country which, having passed through a critical developmental phase during the war, was able directly to assist the Truman administration in achieving key objectives in the post-war period.31 Another way of assessing the impact of the business planners is to look at their role in influencing business itself, or what their activities achieved ‘on the ground’. For many business planners, the primary aim was not to be influential in formulating government policy but to convince US businessmen to ready themselves for the postwar era. In this regard the impact of the post-war planners on US post-war prosperity is even less quantifiable, but, nonetheless, can be somewhat inferred by the success of the transition after the war and of the sheer dominance of US capitalism, as the planners predicted, in the decades that followed. The business planners were, of course, helped in their predictions by the higher-than-expected levels of spending from personal savings, and the indirect federal stimulus provided by handouts to returning veterans. International politics also swung to American advantage. US global authority, in Europe and elsewhere, over international capitalism was reinforced with the onset of the Cold War, an event none of the wartime planners predicted. In fact, of note was the consistently pro-Soviet outlook of all the business planners, which until 1947 viewed the Soviet Union as a more or less viable partner in the post-war set-up. Still, in pressing home the message of preparedness for the ‘average’ US businessman, as well as devising practical methods and solutions, the corporate planners most likely registered considerable success. This is all the more appreciable given the comparably lower level of resources devoted to post-war preparedness (as well as interest) by the local heavyweights, the NAM and the USCC.32 The CED, in particular, spent huge sums in establishing a local presence, arguably pushing some local associations out of their lethargy. The TCF, of all the post-war planners, utilized a wide range of media to stimulate post-war planning across the country. At its height, the NPA boasted a membership of thousands, as did the CED after the war (some 70,000 ‘members’ by 1946), close to that of the traditional employers’ associations, the NAM and the USCC.

194

Post-War Business Planners in the United States, 1939–48

So close, in fact, that the old guard feared being replaced at the grass-roots level. As Hoffman trumpeted: ‘I doubt if any assignment was ever met as fully in as short a time.’ He proudly credited the smooth post-war conversion to the activities of the CED and ‘other organizations’.33 It is hard to verify, as the NPA did, that its 1946 National Budgets for Full Employment became ‘virtually a handbook for Americans seeking a balanced national economy’, or that the accuracy of American Industry Looks Ahead ‘sold’ the CED to the business community after 1945, or that by 1948, CED policy statements were ‘standard classroom material’ in hundreds of leading US universities and colleges.34 However impossible to accurately measure, it is nonetheless reasonable to deduce that towards the end of the war the business planning community had reached a critical mass which, given the size, energy and popularity of the main organizations, must have exerted a considerable influence on the economic transition.35 It is hoped that this examination of the major post-war business planners reveals something of the unique atmosphere of wartime America as expressed through the hopes and the fears, the drive, determination and self-belief of an elite of far-sighted corporate executives, academics and their associates. American capitalists were full of confidence, not fear, about the post-war era, often to the point of arrogance, even of its ‘enlightened’ sections. This was born not only of business hard-headedness, but also of a unique distancing from the material horrors of war mercilessly visited upon the rest of the world. They were in a unique and luxurious position – in more ways than one – from which to devise benefits from the travails of war. This was true even of the liberal NPA and TCF. The underlying assumption of all the business planners was the indisputable superiority of private enterprise capitalism and its post-war advancement. It was overriding confidence in the incomparability and efficiency of the US capitalist method and its worldwide supremacy after the war that most united the business planners, liberal, moderate and conservative. These principles, once threatened by the ravages of the Great Depression, were restored to their former glory by the impact of total war, which for the United States more than any other nation imparted the greatest material benefit. Unlike other epochs, American business was responding not to a social or economic crisis but from a desire to shape and control the already upward trajectory of the US economy. The war allowed American capitalists the opportunity to comfortably consider options in the absence of severe external threat or powerful movements for radical change from the left, the right or from below.36 The result was the adoption of a corporate moderate model of economic management that served both national and international needs and lasted well into the Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy years. The United States arose from the Second World War as history’s first ‘superpower’, a feat anticipated, articulated, promoted and facilitated by the postwar business planners.

Appendix 1

Composition of Planning Organizations

BAC

CED Government

Bankers Government Military Academic

Academic Bankers Business

Business

Law Labour

TCF

NPA Bankers

Bankers

Agriculture Military Government

Academic

Business

Business

Labour Government Agriculture Law Labour

Source: From available membership lists of the period 1939–48

Academic

Appendix 2

Chronology of Major Planning Publications

▲

TCF

● NPA ■ CED

1939 ● ●

Democracies Also Must Plan (May) War and Our Latin American Trade Policy (September)

1940 ▲

Housing for Defense (November)

1941 ● ▲ ▲ ▲

● ● ● ● ● ● ●

A Plan for Britain (February) Labor and National Defense (March) Labor in the Defense Crisis Paths to Tomorrow Germany’s Challenge to America’s Defense (April) Defense Planning and Labor Policy (May) United States’ Cooperation with British Nations (August) The Crisis in Transportation (September) Guides for Post-war Planning (November) Britain’s Trade in the Post-War World (December) Urban Redevelopment and Housing (December)

1942 ▲ ▲

● ● ● ▲

An American Program of Plenty The Road We Are Travelling – Chase I (April) For a Better Post-War Agriculture (May) The Post-War Industrialization of China (June) When Demobilization Day Comes (July) How Collective Bargaining Works (August)

Appendix 2 ● ● ▲

● ▲

197

International Development Loans (September) Regional Resource Development (October) Goals for America – Chase II (November) Relief for Europe (December) Postwar Planning in the United States – Galloway

1943 ● ● ● ■

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

▲ ▲ ▲ ▲ ▲ ▲

■ ▲ ▲ ▲ ▲

The Economic Pattern of World Population (January) Business Reserves for Post-War Survival (April) Declaration of Interdependence (April) Target for Peace (May) Joint Statement on the Reconversion of Industry to Peace (September) The Outlook for Domestic Air Transport (September) The Outlook for the Railroad Industry (October) Public Thinking on Post-War Problems (October) Reconversion of Industry to Peace (November) World Needs for US Food and Fiber (November) Business Reserves in Present Tax Law (November) Farm People and the Land After the War (November) For this We Fight Financing Postwar Prosperity Workers and Bosses Are Human Workers and Employers: The ABC’s of Collective Bargaining Postwar Plans of the United Nations (November) Where’s the Money Coming From? – Chase III (November) Postwar Employment and the Settlement of Terminated War Contracts (October) Postwar Planning in the United States – Galloway Housing America: Problems and Prospects The Power Industry and the Public Interest Wartime Facts and Postwar Problems

1944 ● ● ▲

● ● ▲

● ■ ■ ■ ■

Food For Europe After Victory (January) UNRRA: Gateway to Recovery (February) The Power Industry and the Public Interest (February) The Outlook for Synthetic Rubber (March) A Joint Statement on Social Security (April) American Housing: Problems and Prospects (April 1944) Clothing and Shelter for European Relief (May) Production, Jobs and Taxes (June) Postwar Employment and the Liquidation of War Production (July) Postwar Employment and the Settlement of Terminated War Contracts Small Business after the War

198

Appendix 2

● ● ● ● ●

Fiscal and Monetary Policy (July) Corporate Income Taxes during the Transition from War to Peace (September) Europe’s Uprooted People: The Relocation of Displaced Population (September) America’s New Opportunities in World Trade (November) Relief and Rehabilitation Study Guide (November) Postwar Federal Tax Plan for High Employment (September) Economics of a Free Society (December) Personnel Problems of the Postwar Transition Period (December) Postwar Planning in the United States – Galloway Building America’s Houses

■ ■ ■ ▲ ▲

1945 ■ ■ ■ ▲

● ● ● ● ● ■

● ● ●

■

●

■ ■ ■

● ● ●

▲ ▲ ▲

■

● ● ●

▲ ▲ ▲

Providing for Unemployed Workers in the Transition The Bretton Woods Proposals Demobilization of Wartime Economic Controls (January) Democracy Under Pressure: Special Interests vs. the Public Welfare – Chase IV (January) China’s Relief Needs (January) Fertilizers in the Postwar National Economy (February) Stabilizing the Construction Industry (February) National Budgets for Full Employment (April) The Stakes of Bretton Woods (April) Postwar Employment and the Removal of Wartime Controls (April) Fiscal Policy for Full Employment (May) A Food and Nutrition Program for the Nation (May) The Food and Agriculture Organization (May) International Trade, Foreign Investment and Domestic Employment (May) The V-Day Problem of Military Aircraft Procurement (June) International Trade and Domestic Employment (September) American Industry Looks Ahead (July) The Problem of Changeover Unemployment (August) Farms for Veterans (September) 4 for 4: Questions for National Action (October) Recommendations on National Aviation Policy (October) Financing American Prosperity (October) Tomorrow’s Trade: Problems of Our Foreign Commerce – Chase V (November) Trends in Collective Bargaining (November) Toward More Production, More Jobs and More Freedom (November) A Farmer Looks at Fiscal Policy (December) America Must Help Feed Europe This Winter (December) A National Employment Service (December) Toward American Prosperity: Views of Six Leading Economists Pressure Groups in Our Democracy Houses for Tomorrow

Appendix 2

199

1946 ■ ■ ■

● ● ● ● ●

■ ■ ■ ▲

● ▲ ▲ ▲ ▲

World Politics Faces Economics (January) Agriculture in an Unstable Economy (January) Agriculture in an Expanding Economy (January) A Retirement System for Farmers (January) Democratic Planning in Action: Time for Timing (January) International Economic Collaboration (February) National Policy for Aviation (March) Goals of Cooperation: A Declaration of Interdependence (April) International Trade Handbook (May) Postwar Taxation and Economic Progress (May) Controlling World Trade – Cartels and Commodity Agreements (August) Report of the Committee on Foreign Economic Relations (October) Recovery in Europe (November) For This We Fought – Chase VI Foreign Trade Means YOU Cartels in Action: Case Studies in International Business Diplomacy Your Stake in Collective Bargaining

1947 ● ● ● ● ●

America’s World Food Responsibilities (January) Strengthening the Congress (January) The Big 4 in Germany (February) Dare Farmers Risk Abundance? (February) The Future of German Reparations (March) ■ Freedom has its Price (March) ● Obstacles to Multilateral Trade (April) ● The Role of Business in Orderly Price Adjustments (May) ▲ America’s Needs and Resources (May) ■ Meeting the Special Problems of Small Business (June) ● Management-Labor Cooperation in Cutting Costs (August) ● America’s Vital Interest in European Recovery (September) ▲ Rebuilding the World Economy (October) ▲ America’s Stake in World Trade (October) ■ Taxes and the Budget: A Program for Prosperity in a Free Economy (November) ● The General Principles and Administration of the Marshall Plan (December) ▲ Power, Machines and Plenty ▲ Strikes and Democratic Government ▲ The World We Fought For

1948 ● ●

NPA’s Principles and Objectives (January) The Marshall Plan (February)

200 ■

●

▲

● ● ■

● ● ● ● ●

■ ▲ ▲

Appendix 2 An American Program of European Economic Cooperation (February) Good Health is Good Business (February) Electric Power and Government Policy (February) The Agricultural Research and Marketing Act of 1946: A Consideration of Basic Objectives and Procedures (April) The Guaranteed Annual Wage (August) Small Business – Its Place and Problems (September) Crown Zellerbach and the Pacific Coast Pulp and Paper Industry (September) The Role of Uprooted People in European Recovery (October) The Libby-Owens-Ford Glass Company and the Federation of Glass, Ceramic and Silica Sand Workers of America (October) Can Farmers Afford to Live Better? (November) The Dewey and Almy Chemical Company and the International Chemical Workers Union (December) Monetary and Fiscal Policy for Greater Economic Stability (December) Cartels or Competition? Report on the Greeks

1949 ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ■ ■ ■ ▲

● ● ● ● ● ● ●

Why I Am in the Labor Movement (January) Hickey-Freeman Company and Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (January) Beyond the Marshall Plan (February) Efficiency in Defense Expenditure (February) Must We Have Food Surpluses? (March) Old-Age Security for Farm People (March) Agricultural Policy (April) Sharon Steel Corporation and United Steelworkers of America (January) A New American Policy in China (May) New Industry Comes to the South (May) Why Industry Moves South (June) The International Trade Organization and the Reconstruction of World Trade (June) Uses and Dangers of Direct Controls in Peacetime (July) Monetary Management (July) USA: Measure of a Nation (July) Current tax Policy (July) Disposal of Southern War Plants (July) The Position of Business on Fiscal and Wage Policy in Depression (August) State Planning and Economic Development in the South (August) America’s Economic Preparedness (August) Toward Building a Better America (September) Lockheed Aircraft Corporation and International Association of Machinists (November)

Appendix 2 ■ ▲ ▲ ▲ ▲ ▲ ▲

National Security and Our Individual Freedom (December) Monopoly Trends in American Business Partners in Production: A Basis for Labor-Management Understanding Can Labor and Management Work Together? Monopoly and Free Enterprise Brazil: An Expanding Economy Turkey: An Economic Appraisal

201

Notes Context and Themes 1 From the NPA’s ninth anniversary meeting on 6 December 1943 (quoted in ‘NPA’s Ninth Anniversary, 1934-43: Report to Members’, 4 April 1944, Leland Olds Papers, Box 7, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library (henceforth FDRL)). 2 Also called ‘New Liberalism’ based on ‘balance’ and the ‘idea that there is a middle ground which is best for all in the long run’, as enunciated by Secretary of Commerce Charles Sawyer in 1949; see ‘Press Release for the Department of Commerce, 5 December 1949’, Papers of William L. Clayton, Box 70, Harry S. Truman Library (henceforth HSTL). There are countless treatments of wartime America, but the most notable accounts on the conservative revival and the transformation of American liberalism are Alan Brinkley, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (New York: Vintage, 1996) (this summary from p. 271) and his Liberalism and its Discontents (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998); and Brian Waddell, The War Against the New Deal: World War Two and American Democracy (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2001) (this summary from pp. 134–5) and also by Waddell, ‘Corporate Influence and World War II: Resolving the New Deal Political Stalemate’, Journal of Political History, Vol. 11, No. 3 (1999), p. 233. For a wider discussion, see Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle (eds), The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930-1980 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989). For later studies on New Deal liberalism, see Sidney Milkis and Jerome Mileur (eds), The New Deal and the Triumph of Liberalism (Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002), and for a recent discussion of the impact of the war on American perceptions of government, see James T. Sparrow, Warfare State: World War II Americans and the Age of Big Government (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 3 Herbert Stein, Presidential Economics: The Making of Economic Policy from Roosevelt to Reagan and Beyond (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1988 Second Edition), p. 65. Stein was on the research committee of the CED in the late 1940s and its research director in the 1960s. 4 On the conservative opposition, see Kim Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands: the Businessmen’s Crusade against the New Deal (New York: W. W. Norton, 2009), pp. 3–25; also summarized in Howell John Harris, The Right to Manage: Industrial Relations Policies of American Business in the 1940s (Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982), pp. 180–1. 5 For NAM and USCC opposition to the New Deal, see Robert Collins, The Business Response to Keynes, 1929-1964 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), pp. 24–52. For thumbnail descriptions of both groups, see Val Burris, ‘Elite PolicyPlanning Networks in the United States’, Research in Politics and Society, Vol. 4 (1992), pp. 117 and 120. 6 For a brief account, see Alan Sweezy, ‘The Keynesians and Government Policy, 1933-1939’, The American Economic Review, Vol. 62, No. 1/2 (March 1972),

Notes

7 8

9

10

11 12 13

14

203

pp. 116–24; also John K. Galbraith, How Keynes Came to America (New York: Overbrook Press, 1965). Collins, Business Response to Keynes, pp. 9–10. For the conservative opposition, see James T. Patterson, Congressional Conservatives and the New Deal (Frankfurt: University Press of Kentucky, 2015). Roosevelt’s conversion is noted in most studies of the period. For critical treatments of the 1930s economy, see Peter Temin, Lessons from the Great Depression (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989); Gary Best, Pride, Prejudice and Politics: Roosevelt versus Recovery, 1933-1938 (New York: Praeger, 1991); William J. Barber, Designs within Disorder: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Economists, and the Shaping of American Economic Policy, 1933-1945 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Michael Bordo, Claudia Goldin and Eugene White, The Defining Moment: The Great Depression and the American Economy in the Twentieth Century (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1997); Jim Couch and William Shughart II, The Political Economy of the New Deal (Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 1998); Mark Wheeler (ed.), The Economics of the Great Depression (Kalamazoo, MI: Upjohn Press, 1998); Gene Smiley, Rethinking the Great Depression (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002); and Collins, Business Response to Keynes, pp. 5–6 and 44. See Bernard D. Nossiter, Fat Years and Lean: The American Economy since Roosevelt (New York: Harper & Row, 1991), pp. 33–4 on how war and not the New Deal ended the Depression. For one of the best comprehensive explanations of multilateralism, see Randall Bennett Woods, A Changing of the Guard: Anglo-American Relations, 1941-1946 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), pp. 13–17. Hull’s ‘tariff revolution’ is charted in Alfred E. Eckes, Jr., Opening America’s Market: US Foreign Trade Policy since 1776 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), Chapter 5; and Susan Aaronson, Trade and the American Dream: A Social History of Postwar Trade Policy (Frankfurt: University Press of Kentucky, 1996), pp. 13–14. New Left historians argued that multilateralism was a tool for the extension of US economic power; see Lloyd C. Gardner, ‘The New Deal, New Frontiers, and the Cold War: A Re-examination of American Expansion, 1933-1945’, in Corporations and the Cold War, ed. David Horowitz (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969), pp. 105–41; Joyce Kolko and Gabriel Kolko, The Limits of Power: The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1945-54 (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), and William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (New York: W. W. Norton, 1972 edition), Chapter 1. For Hull and Imperial Preference, see Thomas Zeiler, Free Trade, Free World: The Advent of GATT (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), pp. 8–9. Industrialists and the NAM were especially protectionist; see Zeiler, Free Trade, Free World, pp. 11–12. Foremost was David Eakins, ‘Business Planners and America’s Postwar Expansion’, in Corporations and the Cold War, ed. David Horowitz (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969), pp. 143–71. Others are listed in following section on ‘corporate liberalism’. Early proponents were Martin Sklar, ‘Woodrow Wilson and the Political Economy of Modern United States Liberalism’, Studies on the Left, Vol. 1 (1960), pp. 17–47; Gabriel Kolko, The Triumph of Conservatism (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1963); William Appleman Williams, The Contours of American History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1961); G. William Domhoff, Who Rules America? (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice

204

15

16

17 18 19

Notes Hall, 1967); James Weinstein, The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State, 1900-1918 (Boston: Beacon, Whitt & J. Allen, 1968); David Eakins and James Weinstein, For a New America (New York, 1970); Ellis W. Hawley, ‘The Discovery and Study of a “Corporate Liberalism” ’, Business History Review, Vol. 52 (Autumn 1978), pp. 309–20; and Kim McQuaid, ‘Corporate Liberalism in the American Business Community, 1920-1940’, Business History Review, Vol. 52 (Autumn 1978), p. 343. For later treatments, see Michael Useem, The Inner Circle: Large Corporations and the Rise of Business Political Activity in the US and UK (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), whose ‘inner circle’ constitutes a semi-autonomous network that ‘transcends company, regional, sectoral, and other politically divisive fault lines within the corporate community’ (p. 3); Michael J. Hogan, ‘Corporatism: A Positive Appraisal’, Diplomatic History, Vol. 10, No. 4 (1986), pp. 363–72, and his interpretation of the ‘New School’; Martin Sklar, The Corporate Reconstruction of Capitalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), who formulated the idea that corporations assimilated socialist economics in a ‘capitalist-socialist mix’; G. William Domhoff, The Power Elite and the State: How Policy is Made in America (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1990) who extended corporate liberal theory with the notion of ‘power elites’; and Kim McQuaid, Uneasy Partners: Big Business in American Politics, 1945-1990 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994). For challenges, see Fred Block, ‘Beyond Corporate Liberalism’, Social Problems, Vol. 24, No. 3 (February 1977), pp. 352–61; Val Burris and James Salt, ‘The Politics of Capitalist Class Segments: A Test of Corporate Liberalism Theory’, Social Problems, Vol. 37, No. 3 (August 1990), pp. 341–59; G. William Domhoff, The Myth of Liberal Ascendancy: Corporate Dominance from the Great Depression to the Great Recession (Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2013), for the latest updating. Most corporate liberal theorists agree with this analysis, but major proponents are Eakins, Collins, McQuaid and especially Domhoff; see The Myth of Liberal Ascendancy, pp. 10–12 for a classic outline of ‘corporate moderates’. The outlook of NAM and the USCC relative to other business groups is charted in Michael J. Hogan, The Marshall Plan: America, Britain, and the Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1947-52 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 10–12. See also McQuaid, Uneasy Partners, p. 19, and McQuaid, ‘Corporate Liberalism’, pp. 362–6. What constituted ‘corporate liberal’ and ‘conservative’ segments of the US business class was debated in Burris and Salt, ‘The Politics of Capitalist Class Segments’, pp. 341–59. On the specific organizations, see Richard Gable, ‘Birth of an Employer’s Association’, Business History Review, Vol. 33, No. 4 (Winter 1959), pp. 535–45; Philip H. Burch, Jr., ‘The NAM as an Interest Group’, Politics and Society, Vol. 4 (Fall 1973), pp. 97–130; Andrew Workman, ‘Manufacturing Power: The Organizational Revival of the National Association of Manufacturers, 1941-45’, Business History Review, Vol. 72, No. 2 (Summer 1998), pp. 279–317; and Richard Hume Werking, ‘Bureaucrats, Businessmen and Foreign Trade: The Origins of the US Chamber of Commerce’, Business History Review, Vol. 52 (Fall 1992), pp. 2–12. Eakins, ‘Business Planners’, p. 143. Collins, Business Response to Keynes, p. 57. Collins, along with Domhoff and McQuaid, have offered the most detailed and authoritative treatments of the CED; see G. William Domhoff, ‘Who Made American Foreign Policy, 1945-1963?’, in Corporations and the Cold War, ed. David Horowitz (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969), pp. 36–9; Kim McQuaid, Big Business and Presidential Power: From FDR to Reagan (New York: William Morrow

Notes

205

and Co., 1982), pp. 107–58. More recently Domhoff, The Power Elite, p. 37; Waddell, ‘Corporate Influence and World War II’, pp. 242–7; and Domhoff, The Myth of Liberal Ascendancy, Chapter Four. 20 This process of controversy, disagreement and realignment among the corporate elite is used to explain the rise of a New Deal coalition in the 1930s; see Hogan’s defence of this analysis in ‘Corporatism’, pp. 368–9. 21 The linkage of corporate ‘liberals’ (namely the CED), with the rise of a moderated New Deal liberalism is mentioned but not detailed by Brinkley in The End of Reform, pp. 173–4; and Waddell, War Against the New Deal, pp. 134–9 and 161.

Chapter 1 1 For studies of business and the Progressive Era, see Kolko, The Triumph of Conservatism; Williams, The Contours of American History, pp. 345–439. For general treatments, see the standard Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform (New York: Vintage, 1960), and more recently, Michael McGerr, A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870-1920 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), and Maureen A. Flanagan, America Reformed: Progressives and Progressivisms, 1890s-1920s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). 2 Adolf A. Berle, Leaning Against the Dawn: An appreciation of the Twentieth Century Fund and its Fifty Years of Adventure in Seeking to Influence American Development Toward a more Effectively just Civilization, 1919-1969 (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1969 – Third Printing 1986). 3 Early Filene and Dennison profiles can be found in Richard Holl, From the Boardroom to the War Room: America’s Corporate Liberals and FDR’s Preparedness Program (New York: University of Rochester Press, 2005), pp. 16–18. 4 Berle, Leaning Against the Dawn, p. 32. 5 In 1939 Clark received a $20,000 salary, with the next largest salary of $12,000 going to Dewhurst. All other staff were paid under $3,000; see ‘Director’s Report for Fiscal Year 1938–39’, 28 March 1939, p. 43, from the unprocessed documents collection at Century Foundation Headquarters in New York City, NY (henceforth Century Foundation Holdings). 6 Soon-to-be ambassador to London John G. Winant was also a member in 1939. 7 See ‘Minutes of the Special Meeting of the Board of Trustees’, 29 January 1944, Century Foundation Holdings. 8 Figures are for 1939–40, but remained roughly in this ratio throughout the 1940s; see ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report for 1939 and 1940’, p. 54, Century Foundation Holdings. 9 Listed in ‘Director’s Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting of 14 December 1942’, p. 40, Century Foundation Holdings. The group’s chief stock was in the American Tobacco Company, General Motors Corporation, Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company (Myers was a trustee), Eastman Kodak Company and Continental Can Company. 10 McQuaid also covers the BAC origins in Big Business and Presidential Power, pp. 30–4. There is no complete set of records for the BAC after 1939 in the National Archives and Records Administration. Those used in this study have been gathered from an assortment of private collections and archives across the United States.

206

Notes

11 McQuaid, Big Business and Presidential Power, p. 64. 12 Roper quoted in Collins, Business Response to Keynes, p. 57. Detail on composition on p. 58; also Harris, The Right to Manage, p. 181, on the composition of the BAC. 13 Summarized in Wayne C. Taylor to Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 5 March 1943, File 94765, Box 786, Entry 33, RG40, National Archives and Records Administration, Archive II, Maryland (henceforth NARA II). 14 From ‘Business Advisory Council for the Department of Commerce: By Laws’, 24 May 1940, File 94765, Box 787, Entry 1 (570/1/26/2-3), RG40, NARA II. 15 See Eakins, ‘Business Planners’, p. 146; also McQuaid, Big Business and Presidential Power, pp. 32–61, and Kim McQuaid, ‘The Business Advisory Council of the Department of Commerce, 1933-1961: A Study in Corporate Government Relations’, Research in Economic History, Vol. 1 (1976), pp. 174–6, on early BAC activities. 16 McQuaid, ‘The Business Advisory Council’, p. 175. 17 Roosevelt quoted in Collins, Business Response to Keynes, p. 60. On BAC relationship with Roosevelt, see Ellis W. Hawley, The New Deal and the Problems of Monopoly: A Study in Economic Ambivalence (New York: Fordham University Press, 1995 edition), pp. 163 and 397. See also McQuaid, ‘The Business Advisory Council’, pp. 178–81, on BAC problems with the administration. 18 Collins, Business Response to Keynes, p. 63. On BAC as restraint on reformism, see Badger, The New Deal, pp. 90–1 and 98. 19 The National Planning Association at Work: Six Decades of Providing Solutions to America’s Challenges (Washington, DC: National Planning Association, 1996), p. 3. NESPA’s origins are briefly mentioned in Hawley, The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly, p. 171. 20 NPA at Work, p. 3. 21 From George Soule, ‘NESPA: December 1934-December 1940’, Plan Age, Vol. 6, Nos. 9–10 (November to December 1940), pp. 289–90, The NPA Collection (unprocessed), Box 5, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University, Detroit MI (henceforth NPAC). 22 NPA at Work, p. 4. 23 Marion Hedges speaking at NPA’s ninth anniversary meeting, 1943; see ‘NPA’s Ninth Anniversary, 1934-43: Report to Members’, April 1944, Leland Olds Papers, Box 7, FDRL. 24 ‘ESPA: Aims and Purpose’ (leaflet), circa 1934, John M. Carmody Papers (General Correspondence), FDRL. 25 Though no complete collection of Plan Age exists to the author’s knowledge, some copies can be found in NPAC, Boxes 5 and 64. 26 Mentioned in the official history of the PEP by John Pinder (ed.), Fifty Years of Political and Economic Planning: Looking Forward, 1931-1981 (London: Heinemann, 1981), p. 95. For studies of British planning in this period, see the staple Alan Budd, The Politics of Economic Planning (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1978), and the more recent Daniel Ritschel, The Politics of Planning: The Debate on Economic Planning in Britain in the 1930s (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997). 27 Soule, ‘NESPA’, p. 291. 28 Confirmed by Eakins, ‘Business Planners’, p. 145. From its inception the NESPA received most of its funding from the Whitney Foundation, but the contribution from business increased during the 1940s. 29 NPA at Work, p. 2.

Notes

207

30 See summary of early NPA thought in ‘A Report to Members on the NPA’s Annual Joint Meeting, 8–9 December 1947’, p. 3, NPAC, Box 6. 31 Plan Age, Vol. 2, No. 5 (May 1936), ‘Miscellany’, NPAC, Box 64. Also Plan Age, Vol. 4, No. 9 (November 1938), p. 245, NPAC, Box 5. In the January 1938 edition of Plan Age, Galloway reviewed the British economist Lionel Robbins’ book Economic Planning and International Order (1937). Galloway praised his detail but attacked Robbins’ liberal economic remedies as ‘erroneous’ as they were based on outmoded forms of international economic activity; see Plan Age, Vol. 4, No. 1 (January 1938), p. 23, NPAC, Box 5. 32 Plan Age, Vol. 2, No. 8 (November 1936), p. 3, NPAC, Box 64. 33 See ‘Minutes of Trustees Meeting, 29 September 1938’, NPAC, Box 67. 34 Details from Plan Age, Vol. 4, No. 5 (May 1938), pp. 147–8, NPAC, Box 64. 35 According to ‘ESPA Past: A Summary of Work from September 1, 1937 to November 15, 1938’, at a rate of twenty-five new members per month, with total membership at 488 by November 1937; in Minutes of Trustees Meeting, 28 November 1938, p. 5, NPAC, Box 67. However, this figure contradicts a membership total of 327 based on Plan Age distribution data supplied to trustees in May; see ‘Minutes of Trustees Meeting, 24 May 1938’, NPAC, Box 67. Membership fees were around $2, but varied according to membership ‘category’. 36 ‘ESPA Past: A Summary of Work from September 1, 1937 to November 15, 1938’, in Minutes of Trustees Meeting, 28 November 1938, p. 6, NPAC, Box 67. Universities using NESPA material included California, Michigan, Missouri, New York, Southern California and Wisconsin. 37 NPA at Work, p. 6; Plan Age, Vol. 5, No. 5 (May 1939), p. 154, NPAC, Box 64. 38 The first pamphlet was Democracies Also Must Plan (May 1939). A complete collection of Planning Pamphlets from 1939 to 1949 are kept in NPAC, Box 1. 39 NPA at Work, p. 5; Soule, ‘NESPA’, p. 292. 40 Soule, ‘NESPA’, p. 290. 41 Nearest they came was in September 1938 Plan Age which contained the complete text of Adolf Berle’s (TCF) report on monopoly; See ‘Minutes of Trustees Meeting, 26 August 1938’, NPAC, Box 67. 42 This corporate domination is clearly reflected in the minutes of the TCF and the NPA.

Chapter 2 1 ‘What will be the probable effect of the war on business?’: An Address by Walter White before the Associated Grocery Manufacturers of America, Hot Springs, Virginia, 14 June 1940, Papers of Harry L. Hopkins, Box 110, FDRL. 2 ‘Minutes of the Annual Meeting of the Board of Trustees’, 29 November 1940, Century Foundation Holdings. 3 Soule, ‘NESPA’, pp. 293–4. 4 Coil to Taussig, 25 July 1941, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL. 5 For a recent summary, see Allan Winkler, Home Front USA: America During World War II (Wheeling, IL: Harlen Davidson, 2012 edition), pp. 10–12; and Robert Higgs, Depression, War and Cold War: Studies in Political Economy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 73. For detailed treatment, see Brian Waddell,

208

6

7

8

9 10

11

12

Notes ‘Economic Mobilization for World War II and the transformation of the US State’, Politics & Society, Vol. 22, No. 2 (June 1994), pp. 165–94; and Waddell, War Against the New Deal, Chapter Four. Early critique can be found in Eliot Janeway, The Struggle for Survival: A Chronicle of Economic Mobilization in World War II (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951), in which Roosevelt’s performance was described as both ‘professional’ and ‘amateurish’ (pp. 6–9). More recently, see Paul Koistinen, Arsenal of World War II: The Political Economy of American Warfare, 1940-1945 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004) and Burton and Anita Folsom’s critical treatment in FDR Goes to War: How Expanded Executive Power, Spiraling National Debt, and Restricted Civil Liberties Shaped Wartime America (New York: Threshold Editions, 2013). Explained in Gene Smiley, The American Economy in the Twentieth Century (Cincinnati, OH: Southwestern Publishing Co., 1994), p. 190. On reservations of business, see Roland Stromberg, ‘American Business and the Approach of War, 1935-1941’, The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 13, No. 1 (Winter 1953), p. 70; and Nossiter, Fat Years and Lean, pp. 35–6. On Roosevelt’s management style, see Warren Kimball, The Juggler: Franklin Roosevelt as Wartime Statesman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991); M. J. Heale, Franklin D. Roosevelt: The New Deal and War (New York: Routledge, 1999), pp. 5–6; and Winkler, Home Front USA, pp. 8–9. On Roosevelt and mobilization, see Heale, FDR, the New Deal and War, pp. 63–4. For a recent treatment, see Nigel Hamilton, The Mantle of Command: FDR at War, 1941-1942 (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2014). Vatter contended that the lack of trained government personnel meant the administration had to ‘rely heavily upon the decision makers in a small number of large corporations’; see Harold Vatter, The US Economy in World War II (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), p. 23. McQuaid also charted Roosevelt’s early mobilization struggles with business in Big Business and Presidential Power, pp. 68–85. McQuaid, Big Business and Presidential Power, p. 61. Waddell, ‘Economic Mobilization for WWII’, p. 172. Waddell argued that conservative elements combined with the military to thwart the New Deal, pro-Keynesian advocates in the administration who viewed war mobilization as a means to further their cause. Also Waddell, ‘Corporate Influence and World War II’, pp. 233–7 for elaboration on this theme. For similar argument, see earlier Barton Bernstein, ‘The Debate on Industrial Reconversion: The Protection of Oligopoly and Military Control of the Economy’, American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 16 (April 1967), pp. 159–72. Higgs noted the replacement of New Dealers with pro-business types from as early as 1940; see Higgs, Depression, War and Cold War, pp. 5 and 18–20. For a recent treatment of corporate liberal (or more accurately corporate moderate) involvement in the early (pre-Pearl Harbor) mobilization, see Holl, From the Boardroom to the War Room, especially pp. 116–24. A useful summary of the haphazard defence mobilization can be found in Vatter, US Economy in WWII, pp. 32–42. For general histories of the NRPB, see Philip W. Warken, A History of the National Resources Planning Board, 1933-1943 (New York: Garland, 1979); on its formation see Patrick Reagan, Designing a New America: The Origins of New Deal Planning, 1890-1943 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999), pp. 212–13. Washington ensured pro-Keynesian economists populated the defence agencies; see Byrd Jones, ‘The Role of Keynesians in Wartime Policy and Post-War Planning, 1940-1946’, The American Economic Review, Vol. 62, No. 1/2 (March 1972), p. 128.

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13 After Defense – What? Full Employment, Security, Up-Building America, NRPB (August 1941), p. 9; also Marion Clawson, New Deal Planning: The National Resources Planning Board (Washington, DC: Johns Hopkins Press, 1981), p. 181. Also Reagan, Designing a New America, p. 215. 14 On the faltering early days of the NRPB’s post-war planning, see Reagan, Designing a New America, pp. 215–16. 15 Outlined in Post-War Planning: Full Employment, Security, Building America, NRPB (September 1942), p. 2. 16 Roosevelt was no ‘enthusiastic free-trader’ but supported it because it furthered New Deal policies on raising agricultural and industrial exports; see Zeiler, Free Trade, Free World, pp. 6–9 and 45. On Roosevelt and Hull, see Gary Hess, The United States at War, 1941-1945 (Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, 2011 edition), p. 88. 17 Hull’s dislike for policy detail is noted in Randall B. Woods, ‘FDR and the New Economic Order’, in FDR’s World: War, Peace and Legacies, ed. David Woolner, Warren Kimball and David Reynolds (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), p. 176. 18 See Zeiler, Free Trade, Free World, p. 17, on the ‘mid-level’ officials. 19 See Cordell Hull, The Memoirs of Cordell Hull, Volume II (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1948), p. 1638; and Graham H. Stuart, The Department of State: A History of its Organization, Procedure, and Personnel (New York: Macmillan, 1949), p. 380. For the definitive empirical account of the varied and complex State Department efforts at post-war foreign policy planning, see Harley S. Notter, Postwar Foreign Policy Preparation (Washington, DC: Department of State, 1949). 20 Described in Susan Aaronson, ‘How Cordell Hull and the Postwar Planners Designed a New Trade Policy’, Business and Economic History, Vol. 20 (1991), pp. 173–4; and Aaronson, Trade and the American Dream, pp. 23–4. 21 On the origins of the CFR, see Michael Wala, The Council on Foreign Relations and American Foreign Policy in the Early Cold War (Providence: Berghahn Books, 1994), Chapter 1; and Inderjeet Parmar, Think Tanks and Power in Foreign Policy: A Comparative Study of the Role and Influence of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1939-1945 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), pp. 37–8 and 110. For general analysis of the CFR, see Domhoff, ‘Who Made American Foreign Policy’, pp. 28–36; and Domhoff, The Power Elite, p. 114. 22 See Robert Divine, Second Chance: The Triumph of Internationalism in America During World War II (New York: Atheneum, 1967), p 32; and Domhoff, The Power Elite, p. 117. The Rockefeller Foundation paid $44,000 to begin the work, and over the five-year life of the project supplied the modern equivalent of several million dollars to the CFR. 23 See Wala, The Council on Foreign Relations, pp. 41–6; Parmar, Think Tanks and Power, p. 127, for summary of CFR wartime achievements. 24 Soule, ‘NESPA’, p. 293. 25 ‘Study of American Policy for Peace’ in Plan Age, Vol. 5, No. 9 (November 1939), ‘Miscellany’, NPAC, Box 64. 26 Plan Age, Vol. 5, No. 10 (December 1939), pp. 325–6, NPAC, Box 5. 27 The CFR advocated US post-war goals within a ‘Grand Area’ concept of global hegemony which included the Far East, British Empire and the Western Hemisphere to be policed through international economic, political and military institutions; explained in Parmar, Think Tanks and Power, pp. 113–15. 28 Plan Age, Vol. 6, No. 2 (February 1940), pp. 43 and 48–9, NPAC, Box 5. Staley had presented a paper on this subject at the American Political Science Association conference of December 1939.

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29 Ibid. The conference took place on 8–11 July. The sessions covered topics such as ‘Planning the Use of our Resources’; ‘Public Education for Planning’; ‘Migration and Resettlement of the People’; ‘National Industrial Development in the Pacific Northwest, the South and New England’; ‘A Program for the use of Tax-Abandoned Land’; ‘The Nature of Planning in a Democracy’; ‘Zoning; Highways and Transportation’; ‘County, City and Neighbourhood Planning’; and ‘Architectural and Roadside Control’. 30 Plan Age, Vol. 6, No. 8 (October 1940), pp. 282–3, NPAC, Box 5. 31 Ibid., p. 288. 32 Plan Age, Vol. 6, Nos. 9–10 (November to December 1940), pp. 311–13, NPAC, Box 5. 33 ‘Some Aspects, Near-Term and Long-Term, of the International Position of the United States’ (paper delivered by Alvin Hansen and Arthur Upgren at the 53rd Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association, December 1940), extract from American Economic Review, February 1941, Alexander Sachs Papers, Box 296, FDRL. Hansen put similar ideas before the CFR in June 1940; see Wala, The Council on Foreign Relations, p. 38. 34 Soule, ‘NESPA’, pp. 293–4. 35 ‘Agenda for Post-War Reconstruction Meeting’, 6 February 1941, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL. The papers contained no list of those present. 36 ‘Post-War Reconstruction Group: Summary of Points of Last Meeting, February 6’, 25 February 1941, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL. 37 ‘Agenda: Post-War Reconstruction Group’, 27 February 1941, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL. 38 ‘Discussion Notes of Post-War Reconstruction Meeting, February 27, 1941’, 11 March 1941, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL. 39 ‘Supplementary Materials on Post-War Reconstruction’, 27 February 1941, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL. 40 ‘Discussion Notes of Post-War Reconstruction Meeting, February 27, 1941’, 11 March 1941, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL. 41 ‘Discussion Notes of the Business Committee meetings’, 19–20 February 1943, pp. 13–14, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL. 42 ‘Discussion Notes: Post-war Reconstruction Group Meeting’, 13 March 1941, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL. 43 NPA at Work, p. 7. The author found no documents to support this assertion, either from the NPA or BAC, or any other reference to the approach by the BAC members. 44 Batt had been president of the US subsidiary of SKF Industries for twenty-five years, and was even decorated by the king of Sweden for distinguished service to that country. Controversy surrounded Batt’s links to SKF. In 1939 Senator Vic Donahy (Ohio) complained to Roosevelt (on behalf of anti-friction bearing manufacturers in Ohio) about Batt working for the government. The manufacturers believed that Batt’s relationship with SKF, which had subsidiaries in Germany and with which they were in direct competition, compromised his impartiality: ‘No person so closely associated with these foreign companies should be placed in a position where he may come into possession of military secrets or information relative to our domestic economy or foreign trade, to the embarrassment of himself and the United States’; see Donahey to Roosevelt, 1 March 1939 (with attachment), Box 85, Papers of Harry L. Hopkins, FDRL. 45 See draft manuscript ‘out of memory’ by John Miller for NPA Ad Hoc Committee on the Role of NPA, 26 October 1983, pp. 1–3, NPAC, Box 64. Miller, who was

Notes

46 47

48 49 50 51

52 53 54 55 56 57

58

59 60 61

211

former NPA director and once head of Field Service Operations for the NRPB, did not attribute dates and talked not of the BAC but only of the ‘WPB group’ approaching NESPA, even though WPB was not formed until January 1942. Also, in his recollections for another unpublished ‘history of the NPA’, he claimed: ‘With successful conclusion of World War II clearly in sight, some of the top leaders from business, labor and agriculture who had been cooperating successfully in running the war economy wanted to carry on this cooperation in the government to do post-war planning.’ This assertion is a little odd. To assert that the end of the war was ‘clearly in sight’ by April 1941 – the date NPA was created – is far-fetched, especially if Miller had his dates right. This statement is reiterated in the leaflet ‘NPA: 50 Years of Looking Ahead’, p. 1, released in 1990 that borrowed heavily from Miller’s text; copy in NPAC, Box 64. Eakins, ‘Business Planners’, p. 149. Wilson was later asked to be a trustee for the TCF, but found it ‘impossible to accept’, most likely out of pressure of commitments; see ‘Director’s Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting of 14 November 1941’, Century Foundation Holdings. ‘Report of the Joint Meeting of the Board of Trustees’, 1951, p. 4, NPAC, Box 64. Miller, ‘Ad Hoc Committee on the Role of NPA’, pp. 1–3, NPAC, Box 64. Soule, ‘NESPA’, p.2 94. ‘Report of the Joint Meeting of the Board of Trustees’, 1951, p. 4, NPAC, Box 64. For profile on Ruml, see Collins, Business Response to Keynes, pp. 67–70; also Sweezy, ‘The Keynesians and Government Policy’, p. 123. For a detailed account of his early career, see Reagan, Designing a New America, pp. 140–67. On the 1938 advice, see p. 207. Soule, ‘NESPA’, pp. 290–1; NPA at Work, p. 5. From Miller, ‘Ad Hoc Committee on the Role of NPA’, pp. 1–3, NPAC, Box 64. From leaflet ‘Plan’, June 1942, copy in Charles Taussig Papers, Box 24, FDRL. Public Policy Digest, No. 17 (September 1941), p. 10, Rexford Tugwell Papers, Container 16, FDRL. Coil memorandum to Batt, 11 June 1941, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL. No names were mentioned. Gulick headed the NRPB’s Post-War Agenda Section; see Reagan, Designing a New America, pp. 217–18; and Public Policy Digest, Nos. 29–30 (November to December 1942), p. 4, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL. Coil memorandum to Taussig, ‘Needed Post-War Studies’, 6 June 1941, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL. The other ten topics were price policy, public–private investment, small business, new industrial products, conservation, capital formation, capital adjustment, construction industry, tax policy and relations between government, labour and industry. Coil also mentioned that Philip Jessup, director of Division of International Law, Columbia University, had offered $1,000 to study post-war investment, and the American Committee for International Studies offered $500 to study Anglo–US relations. Attached to Coil memorandum to Batt, 11 June 1941, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL. By August 1941 the NPA had released seven substantial Planning Pamphlets and countless copies of the monthly Plan Age, NESPA Guide and Public Policy Digest. From After Defense – What? Full Employment, Security, Up-Building America, NRPB (August 1941). Also summarized in NPA’s Public Policy Digest, No. 17 (September 1941), p. 10, copy in Rexford Tugwell Papers, Container 16, FDRL.

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62 From United States News, 26 September 1941, pp. 30–2; attached to Coil to New York Group, 22 October 1941, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL. 63 ‘International Post-War Group: Group Discussion, The New Republic Office, New York City, 22 July 1941’, Rexford Tugwell Papers, Container 16, FDRL; also in Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93. FDRL. 64 See Coil to Taussig, 25 July 1941, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL. The ‘Suggested Outline of Approach and List of Topics for Investigation’ is attached to the letter. 65 For Taussig’s role in promoting US penetration of the British West Indies through the Anglo-American Caribbean Commission, see Charlie Whitham, Bitter Rehearsal: British and American Planning for a Post-War West Indies (Westport: Praeger, 2002). 66 From outline of Sonne in Looking Ahead, Vol. 7, No. 7 (October 1959), p. 4, NPAC, Box 64. 67 Minutes of ‘International Group, Post-war Reconstruction’, 14 August 1941, p. 2, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL. The IPWG’s secretary was Eric Beecroft, assistant professor at the University of California. The board of trustees agreed an annual budget for the IPWG of $10,500. 68 ‘Memorandum to Members, International Group’, from Coil, 11 September 1941, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL. The guest list included Chester Barnard (president of Bell Telephone of NJ); Edward C. Carter (Institute of Pacific Relations); John Chapman (Foreign Editor Business Week); Julius Ernspack (United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America); Professor Philip C. Jessup (Division of International Law, Columbia); Russell Leffingwell (J. P. Morgan); Thomas Lyons (President, NY State AF of L); George Mufson (United Steelworkers of America); Lars Christensen (Western Operating Company); Jacob Patofsky (Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America); Edgar Smith (Director of Public Relations General Motors). 69 ‘Notes for International Post-War Group, Dinner Meeting, September 15th’, 11 September 1941, p. 4, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL. Unfortunately, there are no minutes of this meeting. 70 ‘Memorandum: New York Steering Committee’, from Beecroft, 13 October 1941, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL. 71 The committees were chaired by Pickett, Sonne, Patchin and Teper, respectively; see ‘IPWG Discussion Notes’, 21 October 1941, attached to Coil to New York Group, 22 October 1941, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL. 72 Planning Pamphlet No. 8, Guides for Post-War Planning (November 1941), pp. 29–30, copy in Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL; also copy in NPAC, Box 1. 73 Planning Pamphlet No. 3, A Plan for Britain (February 1941), p. 1. The articles were written by such notables as Julian Huxley and J. B. Priestley. Coil triumphantly wrote that the pamphlet ‘has been well received here and all agree that it is one of the clearest statements of post-war aims to come out of Britain or our own country’; see Coil to Rena Kronfeldt (secretary to Sachs), 19 March 1941, Alexander Sachs Papers, Box 51, FDRL. 74 Raised in Coil to Taussig, 6 June 1941, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL. The committee gave NPA $500 to finance the ‘preliminary memorandum’. Coil also stated that Philip Jessup, director of Division of International Law, Columbia University, had offered $1,000 ‘towards a study of planning post-war investment’. Anglo–American relations was also one of the twelve items listed in Coil’s ‘Needed Post-War Studies’ attached to same letter.

Notes

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75 Coil memorandum to Taussig, ‘Needed Post-War Studies’, p. 7, 6 June 1941, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL. 76 NPA ‘Notes on British-Commonwealth-US Collaboration during the War and After’, 8 July 1941, pp. 8–9, Rexford Tugwell Papers, Container 16, FDRL. 77 See Planning Pamphlet No. 6, United States’ Cooperation with British Nations (August 1941). 78 See ‘Discussion Notes: Post-war Reconstruction Group Meeting’, 13 March 1941, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL (covered earlier in this chapter). Indeed, the NPA concluded that if Britain, the United States and the Dominions were not to go their own way during the hostilities then clear statements were needed immediately that would link present material war assistance to post-war assurances about economic collaboration; see NPA ‘Notes on British-Commonwealth-US Collaboration during the War and After’, 8 July 1941, p. 10, Rexford Tugwell Papers, Container 16, FDRL. For specialist accounts of the Charter, see H. V. Morton, Atlantic Meeting (Melbourne: Methuen, 1943), and Douglas Brinkley and David Facey-Crowther (eds), The Atlantic Charter (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1994). See also analysis by David Reynolds, The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance, 1937-1941: A Study in Competitive Cooperation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), pp. 14–15 and 277. 79 From The United States News, 26 September 1941, pp. 30–2; attached to Coil to New York Group, 22 October 1941, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL. 80 Planning Pamphlet No. 9, Britain’s Trade in the Post-War World (December 1941), p. 31. 81 ‘Report to the Board of Trustees and to the William C. Whitney Foundation’, 14 October 1942, p. 2, Gardner Jackson Papers, Container 57, FDRL. The NPA reported that Oxford University Press was releasing the pamphlet in book form. Hopkins was an early supporter in the administration of Keynesian ideas; see Sweezy, ‘The Keynesians and Government Policy’, p. 123. 82 All from ‘Notes: Board Meeting, November 6, 1941’, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL; and Coil to the board of trustees, 12 November 1941, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL. Attached to the notes was a letter from Professor O. B. Jesness, chief of Division of Agricultural Economics, University of Minnesota (30 October 1941), that pleaded for NPA to urge private, and not just public, groups to become active in planning. 83 Eakins attributed the joining of Batt and Wilson as the point when NPA ‘changed emphasis’ to post-war matters, but such a shift was clearly already in motion; see Eakins, ‘Business Planners’, p. 145. 84 Planning Pamphlet No. 8, Guides for Post-War Planning (November 1941), p. 3, copy in Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL; also copy in NPAC, Box 1. 85 ‘Minutes of the Meeting of the Executive Committee, 6 April 1939’, Century Foundation Holdings. 86 Bliven wished this information to be treated as ‘confidential’; see ‘Memorandum to Trustees of the Fund: Pending Matters’ by Evans Clark, 5 December 1939, Century Foundation Holdings. 87 Bliven would later become involved in the NPA’s IPWG in July 1941 (see earlier in chapter). 88 Evans to Fahey, 31 May 1940, Century Foundation Holdings. 89 Housing for Defense was written by a team led by Henry E. Hoagland, professor of business finance at Ohio State University, and was published in November 1940.

214

90 91 92 93 94 95

96 97 98 99 100 101

102 103

104

105 106 107

108 109 110

111

Notes A shorter version was issued in Public Policy Bulletin No. 13 ‘Defense Housing in Our Town’. Labor and National Defense was written by a team led by Lloyd G. Reynolds of Johns Hopkins University, and was published in March 1941; see ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1941’, pp. 13–15, Century Foundation Holdings. Harriman to Fahey, 24 June 1940, Century Foundation Holdings. ‘Letter to Trustees’, 1 November 1940, Century Foundation Holdings. This was the usual size of a board meeting, which rarely met the maximum of fourteen. ‘Minutes of the Annual Meeting of the Board of Trustees’, 29 November 1940, Century Foundation Holdings. Berle, Leaning Against the Dawn, p. 46. ‘Minutes of a Special Meeting of the Board of Trustees’, 29 January 1941, Century Foundation Holdings. Unfortunately, Berle’s memorandum is not attached. The projects to be postponed were those on ‘Collective Bargaining’ and ‘Short Selling’. The author found no record of the ‘special committee’s’ membership. It is likely that Dewhurst simply called upon other trustees. See ‘Director’s Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting of 25 April 1941’, Century Foundation Holdings. From ‘Proposed Pamphlet Series on Postwar Problems’, 18 April 1941, Century Foundation Holdings. Ibid. Domhoff called Chase ‘an important popularizer of the stagnationist prescription’; see Domhoff, The Power Elite, p. 231 (footnote 87). William A. Hodson and John Carfora, ‘Stuart Chase: Brief life of a Public Thinker, 1888-1985’, Harvard Magazine (September to October 2004), p. 38. Apparently, the remark was made to Chase’s father. ‘The Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1941’, pp. 16–17, Century Foundation Holdings. Chase was a director of the Bureau from 1922 to 1939. The Bureau supplied accounting and specialist services to trades union and cooperatives and published a newsletter Facts for Workers. See ‘Director’s Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting of 25 April 1941’, Century Foundation Holdings. Chase’s memorandum was sent to Clark on 1 April and was dispatched to trustees alongside the ‘Proposed Pamphlet Series’ memorandum of 18 April. The Chase memorandum cannot be found. ‘Minutes of the Annual Meeting of the Board of Trustees, 25 April 1941’, Century Foundation Holdings. Clark to Chase, 15 May 1941, Stuart Chase Papers, Box 6, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress (henceforth MDLC). All from ‘The Twentieth Century Fund: Memorandum on Postwar Problems Pamphlet Subjects’ by Stuart Chase, 6 November 1941, Century Foundation Holdings. Ibid. Op cit. Noted in ‘Minutes of the Annual Meeting of the Board of Trustees, 14 November 1941’, Century Foundation Holdings. No detail about the ‘changes’ was offered nor was there any evidence elsewhere of how the manuscript was altered. Ibid. A suggestion by Knauth that, in order to speed publication, a second author be asked to join Chase was rejected after interventions from Clark, Dennison and Fahey.

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112 As recorded in ‘The Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1941’, Century Foundation Holdings. 113 ‘Director’s Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting of 14 November 1941’, Century Foundation Holdings. 114 ‘Minutes of the Annual Meeting of the Board of Trustees, 14 November 1941’, Century Foundation Holdings. It was passed that the price of TCF publications ‘should be fixed in each case so as to obtain the widest distribution in the particular fields we want to reach, even at the risk of not recovering manufacturing and promotion costs’. 115 ‘Director’s Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting of 14 December 1942’, p. 29, Century Foundation Holdings. 116 ‘Minutes of the Annual Meeting of the Board of Trustees, 14 November 1941’, Century Foundation Holdings. 117 ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1946’, p. 11, Century Foundation Holdings. 118 ‘The Twentieth Century Fund: Tentative Proposals for Two Major Surveys of Postwar Problems’, by Clark and Dewhurst, 8 November 1941, Century Foundation Holdings. 119 See ‘Minutes of the Annual Meeting of the Board of Trustees, 14 November 1941’, Century Foundation Holdings. 120 According to Collins, Hansen was the most ‘left-wing’ Keynesian in US academic circles, favouring the ‘stagnationist’ perspective; see Collins, Business Response to Keynes, p. 13. 121 From ‘Director’s Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting of 14 November 1941’, Century Foundation Holdings. Initially one thousand copies of ‘A Survey of Institutional Research on American Postwar Problems’ were mimeographed. Copy also in Papers of Paul G. Hoffman, Box 40, HSTL. 122 ‘Minutes of the Annual Meeting of the Board of Trustees, 14 November 1941’, Century Foundation Holdings. 123 ‘Director’s Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting of 14 November 1941’, Century Foundation Holdings. 124 Noted in Collins, Business Response to Keynes, pp. 59–60. 125 McQuaid, Big Business and Presidential Power, pp. 65–6. 126 ‘Revised Recommendations of the Foreign Trade Committee’, 11 February 1938, in Papers of Averell Harriman, Box 146, MDLC. 127 ‘Resolution of the Foreign Trade Committee on Reciprocal Trade Agreements Program’, 12 May 1938, in Papers of Averell Harriman, Box 146, MDLC. 128 ‘Minutes of General Council Meeting, 26–27 January 1939’, Papers of Harry L. Hopkins, Box 109, FDRL. 129 Mentioned in ‘Minutes of General Council Meeting, 1–2 June 1939’, Papers of Harry L. Hopkins, Box 109, FDRL. 130 ‘Report on Reciprocal Trade Agreements Program’, 12 January 1940, Papers of Harry L. Hopkins, Box 109, FDRL. 131 ‘BAC Report on Reciprocal Trade Agreements Program’, circa 22 April 1940, File 94765, Box 785, Entry 1 (570/1/26/2-3), RG40, NARA II. 132 This topic is covered in Charlie Whitham, ‘Sore Thumbs and Beachcombers: Britain, the War Debt and the Cession of the British West Indies, June 1938-May 1940’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Vol. 25, No. 3 (September 1997), pp. 466–88.

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133 ‘BAC Resolution’, 24 May 1940, Papers of Harry L. Hopkins, Box 110, FDRL; also File 94765, Box 787, Entry 1 (570/1/26/2-3), RG40, NARA II. 134 See Batt’s letter to BAC member Edward Stettinius (Office of Production Management), of May 1940, which suggested the BAC ‘could form the nucleus for industrial cooperation’ and be the ‘principal instrumentality’ for drafting corporate managers into government service; see McQuaid, Big Business and Presidential Power, p. 87. 135 ‘What will be the probable effect of the war on business?’: An Address by Walter White before the Associated Grocery Manufacturers of America, Hot Springs, Virginia, 14 June 1940, Papers of Harry L. Hopkins, Box 110, FDRL. 136 Ibid. Another example of the BAC’s closeness to government took place on 20 February 1941 when the BAC General Council meeting entertained federal officials from the Office of Production Management, including those leading aircraft production, ordnance and the assistant director of priorities, James F. Towers; see Agenda for General Council Meeting, 20 February 1941, Box 1, Entry 2 (570/2/22/03), RG40, NARA II. 137 Batt to Jones (with attached ‘Recommendations’), 10 April 1941, Box 1, Entry 2 (570/2/22/03), RG40, NARA II. 138 ‘Minutes of General Council Meeting, 19 June 1941’, copy in Papers of Averell Harriman, Box 150, MDLC. 139 ‘Report of Committee on Organization and Functions of the Council’, 29 July 1941, Box 184, RG151, NARA II. 140 From a BAC protest to Taylor at the Commerce Department in autumn 1941; see Karl Schriftgiesser, Business Comes of Age: The Story of the Committee for Economic Development and Its Impact upon the Economic Policies of the United States, 19421960 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960), p. 19. 141 These ‘opportunities’ referred to the Industrial Advisory Board of the NRA, which BAC was asked to form soon after the group was created. According to the committee, the ‘importance of this Board has been fully recognized, both in its influence on NRA policy and in the assistance which it rendered to business concerns which had special administrative problems to solve with NRA’. The BAC also advised the government when it considered new Banking and Security Laws; was invited to ‘confidential discussions’ over early Social Security legislation; maintained ‘frequent and continuing contacts’ with government officials over labour relations through its long-standing Committee on Industrial Relations; worked closely with the Commerce Department on the Temporary National Economic Committee; see ‘Report of Committee on Organization and Functions of the Council’, 29 July 1941, Box 184, RG151, NARA II. The list included providing heads of Production, Priorities and Purchasing within the Office of Production Management, and staff for the Defence Mediation Board. 142 Ibid. 143 ‘Minutes of General Council Meeting, 19 June 1941’, copy in Papers of Averell Harriman, Box 150, MDLC. 144 Schriftgiesser, Business Comes of Age, p. 20. See biographical piece on Folsom in Holl, From the Boardroom to the War Room, pp. 11–13. 145 From untitled memorandum, 21 July 1941, Box 184, RG151, NARA II. 146 White memorandum to all council members, 20 September 1941, Papers of Averell Harriman, Box 154, MDLC. The questions were requested by Folsom, chair of the BAC Committee on Economic Policy.

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147 In early 1939 Roosevelt stated his quest for serious reforms was over; see Robert McElvaine, The Great Depression: America, 1929-1941 (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1993 edition), pp. 307–8. Roosevelt had, in fact, offered nothing new since 1937 (p. 311). 148 The TCF made no mention of what the NPA was up to, and the NPA simply noted in February 1941 that the TCF was ‘considering’ a study on post-war problems under the direction of Dewhurst. Taken from a list of groups undertaking post-war studies in 1941 in ‘Post-War Reconstruction Group: Summary of Points of Last Meeting, February 6’, 25 February 1941, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL.

Chapter 3 1 ‘Remarks of Jesse H. Jones, Secretary of Commerce and Federal Loan Administrator, and the reply of R. R. Dupree of the BAC’, 30 January 1942, Box 184, RG151, NARA II. 2 From ‘Business Post-War Planning: Mobilizing the Service of Supply’, attached to White memorandum to Members (for discussion on 30 January), 26 January 1942, Box 184, RG151, NARA II. 3 ‘Minutes of a Special Meeting of the Board of Trustees, 14 May 1942’, Century Foundation Holdings. 4 ‘Report to the Board of Trustees and to the William C. Whitney Foundation’, 14 October 1942, p. 1, Gardner Jackson Papers, Container 57, FDRL. 5 See Smiley, American Economy, pp. 184–5; also Higgs, Depression, War and Cold War, p. 73, who noted the beginning of 1943 as the start of the ‘war-command’ economy. 6 The contrasting expectations of Americans are neatly outlined in McElvaine, The Great Depression, pp. 320–2. 7 This process is explained in Winkler, Home Front USA, pp. 16–20; also McQuaid, Big Business and Presidential Power, pp. 86–91. 8 Wilson and Golden joined later in the year. For WPB origins, description of duties and jurisdictional problems, see Vatter, US Economy and WWII, pp. 69–74, 77–8 and 82; Waddell, War Against the New Deal, pp. 88–94; and Michael G. Carew, Becoming the Arsenal: The American Industrial Mobilization for World War II, 1938-1942 (New York: University Press of America, 2010), pp. 248–57. 9 See Hess, The United States at War, pp. 34–5. Also Carew, Becoming the Arsenal, pp. 221–7. 10 See Vatter, US Economy in WWII, p. 68, for a summary of multitude of problems in coordinating mobilization including ‘widespread customary preference for minimal interference with the private market’ (same page). Also Julian E. Zelizer, Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security from World War II to the War on Terrorism (New York: Basic Books, 2010), p. 54, on sectional divisions among Democrats; and Glen Feldman, Great Melding: The Dixiecrat Rebellion and the Southern Model for America’s New Conservatives (Birmingham: University of Alabama Press, 2015), Chapters 4 and 5. 11 Noted in Higgs, Depression, War and Cold War, p. 18. 12 See Jones, ‘Keynesians in Wartime Policy’, p. 127; and McQuaid, ‘The Business Advisory Council’, pp. 182 and 184.

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13 Schriftgiesser, Business Comes of Age, pp. 16–17. No date is attributed to this discussion. McQuaid also claimed that Jones ‘had been looking for ways to use his Cabinet status to increase the scope of business influence in Washington’; McQuaid, Big Business and Presidential Power, p. 110. Also Domhoff, The Myth of Liberal Ascendancy, p. 35, on Jones’s motives regarding the liberal groups. 14 Mentioned in Domhoff, The Myth of Liberal Ascendancy, p. 36. The author found no copy of this report in government or private archives. 15 The scarcity of official documentation on the origins of the CED has left scholars to fill in the gaps with the unattributed work of CED employee Schriftgiesser; see Business Comes of Age, p. 15–18. 16 Schriftgiesser, Business Comes of Age, pp. 18–19. 17 See Harris, The Right to Manage, pp. 106–7. Only three of the twelve representatives at the conference were in the NAM. 18 See McQuaid, Big Business and Presidential Power, p. 114, on conservative distrust of the BAC. 19 Batt to Clayton, 16 January 1942, Papers of William L. Clayton, Box 27, HSTL. After Japan’s attack in December 1941, Folsom’s BAC Committee on Economic Policy decided to ‘concentrate on immediate problems and consider long-range projects in this connection later’; see ‘Minutes of General Council Meeting, 19 December 1941’, Papers of Averell Harriman, Box 150, MDLC. 20 ‘Remarks of Jesse H. Jones, Secretary of Commerce and Federal Loan Administrator, and the reply of R. R. Dupree of the BAC’, 30 January 1942, Box 184, RG151, NARA II. 21 ‘Business Post-War Planning: Foreword’, attached to White memorandum to Members (for discussion on 30 January), 26 January 1942, Box 184, RG151, NARA II. 22 ‘Business Post-War Planning: Mobilizing the Service of Supply’, attached to White memorandum to Members (for discussion on 30 January), 26 January 1942, Box 184, RG151, NARA II. 23 ‘Outline of the United States Economy Mobilized for Total War’, 20 February 1942, Box 184, RG151, NARA II. 24 ‘Business Post-War Planning: Mobilizing the Service of Supply’, attached to White memorandum to Members (for discussion on 30 January), 26 January 1942, Box 184, RG151, NARA II. 25 From Benton’s ‘Speech before Citizens Board of the University of Chicago’, 26 October 1943, Papers of Paul G. Hoffman, Box 40, HSTL. 26 Op cit. 27 Folsom had made this point before Pearl Harbor; see McQuaid, Big Business and Presidential Power, p. 110. 28 The first mention of Folsom’s work was made in ‘Minutes of General Council Meeting, 5 March 1942’, Papers of Averell Harriman, Box 150, MDLC. 29 White to Wilson, 13 March 1942, Box 184, RG151, NARA II. 30 See White to Wilson, 31 March 1942, Box 184, RG151, NARA II. 31 ‘Report of the Committee on Economic Policy regarding the Establishment of an Organization for Post-War Planning’, 9 April 1942, Papers of Averell Harriman, Box 150, MDLC. A copy can also be found in Box 1, Entry 2 (570/2/22/03), RG40, NARA II. 32 Ibid. 33 Op cit. In terms of organizational detail, the committee recommended that Jones ‘ask twenty-five men or more to serve as a board of trustees for the Institute’. The committee suggested ‘at least’ twenty must be ‘leading businessmen, including

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several representatives of smaller manufacturers, and that there should also be three or four economists’; five members of the board of trustees must form an ‘executive committee’ and be willing to spend a ‘substantial part of their time’ on work of the institute; the board should choose a ‘practical economist as executive director’, with a ‘field representative’ and a ‘research director’; and the institute should work closely with the Commerce Department and its ‘staff of five economists’ who were already working on this problem. Wilson to White, 4 April 1942, Box 184, RG151, NARA II. Jones to Dupree, 4 April 1942, File 94765, Box 786, Entry 1 (570/1/26/2-3), RG40, NARA II. See ‘Minutes of General Council Meeting, 9 April 1942’, Papers of Averell Harriman, Box 150, MDLC. A copy of the original draft is attached to White to Wilson, 31 March 1942, Box 184, RG151, NARA II. Interestingly, a recommendation in Folsom’s 31 March draft (unchanged by Wilson), that Jones and the BAC jointly select the 25-person board of trustees, and that ‘say five’ of them be members of the BAC, was dropped – perhaps because the BAC saw the sense in maintaining the ‘independence’ of the new group (same file). Outlined in Collins, Business Response to Keynes, p. 72. Also recounted by Benton in Minutes of Meeting, 20 May 1948, CED Minutes of Board Meetings Volume II (1946–48), CED Headquarters, Washington, DC. From Alan R. Raucher, Paul G. Hoffman: Architect of Foreign Aid (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1985), p. 51. William Clayton was also approached but declined due to pressure of work. See various correspondences, including draft commission document and proposed membership list, between Benton, Hoffman and Harold Lasswell between 14 March and 12 May 1941 in Papers of Paul G. Hoffman, Box 40, HSTL. Benton wrote Hoffman that ‘perhaps we should consider reorienting our approach here in line with his [Galloway’s] suggestion’; see Benton to Hoffman, 5 January 1942, Papers of Paul G. Hoffman, Box 40, HSTL. Schriftgiesser, Business Comes of Age, pp. 12–13, and McQuaid, Big Business and Presidential Power, pp. 109–10 note this shift but not the Galloway connection. See Collins, Business Response to Keynes, p. 83. Jesse Jones, Fifty Billion Dollars: My Thirteen Years with the RFC, 1932-1945 (New York: Macmillan, 1951), p. 338. Recited by Benton in Minutes of Meeting, 20 May 1948, CED Minutes of Board Meetings II. In 1949, Hoffman confirmed that he and Benton made their acceptance ‘conditional’ on Jones’s agreement to a research component; see ‘An Address by Paul G. Hoffman to the Board of Trustees of the CED’, 11 May 1949, Papers of William L. Clayton, Box 72, HSTL. From Benton’s ‘Speech before Citizens Board of the University of Chicago’, 26 October 1943, Papers of Paul G. Hoffman, Box 40, HSTL. Benton also stated that the idea for an ‘American Policy Commission’ was henceforth ‘merged’ into the CED. Schriftgiesser, Business Comes of Age, pp. 24–5; and Jones, Fifty Billion Dollars, p. 338. Supported by Collins, Business Response to Keynes, p. 83; and Benton in Minutes of Meeting, 20 May 1948, CED Minutes of Board Meetings II. Minutes of Meeting, 11 September 1942, CED Minutes of Board Meetings Volume I (1942–45). Mentioned in McQuaid, Big Business and Presidential Power, p. 132. See McQuaid, Big Business and Presidential Power, pp. 111–12; and Collins, Business Response to Keynes, p. 84.

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48 Wilson to Benton (‘Re: Mr Clayton’s Membership’), 14 August 1942, The William Benton Papers, Folder 2, Box 256, University of Chicago Special Collections Research Centre (henceforth SCRC). 49 ‘Report of Meeting with the Secretary of Commerce, June 9 1942’, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. 50 Ibid. A second line ‘Through Commerce and Industry’ was also agreed. 51 Other members were Hoffman, Johnston, McCabe, Wilson and Arthur Kudner, a New York advertising executive; see ‘Report’, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. 52 ‘Report of Special Organizing Committee Meeting, June 26, 1942’, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. 53 See Jones, Fifty Billion Dollars, p. 347. 54 Schriftgiesser, Business Comes of Age, p. 21. 55 Officers were elected at a special meeting; see ‘Report of Executive Committee Action Meeting July 17, 1942, and Subsequent Developments’, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. 56 Schriftgiesser, Business Comes of Age, p. 28. 57 Benton cited in Schriftgiesser, Business Comes of Age, pp. 70–1. And Schriftgiesser agreed; see p. 140. 58 According to Schriftgiesser, Benton consulted with various government departments, including the Departments of State, War, Treasury, Agriculture and the Federal Reserve Board, and personally approached Secretary of State Hull and Secretary of War Knox; see Business Comes of Age, p. 34. 59 See Schriftgiesser, Business Comes of Age, p. 60. 60 Mentioned in Minutes of Meeting, 13 April 1943, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. 61 Flanders chaired a TCF Committee on Big Business in 1934. He joined the CFR in July 1942; see Domhoff, The Power Elite, p. 119. 62 Schriftgiesser, Business Comes of Age, p. 35. 63 See ‘Structure of the American Economy: A Report Prepared by the Industrial Section under the Direction of Gardiner C. Means’, National Resources Committee, June 1939; copy in Papers of Harry L. Hopkins, Container 109, FDRL. 64 Apparently, the selection of Means cost the CED $100,000 in finance. Means stayed until 1958: see Schriftgiesser, Business Comes of Age, p. 35. 65 From ‘Quarterly Report of the Chairman of the Research Committee to the Board of Trustees’, in Minutes of Meeting, 11 January 1944, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. 66 Noted in Collins, Business Response to Keynes, p. 85. 67 Hoffman initially suggested Father Walsh, vice president of Georgetown University, and Father Samuel Knox Wilson, former president of Loyola University; see ‘Minutes of Meeting, 28 September 1942’, CED Research Minutes Volume I (1942–45). 68 Ibid. 69 ‘Discussion Notes of Joint Research Meeting, 9–10 January 1944’, CED Research Minutes I. 70 Wilson eventually became a CED trustee in July 1945; see ‘Minutes of Meeting, 9–10 July 1945’, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. 71 Harris called Johnston a ‘corporate liberal’, though he was more accurately a moderate; The Right to Manage, p. 112. See also Collins, Business Response to Keynes, pp. 89–94, for a profile on Johnston. 72 Quoted in Schriftgiesser, Business Comes of Age, p. 37. 73 Schriftgiesser, Business Comes of Age, pp. 36–7.

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74 From ‘Report of Meeting with the Secretary of Commerce, June 9 1942’, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. 75 Minutes of Meeting, 5 October 1945, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. 76 Bissell was included ‘because of the great dearth of really high-grade talent available for this work’; see ‘Minutes of Meeting, 28 September 1942’, CED Research Minutes I. 77 At the November 1942 BAC meeting (with Hoffman present), ‘the Council’s part in the formation of the Committee for Economic Development was mentioned and its continued interest in and support of this program was urged’; see ‘Minutes of Executive Committee, 19 November 1942’, Correspondence of Wayne C. Taylor, Box 2, Entry 12 (570/2/27/4-5), RG40, NARA II. 78 This was according to Schriftgiesser, in Business Comes of Age, p. 28. 79 All from Minutes of Meeting, 14 December 1942, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. 80 As Schriftgiesser put it there was a ‘still prevalent atmosphere of businessgovernment antagonism’; Schriftgiesser, Business Comes of Age, p. 34. 81 Schriftgiesser, Business Comes of Age, p. 31; Eakins, ‘Business Planners’, p. 147. 82 Clark earlier circulated his idea to trustees and various relevant parties, including Harold S. Sloan, director of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Ward Shepard, agricultural conservation specialist at the Department of the Interior, and Harold F. Strong, director of the public relations firm Harold F. Strong and Associates. Their replies, which are generally supportive, are attached as Appendices to ‘Memorandum to the Board of Trustees: Supplementary Information for Postponed Board Meeting’ by Evans Clark, 8 May 1942, Century Foundation Holdings. 83 ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1942’, p. 18, Century Foundation Holdings. 84 ‘Minutes of a Special Meeting of the Board of Trustees, 14 May 1942’, Century Foundation Holdings. 85 ‘Director’s Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting of 14 December 1942’, p. 19, Century Foundation Holdings. 86 Op cit. 87 See ‘Director’s Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting of 14 December 1942’, p. 19, Century Foundation Holdings. 88 Ibid., p. 21. 89 Minutes of a Special Meeting of the Board of Trustees, 14 May 1942, Century Foundation Holdings. 90 The State Department request is listed as ‘rejected’ by the trustees; see ‘Record of Actions by the Board of Trustees, 1937–48’, Century Foundation Holdings. 91 ‘Minutes of a Special Meeting of the Board of Trustees, 14 May 1942’, Century Foundation Holdings. 92 Ibid. Another suggestion refused due to the weight of current obligations came from A. E. Taylor on behalf of General Mills, Inc., who wanted a survey of past advertising expenditures as a guide to the use of advertising after the war. 93 Op cit. 94 ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1942’, p. 18, Century Foundation Holdings. 95 ‘Memorandum to Dennison: Proposed Survey of United Nations’ Postwar Plans’, from Clark, 13 October 1942, Papers of John H. Fahey, FDRL. 96 Ibid. 97 See ‘Director’s Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting of 14 December 1942’, p. 50; quotation from ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1942’, p. 10, both in Century Foundation Holdings.

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98 See ‘Memorandum to Henry S. Dennison: Proposed Survey of United Nations’ Postwar Plans’ by Evans Clark, 13 October 1942, Papers of John H. Fahey, FDRL. 99 Lewis L. Lorwin, Economic Consequences of the Second World War (New York: Random House, 1941). 100 From a review of Lorwin’s book in Public Policy Digest, Nos. 29–30 (November to December 1942), p. 3, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL. It was released in October 1942 as International Economic Development: Public Works and Other Problems. 101 ‘Memorandum to Henry S. Dennison: Proposed Survey of United Nations’ Postwar Plans’ by Evans Clark, 13 October 1942, Papers of John H. Fahey, FDRL. 102 ‘Memorandum on Survey of Postwar Reconstruction Plans of the United Nations’ by Lorwin, 22 September 1942, attached to ‘Memorandum to Henry S. Dennison: Proposed Survey of United Nations’ Postwar Plans’ by Evans Clark, 13 October 1942, Papers of John H. Fahey, FDRL. An ‘Outline of Proposed Survey on Programs of Postwar Reconstruction of the United Nations’ by Lewis L. Lorwin (no date) that lists the countries is also attached. 103 See ‘Director’s Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting of 3 December 1943’, p. 8, Century Foundation Holdings. 104 ‘Memorandum to Henry S. Dennison: Proposed Survey of United Nations’ Postwar Plans’ by Evans Clark, 13 October 1942, Papers of John H. Fahey, FDRL. 105 Mentioned in ‘Minutes of a Special Meeting of the Board of Trustees, 14 May 1942’, Century Foundation Holdings. Publicity details are in ‘Director’s Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting of 14 December 1942’, pp. 1–2 and 8–9, Century Foundation Holdings. It includes a list of ‘leaders’ of ‘influential organizations in American life’ who were canvassed for promotional comments prior to release. 106 Data from ‘Director’s Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting of 14 December 1942’, p. 2, Century Foundation Holdings. 107 A copy was passed to Biddle for FDR; see Biddle to Roosevelt, 16 July 1942, Official File 2540, FDRL. Contains the sentence ‘This book used in connection with speech material’. 108 Op cit., p. 2. 109 Data from ‘Memorandum to the Board of Trustees: Supplementary Information for Postponed Board Meeting’ by Evans Clark, 8 May 1942; and ‘Director’s Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting of 14 December 1942’, p. 2, both in Century Foundation Holdings. The Galloway book actually went out of print. 110 Stuart Chase, The Road We Are Travelling, 1914-1942: Guidelines to America’s Future as Reported to The Twentieth Century Fund (New York: TCF, 1942), p. 3. 111 Chase, The Road We Are Travelling, p. 101. 112 Stuart Chase, Goals for America: A Budget of Our Needs and Resources (New York: TCF, 1942), p. 132. 113 TCF total sales for 1942 to 30 October 1943 were 76,819 against 37,566 sold in the previous twelve years; see ‘Director’s Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting of 3 December 1943’, p. 33, Century Foundation Holdings. For Fortune figure (1941) see Ayer Directory of Publications (New York: Ayer Press, 1941), p. 650. 114 The publishing division of the TCF reported in 1942 that for the first time its sales covered salaries, rent and advertising expenses. However, they still did not cover manufacturing costs; see ‘Director’s Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting of 14 December 1942’, p. 2, Century Foundation Holdings.

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115 Ibid., pp. 1 and 11. The Educational Association advertised the Chase books in its wallet-sized ‘Personal Growth Leaflet’ series. 116 ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1942’, pp. 14–15, Century Foundation Holdings. Includes details of the programme dates and subject headings. 117 ‘Director’s Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting of 14 December 1942’, p. 7; and ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1942’, p. 16, both in Century Foundation Holdings. Half of the mail received for ‘Defense’ was from men and two-thirds lived in urban areas. 118 ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1942’, pp. 15–16, Century Foundation Holdings. 119 See ‘Minutes of the Annual Meeting of the Board of Trustees, 14 November 1941’, Century Foundation Holdings. 120 Information supplied in ‘Memorandum to the Board of Trustees: Supplementary Information for Postponed Board Meeting’ by Evans Clark, 8 May 1942, Century Foundation Holdings. 121 ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1942’, p. 12, Century Foundation Holdings. 122 Ibid., pp. 20–1. 123 Beyond the Filene endowment, the TCF relied on voluntary contributions from its members. Its cash surplus was $130,800; ibid., p .4. Membership numbers for the war period have not been found by the author in any TCF documents. 124 The housing, power and short-selling surveys were early victims and did not reach fruition for years to come, with only one project, ‘How Collective Bargaining Works’, making release in August 1942; see ‘Director’s Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting of 14 December 1942’, p. 3, Century Foundation Holdings. ‘Collective Bargaining’ was published 10 August 1942. The TCF was particularly happy with this major survey, the material for which had earlier been used by the Council for Democracy in its battle against those demanding a law against the right to strike in defence industries. The survey was of the ‘labormanagement relations and bargaining methods in sixteen American industries’, released ‘when public interest in all-out war production was at its height’. The research director of the project, Harry A. Millis, was made chairman of the government’s National Labor Relations Board and the project’s overall supervisor, William H. Davis, was sitting chairman of the National War Labor Board; see ‘ Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1942’, pp. 13–15, Century Foundation Holdings. 125 All from Coil memorandum to members of the board ‘The Association’s work in light of the war’, 11 December 1941, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL. 126 All from Coil to IPWG, 2 February 1942, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL. Both reports attached. 127 The introduction to the pamphlet noted the difficult public terrain by stating that some ‘believe that a specific definition of peace aims may create more disunity than harmony’; see Planning Pamphlet No. 14, When Demobilization Day Comes (July 1942), p. 3, NPAC, Box 1. 128 When Demobilization Day Comes, pp. 3–4 and 34–5. A first draft (incorrectly dated April ‘1941’) was circulated to trustees in May 1942. There are no significant differences between texts, although a reference in the first draft to the terms ‘full employment’ and ‘international collaboration’ as ‘slogans’ was removed; see attachment to Coil to Taussig, 5 May 1942, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL. The role of private business was also recognized in March 1942 when the IPWG met to discuss the establishment of local groups to organize private works reserves

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Notes for their areas. David C. Prince, vice president of General Electric and chief of the NPA Business Committee, was invited to speak on creating a parallel ‘private works reserve’ to the public works reserve to ensure full employment after the war; see IPWG ‘Notice of Special Dinner Meeting’, 20 February 1942, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL. Prince had experience of post-war planning issues as he was in charge of General Electric’s post-war schemes. ‘Invitation’ and ‘Notes for Meeting of New York Post-War Group’, 6 May 1942, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL. Attached was an outline of questions to consider and a three-page ‘Outline for Study of International Relief and Reconstruction’ is also in this box. See ‘Invitation’ to Taussig, (circa July 1942), Charles Taussig Papers, Box 24, FDRL. In the proposed agenda, the NPA wanted to talk about functions, personnel size, ‘type’ of person required, from where would they be recruited?, ‘what proportion should be American?’, what type of training would be required?, and ‘what steps should the United States Government take toward recruiting personnel?’ In ‘Report to the Board of Trustees and to the William C. Whitney Foundation’, 14 October 1942, p. 3, Gardner Jackson Papers, Container 57, FDRL. Morris Leeds ‘underwrote’ NPA’s International Relief Project in 1942 to the tune of $2,250, though Leeds’ ‘personal contribution’ to the Project in 1942 was $1550; see ‘List of Organizational and Sustaining Members’, attached to Report. From ‘What is NPA, and how is it organized?’, Draft Chapter 1 (circa 1959), pp. 10–11, NPAC, Box 64. This information from the draft was not included in the extract published in the October 1959 Looking Ahead. Planning Pamphlet Nos. 12 and 13, The Post-War Industrialization of China (June 1942), was ‘praised by Far Eastern officials of this government, and by representatives of China’; ‘Report to the Board of Trustees and to the William C. Whitney Foundation’, 14 October 1942, p. 2, Gardner Jackson Papers, Container 57, FDRL. China was a larger project than was ‘ordinarily’ published in the Pamphlet series. Nearly 2,000 copies were distributed by the end of 1942. Post-War Planning: Full Employment, Security, Building America, NRPB (September 1942), pp. 9–10. Regarding the NPA, it was ‘devoting special attention to the business aspects of the post-war problem and an elaborate program of inquiry and action has been set up’ (p. 10). The first Carnegie study was led by Dr Arthur W. MacMahon, professor of public administration at Columbia University. The NPA was paid $9,200 and $9,600 respectively for the Carnegie studies, and $450 for the Alaska research; see ‘Report to the Board of Trustees and the William C. Whitney Foundation’, 14 October 1942, pp. 4 and 9, Gardner Jackson Papers, Container 57, FDRL. Ibid., p. 5. Hull disliked Welles’s closeness to Roosevelt, and was forced to resign thanks to a scandal. Welles did not join any of the business groups. For his planning exploits, see Christopher D. O’Sullivan, Sumner Welles, Postwar Planning, and the Quest for a New World Order, 1937-1943 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008). The Board of Economic Warfare was established on 17 December 1941 to coordinate necessary imports for war and civilian economies. It was abolished on 15 July 1943 and its functions transferred to the Office of Economic Warfare. All quotations from Coil to Taussig, 13 July 1942, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 24, FDRL. See Condliffe to Bean, 17 July 1942, Louis H. Bean Papers, Box 19, FDRL. Condliffe asserted: ‘In my judgement the National Planning Association is an effective research

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146 147 148 149

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agency, with competent staff free of routine administration and with excellent contacts.’ ‘Report to the Board of Trustees and to the William C. Whitney Foundation’, 14 October 1942, pp. 4 and 7, Gardner Jackson Papers, Container 57, FDRL. The NPA received $8,371.44 from Rockefeller for the first contract. Details of new proposal are in a Coil memorandum to board of trustees, ‘The Work of the Association on the Development of Resources’ and ‘Development Potentials of Latin American Resources: A Project submitted to the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs by the National Planning Association’, both 30 October 1942, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 24, FDRL. Article attached to Coil to Taussig, 20 April 1943, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 94, FDRL. By October 1942 Demobilization was being ordered in batches of twenty or more, forcing a reprint beyond the initial 4,000 copies: for instance, the Worthington Pump and Machinery Company, Inc. ordered 550; see ‘Report to the Board of Trustees and to the William C. Whitney Foundation’, 14 October 1942, p. 2, Gardner Jackson Papers, Container 57, FDRL. Growth was experienced by groups other than the TCF (and evidenced in formation of CED). In May 1942 the Section for Information on Studies in Post-War Reconstruction of the Inter-Allied Information Center listed twenty-seven private, two international and four non-American agencies devoted to post-war research and planning. By June there were twenty-six additional non-official agencies and one non-American. Mentioned in ‘Research and Post-War Planning’ cited in Public Policy Digest, No. 26 (June 1942), Rexford Tugwell Papers, Container 16, FDRL. ‘Report to the Board of Trustees and to the William C. Whitney Foundation’, 14 October 1942, p. 1, Gardner Jackson Papers, Container 57, FDRL. Ibid. The Chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority considered the Planning Pamphlet No. 16, Regional Resource Development (October 1942) so important that he ordered 3,000 copies, saying that ‘it answers the questions people ask about the post-war significance of TVA’ (same file). It was written by Alvin Hansen and Harvey S. Perloff. The TVA Chairman was David E. Lilienthal. Ibid., p. 8. See Coil to IPWG, 26 March 1942, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL. Op cit. The councils would be led by a national executive committee. Ibid., p. 9. ‘Regular’ and ‘sustaining’ membership totalled under $4,000, and publications a little over $2,300. Corporate – or ‘organizational’ – members paid between $100 and $500 per annum. Ibid., p. 1. The NRPB noted: ‘The Department of Commerce has organized a special committee for the consideration especially of the business aspects of this whole problem, and important results may be expected from this undertaking’, which was most likely the CED; in Post-War Planning: Full Employment, Security, Building America, NRPB (September 1942), p. 10. No other group apart from NPA was mentioned. Nor was there mention of publications by other planning groups, such as NAM or USCC. The list included a pamphlet on commercial issues by the League of Nations, the opinions of various governments in exile on post-war matters showcased in Foreign Policy Reports, four articles on the reorganization of Europe in Foreign Policy Bulletins, a series of articles in the Rotarian Magazine under the heading ‘A World to Live In’ (with contributions from H. G. Wells, John Dewey, Mahatma Gandhi, Cordell Hull, Henry Wallace and Stuart Chase), relevant reports from the

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154 155 156

Notes convention of the Foreign Trade Council and articles on post-war affairs in the pro-CED Fortune magazine; see Public Policy Digest, Nos. 29–30 (November to December 1942), p. 18, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL. The commission engaged heavily in publicity – newspaper mogul William Allen White was a founding member – and its membership was very broad-based; see outline by Divine, Second Chance, pp. 31–4; on growth see pp. 53–5. Coil to Taussig, 30 January 1942, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 24, FDRL. Attached is a copy of the CSOP questionnaire and covering letter of 26 January 1942. ‘Report to the Board of Trustees and to the William C. Whitney Foundation’, 14 October 1942, p. 10, Gardner Jackson Papers, Container 57, FDRL. Jones wrote Roosevelt in mid-June 1942 informing him of what he was doing; see Domhoff, The Myth of Liberal Ascendancy, pp. 36–7.

Chapter 4 1 ‘Minutes of Joint Research Meeting, 24–25 July 1943’, CED Research Minutes I. 2 From NPA’s Ninth Anniversary Meeting, December 1943, quoted in ‘NPA circular’, 7 February 1944, NPAC, Box 64. 3 ‘Discussion Notes of Joint Research Meeting, 20–21 February 1944’, CED Research Minutes I. 4 From a news release for Goals for America of 26 October 1942; see ‘Director’s Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting of 14 December 1942’, pp. 2 and 9–10, Century Foundation Holdings. 5 See Vatter, US Economy in WW2, p. 16. Smiley, American Economy, p. 186; Carew, Becoming the Arsenal, pp. 101 and 264–6 on the production ‘miracle’. 6 Myron W. Watkins, ‘Post-War Plan and Program’, Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 51, No. 5 (October 1943), p. 397. 7 From the National Industrial Conference Board’s ‘British Postwar Planning’, p. 5, in Papers of Paul G. Hoffman, Box 39, HSTL. 8 Mentioned in Collins, Business Response to Keynes, p. 99. Also Sparrow, Warfare State, p. 199. 9 Discussion of Leon Henderson’s Dinner Talk, 5 December 1943, CED Research Minutes I. 10 According to Waddell, congressional conservatism ‘thrust the initiative’ of reconversion into the ‘hands of those guiding wartime mobilization’; Waddell, War Against the New Deal, p. 134. 11 The NPA understood that Roosevelt had assigned the NRPB to do just that; see Public Policy Digest, Nos. 29–30 (November to December 1942), p. 4, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL. The NPA believed the NRPB should be ‘coordinating the post-war projects of the various Federal agencies’; see ‘Post-War Reconstruction Group: Summary of Points of Last Meeting, February 6’, 25 February 1941, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL. 12 See Public Policy Digest, Nos. 29–30 (November to December 1942), p. 3, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL. After mid-1942 the NRPB concentrated exclusively on public education; see Reagan, Designing a New America, p. 216. 13 The ‘killing’ of the NRPB is detailed in Clawson, New Deal Planning, Chapter 18. Also Reagan, Designing a New America, pp. 226–38; and Jytte Klausen, ‘Did

Notes

14

15 16

17

18

19 20 21

22 23 24

227

World War II End the New Deal: A Comparative Perspective on Postwar Planning Initiatives’, in The New Deal and the Triumph of Liberalism, ed. Sidney Milkis and Jerome Mileur (Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002), pp. 207–9. See Clawson, New Deal Planning, p. 183. As Clawson put it, the NRPB releases were ‘not only to establish its own role in postwar planning but to popularize the whole concept and to prepare the American public for some of the anticipated postwar adjustments’; Clawson, New Deal Planning, p. 185. Also Watkins, ‘Post-War Plan and Program’, p. 398. Watkins offered an academic conservative critique of the report, which he slammed for consisting ‘of a congeries of ill-digested suggestions of government policies’ and for its ‘futile tapping of the barren Keynes-Hansen rock’ (pp. 405 and 413, respectively). Program was one of three reports submitted to Congress in March which sketched a liberal post-war social and economic vision for the United States; for details, see Klausen, ‘Did World War II End the New Deal’, pp. 200–7. Reagan, Designing a New America, p. 222. For fresh coordination initiative, see Vatter, US Economy and WWII, pp. 80–3. Arms production in the United States reached a new peak by the end of 1943, some $74 billion on the year. See Jones, ‘Keynesians in Wartime Policy’, p. 129; George Q. Flynn, The Mess in Washington: Manpower Mobilization in World War II (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1979), pp. 236–7; and Smiley, American Economy, p. 200. Vatter claimed the federal ‘reconversion impetus’ began soon after the German collapse at Stalingrad in February 1943; see Vatter, US Economy and WWII, p. 84. Neatly listed in Vatter, US Economy and WWII, pp. 84–5. See Luther Gulick, Administrative Reflections from World War II (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1948), p. 11, on resignations; Flynn, The Mess in Washington, pp. 230–1, on Byrnes’s appointment; and Carew, Becoming the Arsenal, pp. 257–9, and Waddell, ‘Corporate Influence and World War II’, pp. 237–40, on failings of WPB. On the OWMR, see Herman Miles Somers, Presidential Agency: OWMR, the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1950). See Aaronson, ‘How Cordell Hull and the Postwar Planners designed a New Trade Policy’, p. 178. Mentioned in Divine, Second Chance, pp. 190–1. Three sub-committees of a new executive committee on Economic Foreign Policy were created: a Committee on Trade Barriers was already in existence (since 11 June 1943) but was incorporated by Executive Committee on Economic Foreign Policy on 5 May 1944 (terminated 1 March 1946). A Committee on Trade Expansion was formed 9 February 1945 and terminated 19 April 1946. A Committee on American Trade Problems in Sterling Areas was formed 11 May 1945 and ended 26 October 1945. The ECEFP met a total of six times before termination at end of 1949 (last meeting 6 May 1949). The forming of the ECEFP is detailed in Notter, Postwar Foreign Policy Preparation, pp. 218–19. The reorganization of the State Department is summarized in Aaronson, Trade and the American Dream, pp. 52–3. By 1944 corporate profits had risen 60 per cent ($9.6 billion) since 1940; see Nossiter, Fat Years and Lean, p. 36. Jones, ‘Keynesians in Wartime Policy’, p. 129; also Vatter, US Economy and WWII, p. 86. The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act was passed in June 1944. The Bill was proposed by the conservative American Legion and won the backing of the conservative

228

25 26

27

28 29 30

31

32 33 34 35 36

37

38

39

40

Notes coalition. The business planners made no mention of the Bill: for a rare comment (of support) see Hoffman in ‘Discussion Notes of Research Committee and Research Advisory Board, 11–12 November 1944’, CED Research Minutes I. For detailed treatment, see David Ross, Preparing for Ulysses: Politics and Veterans during World War II (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), and Michael J. Bennett, When Dreams Came True: The GI Bill and the Making of Modern America (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 1999). Domhoff pointed to the passing of the ‘GI Bill’ as evidence of ‘moderation’ in the wartime Congress; see The Myth of the Liberal Ascendancy, pp. 50–3. See Heale, FDR, the New Deal and War, p. 62. On Republican internationalism, see Zeiler, Free Trade, Free World, p. 42; also Zelizer, Arsenal of Democracy, pp. 55–7. Truman ‘backed protectionism when needed but freer trade as a rule’; Zeiler, Free Trade, Free World, p. 47. On the Wallace decision, see Torbjorn Sirevag, The Eclipse of the New Deal and the Fall of Vice-President Wallace, 1944 (New York: Garland, 1985). These were listed as David C. Prince and S. A. Holme of General Electric; Bert White of Liberty National Bank of Buffalo; T. G. McGowan of Firestone; and Elihu Hedges of Eastman Kodak; see ‘Minutes of Meeting, 11 September 1942’, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. Minutes of Meeting, 14 December 1942, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. Minutes of Meeting, 24 June 1943, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. Ibid. Copies of Preparing for High Levels of Employment and Productivity, Target for Peace and Handbook for Community Chairmen can be found in Papers of Paul G. Hoffman, Box 40, HSTL. See Schriftgiesser, Business Comes of Age, pp. 41–4. A copy of ‘The Story of Peoria: A Test City’s Time Table for Postwar Planning’ (Report No.1) is in Papers of Paul G. Hoffman, Box 40, HSTL. Results from the case studies were issued to trustees in April; see ‘Minutes of Meeting, 13 April 1943’, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. Minutes of Meeting, 14 December 1942, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. Minutes of Meeting, 13 April 1943, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. Recalled by Hoffman in Minutes of Meeting, 20 May 1948, CED Minutes of Board Meetings II. See ‘Minutes of Meeting, 13 April 1943’, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. Copy of draft ‘Handbook for Trade Associations’ of April 1943 in Papers of Paul G. Hoffman, Box 40, HSTL. The actual figure was 280,126, consisting mainly of 100,000 copies of Target for Peace and 84,000 Employers Handbooks; see ‘Minutes of Meeting, 17 September 1943’, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. See Minutes of Meeting, 17 September 1943, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. A ‘speakers bureau’ was organized in May 1943 to send CED speakers to national conventions and other meetings, with special groups arranged around New York, Chicago and the West Coast; see ‘Minutes of Meeting, 13 April 1943’, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. See ‘Minutes of Meeting, 17 September 1943’ and ‘Minutes of Meeting, 24 June 1943’, both in CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. At the regional, district and community level funds were collected independently of the national organization. Quote is from Morris Edwards, vice chairman of Cleveland District CED; see ‘Minutes of Meeting, 13 April 1943’, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. In January

Notes

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46 47

48

49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57

58 59 60 61 62

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1944 Target for Peace was shown in 38 cities in Indiana, with attendances ranging from 250 to 450, putting them in touch with 4,000 manufacturing concerns; see ‘Minutes of Meeting, 11 January 1944’, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I; also mentioned in Quarterly Report of the Filed Development Division to the Trustees, same minutes. McQuaid, Big Business and Presidential Power, p. 113. Outlined by McQuaid, Big Business and Presidential Power, pp. 115–16. Minutes of Meeting, 13 April 1943, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. A report of the ‘Albert Lea Plan’ can be found in Minutes of Meeting, 17 September 1943, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. Ibid. Albert Lea was projected to be short of 593 jobs after the war – a prospect the USCC was less positive about than the CED; see Collins, Business Response to Keynes, p. 102. Ibid. Other trustees that challenged Hoffman were Chester Davis, George Crabbs, Reuben Robertson, Morris Edwards, James McGraw and Willard Chevalier. Publications such as ‘Community Action for Post-War Jobs & Profits’ were issued by the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce in 1943; copy in Papers of Paul G. Hoffman, Box 39, HSTL. Folsom had complained in June 1943 of the lack of success in getting ‘effective collaboration’ with NAM in the local work of CED. NAM members Weisenberger and Sargent were invited to sit on the industrial advisory board but, respectively, refused and resigned after a few meetings; see ‘Minutes of Meeting, 24 June 1943’, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. Ibid. Minutes of Meeting, 11 September 1942, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. Minutes of Meeting, 28 September 1942, CED Research Minutes I. Ibid. The board and committee met on 11, 12 and 13 December 1942; see ‘Minutes of Meeting, 13 April 1943’, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. Minutes of Meeting, 14 December 1942, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. Minutes of Meeting, 13 April and 24 June 1943, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. Minutes of Joint Research Meeting, 24–25 July 1943, CED Research Minutes I. Ibid. Mounting pressure on the research agenda led to the research division entertaining monthly instead of bimonthly meetings. It was agreed such a schedule would be hard for participants to guarantee, so two full days were put aside every two months for the research division to debate. Yntema pushed for the research committee to issue policy statements in advance of conclusive research findings, but Flanders doubted whether CED should ‘get too far ahead’ of the reports, and Yntema’s plea was left wanting (same file). Specified in ‘Discussion Notes of Joint Research Meeting, 20–21 February 1944’, CED Research Minutes I. Up to 3,700 contracts had already been terminated; see ‘Minutes of Joint Research Meeting, 24–25 July 1943’, CED Research Minutes I. Minutes of Joint Research Meeting, 21–22 March 1943, CED Research Minutes I. Minutes of Joint Research Meeting, 24–25 July 1943, CED Research Minutes I. CED trustees and regional chairmen met to discuss the ‘Proposed Policy on the Settlement of Terminated War Contracts’ on 16 September; see ‘Notes on Formal Meeting of Trustees and Regional Chairman, 16 September 1943’, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. The research division gave its final approval on 26 September; see

230

63 64

65

66 67

68 69

70 71

72 73 74 75 76 77 78

79

80 81

Notes Discussion Notes of Joint Research Meeting, 25–26 September 1943, CED Research Minutes I. Minutes of Meeting, 11 January 1944, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. All from Discussion Notes of Joint Research Meeting, 25–26 September 1943, CED Research Minutes I. At one point during the grilling, Clark snapped: ‘How big a book do you want, anyway?’ Discussion Notes of Joint Meeting, 20–21 May 1944, CED Research Minutes I. Hoffman had attended a recent meeting of ‘leading industrial leaders’ (same reference). ‘Discussion Notes of Research Committee and Advisory Board, 14–15 July 1944’, CED Research Minutes I. Krug’s reasoning and the resulting controversy is outlined in Waddell, War Against the New Deal, pp. 130–1. Also Flynn, The Mess in Washington, pp. 237–8 for Nelson’s replacement by Krug. ‘Discussion Notes of Research Committee and Research Advisory Board Meeting, 23–24 September 1944’, CED Research Minutes I. Taylor was more explicit in attacking this sensitive and unpopular subject: ‘You ought to emphasize that this has been a peculiar type of war – a war fought at great distances and with great strains on transportation. This will help to explain to the public the reason for continuing some controls’; see ‘Discussion Notes of Research Committee and Research Advisory Board Meeting, 23–24 September 1944’, CED Research Minutes I. Ibid. Noted in ‘Discussion Notes of Research Committee and Advisory Board Meeting, 20–21 January 1945’, CED Research Minutes I. See J. M. Clark, Demobilization of Wartime Economic Controls (New York: McGraw Hill, 1945). Postwar Employment and the Removal of Wartime Controls (CED, April 1945), pp. 19 and 28, respectively. ‘Discussion Notes of Joint Research Meeting, 30–31 October 1943’, CED Research Minutes I. Ibid. Op cit. All quotations from ‘Research Committee Business Session, 9 January 1944’, CED Research Minutes I. ‘Discussion Notes of Joint Research Meeting, 20–21 February 1944’, CED Research Minutes I. Hancock addressed CED trustees in January 1947; see ‘Minutes of Meeting, 17 January 1947’, CED Minutes of Board Meetings II. He was appointed a trustee in 1949. Public Policy Digest, No. 43 (March 1944), p. 1, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 94, FDRL. The Baruch Report hailed plans covering ten major problems: the human side of demobilization; settlement of terminated war contracts; surplus property; ‘tightening’ of the entire government war machine; ‘X Day Reconversion Plan’ for use on Germany’s sudden collapse; extension of government controls; cancellations; problems of small business; post-war tax law; and planning of public works. All quotations from ‘Discussion Notes of Joint Research Meeting, 20–21 February 1944’, CED Research Minutes I. Postwar Employment and the Liquidation of War Production (CED, July 1944), pp. 9 and 12.

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82 See Schriftgiesser, Business Comes of Age, p. 78. Scherman acquired his fortune setting up the Book-of-the-Month Club (see p. 80). 83 Enumerated by Groves in a research committee discussion of his conclusions; see ‘Discussion Notes of Joint Research Meeting, 25–26 September 1943’, CED Research Minutes I. 84 Ibid. 85 ‘Minutes of Business Meeting of the Research Committee, 30–31 October 1943’, CED Research Minutes I. Benton cited ‘the insistence for further review and revision’ as reasons for delay. Ruml charged that: ‘The report as it stands is poorly written and needs a great deal of re-writing’. The main objection was to Groves’s capital gains tax proposal. A subsequent discussion on Groves’s report in December, and another in January 1944 to decide on CED’s accompanying ‘policy statement’ made no further progress: see ‘Discussion Notes of Joint Research Meeting, 5–6 December 1943’, CED Research Minutes I; and Research Committee Business Session, 9 January 1944, CED Research Minutes I, respectively. 86 From ‘Business Session of the Research Committee, 10 January 1944’, CED Research Minutes I. 87 See ‘Research Committee Business Session, 9 January 1944’, CED Research Minutes I. 88 All quotations from ‘Discussion Notes of Joint Research Meeting, 20–21 February 1944’, CED Research Minutes I. 89 Ruml in ‘Discussion Notes of Joint Research Meeting, 10 April 1944’, CED Research Minutes I; see also same minutes for Folsom comments on need for early release to the field organization. 90 Discussion Notes of Joint Meeting, 20–21 May 1944, CED Research Minutes I. 91 See ‘Executive Session of Research Committee, 21 May 1944’, CED Research Minutes I. 92 From ‘Special Meeting of Research Committee, 7 June 1944’, CED Research Minutes I. 93 ‘Discussion Notes of Special Research Committee Meeting, 20 June 1944’, CED Research Minutes I. 94 Reported in ‘Discussion Notes of Research Committee and Research Advisory Board Meeting, 23–24 September 1944’, CED Research Minutes I. The first draft Groves’ ‘final’ report was due October 1944. 95 See ‘Executive Session of the Research Committee, 15 July 1944’, CED Research Minutes I. 96 From ‘BAC Report of Committee on Taxation’, 18 October 1944, attached to Minutes of BAC General Council Meeting, 3–4 November 1944, Papers of William L. Clayton, Box 27, HSTL. 97 The tax debate is addressed by Collins, Business Response to Keynes, pp. 129–31, and recently detailed in Domhoff, The Myth of Liberal Ascendancy, pp. 43–8. 98 Minutes of BAC General Council Meeting, 3–4 November 1944, Papers of William L. Clayton, Box 27, HSTL. 99 New Republic cited by Benton in Minutes of Joint Research Meeting, 24–25 July 1943, CED Research Minutes I; Common Sense mentioned in ‘Discussion Notes of Joint Research Meeting, 5–6 December 1943’, CED Research Minutes I; trustee’s comments noted in Minutes of Meeting, 11 January 1944, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. The other trustees were McClellan and Weinberg. 100 All from Minutes of Joint Research Meeting, 21–22 March 1943, CED Research Minutes I.

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Notes

101 ‘Notes on Research and Advisory Meeting, 15–16 May 1943’, CED Research Minutes I. Read’s views were conveyed to the Committee in a letter. 102 Minutes of Meeting, 24 June 1943, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. 103 All quotations from ‘Minutes of Joint Research Meeting, 24–25 July 1943’, CED Research Minutes I. 104 All quotations from ‘Discussion Notes of Joint Research Meeting, 25–26 September 1943’, CED Research Minutes I. 105 Benton later admitted that it had not been easy to achieve consensus within CED over the content of his document, and apparently went through forty-four drafts; see Schriftgiesser, Business Comes of Age, p. 70. Schriftgiesser called the article a ‘brilliant dissertation on business liberalism’ (p. 32). 106 Minutes of Meeting, 11 January 1944, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. 107 Ibid. The CED’s legal counsel underlined the necessity of ‘avoiding propaganda and political activity’; from Minutes of Meeting, 24 June 1943, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. 108 ‘Minutes of Business Meeting of the Research Committee, 30–31 October 1943’, CED Research Minutes I. Raymond Walsh and Bob Watts were put forward as candidates, but Benton objected ‘pretty strongly’ to Walsh, as did the rest of the Committee. 109 Sent as attachment in Coil to Taussig, 20 April 1943, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 94, FDRL. 110 Special Meeting of the Research Committee, 7 June 1944, CED Research Minutes I. Benton and Ruml also suggested that the CED ‘join forces’ with the CFR to conduct the study on monopoly. 111 Comments are from Morris Edwards, vice chair of Cleveland District CED. Despite a further 2,500 letters the CED finance committee was expressing frustration at the slow response at the district level to raising funds; both in Minutes of Meeting, 13 April 1943, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. In its first year of operations, the CED received contributions of $350,465.83 but managed to keep its spending well within this limit to $239,885.62; figures contained in Minutes of Meeting, 17 September 1943, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. The expansion of personnel numbers was especially worrying as a third of the CED’s income went on salaries: CED personnel were not giving their time for free. For the period January to December 1943, 74 per cent of the research division, 47 per cent of the field development division, and 59 per cent of administrative (including finance) expenditures went on salaries. Most donations came from regions outside of the industrial east, whose contribution was judged ‘inadequate’; from Minutes of Meeting, 11 January 1944, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. 112 Congress meeting was discussed in Minutes of Meeting, 24 June 1943, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. Hoffman mused: ‘We found, somewhat to our surprise, that these Congressmen today are definitely interested in the business point of view, and in the help which businessmen can give towards the solution of those post-war problems that only Congress can develop’. 113 The ‘Colmer Committee’ was established by HR408 in January 1944. It comprised Colmer, Jere Cooper (TN); Orville Zimmerman (MO); Jerry Voorhis (CA); Walter A. Lynch (NY); B. Carroll Reece (TN); Richard J. Welch (CA); Clifford R. Hope (KS); Eugene Worley (TX). All members were recorded as asking questions of Batt except Reece. Records of the Colmer Committee are held in NARA Archive I (Washington, DC) under RG233.

Notes

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114 Mentioned in Minutes of Joint Research Meeting, 24–25 July 1943, CED Research Minutes I. Records of the George Committee are in Box Y6043, RG287, NARA Archive I (Washington, DC). On George and NRPB see Klausen, ‘Did World War II End the New Deal’, p. 208. 115 Folsom was assisted by four consultants: H. B. Arthur, Vergil D. Reed, C. A. Sienkiewicz and T. C. Yarnall. 116 Minutes of BAC General Council Meeting, 12–13 May 1944, Papers of William L. Clayton, Box 27, HSTL. 117 Jones downplayed the involvement of his Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce which he claimed had provided only ‘certain research information’ when in fact its chief, Carroll Wilson, had been permanently assigned as executive secretary for the CED. Fennelly’s letter of 28 August 1944 (with reports attached), Jones’ memorandum of 29 August 1944, Roosevelt’s handwritten note and his typed reply of 6 September 1944 are all in Official File 5384 (‘Committee for Economic Development’), FDRL. At the September meeting of the board, Hoffman read from a letter he received from Jones quoting a note from Roosevelt which indicated ‘an appreciation by the President and Secretary Jones’ of the work of the CED; see ‘Minutes of Meeting, 22–23 September 1944’, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. 118 Minutes of Meeting, 14 December 1942, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. The members were Eric Johnston (chair); James Bell; William Benton (vice chair); Earl Emerson; Wilson Hemingway; James Kemper; and Thomas B. McCabe; see ‘Minutes of Meeting, 13 April 1943’, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. 119 Minutes of Meeting, 13 April 1943, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. 120 Ibid. Johnston told them that ‘businessmen in the United States, regardless of their attitude towards the New Deal, are in favour of close Inter-American cooperation’. 121 Three of the manuscripts – Demobilization of Wartime Economic Controls by J. M. Clark, and Providing for Unemployed Workers During the Postwar Transition by Richard A. Lester, and Personnel Problems of the Postwar Transition Period, a Supplementary Paper by Charles A. Myers, assistant professor of Industrial Relations at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, were in press; see ‘Discussion Notes of Research Committee and Research Advisory Board, 11–12 November 1944’, CED Research Minutes I. Its published policy statements were Postwar Employment and the Settlement of Terminated War Contracts, Small Business after the War, Postwar Employment and the Liquidation of War Production, A Postwar Federal Tax Plan for High Employment, and Personnel Problems of the Postwar Transition Period. Expansion was agreed in Minutes of Meeting, 17 September 1943, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. The CED had also been approached to provide information for the Harvard Business School and the Brookings Institution. Harvard wanted data on financing post-war conversion; see ‘Minutes of Joint Research Meeting’, 24–25 July 1943, CED Research Minutes I; for Brookings request see same minutes. 122 Noted by the Philadelphia Field Committee of the CED, Minutes of Meeting, 11 January 1944, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. 123 From ‘Director’s Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting of 14 December 1942’, pp. 2, 9–10 and 25, Century Foundation Holdings. The Report was composed and sent out to trustees at the end of November 1942. 124 Ibid., p. 49. 125 Ibid. A sum of $1,500 was put aside ‘to pay the fees of those who might comment on the Chase book’.

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Notes

126 Ibid., pp. 49–50. A third edition of the Galloway directory was also scheduled in 1943 (for distribution in early 1944), this time to include information on the postwar planning arrangements of ‘important’ trade associations with the cooperation of the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce; see ‘Director’s Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting of 3 December 1943’, p. 8, Century Foundation Holdings. The TCF expected to make a ‘modest contribution’ to meet the expenses of the services of the Bureau. 127 Chase preferred the alternative title, and the TCF agreed: see Chase to Clark, 17 December 1942; and Clark to Chase, 7 January 1943, both in Stuart Chase Papers, Box 6, MDLC. 128 This was according to Chase who met early with Ruml about the book; Chase to Clark, 23 June 1943, Stuart Chase Papers, Box 6, MDLC. 129 ‘Director’s Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting of 3 December 1943’, pp. 7–8; and ‘Staff Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting, 7 December 1944’, p. 7, both in Century Foundation Holdings. Also Clark to Chase, 21 July 1944, Stuart Chase Papers, Box 6, MDLC. 130 Clark to Chase, 3 June 1943, Stuart Chase Papers, Box 6, MDLC. 131 ‘Memorandum to Board of Trustees: Special Meeting of January 29, 1944’, by Evans Clark, 21 January 1944, Century Foundation Holdings. A draft of the letter is attached. 132 See ‘Director’s Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting of 14 December 1942’, pp. 3–4, Century Foundation Holdings. 133 Clark was one of a ‘slate’ of six candidates approached, but no names were given except for ‘Dr Homan’; ibid. 134 Ibid. Evans Clark was the only person recorded in the minutes, pointing out that Berle’s suggestion was ‘entirely different’ from that approved and both ‘extended’ it and ‘involved a policy rather than a research report’. This implies the TCF leadership had no forewarning of Berle’s intervention, even though Berle was on the Executive Committee. 135 No explanation is given for Clark’s decision; see ‘Director’s Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting of 3 December 1943’, p. 10, Century Foundation Holdings. 136 Homan co-wrote The ABC of the NRA and The National Recovery Administration: An Analysis and Appraisal for the Brookings Institution in 1934 and 1935 respectively. In 1947 he joined the first Council of Economic Advisers under President Harry Truman. 137 ‘Director’s Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting of 3 December 1943’, p. 10, Century Foundation Holdings. However, Clark’s report stated Homan might ‘possibly’ suggest ‘appropriate policies to be followed’ (same file). 138 Anderson was also consulting economist of the Capital Research Company of Los Angeles and editor of the Chase Economic Bulletin. 139 ‘Memorandum to Trustees of the Twentieth Century Fund: Postwar Financial Survey’ by P. T. Homan and J. F. Dewhurst, 2 December 1943, Century Foundation Holdings. The list began with the central banking specialist H. L. Reed, professor of economics at Cornell University and member of the New York State Banking Board, vice president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank and former adviser to the League of Nations and the Treasury Department; John H. Williams, professor of political economy and dean of the Littauer School of Public Administration at Harvard University and vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York;

Notes

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141 142

143

144 145 146 147 148

149

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Jacob Viner, distinguished service professor at the University of Chicago, a leading authority on international financial relations, former adviser to the League of Nations and assistant to the secretary of the Treasury; and John M. Clark, professor of economics at Columbia University. Of this group, only Viner was a member of the TCF. The list of potential substitutes included (in no particular ideological order), Sumner Slichter, Lamont University professor at Harvard University; Jacob Schumpeter, professor of economics at Harvard University; Howard S. Ellis, professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley and consulting economist to the Federal Reserve Board; Frank Graham, professor of economics at Princeton University and former chairman of the National Advisory Council on Economic Security; Charles O. Hardy, economist at the Brookings Institution and author of Credit Policies of the Federal Reserve System; G. Harberler, professor of economics at Harvard University; and H. C. Simons, professor of economics at the University of Chicago. Graham was a TCF member and Slichter was both a member and former economic adviser to the TCF and member of the research advisory board of the CED. The final manuscript was expected October 1944 and publication early in 1945 that ‘should coincide with a period of active discussion of the problem’. In the final cut, Reed and Viner were replaced by Ellis and Slichter; see ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1943’, pp. 16–17, Century Foundation Holdings. ‘Minutes of the Annual Meeting of the Board of Trustees, 3 December 1943’, Century Foundation Holdings. The economists were to be paid $1500 for their contribution. Ibid. Both proposals are in ‘Director’s Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting of 3 December 1943’, pp. 15–16, Century Foundation Holdings. Other topics were taxation, cost of distribution, government–business relations, the monopoly problem, veterans’ payments, an economic study of the family, consumer rationing and price controls, Latin American economic relations, wartime economic controls and international business controls. The trustees were asked to comment in writing on the merits of each project and rank them according to priority. The other projects rejected were the effects of the war on American life (symposium by Galloway), the war economy and its post-war implications, and an appraisal of the NRPB; all from ‘Minutes of the Special Meeting of the Board of Trustees, 29 January 1944’; also ‘Memorandum to Board of Trustees: Special Meeting of January 29, 1944’, by Evans Clark, 21 January 1944, both in Century Foundation Holdings. See ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1944’, p. 19, Century Foundation Holdings. At its inaugural meeting, Nelson stated the CED was ‘vital to the country’s future’; Minutes of Meeting, 14 December 1942, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. Listed (with photograph) in ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1949’, p. 21, Century Foundation Holdings. They were The Power Industry and the Public Interest (February), American Housing: Problems and Prospects (April), and Building America’s Houses (December). ‘Minutes of the Annual Meeting of the Board of Trustees, 3 December 1943’, Century Foundation Holdings; also ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1943’, p. 10, Century Foundation Holdings. See ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1942’, p. 17, Century Foundation Holdings.

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150 See ‘Director’s Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting of 3 December 1943’, p. 34, Century Foundation Holdings. 151 ‘Planning for Peace’ by George B. Galloway, circa January 1943, pp. 2 and 6–7, in Papers of Charles F. Palmer, Box 2, FDRL. Palmer was special assistant to the president and was collecting material for a confidential report to Roosevelt entitled ‘Possible Utilization of Wartime Construction in Postwar Development’. Palmer wrote to Galloway for a list of the agencies that Galloway thought were doing the most constructive work on post-war planning; see Palmer to Galloway, 26 January 1943, Papers of Charles F. Palmer, Box 2, FDRL. There is no trace of a reply from Galloway in the Palmer papers, only a list of CED members and press cuttings relating to the formation of the CED. 152 ‘Memorandum to Board of Trustees: Special Meeting of January 29, 1944’, by Evans Clark, 21 January 1944, Century Foundation Holdings. The Appendix of the memorandum stated: ‘There appears to be no existing publication directly serving this purpose.’ Overall Clark consulted sixty organizations about the venture. 153 ‘Minutes of the Special Meeting of the Board of Trustees, 29 January 1944’, Century Foundation Holdings. The trustees agreed $2,500 per annum. 154 From ‘Director’s Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting of 14 December 1942’, p. 20, Century Foundation Holdings. 155 See ‘Minutes of the Annual Meeting of the Board of Trustees, 14 December 1942’, Century Foundation Holdings. 156 Negative comments were from Lynd; see ‘Minutes of the Special Meeting of the Board of Trustees, 29 January 1944’, Century Foundation Holdings. 157 ‘Staff Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting, 7 December 1944’, pp. 12–15, Century Foundation Holdings. 158 Ibid., pp. 18–19. The TCF thought ‘the stakes are high and the expense is very low’. MGM meetings are mentioned in ‘Memorandum to Board of Trustees: Special Meeting of January 29, 1944’, by Evans Clark, 21 January 1944, Century Foundation Holdings. 159 ‘Staff Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting, 7 December 1944’, p. 12, Century Foundation Holdings. 160 Quotation from ‘Director’s Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting of 3 December 1943’, p. 26, Century Foundation Holdings. 161 Reported by Clark in ‘Director’s Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting of 14 December 1942’, p. 20, Century Foundation Holdings. 162 Ibid., p. 20. 163 Detail on ‘For this We Fought’ in ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1942’, pp. 16–17, Century Foundation Holdings. 164 ‘Director’s Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting of 3 December 1943’, pp. 27–8, Century Foundation Holdings. 165 Ibid., p. 28. 166 From ‘Director’s Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting of 3 December 1943’, p. 29, Century Foundation Holdings. 167 See ‘Classification of Projects and Publications, 20 January 1949’, Century Foundation Holdings. A copy of TCF pamphlet ‘Financing Postwar Prosperity: Program 20, 16 October 1943’ is in Papers of John H. Fahey, FDRL. 168 The cost of the shows was such that the TCF looked to collaborate, and in 1944 agreed to joint sponsorship with Columbia University (with operational responsibility falling to the TCF), and financial support from the Rockefeller and

Notes

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170 171

172 173

174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181

237

Sloan Foundations. Detailed in ‘Staff Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting, 7 December 1944’, p. 22, Century Foundation Holdings. Perhaps this was to do with the relatively high price ($2.50) of Lorwin’s book compared to the low (subsidized) price of the Chase books ($1.00). Lorwin price mentioned in ‘Director’s Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting of 3 December 1943’, p. 34, Century Foundation Holdings. Thomas Carskadon of the TCF education department exclaimed that Where’s the Money Coming From? ‘continues to go like a house afire’; Carskadon to Chase, 3 February 1944, Stuart Chase Papers, Box 6, MDLC. Clark to Chase, 16 March 1944, Stuart Chase Papers, Box 6, MDLC. ‘Staff Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting, 7 December 1944’, pp. 30–1, Century Foundation Holdings. Six TCF titles even made their way into China as part of a batch of sixty books microfilmed by the OWI and flown into the country by the Department of State; see p. 31, same file. ‘Minutes of the Annual Meeting of the Board of Trustees, 3 December 1943’, Century Foundation Holdings. In the space of a year Dewhurst and eighteen ‘contributors’ had written fourteen out of a target of twenty-one chapters for ‘Needs and Resources’; see ‘Director’s Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting of 3 December 1943’, p. 9, Century Foundation Holdings. This figure was later revised to nineteen chapters out of twenty-one: see ‘ Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1944’, p. 16, Century Foundation Holdings. The chapters presented estimates of three main areas of the country’s post-war economic requirements: the minimum goods and services required to provide a ‘reasonable’ standard of living; the ‘probable demands’ in addition to these requirements to attain ‘full employment and the full use of our resources’ after the war; and an assessment of the nation’s ‘probable postwar capacity’ to meet these demands; see ‘ Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1943’, p. 15, Century Foundation Holdings. It was also decided to supplement ‘Needs and Resources’ with the full text of a survey of American post-war construction and capital needs conducted by Robert W. Hartley; see ‘ Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1944’, p. 16, Century Foundation Holdings. See ‘Notes of Meeting of War and Postwar Readjustment Group [formerly IPWG], 14 October 1943’, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 94, FDRL. Copy in FDR Papers, OF 5456 (National Planning Association 1943), FDRL. NPA at Work, p. 9; and ‘Report of the Joint Meeting of the Board of Trustees, 1951’, pp. 6–7, NPAC, Box 64. All publications contained in attachment to Coil to Taussig, 20 April 1943, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 94, FDRL. From ‘Resolutions of the Executive Committee’ in Minutes of Executive Committee Meeting, 4 February 1944, NPAC, Box 67. ‘Memorandum for the President’ from Currie, 24 March 1943, FDR Papers, OF5456 (National Planning Association 1943), FDRL. No draft was contained in the file. Roosevelt to Rieve (Secretary NPA), 24 March 1943, copy in NPAC, Box 64; also FDR Papers, OF5456 (National Planning Association 1943), FDRL. When Currie was later invited to speak to the CED, he and Leon Henderson of the defunct NRPB were criticized for being ‘pessimistic’ about the prospects for jobs in the transition period: see ‘Discussion of Leon Henderson’s Dinner Talk, 5 December 1943’, CED Research Minutes I.

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182 This information was not included in the extract published in the October 1959 Looking Ahead; see ‘What is NPA, and how is it organized?’, Draft Chapter 1 (circa 1959), pp. 7–8, NPAC, Box 64. 183 The final report – also entitled Reconversion of Industry to Peace – was published in November 1943 and was written by the chairs and vice chairs of the standing committees and Sonne. 184 The charge is made in Looking Ahead, Vol. 7, No. 7 (October 1959), p. 2, NPAC, Box 64, although the president’s reply to receiving the joint statement suggests a generous reading of its influence; see Roosevelt to Sonne (Chair NPA), 27 October 1943, copy in NPAC, Box 64; also FDR Papers, OF5456 (National Planning Association 1943), FDRL. The 1959 Looking Ahead (same page) also claimed that Roosevelt ‘requested that NPA prepare a written report implementing the general Statement already adopted’ which appeared in November 1943, though there is no archival evidence to support this claim. 185 Dirksen wanted eleven senators and eleven congressmen, a director and an assistant director to make plans; see ‘Discussion Notes of the Business Committee meetings’, 19–20 February 1943, p. 13, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL. 186 Ibid., pp. 11–12. 187 The impact of WPB failings in particular on New Dealer aspirations is discussed in Brinkley, End of Reform, pp. 198–9. 188 See Coil memorandum ‘Post-War Activities in Federal Agencies’ to Organizational and Sustaining Members, 17 August 1943, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 94, FDRL. The survey was purely descriptive and offered no real analysis or conclusions. 189 Planning Pamphlet No. 23, Public Thinking on Post-War Problems (October 1943), pp. 5 and 10. 190 From ‘NPA’s Ninth Anniversary, 1934-43: Report to Members’, April 1944, Leland Olds Papers, Box 7, FDRL. 191 From NPA circular, 7 February 1944, NPAC, Box 64; see also ‘NPA’s Ninth Anniversary, 1934-43: Report to Members’, April 1944, Leland Olds Papers, Box 7, FDRL. 192 Both quoted in NPA circular, 7 February 1944, NPAC, Box 64. 193 The committee was due to make its first report to Congress in May 1944. 194 ‘Testimony of William Batt before the Special Committee on Post-War Economic Policy and Planning of the House of Representatives, 13 April 1944’, p. 3, in Charles Taussig Papers, Box 94, FDRL. 195 Ibid., p. 11. 196 Ibid., p. 13. 197 Ruml openly shared with CED the conclusions of the NPA committee dealing with taxation; see ‘Discussion Notes of Joint Research Meeting, 25–26 September 1943’, CED Research Minutes I. 198 See Schriftgiesser, Business Comes of Age, p. 84. 199 NPA at Work, p. 10. 200 This information was not included in the extract published in the October 1959 Looking Ahead; see ‘What is NPA, and how is it organized?’, Draft Chapter 1 (circa 1959), p. 13, NPAC, Box 64. 201 The noting of the creation of CED was hidden away in the ‘notes’ section on p. 31 of Public Policy Digest, Nos. 33–4 (March to April 1943), Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL. 202 Mentioned by Coil in ‘Minutes of Board Meeting, 8 June 1944’, NPAC, Box 67.

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203 Quoted in ‘NPA’s Ninth Anniversary, 1934-43: Report to Members’, April 1944, Leland Olds Papers, Box 7, FDRL. 204 See ‘Minutes of Special Meeting of the Board of Trustees, 25 August 1944’, NPAC, Box 67. 205 From ‘NPA Release to Members: Progress in 1944 and Plans for 1945’, 23 March 1945, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 95, FDRL; NPA at Work, p. 10. 206 In 1942 fees from organizations were $16,500; in 1943 they were $62,550; all figures from ‘Minutes of the Annual Meeting of the Board of Trustees, 6–7 December 1945’, NPAC, Box 67. Lists of business affiliates of any of the groups are rare, but this one from 1942 is illuminating. Organizations as members of NPA each paying $500 per annum were: Aluminum Company of America; American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, Inc.; American Molasses Company; American Philanthropic Fund, Inc.; Bell Telephone Company (NJ); Bell Telephone Company (PA); Consolidated Edison Co (NY); Douglas Aircraft Corp; Ferguson, HK, Co, Inc.; General Electric Company; General Motors Corporation; Grace, W R and Company; Hercules Powder Company; Leeds and Northrup Co.; Macy, R H and Co, Inc.; Marathon Paper Mills; McGraw-Hill Publishing Company; Monsanto Chemical Company; Morgan, J P and Company; National Steel Corporation; Owens-Illinois Glass Co.; Pennsylvania Railroad Co.; Proctor & Gamble Company ($1,000); RCA Manufacturing Company; Revere Copper & Brass, Inc.; Schick, Incorporated; Schaeffer, W A Pen Co.; SKF Industries; Sperry Gyroscope Co., Inc.; Studebaker Corporation; Swift and Company; Warner and Swasey Co.; Worthington Pump and Machinery Company; Woodward Governor Co. At $100 per annum: American Steel Export Co.; Carborundum Company; Cherry-Burrell Corp.; Ferguson, Harry, Inc.; Inter-Allied Committee; Joyce, Incorporated; Norwegian Shipping and Trade Mission; US Steel Export Corporation; Walworth Company, Inc.; see ‘Report to the Board of Trustees and the William C. Whitney Foundation’, 14 October 1942, p. 9, Gardner Jackson Papers, Container 57, FDRL. 207 See ‘Minutes of Board Meeting, 8 June 1944’, NPAC, Box 67. 208 See ‘Minutes of Meeting, 14 July 1944’, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. 209 Clawson, New Deal Planning, p. 226. 210 Reagan, Designing a New America, p. 238. 211 The NPA was convinced of the public mandate for government planning after its survey in Planning Pamphlet No. 23, Public Thinking on Post-War Problems (October 1943), pp. 17, 20, 24, 29 and 33. The survey was purely descriptive and offered no real analysis or conclusions. 212 Domhoff claimed that regarding taxation corporate moderates and liberals ‘had reached a cross-class compromise’; The Myth of Liberal Ascendancy, p. 48.

Chapter 5 1 Clayton to Amos Taylor, 20 January 1944 (attached to Taylor to Clayton, 22 January 1944), Correspondence of Wayne C. Taylor, Box 3, Entry 12 (570/2/27/4-5), RG40, NARA II. 2 ‘Memorandum to Board of Trustees: Special Meeting of January 29, 1944’, by Evans Clark, 21 January 1944, Century Foundation Holdings. 3 ‘National Policies for Post-War Foreign Trade and Investment’, Economic Section of NPA International Committee, 16 October 1944, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 95, FDRL.

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4 ‘Statement on the Bretton Woods Proposals’, 6 March 1945, copy in Charles Taussig Papers, Box 95, FDRL. 5 Staple specialist accounts include Richard N. Gardner, Sterling-Dollar Diplomacy: Anglo-American Collaboration in the Reconstruction of Multilateral Trade (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956); Alfred Eckes, Jr, A Search for Solvency: Bretton Woods and the International Monetary System, 1941-1971 (Austin: Texas University Press, 1975); Georg Schild, Bretton Woods and Dumbarton Oaks (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995); Filippo Cesarano, Monetary Theory and Bretton Woods: The Construction of an International Monetary Order (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), esp. pp. 159–83. On the role of extra-governmental advisers, see G. John Ikenberry, ‘A World Economy Restored: Expert Consensus and the Anglo-American Postwar Settlement’, International Organization, Vol. 46, No. 1 (Winter 1992), pp. 289–321. For a recent treatment by the CFR, see Benn Steil, The Battle of Bretton Woods: John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order (Princeton: CFR, 2013). 6 For American debate, see Gardner, Sterling-Dollar Diplomacy, pp. 129–32; on academic criticisms, see Cesarano, Monetary Theory and Bretton Woods, pp. 169–82. 7 Confidential Press Release: Address by William L. Clayton at the Metropolitan Opera House, NYC, 17 March 1945 (broadcast over the Blue Network), Folder 16, Box 2, Papers of William L. Clayton, Hoover Institution, CA. 8 For summary of these agreements in relation to free trade see Zeiler, Free Trade, Free World, pp. 24–7; also Aaronson, Trade and the American Dream, pp. 25–33. 9 See Zeiler, Free Trade, Free World, pp. 18–19; and Aaronson, Trade and the American Dream, pp. 34–40, for the legislative journey of ITO. As the Bretton Woods conference approached, the State Department remained convinced that America’s political and economic future depended on the achievement of the highest possible volume of international trade; see report from State Department’s Special Committee on Relaxation of Trade Barriers of 18 December 1943 in Gardner, Sterling-Dollar Diplomacy, p. 102. 10 Described in Eric Helleiner, Forgotten Foundations of Bretton Woods: International development and the Making of the Post-War Order (New York: Cornell University Press, 2014), pp. 124–7. 11 Discussed in detail by Domhoff, The Power Elite (Chapters 5 and 6); Burris, ‘Elite Policy-Planning Networks in the United States’, p. 118; and summarized in Domhoff, The Myth of Liberal Ascendancy, pp. 35–6. 12 This process is detailed in Charlie Whitham, ‘The Committee for Economic Development, Foreign Trade and the Rise of American Corporate Liberalism, 1942-48’, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 48, No. 4 (October 2013), pp. 845–71. 13 ‘America’s Stake in World Trade’, Address by W. L. Clayton at the Thirtieth National Foreign Trade Convention, 25 October 1943, Folder 8, Box 2, Papers of William L. Clayton, Hoover Institution. 14 Hoover also enlisted help from John H. Williams, Nathaniel Ropes Professor of Economics at Harvard University. 15 White took issue with Clayton (who had sent White his comments on Hoover’s paper), stating that ‘the direct and immediate effects of foreign trade on employment are not so clear’; see White to Clayton, 22 November 1944, Papers of William L. Clayton, Box 27, HSTL. 16 Hoover did not believe his position differed that much from Clayton’s, and stressed to Clayton that he was not insisting his view be used in the policy statement; see

Notes

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18

19 20 21 22 23

24 25

26 27 28 29 30

31

32

33

241

Hoover to Clayton, 24 November 1944, Papers of William L. Clayton, Box 44, HSTL. Letter’s responding politely to Clayton from Hoffman, Flanders, Davis and Yntema of November are in same box. Unless otherwise noted all the above was summarized from Whitham, ‘The Committee for Economic Development’. For Feis on US expansionist needs, see Eakins, ‘Business Planners’, pp. 155–6. This interpretation differs from Eakins who claimed that Hoover’s final position was ‘contradictory’ and ‘ended up by supporting new foreign expansion’; see Eakins, ‘Business Planners’, p. 155. International Trade, Foreign Investment and Domestic Employment: A Statement on National Policy by the Research Committee of the CED (May 1945), pp. 10–11. Myers to Benton, 7 February 1945, Folder 5, The William Benton Papers, Box 258, SCRC. Oddly, Benton claimed he did not know of him. Benton to Flanders, 9 February 1945, Folder 1, The William Benton Papers, Box 255, SCRC. All from ‘Discussion Notes of Research Committee and Advisory Board Meeting, 20–21 January 1945’, CED Research Minutes I. ‘Discussion Notes of Research Committee and Research Advisory Board Meeting, 24–25 February 1945’, CED Research Minutes I. The comment was from Patchin, same file. The charter of the IBRD was to be interpreted as allowing ‘stabilization loans’; see Eakins, ‘Business Planners’, p. 153. Minutes of Meeting, 16–17 April 1945, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. Reported by Benton in Minutes of Meeting, 9–10 July 1945, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. Schriftgiesser also claimed that in June Truman praised CED for its part in saving the Bretton Woods system; see Business Comes of Age, p. 125; also Hogan, The Marshall Plan, pp. 97–9, on the role of CED. Various (mostly favourable) press comments on CED and Bretton Woods are in Papers of Paul G. Hoffman, Box 41, HSTL. The company owner James H. McGraw was in the CED and the NPA, and vice chairman of the company, Mason Britten, was in the BAC. From ‘Report to International Committee on Postwar International Problems’ by Frank Altschul, 22 February 1944, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 94, FDRL. Coil memorandum to NPA executive committee ‘NPA Committee and Staff Work in Process’, 4 February 1944, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 24, FDRL. See NPA’s Fiscal and Monetary Policy (detailed in previous chapter). ‘A Budget of United States Postwar Foreign Trade – Preliminary Draft’ (circa 1 May 1944), attached to Miller to Taussig, 3 June 1944, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 94, FDRL. ‘Testimony of William Batt before the Special Committee on Post-War Economic Policy and Planning of the House of Representatives, 13 April 1944’, pp. 6–7, in Charles Taussig Papers, Box 94, FDRL. ‘National Policies for Post-War Foreign Trade and Investment’, 16 October 1944, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 95, FDRL. At the end of 1944 the NPA was sent details of the Principal Articles of Agreement for the IBRD courtesy of the Bankers Association for Foreign Trade; mentioned in Coil memorandum to ‘Organizational and Sustaining Members’ of NPA, 17 November 1944, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 95, FDRL. As summarized in Public Policy Digest, No. 50 (December 1944), p. 11, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 95, FDRL. America’s New Opportunities in World Trade was

242

34 35 36

37 38 39

40 41 42

43 44 45 46

Notes issued as Planning Pamphlet Nos. 37–8. Eakins also addresses the report’s findings in ‘Business Planners’, pp. 156–8. ‘Excerpt from a broadcast of H. R. Baukhage from Washington on Wednesday, November 29, 1944, over the Blue Network’, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 95, FDRL. Schultz and others addressed the Colmer Committee at the end of 1944; see Box 2, RG233, NARA I. Acheson quoted in NPA at Work, pp. 14–15. Acheson spoke before the Colmer Committee on 30 November 1944. His comments on post-war international economics were later released as a Department of State Bulletin, 3 December 1944. ‘Report to International Committee on Postwar International Problems’ by Frank Altschul, 22 February 1944, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 94, FDRL. ‘Aspects of the USSR in Relation to American Foreign Policy’ (draft outline), 23 May 1944, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 94, FDRL. They were Food for Europe After Victory (January), UNRRA: Gateway to Recovery (February), Clothing and Shelter for European Relief (May), Europe’s Uprooted People: The Relocation of Displaced Population (September), and a Relief and Rehabilitation Study Guide (November). ‘Minutes of Special Meeting of the Board of Trustees, 25 August 1944’, NPAC, Box 67. A copy of the ‘Statement on the Bretton Woods Proposals’, 6 March 1945, can be found in Charles Taussig Papers, Box 95, FDRL. ‘Minutes of Special Meeting of the Board of Trustees, 16 March 1945’, NPAC, Box 67. The board’s lack of confidence in the methods of the International Committee was evident when the board endorsed a request from the committee to begin a report on the ‘National Policies for the Export of US Technologies’ provided that the committee ‘be cautioned not to commit itself too far as to the form of the report, method of preparation or the personnel without clearing with the Board’; ibid., 16 March 1945. The project on ‘technologies’ was dropped by the board in June 1946 because of its ‘scientific nature’, and instead the board asked the International Committee to find a ‘qualified agency’ to conduct the study; see ‘Minutes of Board Meeting, 4 June 1946’, NPAC, Box 67. Still, the importance of international questions was such that the International Committee was granted access to the reports from the other standing committees of Business, Agriculture and Labor to allow it to offer ‘any statement as regards the international implications of the said reports’; from ‘Minutes of Special Meeting of the Board of Trustees, 16 March 1945’, NPAC, Box 67. Planning Pamphlet No. 45, The Stakes of Bretton Woods (23 April 1945). All quotations from ‘Statement by Charlton Ogburn’ and ‘Statement of Robert H. Patchin’ in The Stakes of Bretton Woods, pp. 37–40 and 41–44 respectively. ‘Information for the Press’, 23 April 1945, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 95, FDRL. Around May 1945 the NPA favourably compared its two latest reports on international economics, America’s New Opportunities in World Trade and The Stakes of Bretton Woods, with two recent congressional statements on the matter. Its confidential ‘Summary Comparison of NPA Reports’ placed sections of its two reports directly alongside comparative sections from the House Special Committee on Postwar Economic Policy and Planning Report ‘The Post-War Foreign Economic Policy of the United States’ of 8 May 1945, and the ‘Report of the Home Committee on Banking and Currency to accompany HR3314 (Bretton Woods) of 30 May 1945’. Overall the NPA found the wording, let alone the sentiment, of the NPA and congressional findings highly similar; both ‘Summary Comparisons of NPA Reports with some selected documents’, circa May 1945, are in Charles Taussig Papers, Box 95, FDRL.

Notes

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47 Berle’s support is noted in Helleiner, Forgotten Foundations of Bretton Woods, p. 128. 48 The EPC is mentioned by the NPA in ‘Post-War Reconstruction Group: Summary of Points of Last Meeting, February 6’, 25 February 1941, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL. 49 Waymack’s comments are in ‘Memorandum to Board of Trustees: Special Meeting of January 29, 1944’, by Evans Clark, 21 January 1944, Century Foundation Holdings. 50 ‘Minutes of the Special Meeting of the Board of Trustees, 29 January 1944’, p. 7, Century Foundation Holdings. 51 ‘Staff Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting, 7 December 1944’, p. 7, Century Foundation Holdings. 52 Stinebower later headed the Office of International Trade Policy and led US commercial policy initiatives in the United Nations. Stinebower considered himself ‘closer’ to the Clayton viewpoint than any others on liberalized trade; see ‘Oral History Interview with Leroy Stinebower’, p. 39, HSTL. 53 Op cit. 54 Buchanan’s team started 1 July 1945; see ‘Staff Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting, 8 December 1945’, p. 12; and ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1944’, pp. 19–20, both in Century Foundation Holdings. 55 The TCF acknowledged the ‘generous’ help provided by the institute in its ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1947, p. 20, Century Foundation Holdings. 56 All from ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1945’, p. 19, Century Foundation Holdings. 57 Riefler was a recent ‘guest’ of the CED research committee; see ‘Discussion Notes of Joint Research Meeting, 20–21 May 1945’, CED Research Minutes Volume II (1945–47).

Chapter 6 1 ‘Address by William Batt (as Vice Chairman of WPB) before the Chicago Association of Commerce, 5 January 1944’, The Papers of William L. Batt, Box 3, HSTL. 2 Minutes of Meeting, 12 July 1946, CED Minutes of Board Meetings II. 3 From Foreword to Norman Buchanan and Friedrich Lutz, Rebuilding the World Economy: America’s Role in Foreign Trade and Investment (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1947), p. vii. 4 Planning Pamphlet Nos. 60–61, The Marshall Plan (February 1948), pp. 8–9. 5 An American Program of European Economic Cooperation: A Statement on National Policy by CED (Washington, DC: CED, February 1948), pp. 9–11. 6 Stein, Presidential Economics, p. 74. 7 For the ‘employer’s counteroffensive’ see Elizabeth Fones-Wolf, Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism, 1945-60, (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994), Chapters 1 and 2. 8 See Robert A. Pollard, Economic Security and the Origins of the Cold War, 1945-1950 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), pp. 232–4. 9 See Smiley, American Economy, p. 201. See CED policy statement Postwar Employment and the Removal of Wartime Controls discussed earlier. Also CED recommended ending of all wartime price controls by June 1946, with any retained after that point viewed as ‘peacetime controls’; see Hoffman in ‘Discussion Notes of

244

10

11 12 13

14

15 16 17

18 19

20

21 22

23

Notes Joint Research Meeting, 17–18 November 1945’, CED Research Minutes II. The BAC also supported the retention of price controls in 1946; see ‘Minutes of BAC General Council Meeting, 16–17 January 1946’, Papers of William L. Clayton, Box 53, HSTL. Vatter, US Economy and WWII, p. 88. Truman was also handicapped by the large turnover in staff attendant on changes in administration; see Robert J. Donovan, Conflict and Crisis: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1945-1948 (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1996), Chapter 12, for a sketch of Truman’s reconversion woes. For Truman’s shift away from New Dealers to corporate moderates, see Waddell, ‘Corporate Influence and World War II’, p. 245. Quoted in Jones, ‘Keynesians in Wartime Policy’, p. 131. Jones does not provide any evidence in support of his claim about American opinion. See Nossiter, Fat Years and Lean, pp. 43–4, on the creation of the Bill. For an early treatment, see Stephen K. Bailey, Congress Makes a Law: The Story Behind the Employment Act of 1946 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1950). Detailed in James Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 50–2. Conservative domination of Congress lasted throughout the war; see Domhoff, The Myth of Liberal Ascendancy, p. 53. See Vatter, US Economy and WWII, pp. 87–8. See Smiley, American Economy, pp. 190–1. See Philip Armstrong, Andrew Glyn and John Harrison, Capitalism Since World War II (London: Fontana, 1984), pp. 112–13. A sketch of post-war United States is supplied in David Brinkley, Washington Goes to War (New York: Knopf, 1988), pp. 279–80; also Nossiter, Fat Years and Lean, pp. 45–8; and Robert Collins, More: The Politics of Economic Growth in Postwar America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 40–1. The impact of the ‘GI Bill’ as an ‘invisible welfare state’ is noted by Domhoff, The Myth of the Liberal Ascendancy, pp. 50–3. Suggested by Vatter, US Economy and WWII, p. 86. A useful summary of this process is in M. J. Heale, Twentieth Century America: Politics and Power in the United States, 1900-2000 (London: Hodder Arnold, 2004), pp. 141–3. For critical summary of Truman, see Nossiter, Fat Years and Lean, pp. 48 and 54–5. See Vatter, US Economy in WWII, pp. 151–2; on the ability of business to make the transition, see Robert A. Pollard, Economic Security and the Origins of the Cold War, 1945-1950 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), pp. 232–4. Alan S. Milward, War, Economy and Society, 1939-1945 (London: Penguin, 1987 edition), pp. 363–4. The loan talks ran parallel with those over liberalizing trade under Article VII of the Mutual Aid Agreement, with similar disagreements and compromises; see Alan Dobson, The Politics of the Anglo-American Economic Special Relationship (Sussex: Wheatsheaf, 1988), pp. 82–7. For a critical British viewpoint see L.S. Amery, The Washington Loan Agreements: A Critical Study of American Economic Foreign Policy (London: Macdonald, 1949). Repayments were expected after five years. Outlined by Eakins, ‘Business Planners’, pp. 160–1. As Zeiler explained: ‘Memories of wartime cooperation dwindled as Americans turned inward’; and Truman ‘set out on a wholly pragmatic approach to international commerce as Democrats squared off with the empowered Republicans in Congress to contest trade policy’; Free Trade, Free World, p. 74. See also Dan Plesch, America, Hitler and the UN: How the

Notes

24 25

26 27

28 29 30

31 32

33 34 35 36

245

Allies Won World War II and Forged a Peace (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011), p. 137, for explanation of UNRRA closure because of Congressional conservatives. For British motives see Zeiler, Free Trade, Free World, p. 39. See Eckes, Opening America’s Market, pp. 161–2; and Alfred Eckes and Thomas Zeiler, Globalization and the American Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 139–40. Wider strategic interests had already been invoked for allowing American concessions at the founding conference of GATT in Geneva in 1947, where it was agreed that discriminatory British Imperial Preferences may remain and tariff allowances were granted that were damaging to some US industries. Zeiler, Free Trade, Free World, p. 73. Truman eventually pulled the ITO from consideration by Congress in December 1950; on end of ITO, see Gardner, Sterling-Dollar Diplomacy, pp. 349–80; also Dobson, Economic Special Relationship, pp. 98–112. On attitude of business, see pp. 375–6. Also Aaronson, Trade and the American Dream, pp. 57–60 and Chapter Five for public reaction to and failure of ITO. See Dobson, Economic Special Relationship, pp. 96–7, on rising British economic and military difficulties. Eakins, ‘Business Planners’, p. 162. Hogan, Marshall Plan, p. 35; second quotation of Hogan in Walter LaFeber, The American Age: US Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad, 1750 to the Present (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1994 edition), p. 482. Also Gardner, SterlingDollar Diplomacy, pp. 293–305, on the United States ‘restoring equilibrium’ to the world economy; also Kolko, Limits of Power, p. 358, on protectionism, the need for markets and containing the left (and Chapter 13 on foundations of Marshall Plan); Eakins, ‘Business Planners’, pp. 162–4, on close relationship between economics and politics; Pollard, Economic Security and the Origins of the Cold War, pp. 22–3, on reliance of economics to contain Soviet Union; Nigel Harris, Of Bread and Guns: The World Economy in Crisis (London: Penguin, 1983), pp. 36–8 on the transition in US thinking; Armstrong, Glyn and Harrison, Capitalism Since World War II, p. 113–15, on the need for US exports; and Scott Newton, The Global Economy, 1944-2000 (London: Arnold, 2004), pp. 36–46 for a useful summary of the export-protectionism thesis. Also Woods, ‘FDR and the New Economic Order’, pp. 186–7, on the need for European aid to revive ‘modified multilateralism’. ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1945’, p. 9, Century Foundation Holdings. Copy in Century Foundation Holdings. A pamphlet summary of its findings based on promotional newspaper articles (called Toward American Prosperity: Views of Six Leading Economists) was issued later that year by the Associated Press. Homan received help in editing the survey by a colleague at the American Historical Review, Fritz Machlup, who was professor of economics at the University of Buffalo and acting editor of the Review. Homan wrote the introduction to the symposium and Machlup the conclusion. Eakins described the results of the Symposium in ‘Business Planners’, pp. 149–50. Jones, ‘Keynesians in Wartime Policy’, p. 130. ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1945’, p. 9, Century Foundation Holdings. They included a wide range of topics, from wages and national welfare, the organization of political and economic power to achieve ‘full employment’, the Russian economic system and America in a changing world. For the time being, the

246

37 38 39

40

41 42 43 44

45 46 47 48 49 50

51

52

53

Notes weight of existing commitments meant the only new project chosen from this list for advancement was that on implementing the full-employment policy; from ‘Staff Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting, 8 December 1945’, Century Foundation Holdings. America in a Changing World was raised in order ‘to clarify our relations with the rest of the world in such a way that American policy, both public and private, can be formulated intelligently in the light of our expanding role in the world economy’ (same file). ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1946’, p. 11, Century Foundation Holdings. ‘Staff Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting, 12–13 December 1947’, p. 11, Century Foundation Holdings. Mentioned in ‘Staff Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting, 4–5 October 1946’, Century Foundation Holdings. Copy of pamphlet in Century Foundation Holdings. From ‘Staff Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting, 12–13 December 1947’, p. 12; and ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1946’, p. 12, both in Century Foundation Holdings. From Eakins, ‘Business Planners’, p. 159. ‘Report of the Committee on Foreign Economic Relations’, (from draft circulated to trustees on 30 September 1946), Century Foundation Holdings. Ibid. The CFER also recommended that the United States amend the IBRD to allow it to operate as a ‘countercyclical instrument to stabilize the flow of foreign investment’ and concentrate its funds primarily on financing longer-term reconstruction and development programmes and relegate shorter-term rehabilitation funding to the Export-Import Bank of the United States. In addition, the CFER advocated the creation of an ‘international buffer stock agency’ of storable raw materials to relieve pressure on imports during a depression. This idea was formulated from similar suggestions made by the League of Nations and the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization; ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 8. Eakins makes this point (though his dates and report sequences are confused); see ‘Business Planners’, pp. 159–60. See ‘Staff Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting, 12–13 December 1947’, p. 13, Century Foundation Holdings. Established in 1936, the PAC was a mass educational organ that successfully issued pamphlets on current affairs (twelve million by 1947) edited by Maxwell S. Stewart. The PAC published condensed studies of the TCF’s – mainly domestic – during the 1940s, and had Dewhurst and Soule on its board of directors. From article in the New York Times of 26 September 1946, copy in ‘Staff Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting, 4–5 October 1946’, Century Foundation Holdings. Gloria Waldron and Norman Buchanan, America’s Stake in World Trade, Public Affairs Pamphlet No. 130 (New York: Public Affairs Committee, 1947), p. 15, Century Foundation Holdings. Ibid., pp. 12, 20, 23 and 30–1.

Notes

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54 Norman Buchanan and Friedrich Lutz, Rebuilding the World Economy: America’s Role in Foreign Trade and Investment (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1947). 55 ‘Staff Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting, 12–13 December 1947’, p. 12, Century Foundation Holdings. 56 ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1946’, p. 12; also ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1947’, p. 13, both in Century Foundation Holdings 57 Op cit., p. 45. 58 Buchanan thanked Ellis, Condliffe, William Fellner, Margaret S. Gordon and J. M. Latiche for their comments on the manuscript; see Rebuilding the World Economy, p. ix. Ellis was a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley. 59 Buchanan and Lutz, Rebuilding the World Economy, p. vii. Reiterated in the ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1947’, p. 19, Century Foundation Holdings. 60 Berle, Leaning Against the Dawn, p. 50. 61 Written by Landis, the second volume sought to provide a broad picture of how cartels worked for a general readership; see ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1948’, p. 17, Century Foundation Holdings. 62 See ‘Staff Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting, 8 December 1945’, Century Foundation Holdings. 63 Clark to Chase, 5 March 1945; and Carskadon to Dawson, 7 December 1945, both in Stuart Chase Papers, Box 6, MDLC. A summary of conclusions for Stuart Chase, Tomorrow’s Trade: Problems of our Foreign Commerce (New York: TCF, 1945), is on pp. 142–4. 64 ‘Staff Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting, 8 December 1945’, Century Foundation Holdings. 65 Berle, Leaning Against the Dawn, p. 46. 66 ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1947’, p. 9, Century Foundation Holdings. 67 Ibid., p. 16. It took over twelve months to physically print the survey’s text and statistical material. 68 Ibid., p. 14. For Slichter comment, see ‘Minutes of Meeting, 18 April 1947’, CED Minutes of Board Meetings II. 69 Op cit., pp. 17–18. 70 See ‘Staff Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting, 12–13 December 1947’, p. 29; and ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1948’, pp. 13–15, both in Century Foundation Holdings. A copy of The Miracle of America can also be found in the Century Foundation Holdings. 71 ‘Staff Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting, 12–13 December 1947’, p. 1, Century Foundation Holdings. 72 The original title was ‘USA- 1950’; see ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1945’, p. 16, Century Foundation Holdings; also ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1947’, p. 18, Century Foundation Holdings. USA: Measure of a Nation was published by Macmillan. 73 Promotional articles were written in twelve different languages for the foreign press; see ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1949’, p. 8, Century Foundation Holdings. Also in 1948 the main spin-off study from Resources was begun. Under the leadership of Robert W, Hartley in collaboration with Eleanor Wolkind and the assistance of Maynard Hufschmidt and Sidney Jaffe, the capital outlays needed for permanent works and structures and durable machines and equipment in twentyeight areas of the US economy were analysed in America’s Capital Requirements:

248

74 75 76 77

78

79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89

90 91 92 93

Notes Estimates for 1946-1960, released in September 1950; see ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1948’, p. 15, Century Foundation Holdings. ‘Staff Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting, 4–5 October 1946’, pp. 12–13, Century Foundation Holdings. Berle later credited his own ‘insistence’ for the trustee’s decision to conduct a study of Brazil; see Berle, Leaning Against the Dawn, p .48. Reported in ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1946’, p. 11, Century Foundation Holdings. ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1948’, pp. 25–6, Century Foundation Holdings. The study team was Frank Smothers, William Hardy McNeill and Elizabeth D. McNeill. Berle later commented that Report on the Greeks was not too successful at pointing out the issues; see Berle, Leaning Against the Dawn, p. 47. Others on the Turkey study were Max Weston Thornburg and Graham Spry. George Wythe, Royce A Wight and Harold M. Midkiff studied Brazil; listed in ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1949’, p. 44, Century Foundation Holdings. Summaries of these studies can be found in ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1948’, pp. 26–8, Century Foundation Holdings. All from ‘Prospectus: Survey of the Soviet Economy’, 22 November 1948, Century Foundation Holdings. ‘Staff Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting (revised), 25–27 March 1949’, p. 52, Century Foundation Holdings. ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1948’, pp. 22–3; also ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1949’, p. 24, both in Century Foundation Holdings. Listed in ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1950’, pp. 14–15, Century Foundation Holdings. See ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1945’, p. 12, Century Foundation Holdings. MGM ‘declined’ to produce a TCF film; see ‘Staff Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting, 4–5 October 1946’, p. 2, Century Foundation Holdings. ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1945’, p. 12; also ‘News from the Twentieth Century Fund’ Press Release, 19 July 1948, both Century Foundation Holdings. ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1945’, p. 12, Century Foundation Holdings. ‘Twentieth Century Fund Annual Report, 1948’, p. 19, Century Foundation Holdings. Ibid., p. 11. Figures extrapolated from ‘Staff Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting, 12–13 December 1947’, p. 29, Century Foundation Holdings. In 1945 two Chase publications comprised the largest single orders purchased that year, to the US Armed Forces Institute and the US Navy; see ‘Staff Report to the Board of Trustees for the Annual Meeting, 8 December 1945’, p. 29, Century Foundation Holdings. NPA to Truman, 12 October 1945, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 95, FDRL. A copy of 4 for 4 can be found in this box. Truman to NPA, 15 October 1945, copy in NPAC, Box 64; also Charles Taussig Papers, Box 95, FDRL. Planning Pamphlet Nos. 43–44, National Budgets for Full Employment (April 1945), p. v. All from ‘NPA History and Accomplishments, 1934-1959’ (circa 1959), p. 24, NPAC, Box 64. Coil was a ‘guest’ at a CED meeting which discussed the Bill, but

Notes

94

95 96

97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104

105

106 107 108 109 110 111

112 113 114

115 116

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no comments of substance were attributed to him; see ‘Discussion Notes of Joint Research Meeting, 7–8 July 1945’, CED Research Minutes II. Written with the help of pro-Keynesian economist Gerhard Colm, the principal fiscal analyst in the US Bureau of the Budget, the NPA called this its ‘landmark’ study and that the creation of the Council of Economic Advisers was directly attributable to the NPA’s study; see NPA at Work, pp. 11–12. Minutes of Board Meeting, 4 June 1946, NPAC, Box 67. They were Food for Europe after Victory (January 1944), Clothing and Shelter for European Relief (May 1944), Europe’s Uprooted People: The Relocation of Displaced Population (September 1944), Relief and Rehabilitation Study Guide (November 1944), China’s Relief Needs (January 1945), and America Must Help Feed Europe This Winter (December 1945). NPA at Work, p. 15. Minutes of Board Meeting, 4 June 1946, NPAC, Box 67. From attachment to ‘Minutes of Meeting of Board of Trustees, 9 December 1946’, NPAC, Box 67. Minutes of Executive Committee Meeting, 19 October 1946, NPAC, Box 67. Planning Pamphlet Nos. 37–38, America’s New Opportunities in World Trade (November 1944), pp. 7–8. Noted by Eakins, ‘Business Planners’, p. 156. From ‘Report of the Joint Meeting of the Board of Trustees, 1951’, p. 6, NPAC, Box 64. ‘A Report to Members on NPA’s Annual Joint Meeting, 8–9 December 1947’, p. 3, NPAC, Box 6. Ibid., p. 21. America’s Vital Interest in European Recovery and the Joint Statement on the General Principles and Administration of the Marshall Plan were issued as Special Reports as part of the Relief Series on European recovery. Planning Pamphlet Nos. 60–61, The Marshall Plan (February 1948), pp. 3, 8–9. Various detailed policy statements on how the European Recovery Program should work (all dated April 1948) are in Papers of William L. Clayton, Box 78, HSTL. NPA at Work, p. 14. From ‘Report of the Joint Meeting of the Board of Trustees, 1951’, pp. 6–7, NPAC, Box 64. Planning Pamphlet No. 50, International Economic Collaboration (February 1946), p. 6. See ‘Minutes of Meeting of Board of Trustees, 9 December 1946’, NPAC, Box 67. Planning Pamphlet No. 59, Obstacles to Multilateral Trade (April 1947), p. 5. The NPA also agreed to ‘make its experience available’ to private research groups devoted to European recovery; see ‘Minutes of Meeting of Board of Trustees, 9 June 1948’, NPAC, Box 67. NPA at Work, p. 15. ‘NPA History and Accomplishments, 1934-1959’, p. 23. The board ‘unanimously authorized the staff to explore the availability of funds and to lay the plans for the extending of the budget analyses’; ‘Minutes of Meeting of Board of Trustees, 11 June 1947’, NPAC, Box 67. See ‘A Report to Members on the NPA’s Annual Joint Meeting, 8–9 December 1947’, NPAC, Box 6. The NPA justified the report as ‘it was recognized before the end of the war that American technical know-how would be a major key in the reconstruction of a war-torn world’; see ‘A Report to Members on the NPA’s Annual Joint Meeting,

250

117 118 119 120

121 122

123

124

125

126 127 128

Notes 8–9 December 1947’, p. 21, NPAC, Box 6. State Department comments recorded in ‘Minutes of Meeting of Board of Trustees, 9 December 1947’, NPAC, Box 67. From ‘Minutes of the Annual Meeting of the Board of Trustees, 6–7 December 1945’, NPAC, Box 67. Minutes of Board Meeting, 4 June 1946, NPAC, Box 67. The board began the search for new offices in March 1945; see ‘Minutes of Special Meeting of the Board of Trustees, 16 March 1945’, NPAC, Box 67. Outlined in ‘A Report to Members on NPA’s Annual Joint Meeting, 8–9 December 1947’, pp. 28–30, NPAC, Box 6; also copy in Gardner Jackson Papers, Container 105, FDRL. ‘Minutes of Meeting of Board of Trustees, 9 June 1948’, NPAC, Box 67. From ‘Minutes of Meeting of Board of Trustees, 8 June 1949’, NPAC, Box 67. This shift had begun six months before; see ‘Minutes of the NPA Steering Committee, 15 October 1948’, Papers of William L. Clayton, Box 78, HSTL, which contained several references to Soviet ‘aggression’ and agreed that US militarization and its relations with the Soviet Union had ‘first priority’. Also ‘Strategic Goals of American Foreign Policy’, 1 and 20 November 1948, which urged caution over rushing to arms (same file). The December 1946 Joint Statement Goals of Cooperation: A Declaration of Interdependence, which called for an end to ‘blind industrial warfare’ between labour and management as ‘neither can win and democracy is bound to lose’ during the transition became ‘front-page news’ and ‘business firms and labor unions distributed large numbers of copies with their endorsement’. Also ‘cultural, professional, and religious organizations held meetings devoted to the subject’; see Coil to Taussig, 24 January 1947, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 95, FDRL; and ‘Report of the Joint Meeting of the Board of Trustees, 1951’, pp. 6–7, NPAC, Box 64. From draft of ‘America’s Economic Preparedness’, 24 August 1949, in Papers of William L. Clayton, Box 78, HSTL. The statement, which argued the United States was not heading for a new depression, was written at the request of Hoffman and was vetted by his ‘staff ’. This was according to Schriftgiesser, Business Comes of Age, p. 68 (footnote). Publication dates reported in ‘Discussion Notes of Research Committee and Research Advisory Board Meeting, 23–24 September 1944’, CED Research Minutes I. For brief analysis of Benton’s article see McQuaid, Big Business and Presidential Power, pp. 117–19. ‘An Address by William Benton to the Board of Trustees of the CED’, 11 May 1949, Papers of William L. Clayton, Box 72, HSTL. First raised in December 1943, the subject of agriculture attracted little attention. Agricultural economist Theodore Schultz claimed: ‘in thinking about the postwar problems of agriculture, we are not dealing with great changes’. A year later and Schultz had changed his mind. In his presentation to the research division of his first draft of a policy statement on ‘Agriculture in a Developing Economy’ in January 1945 – released in January 1946 as Agriculture in an Unstable Economy and Agriculture in an Expanding Economy – Schultz’s prognosis was a grim one. Despite thriving during the war, once the fighting was over US agriculture would witness a return of the chronic problems that beset the industry in the pre-war period. This called for, as Schultz put it, ‘stabilizing the industrial urban economy’. In the meantime, price fluctuations in farm goods caused by unstable demand needed to be ‘compensated’. Ruml objected that terms like ‘compensation’ would be considered ‘Keynesian’, but few questioned Schultz’s underlying reasoning that some form of

Notes

129 130

131 132 133 134 135 136 137

138 139

140 141

142 143

144 145 146

147 148

251

price subsidy was required to provide stability in agriculture. All from ‘Discussion Notes of Research Committee and Advisory Board Meeting, 20–21 January 1945’, CED Research Minutes I. ‘Discussion Notes of Research Committee and Advisory Board Meeting, 20–21 January 1945’, CED Research Minutes I. For 1944–45 they were ‘Settlement of Claims Arising from Terminated War Contracts’; ‘Disposal of Surplus Government Property and Plants’; ‘Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion’; ‘Economic Problems of the Reconversion Period’; ‘Summary of the Activities of the Special Committee’; ‘The Post-War Foreign Economic Policy of the United States’; and ‘Postwar Public Works and Construction’. Minutes of Meeting, 16–17 April 1945, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. Minutes of Meeting, 9–10 July 1945, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. Myers memorandum to Benton, 7 May 1945, The Papers of William Benton, Folder 1, Box 255 (also Folder 5, Box 258), SCRC. Johnston was unhappy with the negative USCC stance on the Bill; see Collins, Business Response to Keynes, pp. 103–4. See ‘Minutes of General Council Meeting, 10–11 January 1945’, Papers of William L. Clayton, Box 40, HSTL. ‘Discussion Notes of Joint Research Meeting, 20–21 May 1945’, CED Research Minutes II. ‘Discussion Notes of Research Committee and Research Advisory Board Meeting, 7–8 April 1945’, CED Research Minutes I. The BAC also backed the CED position: see ‘Minutes of General Council Meeting, 6–7 June 1944’, Papers of William L. Clayton, Box 40, HSTL. Schriftgiesser, Business Comes of Age, p. 93. Raised in ‘Minutes of Joint Research Meeting, 24–25 July 1943’, CED Research Minutes I. Myers also complained that the CED ‘does not discuss details of legislation’; ‘Discussion Notes of Research Committee and Research Advisory Board Meeting, 7–8 September 1945’, CED Research Minutes II. ‘Discussion Notes of Research Committee and Research Advisory Board Meeting, 7–8 September 1945’, CED Research Minutes II. Quoted in Raucher, Paul G. Hoffman, pp. 54–5. Hoffman also used the term ‘abundant’; see ‘Discussion Notes of Joint Research Meeting, 20–21 May 1945’, CED Research Minutes II. When approached by Senator Murray for his opinion, Calkins told him he disapproved of the term ‘assure’ in the Bill; same file. See Domhoff, The Myth of Liberal Ascendancy, p. 58. For a good summary of CED’s role, see McQuaid, Big Business and Presidential Power, pp. 123–32. The USCC also had a hand in watering-down the Bill; see Collins, Business Response to Keynes, pp. 103–9. See Schriftgiesser, Business Comes of Age, p. 99. This point is underscored by Domhoff, The Myth of Liberal Ascendancy, p. 58. ‘Discussion Notes of Joint Research Meeting, 20–21 September 1946’, CED Research Minutes II. Hoffman stated the CEA should ‘take into account the work of private groups’ as well as of the government. Figures from Schriftgiesser, Business Comes of Age, p. 54; noted in Domhoff, The Myth of Liberal Ascendancy, p. 40. All figures from ‘Discussion Notes of Research Committee and Research Advisory Board Meeting, 20–21 October 1945’, CED Research Minutes II. To this output was added Postwar Employment and the Removal of Wartime Controls;

252

149 150 151 152 153

154 155

156 157

158 159

160 161 162 163 164

165

166

Notes Providing for Unemployed Workers in the Transition; The Bretton Woods Proposals; Postwar Employment and the Removal of Wartime Controls; International Trade, Foreign Investment and Domestic Employment; International Trade and Domestic Employment; Demobilization of Wartime Economic Controls; American Industry Looks Ahead; The Problem of Changeover Unemployment; and Toward More Production, More Jobs and More Freedom. See ‘Minutes of Meeting, 9–10 July 1945’, CED Minutes of Board Meetings I. ‘Minutes of General Council Meeting, 5–6 September 1945’, Papers of William L. Clayton, Box 40, HSTL. Minutes of Meeting, 12 February 1946, CED Minutes of Board Meetings II. Ibid. A detailed account of the CED meeting at Hot Springs, Virginia, where this subject was debated is in Schriftgiesser, Business Comes of Age, pp. 66–7. See also account of this discussion in McQuaid, Big Business and Presidential Power, pp. 132–3. Minutes of Meeting, 12 July 1946, CED Minutes of Board Meetings II. Minutes of Meeting, 12 February 1946, CED Minutes of Board Meetings II. The information committee included Willard T. Chevalier of Business Week and vice president of McGraw-Hill, CED’s publisher. Community CED chairman were asked not to set up local committees but work with ‘already constituted local organizations’; see ‘Minutes of Meeting, 12 July 1946’, CED Minutes of Board Meetings II. See ‘Minutes of Meeting, 18 October 1946’, CED Minutes of Board Meetings II. Hoffman and Harrison met with Treasury Secretary John Snyder and Truman and discussed fiscal policy and inflation; see ‘Discussion Notes of Joint Research Meeting, 9–11 July 1946’, CED Research Minutes II. Benton’s task was to oversee the information (propaganda) about the United States which filtered overseas. Only after some prompting by Clayton – again – did the CED offer its qualified support for the ITO in 1949 (when it was clear it would fail) on the proviso that the articles relating to investment, which it considered exposed the United States to unscrupulous foreign governments, be eliminated. See Clayton to Walter Williams (CED Chairman), 10 September 1948, Papers of William L. Clayton, Box 72, HSTL; for CED position see The International Trade Organization and the Reconstruction of World Trade (CED, June 1949). This was backed-up by International Trade and Domestic Employment in September 1945. Minutes of Meeting, 12 July 1946, CED Minutes of Board Meetings II. See ‘Minutes of Meeting, 18 October 1946’, CED Minutes of Board Meetings II. Underlined by Domhoff, The Myth of Liberal Ascendancy, p. 59. From Eakins, ‘Business Planners’, p. 164; also Schriftgiesser, Business Comes of Age, pp. 127–8; and McQuaid, Big Business and Presidential Power, pp. 154–5 (although their numbers differ); and William Sanford, The American Business Community and the European Recovery Program, 1947-1952 (New York: Garland Publishing Co., 1987), p. 75. Raucher, Paul G. Hoffman, p. 60. Hoffman was indeed becoming more prominent, making it into Forbes magazine in July 1947; copy in Papers of Paul G. Hoffman, Box 111, HSTL. Taylor’s appointment was announced in ‘Minutes of Meeting, 16 October 1947’, CED Minutes of Board Meetings II.

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167 All from ‘Discussion Notes of Joint Research Meeting, 10 November 1947’, CED Research Minutes II. 168 Identified by Hogan, The Marshall Plan, pp. 100–1. 169 Bullis had recently toured Europe. His three reasons for supporting the Marshall Plan were ‘humanitarian’, ‘selfish’ and ‘military’; see ‘Minutes of Meeting, 16 October 1947’, CED Minutes of Board Meetings II. 170 ‘Discussion Notes of Joint Research Meeting, 10 November 1947’, CED Research Minutes II. 171 Minutes of Meeting, 16 October 1947, CED Minutes of Board Meetings II. 172 ‘Discussion Notes of Joint Research Meeting, 10 November 1947’, CED Research Minutes II. 173 On conclusions of Harriman Committee, see Hogan, The Marshall Plan, p. 99. 174 See ‘Minutes of Meeting, 16 October 1947’, CED Minutes of Board Meetings II. Other members of the Taylor committee were Jay Hormel, Chester Davis, Thomas McCabe, Philip Reed, J. Cameron Thomson and Henry Bristol. For Schriftgiesser, the NPA and CED positions were in ‘significant agreement’ on principles; see Business Comes of Age, p. 131. 175 An American Program of European Economic Cooperation: A Statement on National Policy by CED (Washington, DC: CED, February 1948), pp. 9–11 and 28–9. Also Whitham, ‘The Committee for Economic Development’, p. 867. 176 For business mindset see Hogan, Marshall Plan, pp. 95–7; and Sanford, The American Business Community and the European Recovery Program, pp. 68, 82. 177 See Sanford, The American Business Community and the European Recovery Program, pp. 100–1. 178 ‘Discussion Notes of Joint Research Meeting, 10 November 1947’, CED Research Minutes II. 179 For an account of this group see Michael Wala, ‘Selling the Marshall Plan at Home: The Committee for the Marshall Plan to Aid European Recovery’, Diplomatic History, Vol. 10, No. 3 (Summer 1986), pp. 221–66. On business planners’ membership, see p. 260. 180 Sanford, The American Business Community and the European Recovery Program, p. 77. 181 See Eakins, ‘Business Planners’, pp. 165–6; also McQuaid, Big Business and Presidential Power, pp. 156–7; Hogan, The Marshall Plan, pp. 97–9 on role of business planners in Marshall Committee; and Domhoff, The Myth of Liberal Ascendancy, p. 61. 182 Raucher, Paul G. Hoffman, p. 62. Hoffman became more politically suitable when it was mooted State Department high priest Clayton, a former Republican turned Democrat, might head the plan; see Pollard, Economic Security and the Origins of the Cold War, p. 150. Also Sanford, The American Business Community and the European Recovery Program, pp. 102–3, for the decision over Hoffman. Hoffman claimed that in approving his appointment, the Senate Foreign Relations was ‘most impressed’ by the fact that he was chairman of the CED and he was ‘struck by their knowledge of our publications’; Minutes of Meeting, 20 May 1948, CED Minutes of Board Meetings II. Hoffman was replaced as CED chairman by W. Walter Williams, chairman of the board of Continental, Inc., a Seattle-based mortgage, banking, insurance, real estate and property management corporation. He was partly chosen for his relative obscurity – as indeed Hoffman had been chosen in 1942.

254

Notes

183 McQuaid, Big Business and Presidential Power, p. 158. For summary of CED and Marshall Plan see McQuaid, Uneasy Partners, pp. 45–7. 184 See Schriftgiesser, Business Comes of Age, p. 133. 185 See Hogan, Marshall Plan, pp. 139–40. Edward Mason, Calvin Hoover and Richard Bissell, Jr, also later joined the ECA. Schriftgiesser noted that this early enthusiasm for many CED acolytes was in some part fuelled by the desire to assume high ground in expectation of bigger jobs after a Republican victory in the 1948 presidential election; see Business Comes of Age, p. 133. Batt supervised disbursement of Marshall funds in London. 186 Numbers given in ‘Minutes of Meeting, 12 July 1946’, CED Minutes of Board Meetings II. It was estimated there were around 1,900 ‘important’ trade publications at that time with a circulation of over twenty million. 187 Recorded in Minutes of Meeting, 20 May 1948, CED Minutes of Board Meetings II. 188 Detailed in ‘CED Progress Report’, June 1949, Papers of William L. Clayton, Box 72, HSTL. 189 Eakins, ‘Business Planners’, p. 147. 190 The minutes ascribe very few comments of substance to Coil at a meeting which discussed the issue of ‘full employment’ and the Murray Bill; see ‘Discussion Notes of Joint Research Meeting, 7–8 July 1945’, CED Research Minutes II. Sonne election mentioned in Minutes of Meeting, 26 April 1946, CED Minutes of Board Meetings II. Hoffman mentioned in ‘Minutes of the Annual Meeting of the Board of Trustees, 6–7 December 1945’, NPAC, Box 67. Hoffman was invited to become a trustee in June 1946; see ‘Minutes of Board Meeting, 4 June 1946’, NPAC, Box 67. 191 The ‘Committee of the South’ was chaired by Governor Broughton; see ‘Minutes of Executive Committee Meeting, 19 October 1946’, NPAC, Box 67; and ‘Minutes of Meeting of Board of Trustees, 11 June 1947’, NPAC, Box 67; also Calvin Hoover, Memoirs of Capitalism, Communism, and Nazism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1965), p. 252. 192 See Patterson, Grand Expectations, p. 61. 193 See McQuaid’s summary in Big Business and Presidential Power, pp. 119–21. 194 Noted by Domhoff, The Myth of Liberal Ascendancy, p. 61. 195 See Eakins, ‘Business Planners’, pp. 159–60. 196 Minutes of Meeting, 20 May 1948, CED Minutes of Board Meetings II. 197 Ibid. 198 For Eisenhower see ‘The Role of CED Today: An Address by Thomas B. McCabe’, Washington, DC, CED, 15 November 1950. Eisenhower was listed as ‘President of Columbia University’. The CED was later eclipsed by the Business Roundtable in the 1970s; see Domhoff, The Myth of Liberal Ascendancy, Chapter Ten. This book is the latest on the post-war history of the CED. On post-war influence of BAC, see Burris, ‘Elite Policy-Planning Networks in the United States’, pp. 116–17. Burris claimed twenty-eight members of the BAC (or the Business Council as it came to be known) entered top positions (some cabinet level) in the post-New Deal era. Burris accredited the influence of the corporate moderates to the successful mobilization of political conservatives in the three decades since the Second World War (p. 130). 199 See NPA at Work, p. 22. 200 ‘A Quarter Century of National Planning’, June 1959, Box 64, NPAC. 201 Noted in NPA at Work, pp. 38–9. 202 Berle, Leaning Against the Dawn, pp. 52 and 56, respectively.

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Conclusions 1 Eakins noted this business optimism ‘given the years of depression pessimism’; Eakins, ‘Business Planners’, pp. 148–9. Also Brinkley, End of Reform, pp. 175–7. 2 Winkler and Brinkley conversely argued that the experience of mobilization ‘served not as a model to liberals, but as a warning’ due to the rise of private business; Winkler, Home Front USA, p. 20. 3 Stein, Presidential Economics, pp. 65–6. 4 Domhoff, The Myth of Liberal Ascendancy, p. 39. 5 McQuaid, Big Business and Presidential Power, p. 117. For similar characterizations see Harris, The Right to Manage, p. 182; Collins, Business Response to Keynes, p. 140; and Domhoff, The Myth of Liberal Ascendancy, p. 39. 6 Patterson, Grand Expectations, pp. 55 and 59, respectively. 7 Minutes of Meeting, 12 July 1946, CED Minutes of Board Meetings II. 8 Alan Brinkley, ‘Over Here: World War Two and American Liberalism’, in Major Problems in American History, Volume II: Since 1865, ed. Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman and Jon Gjerde (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002), p. 274. As McQuaid claimed, it was international conflict, militarization and domestic crisis which allowed corporate moderates to exert political influence; see McQuaid, ‘Corporate Liberalism in the American Business Community’, p. 343. 9 Collins, Business Response to Keynes, p. 14; and Jones, ‘Keynesians in Wartime Policy’, p. 131. 10 Eakins talked of a ‘working coalition of corporate liberal businessmen, government officials, and academicians, all of whom often played several of these roles simultaneously’; Eakins, ‘Business Planners’, p. 143. Silva, paraphrasing Domhoff, described a ‘network of businessmen, academics and politicians’ that ‘guide’ federal decision-making; Edward T. Silva, ‘Before Radical Rejection: A Comment on Block’s “Beyond Corporate Liberalism” ’, Social Problems, Vol. 25, No. 3 (February 1978), p. 347. 11 McQuaid, ‘The Business Advisory Council’, p. 192. 12 The term was coined by C. Wright Mills, and originally preferred as a description of the CED by Domhoff, The Power Elite, p. 37, and Harris, The Right to Manage, pp. 182–3. 13 Hoffman might be considered equally ‘instrumental’, but mostly later on. Other candidates include Clayton, Flanders and Chester Davis. 14 ‘Minutes of Meeting of Board of Trustees, 8 June 1949’, NPAC, Box 67. Symington suggested the failing private railroads as an example. 15 See ‘Record of Actions by the Board of Trustees, 1937-1948’, Century Foundation Holdings. 16 Summarized by Hogan, The Marshall Plan, pp. 30–1. 17 This point was made by Pollard, Economic Security and the Origins of the Cold War, p. 4; 134–6. 18 Eakins, ‘Business Planners’, p. 168. 19 See Eakins, ‘Business Planners’, p. 166. Hogan linked the policy of the Marshall Plan with the advent of corporate liberals – or what he called the ‘capital-intensive bloc’ – in the US establishment, naming the BAC, CED and NPA; Hogan, Marshall Plan, pp. 13–18. 20 Harris, The Right to Manage, p. 181. 21 This was noted by the NPA, which believed the work of the CFR was ‘considered confidential’; from list of other groups undertaking post-war studies in ‘Post-War

256

22 23 24 25

26 27 28 29

30 31

32

33 34

35

36

Notes Reconstruction Group: Summary of Points of Last Meeting, February 6’, 25 February 1941, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 93, FDRL. Harris, The Right to Manage, p. 183. Harris believed the CED was ‘outstandingly optimist’ (same page). The heightened confidence of private capitalists is central to Higgs thesis on postwar recovery; see Higgs, Depression, War and Cold War, pp. 74–5. See Stein, Presidential Economics, pp. 78–9. In his last book for the TCF, Chase submitted that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima ‘marked the third great epoch in the history of mankind’ which opened ‘unprecedented increases in production, living standards, public health’; Stuart Chase, For This We Fought (New York: TCF, 1946), p. 114. Higgs, Depression, War and Cold War, p. 75. For treatment of CEA shortcomings, see Collins, More: The Politics of Economic Growth in Postwar America, pp. 25–32. McQuaid, ‘The Business Advisory Council’, p. 192. Hence, they argued, centralized wartime planning was not a ‘viable’ model for postwar planning in democracies; Milward and Klausen theories dealt with in Klausen, ‘Did World War II End the New Deal’, pp. 198–9. Minutes of Meeting, 20 May 1948, CED Minutes of Board Meetings II. Similar conclusions have been made about the influence of the CFR on US policy, which operated indirectly like ‘osmosis’; see discussion in Parmar, Think Tanks and Power, p. 121. As organizations, the NAM and the USCC remained largely outside of this process, with leading members only ‘monitoring’. As an article in Newsweek of 12 April 1943 stated, the USCC was ‘holding to its role of adviser to industry’ and had ‘withheld any conclusions regarding postwar conditions’; sent as attachment to Coil to Taussig, 20 April 1943, Charles Taussig Papers, Box 94, FDRL. The USCC had ‘initiated independent studies under a committee headed by Edgar V. O’Daniel’ who was vice president of American Cyanamid Company. This committee was issuing a ‘series’ of ‘study bulletins’ by Dr Emerson P. Schmidt ‘dealing with domestic problems of reconstruction and later with the international phases’. Johnston was stated as being ‘one of the most ardent postwar planners among businessmen’. Also, in the words of McQuaid, ‘the NAM and the USCC spoke in the idioms of conflict, the BC [Business Advisory Council] and the CED in those of cooperation’; McQuaid, Uneasy Partners, p. 19. Minutes of Meeting, 12 February 1946, CED Minutes of Board Meetings II. Second quotation from press release of same date (attached to minutes). ‘Report of the Joint Meeting of the Board of Trustees, 1951’, p. 5, NPAC, Box 64; Minutes of Meeting, 12 July 1946, CED Minutes of Board Meetings II; and Hoffman in Minutes of Meeting, 20 May 1948, CED Minutes of Board Meetings II. A probability noted by Domhoff in relation to the CED; see The Myth of Liberal Ascendancy, p. 41. Hoffman also claimed that there was ‘general agreement’ that local CED groups ‘contributed importantly to the attainment of our continuing high postwar employment’; Minutes of Meeting, 20 May 1948, CED Minutes of Board Meetings II. This matter is debated in Block, ‘Beyond Corporate Liberalism’, p. 357 and Silva, ‘Before Radical Rejection: A Comment on Block’s “Beyond Corporate Liberalism” ’, p. 346.

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Chapters in edited collections Bernstein, Barton, ‘Americans in War and Peace: The Test of Liberalism’, in Barton Bernstein (ed.), Towards a New Past, New York: Vintage Books, 1968, pp. 289–321. Brinkley, Alan, ‘Over Here: World War Two and American Liberalism’, in Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman and Jon Gjerde (eds), Major Problems in American History, Volume II: Since 1865, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002, pp. 270–7. Domhoff, G. William, ‘Who Made American Foreign Policy, 1945-1963?’, in David Horowitz (ed.), Corporations and the Cold War, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969, pp. 25–69. Eakins, David W., ‘Business Planners and America’s Postwar Expansion’, in David Horowitz (ed.), Corporations and the Cold War, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969, pp. 143–71. Eakins, David W., ‘Policy-Planning for the Establishment’, in Ronald Radosh and Murray N. Rothbard (eds), A New History of Leviathan: Essays on the Rise of the American Corporate State, New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1972, pp. 188–205. Gardner, Lloyd C., ‘The New Deal, New Frontiers, and the Cold War: A Re-examination of American Expansion, 1933-1945’, in David Horowitz (ed.), Corporations and the Cold War, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969, pp. 105–41. Hathaway, Robert M., ‘1933-1945: Economic Diplomacy in a Time of Crisis’, in William H. Becker and Samuel F. Wells, Jr. (eds), Economics and World Power: An Assessment of American Diplomacy Since 1789, New York: Columbia University Press, 1984, pp. 277–332. Hawley, Ellis, ‘The New Deal and Business’, in John Braeman, Robert Bremner and David Brody (eds), The New Deal: The National Level, Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1975, pp. 50–82. Hogan, Michael J., ‘The Marshall Plan and the Search for Economic Order’, in Thomas G. Patterson and Robert j. McMahon (eds), The Origins of the Cold War, Lexington: D. C. Heath and Company, 1991 edition, pp. 213–28.

276

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Klausen, Jytte, ‘Did World War II End the New Deal: A Comparative Perspective on Postwar Planning Initiatives’, in Sidney Milkis and Jerome Mileur (eds), The New Deal and the Triumph of Liberalism, Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002, pp. 193–230. Kolko, Joyce, and Gabriel Kolko, ‘American Capitalist Expansion’, in Thomas G. Patterson and Robert j. McMahon (eds), The Origins of the Cold War, Lexington: D. C. Heath and Company, 1991 edition, pp. 14–21. Patterson, Thomas G., ‘The Quest for Peace and Prosperity: International Trade, Communism, and the Marshall Plan’, in Barton J. Bernstein (ed.), Politics and Policies of the Truman Administration, Chicago: Quadrangle, 1970, pp. 78–112. Peden, G. C., ‘Old Dogs and New Tricks: The British Treasury and Keynesian Economics in the 1940s and 1950s’, in M. O. Turner and B. E. Supple (eds), The State and Economic Knowledge: The American and British Experiences, London: Cambridge University Press, 1990, pp. 208–38. Pollard, Robert A., and Samuel F. Wells, Jr., ‘1945-1960: The Era of American Hegemony’, in William H. Becker and Samuel F. Wells, Jr. (eds), Economics and World Power: An Assessment of American Diplomacy Since 1789, New York: Columbia University Press, 1984, pp. 333–90. Rockoff, Hugh, ‘The United States: From Ploughshares to Swords’, in Mark Harrison (ed.), The Economics of World War Two: Six Great Powers in International Comparison, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 81–121. Woods, Randall B., ‘FDR and the New Economic Order’, in David Woolner, Warren Kimball and David Reynolds (eds), FDR’s World: War, Peace and Legacies, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, pp. 175–226.

Magazine articles Benton, William B., ‘The Economics of a Free Society: A Declaration of American Economic Policy’, Fortune (October 1944). Fischer, John, ‘The Lost Liberals: Can they find a Road Map?’ Harper’s, Vol. 194 (May 1947). Hodson, William A., and John Carfora, ‘Stuart Chase: Brief life of a Public Thinker, 1888-1985’, Harvard Magazine (September to October 2004). Kaysen, Karl, ‘Big Business and the Liberals: Then and Now’, New Republic, Vol. 131 (22 November 1954).

Unpublished dissertations Brady, Patrick G., ‘Toward Security: Postwar Economic and Social Planning in the Executive Office, 1939-1946’ (PhD dissertation, Rutgers University, 1975). Eakins, David, ‘The Development of Corporate Liberal Policy Research in the United States, 1885-1965’ (PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1966). Fucillo, Vincent, ‘The Committee for Economic Development: A study of a corporate sponsor-participant policy research interest group’ (PhD dissertation, New York University, 1969). Hill, William Steinert, Jr., ‘The Business Community and National Defense: Corporate Leaders and the Military, 1943-1950’ (PhD dissertation, Stanford University, 1980).

Bibliography Shoup, Laurence, ‘Shaping the National Interest: The Council on Foreign Relations, the Department of State, and the origins of the postwar world’ (PhD dissertation, Northwestern University, 1974). Tilman, Lee, ‘The American Business Community and the Death of the New Deal’ (PhD dissertation, University of Arizona, 1966). Warken, Philip, ‘A History of the National Resources Planning Board, 1933-1943’ (PhD dissertation, Ohio State University, 1969). Whyatt, Nelson Thomas, ‘Planning for the Post-War World: Liberal Journalism during World War II’ (PhD dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1971).

277

Index Abbott, Charles 97 Acheson, Dean 141 AFL. See American Federation of Labor agriculture 29, 40, 81, 85, 89, 147, 167 BAC 53 CED 68–70, 72, 95, 98, 172 NESPA 18, 29 NPA 32, 39, 86, 93, 122–3, 125–6, 138–9, 167 TCF 20, 43, 53, 117 war effort 1, 91, 150 aid Brazil 164–5 Britain 28, 39 Europe 77, 149, 152–4, 157, 161–2, 168–9, 178–80, 190 Greece and Turkey 160, 164–5 lend-lease 132 worldwide 132 See also Marshall Plan Albert Lea 95, 120, 121 Alexander, Sidney S. 169–70 Altschul, Frank 141–2 American Federation of Labor (AFL) 31, 109, 147 American Friends Service Committee 83, 168 American Management Association 111 Anderson, Benjamin M. 114 Anglo–American relations 38–9 Appleby, Paul H. 125 Atlantic Charter 39, 82, 133, 141, 164 BAC. See Business Advisory Council balanced budget 81, 106 Baruch, Bernard M. 103, 147, 230 n.79 Batt, William L. 1, 34–5, 38, 41, 54, 63, 67, 89, 181, 186, 188–9, 192, 210 n.44 CED 72, 99 Colmer Committee 139, 142

NESPA 31–2 NPA 52–3, 55, 57, 60–1, 122–3, 125–6, 143, 149, 171 WPB 60, 81 Bean, Louis H. 81, 85 Bell, James Ford 69, 233 n.118 Benton, William 137, 173, 177, 188 CED ‘principles’ 107–10, 172, 174, 187 and CFR 136 forming CED 65, 68, 70–1, 73–4 research 97, 176 on tax policy 103–4 Berle, Adolf 21, 48, 77, 117, 145, 162, 192 Chase series 78, 111–12, 163 early TCF 13–15 post-war TCF programme 113–4, 164–5, 183 ‘visionary’ turn 42–4, 46 Biddle, Francis 15, 42–3, 48, 75, 115, 117, 125, 193 Bidwell, Percy W. 147 Biggers, John D. 50 Bissell, Richard M., Jr 62–3, 73, 178 Bliven, Bruce 15, 17, 35–6, 41 Blue Network 80, 141, 240 n.7 Book-of-the-Month Club 105, 136, 231 n.82 Bowles, Chester C. 100–1, 189 Braatoy, Bjarne 36 Brains Trust 14, 36, 44, 135 Brazil 121, 164–5 Bretton Woods Agreements 2, 140, 186, 190, 192 CED 136–8, 173, 175, 177–8, 180, 190 CFR 24 negotiations 132–3 NPA 138, 143–5, 167–8, 190 post-war 152–3, 182 TCF 145, 162, 165, 190

Index Britain Empire markets 7, 24, 49, 132, 144, 152–3 First World War debt 50 importance to US 27–31, 33, 38–9, 42, 45, 51, 58, 101 and post-war order 35, 77, 82, 142, 144, 160, 161, 157 British Broadcasting Corporation 80 British Commonwealth 34, 38–9 Brookings Institution 17, 110, 180 Brown, Percy S. 116 Bruce, Howard 180 Buchanan, Norman S. 146–7, 156, 162, 167 Bullis, Harry 178 Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce 7, 23, 49–50, 53, 62, 65, 73, 93, 147, 162 Bureau of the Budget 102 business–government relations 8, 52–3, 57 Business Advisory Council (BAC) 2–3, 8–9, 20 CED 96–7, 99, 106, 109–110, 136, 173, 175–6 early war 49–60 formation of CED 61–74, 87 Marshall Plan 178–80 mobilization 22, 185 NESPA 25, 31–5 NPA 40, 126, 138, 144, 168, 171 NRPB 23 origins 16–17, 20, 183 post-war 183 synthesis 187–8, 191–2 TCF 15, 41, 116 Business Advisory and Planning Council 16 Business Week 74 Byrnes, James F. 91, 110, 173 Calkins, Robert de B. 72, 107, 174 Cannon, Clarence 84 capitalism business attitudes 13, 17, 188, 192, 194 New Deal 3–6, 44 post-war viii, 10–11, 30, 41, 55, 57, 63, 122, 128, 150, 154, 160, 167, 176, 182, 187, 190, 193 war impact 6–8, 41–2, 60–1, 78, 186

279

Carnegie Corporation 84 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 156, 160 cartels 115–17, 155, 162, 177 CED. See Committee for Economic Development Chase, Stuart background 44 criticisms 111–13, 121 joins TCF 44–8, 56, 58, 75, 77–9, 87 large sales 115, 120–1, 162–3, 166, 192–3 movie 118–19 radio 80 China 46, 77, 168, 179 Churchill, Winston 39 Clark, Evans background 14–15 and Chase 44, 46–8, 111, 113 expanding TCF 111–12, 113–15, 117, 119 international economics 146, 149, 156, 162, 205 n.5 other groups 118 post-war studies 59, 75–7, 80 war emergency 41 Clark, John M. 97, 99–101, 175 Clawson, Marion 129 Clay, General Lucius 101 Clayton, William L. CED 69–70, 192 international economics 131–2, 134–5 ITO 153 NPA 171, 181 TCF 115, 158 Cleary, James 99 Cohen, Benjamin V. 125, 189 Coil, Everett Johnston Anglo–American relations 38 CED 181 CSOP 86 European reconstruction 83 meets Currie 81 NESPA 19–21, 30, 32 post-war 171 post-war NPA studies 33–6, 40, 124 State Department 84–5 Cold War 4, 142, 164–5, 171, 182, 189, 193

280

Index

Colm, Gerhard 249 n.94 Colmer Committee 110, 126, 138–9, 141–2, 172–3, 193, 232 n.113 Colmer, Congressman William M. 110 Colgate, S. Bayard 72 collective bargaining 41, 166, 172 Collyer, John L. 178 Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) 80, 119 Combined Production and Resources Board 72 Commerce Department BAC 16, 23, 25, 49, 51, 53–4, 57, 183 CED launch 95–6, 99, 124, 128, 192 CED origins 61–70, 73–4, 87, 92–3, 134, 185–6 international trade 134–5, 160 Commission on Motion Pictures 119, 166 Commission to Study the Organization of Peace 86, 117, 120 Committee for Economic Development (CED) viii–ix, 2–4, 8–11 Albert Lea 95–6, 120–1 BAC 17 Congress 110 creation 70–74, 87 early publications 92–93 FDR 110 field operations 94–6 international question 133–8, 182 NPA 85–6, 92, 122–8, 130, 144–5, 167–8, 172 NRPB 23 Peoria 93–4 post-war 172–183 research operations 96–99, 111, 129 synthesis 186–194 TCF 76, 80, 92, 112–17, 130, 160, 163 Committee for the Marshall Plan 180 Common Sense 107 communism 100, 179, 182–3 compensatory spending 5, 106, 155, 188 Condliffe, J. B. 85, 138, 162, 170 Congress (US) BAC 16, 54 CED 105, 110, 172–5, 180, 186, 193 domestic transition 150–1, 153–6, 167, 168, 172–5

international economics 132–3, 136–8, 140, 143–5, 153, 161–2, 169–70, 179–80 post-war planning 91, 102, 110, 124–6 Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) 32, 109, 116, 147 Congressional conservatives CED 99–103, 186 ITO 153 Marshall Plan 154, 179, 190 Murray Bill 151, 173–5, 181 New Deal 3, 5 and NRPB 90–1 post-war influence 150, 167, 183 post-war planning 110, 126–7, 172 wartime rise 22, 60–1, 81, 126, 185, 191 controls 6–7, 59, 144 Britain 144 CED 97, 99–101, 109, 113, 187 NPA 37, 83 post-war 150, 152, 154, 167, 177 TCF 44–5, 116 conservatives/conservatism vii, 8, 62 attitudes to post-war 3, 99–104, 110, 126, 127, 150, 151, 167, 172, 183, 191 Bretton Wood 152–3, 173–5 Britain 58 business conservatives 8–9, 42, 52, 56–7, 62–3, 66, 68–9, 70–1, 73, 79, 87–8, 98, 109, 117, 120–1, 129 foreign trade 7, 132–3, 190 impact on planners 92–3, 98–104, 166–7, 111–15, 117, 120–3, 130, 145, 148, 150, 154–5, 171, 181, 188, 192, 194 Marshall Plan 154, 178–80, 190 Murray Bill 151, 174, 181 New Deal 3, 5, 14, 17, 22, 74 wartime opposition 3, 4, 10–11, 22, 55, 60–1, 81, 90–3, 122–3, 185–7, 191 conversion. See post-war conversion Conway, Carle 50 Corbett, P. E. 29–30 corporate liberalism theory 8–9, 187 Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) 168, 171–2, 174–5, 180, 183, 192

Index Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) 62, 193 background 7, 24–8 CED 71, 73, 91, 93, 95, 109, 136, 138, 148, 188–9 international economics 133, 135, 180, 191 NPA 40, 125, 138, 145, 148 TCF 147–8, 156, 160 Coyle, David Cushman 17, 27 Crawford, Frederick 96 Currie, Lauchlin 40, 81, 85, 123–4, 127, 135, 167 David, Donald 72, 173–4, 176 Davis, Chester C. 69, 72, 100, 178 demobilization 102, 113–14, 116 Democrats 3, 32, 60, 91, 92, 110 De Moines Register and Tribune 15, 146 Dennison, Henry S. 13–15, 23, 43–4, 46, 48–9, 76–7, 116 Department of Agriculture 81, 85, 91 Department of Commerce. See Commerce Department Department of State. See State Department Department of the Treasury. See Treasury Department Department of the Interior 24, 221 n.82 Department of Labor 17, 24, 91 Destroyer-Bases Deal 50 Deupree, Ronald R. 68, 70, 178 Dewhurst, Frederic Chase Series 44, 46–7, 112–13 Needs and Resources 47, 113, 163 post-war 189 pre-war TCF 14–15, 42–3 Symposium 114–15 wartime TCF 76–7, 80, 165, 193 Dirksen, Senator Everett 124, 238 n.185 Douglas, William C. 180 Dulles, John Foster 147 Dunn, Gano 50 Eby, Kermit 147 ECA. See Economic Cooperation Administration Eccles, Marriner S. 97, 112, 125 Economic Bill of Rights 92 Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA) 170, 180, 189

281

Edwards, Morris 96, 228 n.40, 229 n.46, 232 n.111 Eliot, Charles 35 Ellickson, Katherine Pollak 32 Ellis, Howard S. 155, 162, 235 n.139 Elmhirst, Leonard 18 employment 2–3, 90, 92, 148, 187, 190 BAC 49, 55 CED 68–9, 71, 93–7, 99–100, 102, 104–8, 135–7, 139–40, 144, 172–5, 177, 183, 186 Commerce Department 64–5 Keynesianism 7–8 NESPA 20, 26, 29–31 NPA 34, 36–8, 59, 82, 125, 168, 170 post-war 150–1, 153 TCF 42–3, 45, 47, 59, 75, 78–9, 114–5, 121, 155, 158 wartime 60–1 Employment Act (1946). See Murray Bill Encyclopaedia Britannica 166 Epstein, Max 72 Europe economic importance to US 28, 41–2, 51 Marshall Plan 154, 160–2, 170, 172, 177, 183, 186, 189–90, 193 post-war 2, 11, 29, 30, 46, 61, 77, 83–4, 91, 98, 122, 132, 141, 146, 148–9, 164, 166–9 totalitarianism 19–20, 24, 27, 82 and trade liberalization 151–3, 158, 161, 170, 182 wartime vii, 10–11, 21–2, 24, 26–8, 34, 36–7, 39–40, 43, 50, 56–8, 68, 89 European Recovery Program 2, 172, 182 Evening Star 85, 122 Executive Committee on Economic Foreign Policy 227 n.21 exports CED 136 Europe 28, 151, 154, 179, 182 NPA 139–41, 144 post-war expansion 26, 140, 148, 151 relation to imports 148, 158 TCF 158–60 Export-Import Bank 50, 63, 140, 157, 179, 246 n.44 Ezekiel, Mordecai 81

282 Fahey, John 13–15, 41–3, 75–6, 121, 125 farmers 32, 34, 45, 51, 85, 113, 167 Federal Reserve Board 13, 28, 40, 97, 112, 125, 137, 155 Feis, Herbert 136 Fennelly, John F. 99–101, 103–5, 135–6 Field, Robert M. 125 Filene, Edward 13–15 Flanders, Ralph E. BAC 49 CED 68–72, 89, 109 on Congress 105, 138 continuing CED 176 and free enterprise 99, 102, 107 on Keynes 49, 135 Murray Bill 173–4 Fletcher, Cyril Scott 70, 73, 93, 95, 176 Fogarty, James F. 50 Folsom, Marion BAC 54–5 background 54 CED 73, 93, 96, 193 Colmer Committee 110, 138, 172–3, 193 forming CED 66–70 international trade 105 Foreign Affairs 24 Foreign Policy Association 15, 42, 117 foreign trade 5–6, 8 BAC 49–51 Bretton Woods 132–3 CED 70, 98, 109, 134–6, 148–9, 175, 177, 179 CFR 133 ITO 133, 153 Marshall Plan 154, 178–9 NESPA 27–9 NPA 33–9, 82, 131, 138–41, 143–4, 148, 168, 170 post-war contest 152 post-war synthesis 182, 186, 189–90 TCF 41, 44–6, 115, 131, 145–8, 156–61 Truman 92 Fortune 62, 68, 74, 79, 108, 163, 172 France 27, 35, 41, 51, 89, 142, 157 Francis, Clarence 70, 176 free enterprise BAC 52, 54–5, 66

Index CED 11, 70, 99–100, 107–8, 110, 137, 174 and corporate liberalism 2, 5, 9 impact of war 186–7, 192 NAM/USCC 9 NESPA 26 NPA 127, 168 NRPB 34 post-war 182 post-war contest 152 free market CED 93, 101, 109, 129 and corporate liberalism 8, 11, 186 NAM/USCC 16, 57, 67 NESPA 17, 20 post-war 154, 182 pre-war setting 3–6 TCF 46, 55 free trade CED 134–6, 177–8 ‘free-traders’ 70, 92, 115, 134, 153, 158 NPA 139, 144 and State Department 82, 148, 152 TCF 146–7 theory 7–8, 189 Fuller, Walter D. 74, 177 ‘GI Bill’ 92, 151, 182 Galbraith, John K. 49, 168–9, 171, 193 Galloway, George CED origins 68 NESPA 19 TCF 48, 77–9, 112–13, 116–18, 124 Gamble, G. C. 110 Gaylord, Robert M. 104 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 153, 170, 177, 182 General Electric Corporation 16, 31, 69–70, 72, 147, 224 n.128 General Motors Corporation 116, 125 George, Senator Walter F. 110 Germany 28–9, 34, 39, 42, 47, 55, 169 Golden, Clinton S. 31–2, 60, 81, 125 Great Depression 2–4, 6, 14, 16–17, 19–20, 62, 65, 74, 183, 186, 194 Greece 153–4, 160–1, 164–5 Griffin, C. E. 97 Groves, Harold 97, 104–6, 175 Gulick, Luther H. 33–4, 36, 81, 192, 211 n.57

Index Hacker, Louis M. 80 Hansen, Alvin 28, 35, 48, 75, 114–15, 133, 143, 155, 193 Harpers 19 Harriman, W. Averell 49–50, 171, 178, 180 Harriman Committee 178–9 Harriman, Henry I. 16, 41–3, 49, 55 Hart, Albert G. 173 Harvard University 28, 48–9, 71–2, 97, 104, 116, 169, 178 Havana Charter 153, 162, 170 Hedges, Marion H. 17, 32, 116, 125 Henderson, Leon 40, 237 n.181 Herter, Congressman Christian A. 125 Hinrichs, A. Ford 17 Hoffman, Paul G. CED philosophy 106–8, 149, 174 Cold War 183 continuing CED 176–7 European reconstruction 178–80 field work 94 forming CED 68–74, 186–8 international trade 136, 147 on other groups 95–6, 109–10, 176, 181, 189, 194 post-war employment 98–101, 105 on Washington 170, 173, 175 taxation 104 Hollywood 119, 166 Homan, Paul T. 114–15, 234 n.133 Hook, Charles R. 50, 69, 96 Hoover, Calvin B. 98, 135–6, 178, 181, 254 n.185 Hoover, Herbert 62 Hopkins, Harry 40, 62, 64, 68 housing 14, 41, 92, 116–17, 166, 182 Hull, Cordell CED 97 Chase 46 liberalized trade 6–7, 24, 133–4, 136, 139, 146, 191 NPA 81, 84 radio 120 RTAA 49–50 and Sonne 36 Hutchins, Robert M. 68 Imperial Preference System 7, 24, 152–3, 245 n.25 imports 139–41, 148, 157–61

283

industry BAC 51, 53, 66 CED 97, 127 NESPA 29 NPA 34, 39, 85–6, 123, 129 post-war 189 TCF 13, 44, 115–17, 160 war 1, 6, 23, 60 inflation 101, 152 Institute of Business Enterprise 66 International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) 132, 137, 140, 144, 157 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 132, 137, 140, 144 international trade CED 98, 134–6, 179 and Keynesianism 7 NPA 33, 35, 37, 39, 82, 139 TCF 44, 145–7 International Trade Organization (ITO) 132–3, 147, 153, 156, 162, 170, 177, 182 internationalism 37, 45, 171 interventionists 21, 50, 58 isolationists 21, 24, 50 investment (domestic and overseas) 6 BAC 50–1, 55 CED 137 CFR 133 Commerce Department 63 Congress 132 NESPA 26 NPA 33, 36, 139, 141, 149, 169, 171 post-war 190 TCF 45, 146, 157, 160, 164 Jacoby, Neil H. 72 Japan 22, 39, 45, 56, 59–60, 81, 89, 122, 132, 150–2 Johnston, Eric A. 69, 73, 96, 110, 173–4, 176, 220 n.51 Jones, Harrison 69 Jones, Jesse H. BAC 52 background 62 CED origins 59, 62, 64–5, 67–70, 73, 87, 106–7, 129, 175, 192 FDR 110 legacy 185, 187–8

284

Index

Kaplan, A. D. H. 97, 101–3, 110, 175 Keynes, John Maynard 5–7, 14, 19, 32, 71, 72, 136, 162 Keynesianism BAC 5, 17, 49 CED 71, 97, 106, 135–6, 178, 186, 188 CFR 25, 133 Murray Bill 151 NESPA 20, 27–8 NPA 40, 81 post-war transition 152 pre-war 5–7, 9 TCF 14, 112, 114, 155 Knauth, Oswald W. 15, 43, 76, 214 n.111 Knox, Frank 97 Knudsen, William S. 51 Krug, Julius A. 100–1, 126 labour BAC 52, 63 CED 71–2, 94, 100–1, 103, 109, 135, 177, 181 Commerce Department 65, 69 and corporate liberals 8 NESPA 17–18, 20, 30–2 NPA 34, 36, 38, 40, 82, 93, 124–5, 140, 168, 171 post-war 150, 152, 154–5, 182–3 TCF 20, 117, 147, 156, 166 war 1 labour–management relations 71, 177, 183 La Follette, Congressman Charles M. 125 laissez-faire 5, 14, 17, 30, 41, 45, 47, 78, 107 Landis, Congressman Gerald W. 125 Landis, James M. 116 Langum, John K. 97 Lasswell, Harold D. 72, 107–8 Latin America 37, 42, 77, 84–5, 147 Lauterbach, Albert T. 28, 101 Leeds, Morris 15, 49, 75–6, 224 n.131 Lehman, Herbert H. 125 Lend-Lease 27, 33, 37, 39, 43, 74, 82, 132–3, 144, 152 liberalization (economic) 7, 27, 35, 132–3, 136, 152–4, 156, 158 liquidation of war production 97, 100–3, 109, 173, 175 Livingston, S. Morris 93

loans

37, 137, 140–1, 154, 157, 161, 164, 179 Lorwin, Lewis L. 17, 19, 77, 120 Luce, Henry 68, 108 Lutz, Friedrich A. 147, 162 Lynd, Robert 15, 43, 75, 115–16 McCabe, Thomas B. 68–9, 233 n.118, 253 n.174 McDonald, James G. 15, 42, 46, 118 management 21, 51, 53, 56, 65, 67, 71, 89, 124, 126, 177, 183 Marshall Plan and business planners vii, 2, 181, 186, 189–90, 192 CED viii, 149, 172, 177–80, 181 NPA 159, 169–70, 172, 181 origins 154 post-war impact 182 TCF 161–2, 167, 181 Marshall, George C. 54, 154, 159, 169, 190 May, Stacy 97, 138–9 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer 119 Means, Gardiner C. 14, 71, 108, 136–7 Meehan, M. Joseph 62 Merriam, Charles E. 65 mobilization and demobilization BAC 49, 51, 53, 55–6, 64 and business 1, 3, 11, 60–1 CED 102–3, 113, 173, 175 federal management 22–4, 60, 89–92, 150, 185, 189 New Dealers 57, 61–2 NPA 81–3, 85 and post-war conversion 40 TCF 114, 116 monopoly studies 109, 113, 116 Moore, M. T. 174 multilateralism background 7, 203 n.10 Bretton Woods 132 CED 134 ITO 170, 182 moderated multilateralism 144, 148, 190 NPA 37, 39, 139–40, 144, 168 post-war adjustment 152, 154 State Department 133 TCF 156–9, 161–2 Murphy, Donald R. 32

Index Murray Bill (Employment Act 1946) 151, 168, 172–5, 177–8, 180–2, 186, 192 Mutual Aid Agreement 133 Myers, Harold B. 104, 136, 173, 175 Myers, William I. 15, 72, 112 Nation 19, 74 Nathan, Robert R. 101–2 National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) BAC 50, 63 Bretton Woods 153 CED 69, 87, 93, 95–8, 104, 109, 123, 129, 176–7, 186, 193 Commerce Department 63, 65, 87 foreign trade 7 Keynesianism 5 Murray Bill 151, 173 origins 5 post-war planning 2, 9, 67 Roosevelt administration 9, 16, 53, 57, 63 National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) 80, 119–20, 164 National Bureau of Economic Research 15, 32, 84, 116 National Economic and Social Planning Association (NESPA) 17–20, 25–33, 43, 48, 52, 77, 101 National Farmers Union 32 National Planning Association (NPA) vii–ix, 1–3, 8–9 BAC 52–8, 63, 66 CED 68–9, 72–3, 93, 96–103, 106, 109, 133, 135–6, 148, 175, 178–80, 188–9, 191, 193 conservative challenge 61, 111 creation of NPA 32–41 European reconstruction 167–72, 180, 183, 190 international economics 138–45 NESPA 17–20 NPA folds 183 post-NRPB 122–30 post-war employment 151 push for leadership 81–7 TCF 40–1, 47–8, 78–80, 112–13, 116–17, 145–7, 159–62, 185, 187, 189, 193–4

285

Truman 92, 125, 150 WPB 60, 81 National Recovery Administration 14, 16–17, 19, 99 National Resources Planning Board (NRPB) CED 71, 99–100, 136, 145 Chase Series 78, 80, 87 early post-war planning 23–5, 61, 66, 84, 87, 90, 101, 191 NESPA 25, 28 NPA 32–6, 39–40, 56–7, 81, 86, 122, 124, 127–9 TCF 14–15, 43, 48, 56–7, 77 termination 90–2, 110, 185, 191 NATO 153, 189 Nelson, Donald M. 40, 60, 91, 116 NESPA. See NPA New Deal attacked 60–1, 90 BAC 16–17, 51, 53, 55, 57, 64, 67 CED 70, 107 Chase Series 44, 111–12, 130 Commerce Department 61, 69 NESPA 17, 19–20, 25, 31–2 New Deal era 3, 5, 13, 22–3, 60, 62–3, 87, 90, 92, 135, 138, 145, 151, 174, 185–6, 191 New Deal liberalism vii–viii, 4, 9, 133, 171–2, 181–2, 185–6, 191 ‘New Dealers’ 3, 6, 10, 58, 67, 74 NPA 36, 40, 81, 124 post-war 132, 183, 185, 190 TCF 14, 44, 77, 130 New Left vii, 8 New Republic 15, 17–19, 35, 41, 74, 107, 164 Newsweek 74, 109, 123, 256 n.32 New York Times 14, 19, 41, 78, 113, 123, 141, 163, 246 n.51 Notter, Harley A. 24 Nourse, Edwin G. 171 NPA. See National Planning Association O’Daniel, Edgar V. 100, 256 n.32 O’Hara, Joyce 108 O’Mahoney, Senator Joseph C. 125 Office of Price Administration (OPA) 40, 53, 99–100, 169, 189 Office of War Mobilization 91, 124, 160

286

Index

Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion (OWMR) 91 Ogburn, Charlton 144 Page, Ann 72, 101, 103 Pasvolsky, Leo 24, 91, 125, 147 Patchin, Robert H. 144, 212 n.17, 241 n.23 Paton, William A. 104 Patterson, Robert 180 Pearl Harbor 11, 22–3, 25, 39, 45, 48, 56, 59–60, 63–4, 79, 81, 85–6 pensions 30, 52, 92 Peoria 93–4 Perkins, Milo R. 40, 112 Person, Harlow S. 17 Pickett, Clarence 83–4, 168–9, 212 n.71 Pierson, Warren L. 50 Political and Economic Planning (PEP) 18, 41, 80 political economy vii–viii, 4, 8, 10 politics vii, 1–2, 4–5, 10, 14, 22, 42, 58, 61, 92, 188, 191–2 BAC 21, 51, 66 CED 74, 93, 95, 103, 106–11, 129, 134–5, 137–8, 148, 172, 178, 180 conservatism 3, 6, 11, 60–1, 91, 111, 127, 132, 150–5, 181–2, 185 NESPA 17–20, 25, 30–1 NPA 37–8, 86, 139–45, 171 post-war 183, 185, 193 TCF 13, 46–7, 74, 79, 111, 113, 115, 119, 146, 157–63, 165, 183 post-war conversion 1, 90, 154, 190 CED 90, 93, 97–8, 103, 149, 181, 187, 194 Congress 91 government 91, 150 NESPA 27 NPA 40, 56, 124, 149, 167 private business 151, 154–5 TCF 114, 116, 121 post-war reconstruction 11, 24, 148, 186 BAC 50 CED 102, 109, 172, 178–9, 183, 189 Marshall Plan 154, 167 NESPA 28–9 NPA 36–8, 83, 139, 142, 168–70 TCF 76–7, 115, 146, 157, 159, 161, 165–6

post-war transition 2, 6–7, 131, 190 BAC 55 business planners’ consensus 11, 58, 130, 133, 148, 181, 188 CED 93–4, 97–8, 100–2, 104, 106, 110, 134, 172–3, 1755–6, 180 Commerce Department 65 government 90–1, 191 NESPA 27, 30 NPA 34–5, 83, 85, 122, 124–8, 144, 167–8, 171 post-war realities 149–52, 154, 182, 190, 193–4 TCF 43, 47, 114, 121, 155, 162–3, 167 Prentis, Henning W. 173 Prince, David C. 32, 224 n.128 Princeton University 24, 28, 101, 135, 138, 147, 162 prices 51–2, 100–1, 103, 105, 151–2, 174 production 1, 22, 58, 60, 90, 185 BAC 51–2, 54–5 CED 68–9, 94, 97, 100–6, 109–10, 136, 173, 179, 187 Commerce Department 62–3 government 91, 134–5, 191 NESPA 26–7, 29, 31 NPA 34–7, 59, 82–3, 168 post-war 2, 150–1 TCF 45–7, 59, 75–6, 78–9, 114, 119, 155, 165–6 wartime high 90 See also war production Program Information Exchange 156 Progressive Era 8, 13, 20 public opinion 119, 130, 146 public works 17, 23, 30, 43, 106, 117, 123, 155, 168 publicity 4, 73–4, 77–8, 120, 123, 166 ‘pump-priming’ 5, 49 radio 2, 77, 79–80, 116, 119–21, 141, 163 Read, Leonard 107 Reader’s Digest 74 Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act (RTAA) 49–50, 133, 140, 152, 158, 162, 170, 182 reconstruction. See post-war reconstruction Reconstruction Finance Corporation 14, 62, 68, 70

Index reconversion. See post-war conversion Republicans 3, 60, 70, 110 Reuther, Walter P. 32 Reynolds, Claude F. 125 Riefler, Winston 136, 147, 193 Rieve, Emil 143 Rockefeller Foundation 24, 166, 209 n.22 Rockefeller, Nelson B. 85, 110, 125, 147, 178 Roosevelt, Franklin D. attitude to business 17, 50, 63, 185 Britain 27–8, 39, 58 CED 110 Chase Series 44 conservative bloc 22, 90, 92 and Keynes 5, 19, 32, 49 management style 2, 22, 24, 57, 185, 191 mobilization 41, 43, 60, 62, 90–1 New Deal 3, 5, 14, 16, 36, 54, 62, 81, 84, 135 NPA 123–5, 127 post-war planning 23, 31, 33, 61, 92, 123–4, 191–2 post-war policy 142–3, 191 TCF 78 Roper, Daniel C. 16, 64 Rosenfelt, Mark 27 Rotary International 111 Roundtable 17 Rovensky, Joseph C. 147 Rubicam, Raymond 68, 100, 176 Ruml, Beardsley CED 68, 72, 99–101, 104–6, 108, 128, 137, 173–4, 176, 178–9, 182, 188 and FDR 32 NPA 32, 127, 139, 143, 188 NRPB 23 TCF 113 Russia 18, 35, 142, 163–4 Schultz, Theodore W. 32, 72, 98, 107, 138, 147, 193 Securities and Exchange Act 14, 84 Scherman, Harry 104–5, 136, 138, 174, 231 n.82 Schmidt, Emerson P. 101, 256 n.32 Schubart, William Howard 36

287

shipping 36–8, 60 Shiskin, Boris 32 Shotwell, James T. 86 Simons, Henry C. 104, 235 n.139 Slichter, Sumner 71, 104, 107–8, 163, 235 n.139 Sloan, Alfred P., Jr 70, 116, 118–19 Sloan, Harold 118 social security 14, 30, 43, 52, 54, 151, 155, 183 Sonne, H. Christian 36, 125, 127, 181, 189 Soule, George 17, 19–21, 27–8, 31–2, 35, 43, 165 Soviet Union 29, 35, 44, 77, 142, 157, 159–60, 163–5, 193 ‘stagnationists’ 5, 44, 48, 58, 155, 192 standard of living BAC 52 NESPA 18, 20 NPA 36, 38, 82–3, 139, 167, 170 post-war 183 TCF 47, 78, 114, 159, 164 State Department BAC 49–50 CED 136, 179–80 CFR 24, 133, 193 Hansen 28 Hull 6, 24 multilateralism 7, 162 NPA 82, 84–6, 139, 141, 148, 171 post-war planning 24, 90–1, 124, 147 TCF 15, 42, 48, 76–7, 113, 117, 146–7, 156, 160, 162, 189 Staley, Eugene 26–7 Stark, Admiral James 54 Stein, Herbert 4, 202 n.3 Sterling Area 44, 132, 137, 144, 152 Stettinius, Edward 50–1 Stewart, Walter W. 162 Stinebower, Leroy D. 24, 136, 146, 162, 243 n.52 Stocking, George W. 113, 116 subsidies 104, 116 Supreme Court 91 Surface, Frank M. 116 Swan, Herbert S. 97, 101 Swope, Gerard 16, 147 Symington, Charles J. 189

288 Taft, Charles P. 15, 75, 115, 117, 193 Taft-Hartley Act, 1947 151 Taft, Senator Robert A. 125, 151 tariffs Britain 153 CED 71, 109, 134 CFR 133 conservatives 5, 7, 133, 190 Keynesianism 7 NPA 37, 140, 144 TCF 115, 158–9 Tarleau, Thomas 104 Taussig, Charles W. 36, 84, 86, 189 taxes BAC 51 CED 97, 103–6, 109, 111, 175, 177, 186–7 Congress 92 NESPA 28, 30 NPA 123, 127–8, 139, 168 TCF 116 war 59 Taylor, Amos E. 147 Taylor, Wayne C. 53, 63, 70, 73, 99, 103, 105, 178–80, 192 Taylor Society 17 TCF. See Twentieth Century Fund Teagle, Walter C. 16 Thorpe, Willard L. 177 Time 74 Tirana, Rifat 36 trades unions 100, 151 transition. See post-war transition transportation 23, 38, 72, 117, 147 Treasury Department 24, 84, 91, 116, 133, 136–7, 145 Truman Doctrine 153, 160–1, 164, 165 Truman, Harry S. 8, 191, 194 CED 138, 178, 180, 193 Doctrine 153, 161, 164–5 NPA 125, 167 post-war transition 150–2, 167, 177 vice president 92 Tugwell, Rexford 44 Turkey 153–4, 160–1, 164–5 Twentieth Century Fund (TCF) vii–viii, 2–3, 8–10, 192–4 after Pearl Harbor 74–80 BAC 16, 49, 52–7, 61, 63, 66–7

Index begins post-war planning 21, 40–3, 47–9 CED 68–73, 92–3, 96, 98, 101–2, 106, 109, 111, 129, 133, 179, 181 Chase partnership 42, 44–6, 130 international economics 145–8 NESPA 17–18, 20 NPA 35, 56–8, 61, 85–7, 92–3, 101, 122, 124–5, 127–9, 168, 170, 181, 185, 187–8 NRPB 23, 48, 56, 101 origins 13–15 post-war 154–67, 183 reassessment 111–22, 187 role 189 United Nations CFR 24, 27 NPA 36, 83, 86, 125, 169, 189 TCF 77, 120, 157, 165 US government 132, 134, 140, 153 United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration 120, 125, 153 United Services Organization 76, 117 United States Chamber of Commerce (USCC) BAC 16, 53, 57, 63, 67 CED 69, 73, 87, 93, 95–8, 100–1, 107–10, 176–7 Commerce Department 63, 65 foreign trade 7, 132, 153 free trade 5, 9, 186 Murray Bill 151, 173–4 NPA 123 post-war planning 2, 9, 129, 193 TCF 14, 41–2, 111, 121 University of Chicago 32, 68, 71–2, 104, 116, 120, 135, 139 Upgren, Arthur 28, 62–3, 73, 95, 135, 193 Vandenburg, Senator Arthur 180 veterans 92, 151, 193 Viner, Jacob 116, 135–6, 193, 235 n.139 Voorhis, Congressman Jerry 125–6, 232 n.139 wages BAC 52 CED 100–1, 174, 177

Index government 59, 92 NESPA 30 post-war 181, 183 Wagner Act, 1935 151 Wall Street Crash 5, 14 Wallace, De Witt 74 Wallace, Henry 40, 44, 92 Walsh, J. Raymond 116 War Department 99, 163 War Labor Board 146 war production BAC 52, 185 Benton 68 business 22, 60 CED 97, 101–3, 109–10, 173, 187 government 91, 191 TCF 45 War Production Board (WPB) BAC 60, 72 CED 99–101 on civilian production 91 loss of power 92 NPA 72, 81, 84, 86, 124, 126, 138 Warren, Robert B. 162 war surplus 35, 46, 80, 102, 169 Washington loan to Britain 152, 156–7, 162 Washington Post 19 Watkins, Myron W. 116 Watt, Robert J. 31, 147 Waymack, William W. 15, 131, 146 Weinberg, Sidney J. 104, 231 n.99 welfare

289

BAC 51 CED 172, 182–3, 186 Commerce Department 65 and corporate liberalism 8 NESPA 28, 30 New Deal 3–5 NPA 82, 122 post-war 4, 92, 152, 183 TCF 13–14, 20, 149, 156–8, 162 Welles, Sumner 84, 224 n.137 White, Harry Dexter 136–7 White, Walter 21, 51–2, 55, 70, 136 Wickard, Claude R. 147 William C. Whitney Foundation 18, 32, 86, 206 n.28 Willson, James C. 128 Wilson, Caroll 59, 62, 64–7, 69–70, 73 Wilson, Charles E. BAC 55 CED 72, 128 NESPA 31 NPA 35–6, 60, 125–6, 128, 192 WPB 81, 91 women 115 Yntema, Theodore O. 71, 97–8, 135, 176, 178 Young, Owen D. 69–70 Young, Ralph 72, 105 Zellerbach, J. D. 178 Zimmerman, Congressman Orville 126, 232 n.113