Detroit evening times., 1945-02-16

thing to gain and nothing to lose, could pay higher
wages than private industry, guarantee an annual
wage and sell at prices low enough slowly but
surely to bankrupt the private companies in the
industry and have them one by one quietly fall
into its lap
Such cooperative could keep up its produc-
ti0n and be a model of corporate management
through the period necessary for it to become a
monopoly by the simple eXpedient Of having the
RFC finance domestic or foreign purchases
TTHE picture seems fantastic But that is only
l. because the powers and the resources of the
RFC are fantastic. 1t is only picture of doing
on large scale what is already being done on
small scale.
The super-co-operatives with only the ad-
vantage of the tax laws are now rapidly buying
up private companies in many lines and are getting
government money at low rates.
-- The Farm Security Administration, it has
been disclosed has sold" some of its experiments
to its clients without requiring any purchase
money and has met all the deficits.
1t is only step from leasing a million for
nothing to leasing billion for nothing.
Take the other fields. The RFC is the largest
holder of railroad securities and, through its
mortgage subsidiary, the largest holder Of reatD
estate mortgages and is the chief loan agent for
the Rural Electrficaton Authority.
1t could control the railroad, housing and util-
ity fields at profit with interest rates which
would he ruinOus to private investors after they
nad pal0 tnelr taxes. investment banking cOulQ
then live only by sufferance.
REC has immense loans throughout agTi-
culture and In the processing and distribution Of
agricultural products. Through its subsidy pay
ments it can make or break any private individual
or organization in these fields.
And finally through the Rubber Reserve Com.
pany, the Metals Reserve Company and the De-
fenSe Supplies Corporation 1t controls stock piles
and sources of raw materials with which it can
make or break any private enterprise.
rTHERE has never been such a fantastic concen-
tration of potential economic power as exists
in the RFG,>
If it got fully under way in somewhat the
fashion sketched, it could take over the national
debt just as John Law took over the French debt
and Loewenstein offered to take over the Belgian
debt.
But some one may ask, is not all this to the
good? Would not all our problems be solved?
No problem would be solved. We would simply
by easy stages have given up all that we now have
to become serfS in despotism of great corporate
herarchles, for private property as such could not
continue to exist.
We should have achieved by default kind o.
corporate state that combined all the worst fea-
lures of fascism, nazism and Stalinism.
yTHE regaining of the COMPLETE CONTROL
OF THE RFC is the GREAT ISSUE BEFORE
CONGRESS TODAY and unless the Congress
does regain the enormous powers which it has
lodged with it, the property of the people and gov
ernment by the people will be in peril.
The situation will not be met by the appoint
ment Of any man to fill the shoes of Jesse Jones'
The power is too great to be exercised by an
individual.
Our fOrefathers guarded against lodging
supreme power in any man. Their provisions are
as good today as when they were written