Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-12-09
j. S. GIVES EUROPE
INDUSTRIAL HINT
Hoover's Business Board Sig
nificant Example in Ma
tionaI Planning.
BY WILLIAM RUFUS SCOTT.


business survey conference just con-
cluded here undoubtedly will focus
chiefly on the proposed industrial board
to be set up shortly for the guidance of
industry counteracting the stock mar
ket slump.
Whatever name finally is given to the
board, or council, of probably 10 lead
| ing captains of industry, within which
will be an executive committee of about
| is members for quick action whenever
| 1t is needed, the body, in effect, will be
a national economic planning board,
thus giving the United States it's first
such co-ordinating effort on a Nation
| wide scale.
While it required the crisis of a stock
market crash to dollhouse this national
| planning idea into fairly mature form,
the business imagination of President
Hoover, and of leaders in industry, long
| ago had grasped the economies and sta
| bilizing value of a national survey of
industry and agriculture, with planning,
or budgeting, to avoid price-depressing
SURPRISES, to equaliZe employment and
otherwise to defeat the periodic slump
| heretofore experienced.
President Hoover, in the opening
paragraph of his address to the con-
ference on Thursday, spoke of the pro-
posed board as "a temporary organiza-
ton for the purpose of Systematically
spreading into industry as a whole the
measures which have been taken by
some of our leading industries to
counterfeit the effect of the recent
panic in the stock market"
Europe and Japan, as the leading in
dustrial nation in the remainder of the
world, will not be so much concerned
with temporary measures to keep Amer
lean industry at its high pitch of recent
years. as with the possibility that ma
tional planning may, in this situation,
prove itself so efficacious as to retain
permanent foothold in one form or an
other.
The United States conceivably may
be moving into a new stage of indus
trialiSm which all other nations, except
Soviet Russia, might find it necessary
to match by similar innovation. Rus
STA is excepted because that country,
being under a SocialiStic regime al
ready has complete national economic
planning. Seeing that the government
owns the factories, mines, railroads,
land and all other substantive prop
erty, necessarily Russia must plan for
its industries and agriculture as a
whole, because there is no private bust
ness initiative. Russia not only does
this year by year, but at present is
operating under a national industrial
plan covering a period of five years,
with the intention of merging it into a
15-year planning period.
Tendencies in the United States for
years have been toward greater con-
centration of industrial planning and
direction, as witness the growth of
chain stores, replacing isolated units;
the development of chain banking, or
the merging Of banks into huge insti-
buttons; the movement to consolidate
the railroads into few large systems,
the creation of the Federal Farm Board
to stabilize agriculture: the recent move
to coordinate the upbuilding of the
American merchant marine through
the Federal loan fund; the uniting into
big buying units of department STOKES,
and many other proofs of the trend
toward national economies.
What the conference here this week
manifeStly has done has been to ad-
vance along this charted road. That
this step will be given close scrutiny
to prevent its abuse or to keep within
the antitrust and other competition
compelling laws goes without saving,
and President Hoover indicated as
much in saying that the proposed ma
tional board would be temporary
Members of Congress and leading
economists already have been specu-
lsting on the question of the limits Of
the present concentration movement
and considering what revisions of laws
may be necessary or wise. or whether
there must come another "unscram-
bling" of industrial eggs such as marked
the arlier part of this century. How
ever, there seems to be a strong con-
viction that new forces are at work
throughout the world that must be
taken into account and that modifl-
cations in American business laws are
likely.
In Europe the cartel movement is
broadly similar. Steel producers in
various European countries, for in
stance, have planning boards to guide
that industry into sound production.
avoiding the price slashing that follows
helter-skelter output in each country.
Consequently, what is taking place in
the United States is not novel. It's
significance to Europe will be measured
by the extent and the permanence of
the step taken this week in Washington
toward national economic planning. or
the organization of industry and agri-
culture into a cohesive, waste prevent
ing and enlightened whole.