Evening star., 1945-12-30
"Antistutism" Trend
Discerned in Nation
Commentator Believes PeopIe
Want Less Government
By Raymond Moley


Want Less Government
By Raymond Moley
AS the year ends, good many people
are wondering whether we shall ever
escape from growing interference by
Government in private business and
personal liberty. Is national socialism
just around the corner? Will war con-
trolls ever be completely removed? Are
President Truman's more recent pro-
labor moves the actions of q man being
swept along in tide toward more and
more government, deeper and deeper
New Dealism and less and less personal
freedom?
The wave of strikes has increased
these doubts and has deepened the
pessimism of oldtime believers in the
free system under which this country
grew up and prospered. Is there any
alternative between that vanished free
dom and an all-powerful government
Must we come, in this country, to what
properly is called "statism?"
There can be no better way to use
our thinking at the turn of the wear
than to consider the alternatives in Our
national progress. The prospect, indeed,
would be dark If there were no other
course-no other way of living except
under bureaucracy or dog-eat-dog in
dividualism. But there is another way,
and the United States is more than
likely to find 1t. That way Is a wider
cooperation within business itself, be-
tween management and labor and be-
tween industry and the consumer.
The battle waged by General Motors
has been on the very frontier between
what is public property and what is
private interest. There is nothing
new about demands for information
formerly held to be private and personal.
More than 40 years ago, when T. r. was
first denouncing trusts, he made the
point over and over, that publicity was
the best protection against monopoly
More and more, over the years, the
facts of business enterprise have been
collected and published by Federal and
State governments. But still more the
facts have been published by private
business itself, voluntarily and often
proudly. In the field of utilities, scarcely
any information is private. Cost sc-
counting and price policies are not only
openly known, but they are regulated
by public authority. For many years.
department stores have published prac-
| tlcally all the facts concerning their
| costs and profits.
| During the war, various authorities
the OPA, the WPB, WLB, the Army and
Navy-required and were freely given
access to business figures. Fact-inding
! became almost automatic
There is no greater individualist in
America than Henry Ford But in his
negotiations with the CIO he not only
has been willing to discuss wages and
costs, but he has put up to labor for
mutual consideration such questions as
| the speed of work and the quality of
labor. subjects hitherto reserved as the
/ private province of management.
The point at which Americans rebel,
! however. is that which involves the is
+ suance of directives by Government.
Employers without number will tell you
| that they do not object to the princi-
pie Of the NLRB, but they do object
when Government, through that board,
attempts to organize labor That is a
private matter, they rightly say. In the
late lamented NRA, everything went
well until the President began to ex-
ercise his alleged power to impose q
code on an industry. It was matter in
/ which Government was merely a mod
orator. But when Government COM
pulsion entered the picture, the New
Deal honeymoon ended
In this American distinction between
cooperation voluntarily accepted and
legal compulsion lies the key to resolve
the conflict between individualism and
statism. The field of cooperation is
boundless. The distribution of risk
! through insurance is as old as the Re-
! public. America is moving slowly toward
collectivism of sort. But that does not
mean Government collectivism.
II, in the programs of political par
! ties, of labor and management associa-
/ eASAAS oAAA VA oAA ooAACA
ing agencies. the principle of co-opera-
tion is substituted for New Deal statism,
the fears about socialism might subside
and the way be cleared for an era of
peaceful expansion beyond anything we
have had in the past.
The year 1916 well might be the be-
ginning of new expansion of American
vision and enterprise. Ring out rugged
individuaism, if you will. But ring in
no further adventures in statism.