Detroit evening times. (Detroit, Mich) 1921-1958, 1942-06-11
War Work
Shows Way+o
Better Times
Improve Present Method
for Peacetime
BY PAUL MALLON

mdldQJuStcQ pfOuuctlOn was the
cause of the 10 years of pre-war
depression, and he wants pro-
duction adjusted for postwar
prosperity.
A letter from an economic
analyst on an important COM
mittee in Sioux City tells me
that prices caused our trouble
and he wants prices fixed at
high figure.
A business man in the East
made a speech in which he held
that sales and marketing was
the cause and should be the
remedy.
| have come to distrust all
mechanical economic formulas.
The New Deal tried them all
and they did not work to remedy
the condition with which we
were faced.
THE price theory of the Sioux
i City economist was tried
first in the gold devaluation and
other ways. The value Of gold
was changed to stimulate prices,
but prices did not move.
The theory of the Harvard
economist was tried in the farm
program, with arbitrary correc-
tions of malajusted production.
A business counterpart of that
was tried in the spending policy
10 create production.
THIS business man Walter d.
Il Fuller. president of the
Curtis Publishing Company,
says there were an estimated
100000 homes without bath
tubs in this country during our
10 depression years, $4,000, 900
without telephones. 100000
rural homes without central
heat.
Lack of buying power?"
he asks. mot at all. Lack OF
ingenuity In exchange of goods
and effort. We could have pro-
duced and financed these needs
and more. We failed to do the
selling job
People will have money after
this war he points out. Savings
are accommodating.
Our system a failure? Why,
says Mr.. Fuller, from "a poor
nation, 95 per cent of whose
people were ill-clothed, ill-fed,
ill-housed and ill-educated, we
have risen in 80 years TO the
supremacy of the world, over
all other systems.
WAS this because nature en-
w dowed us lavishly, or be-
cause we were larger. older,
better than others? Says Mr..
Fuller:
"China has an older civiliza-
ton. India has a larger popula-
ton. Russia has comparable
natural resources. England Is
greater empire. France also
was n republic. Germany has
highly trained and skilled
workers. Japan has q longer
work day.
But In all the world, only
the United States could hope to
produce enough planes, tanks,
guns, ships and everything else
quickly enough to win this
war"
Mr.. Fuller could have gone
further. He could have pointed
out that this unprecedented ac-
compliShment is attributable to
the new unification of purpose
as between government. capital
and labor and the typical Ameri-
can ingenuity exhibited by all
three in this war effort.
He could have expanded his
cure-theory beyond the sales and
marketing phase. which are his
special fields. into the whole field
Of government-citizen relations
for the future, in which govern
ment emphasis should strive to
help business to develop and ex-
pand. encouraging citizens to
work, and thus accomplish their
own greater security through
savings and effort. urging profits
for all. for business, for labor.
for citizen, punish disunity wher-
ever found in all three groups
alike. in a democratic way.
OUR trouble the past 10 years.
" as the success of our war
effort shows, is that we have
had our head down. looking only
at unemployment figures, crop
ing for security at the bottom
of the hole instead of at the
top, trying to share a depres-
sion wealth which did not exist,
instead of creating real wealth
for all.
The depression stunned us into
this despair. Even when we had
100000 unemployed for a time.
we had 40.000000 or more en-
ployed whose interests were of
at least equal Importance, al
though you never heard Of them,
only of the unemployed. We
looked at the bottom side of
everything.
think a sales and merchant
dising policy under unified Co
operation Of government, capital
and labor is all this country
needs.
This does not mean a return
TO the old system. because that
cannot be done. The taxation,
regulatory and labor standards