[L]

This is one of a series of thirteen Mike Wallace Interviews, produced by the American Broadcasting Company in association with the Fund for the Republic for the purpose of stimulating public discussion of the basic issues of survival and freedom in America today. This transcript has been edited. Single copies are available without charge from the Fund for the Republic; additional copies 10 cents each.

Erich Fromm has devoted his career as a psychoanalyst to studying the effects of the complexities of modern civilization on man's personality. Born in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1900, he received his Ph. D. from the University of Heidelberg in 1922 and studied thereafter at the University of Munich and the Psychoanalytic Institute in Berlin. In America he has taught or lectured at Columbia, Yale, Bennington, and the National University of Mexico. His books include "Psychoanalysis and Religion," "Escape From Freedom," "Man for Himself," and "The Sane Society."

[LC]

**WALLACE:** This is Dr. Erich Fromm, one of the most influential psychoanalysts in the world, a man whose work has been hailed as a significant step forward from the theories of Sigmund Freud. Recently Dr. Fromm said: "There has never been a better society than in the United States in 1958." But, he added: "If the United States goes on in the direction it is now taking, it is in serious danger of destroying itself." We'll find out why in a moment.

**ANNOUNCER:** The Mike Wallace Interview, presented by the American Broadcasting Company in association with the Fund for the Republic, brings you a special television series discussing the problems of survival and freedom in America.

**WALLACE:** Good evening, I'm Mike Wallace... In recent weeks we've been discussing the problems of a free society and what it must do to survive. Tonight we'll try to measure the impact of our free society on us as individuals and whether we're as happy as we like to think we are, or as free to think and to feel. Our guest is Dr. Erich Fromm, a psychoanalyst and social critic who is internationally renowned for his studies of men and their search for freedom.

Dr. Fromm, first let me ask you this. From different quarters of the world the United States has been criticized as a materialistic society, even a shallow society. Yet only recently you said: "There has never been a better society than in the United States in 1958." What did you mean by that?

3

[LC]

**FROMM:** Let me first say a word about this criticism of the United States by Europeans and people of other countries. I think they have no particularly good reason to criticize the United States, because the phenomena they criticize are aspects of our modern industrialized culture. The United States, having no feudal remnants, is just a little bit more advanced, while some of the virtues which European nations have preserved are the last remnants of feudalism. After all, feudalism has its virtues, too. To come specifically to your question, if I say there has never been a better society I mean it in a relative sense. The history of man so far is nothing to brag about, but the United States has a society with greater wealth for all than any society before, a society of greater mobility, of lack of oppression, of tremendous increase in the spread of thought, music, art. Beyond that, I would say we have people in our society with a remarkable amount of good-will, human kindness, fairness, and energy. All this would certainly justify the statement I made which you quoted.

**WALLACE:** All right, then, justify, if you will, your later statement, which apparently contradicts the first. You also said, just this week, "If the United States goes on in the direction it is taking, it is in serious danger of destroying itself." How? In what ways?

**FROMM:** It sounds paradoxical, but we have seen many societies that have developed in one direction and then are so proud of the problems they have solved that they don't see the defects and dangers which have arisen after they have solved the problems of the previous century. You might say it is a kind of Maginot Line psychology — fighting the next war in terms of the previous war. I would say the dangers we are confronted with are no longer the dangers of the nineteenth century. We have solved most of these. But we have new ones. For instance, to speak generally, in the process of producing more and consuming more we have transformed—or are in the process of transforming—means into ends.

4

[LC]

Once, more production was a means for more
consumption and more consumption was a
means for a more dignified, richer human life
for the individual. Today, I am afraid, produc-
tion and consumption have become ends in
themselves. We produce and consume more and
more, and if we ask "why," "what for" we
don't quite know the answer.

**WALLACE:** And so, in a sense, we are losing ourselves as human beings?

**FROMM:** Exactly. We are losing the end for which all this effort should be the means and was once meant to be the means. I can give you an example. We try to save time and are very eager and proud when we have saved time. But what do we do with it? We are afraid and embarrassed with all this free time on our hands and we try to kill it. Nevertheless saving time has become an end in itself. There is another aspect to this general question which I would like to formulate by quoting Emerson, who said a hundred years ago: "Things are in the saddle and ride man-kind." What Emerson meant was that while we are so eager to produce more and more things we are in the process of transforming ourselves into things. While we make things, we become the prisoners of things; while we create circumstances, we become the prisoners of circumstances; while we pretend that we control our society, we eventually become the prisoners of the very circumstances which we create and which have become our gods. I mean this quite literally. It is the same thing that the prophets of the Old Testament called idolatry — worship of the products of your own hands. You don't experience yourself as a creator of things any more. Things become your idols. I think we are experiencing this today, without being aware of it.

**WALLACE:** Let me ask you about man in his various pur-
suits. First of all, how do you regard man in
relationship to his work?

5

[LC]

**FROMM:** I think if you ask most people whether they like their work they will say "yes" consciously. But if you probe into their dreams and how they feel in the evening or when they come home from work, I think you will find many millions of Americans who really hate their work, who hate the boss, the competitors, the customers, everybody.

**WALLACE:** Why?

**FROMM:** Because they sense that they spend the best of their energy — eight hours a day — for things, and in a way that is not meaningful for them.

**WALLACE:** You say "meaningful."

**FROMM:** By "meaningful" I mean that they have no real relatedness to what they are doing, because they are doing it only in order to make money and that is not enough to satisfy the spending of one's best life energy.

**WALLACE:** In our social relationships — in our feelings toward our neighbors, our friends, and our business associates — what is happening to us?

**FROMM:** Again I think we meet a peculiar phenomenon. Consciously everybody speaks about "togetherness" today. We all feel consciously very friendly, we smile, we have many friends. And yet I think most of us are actually very lonely. Underneath we feel anxious, we feel isolated, our friendliness is a kind of superficial friendliness among people who are in the same boat and actually are lonely and frightened. While we talk a great deal about friendship and friendliness, we are at the same time afraid to be closer to each other, and we cover up this feeling by a kind of superficial camaraderie, but not by any deep and intense feeling.

**WALLACE:** In your book, *The Sane Society*, you write at some length about the "marketing orientation," and how it makes a man less than he can or should be.

6

[LC]

**FROMM:** This has to do with the point I mentioned before, that we have transformed ourselves into things. We meet each other as things would meet each other on the market — eager to exchange themselves, with a profit. Could I give you a concrete example? It is not entirely realistic, as you will see. Let us assume that a handbag in a department store could think and feel. There is one beautiful handbag there but because of the recession, let's say, it hasn't been sold. If that handbag could feel like modern man, it would have a terrific feeling of inferiority because it would think that because it hasn't been sold it has no value. To translate that into more direct terms, I would say that the sense of value of most of us depends on our salability on the personality market — we are called successful if we have sold ourselves.

**WALLACE:** And success should be what instead of that kind of salability?

**FROMM:** Success should be the satisfaction of work well done, work useful, work meaningful.

**WALLACE:** Let's go to politics. What is happening to man in relation to his politics? At the same time, as a corollary, without becoming specific, I would like to ask you about our political leaders...

**FROMM:** I am a Democrat, so that is a different topic. We find a peculiar phenomenon in this area; namely, that we talk a lot about politics, we read about politics, but if you look at the results of a number of studies we are really concerned only with private affairs. Most Americans, ninety per cent, are concerned with health, money, family problems. They are not concerned with matters of society or with politics... You might ask what I mean by "concerned." I mean the kind of thing over which you lose some hours of sleep.

**WALLACE:** You're not suggesting that there is anything wrong with being concerned over health, family affairs, money affairs. This sounds perfectly natural.

7

[1c]

**FROMM:** It sounds perfectly natural to us. It might not sound so natural to someone else. It is always "my" and "me" and "my family" and "my money" and "my car" rather than the expression as a reality of my relatedness to others, my solidarity with others, my sense of responsibility for what happens to me and the rest of the world and the rest of the people in this country.

**WALLACE:** When we talk about men, are we talking about United States man and woman, or Western man, or world man?

**FROMM:** There is man as such. I would say — although this is not a very popular concept — there is such a thing as human nature in general. There is such a thing as a basic condition of human existence. But this human nature never appears in itself; it always appears as molded by a particular culture or society. The strange thing is that most societies assume naively that the way they are is human nature.

**WALLACE:** You say that you are a Democrat, and I don't want to hear about that particularly. I am talking about our political leaders of whatever political hue.

**FROMM:** I would say, without being facetious, that what we miss are men who have convictions, an emotion in which these convictions are rooted, and a deep penetration of the problems of society — ours or others — and of the forces which operate within them.

**WALLACE:** And you feel we miss them on both sides of the political fence?

**FROMM:** Oh yes, in this respect I am quite neutral. I think we miss them on both sides.

**WALLACE:** How do you account for it, or are you accounting for it in our discussion?

**FROMM:** For the same reason we talked about a minute ago — that we are so concerned with instru-

8

[LC]

mentalities that we are not sufficiently concerned with discovering or uncovering the essence, the causes, the forces which are underneath the surface.

**WALLACE:** Let's talk now about man in relation to his intellectual development. Aldous Huxley, who was our guest last week on this program, has written a series of articles called "Enemies of Freedom" which will shortly be appearing in *Newsday*, a Long Island newspaper. He says that our entertainments, particularly television, are robbing Americans of their capacity to think, to discriminate. Do you agree?

**FROMM:** I agree wholeheartedly.

**WALLACE:** Do you wish to elaborate?

**FROMM:** I think Mr. Huxley has done a very good job of elaborating on this and I just agree.

**WALLACE:** What of man in relationship to love and marriage? Where are we getting off the track?

**FROMM:** We talk a lot about marriage and about love. We have courses in marriage and I think we might have some courses on love, because there are courses on everything. Indeed, the wish to love is probably the deepest wish and longing in every man; it is part of human nature and of man. But I think we have the wrong concept of love, as expressed in the phrase "falling in love" — as a sentiment which comes over us. We don't understand that love is an active relatedness, that is not easy to achieve, that it is in fact the most difficult thing to achieve, and that one must take it much more seriously than we do in order to become a master or even a decent apprentice at it. What we consider love is often the kind of thing you read about in newspapers and columns — a kind of smooth cooperating team, a kind of egotism à deux, a kind of friendly relationship between two people who consider their marriage a refuge from aloneness and yet

9

[LC]

who never make the jump into any intense relatedness with each other.

**WALLACE:** Religion?

**FROMM:** Religion is a very sad picture as I see it. Of course many people are very happy about the renaissance of religion which allegedly is going on in the United States now. More people talk about God than a hundred years ago. They go more to the churches than they used to a hundred years ago. But actually they take a word for a reality. Instead of having a religious experience, they just go to church and, if I may be biblical, I am afraid they use the word “God” in vain.

**WALLACE:** You say "instead of having a religious experience." What is a religious experience?

**FROMM:** This is indeed a very difficult question to answer and many people would answer it different ways. I would say: to have a sense of "ultimate concern" — to quote Dr. Tillich — for the spiritual values in man, for our love for man, for our reason, for truth, and to experience this development of ourselves as the most — and only — important aim of life.

**WALLACE:** You say in *The Sane Society*: "In the nineteenth century the problem was that God was dead. In the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead."

**FROMM:** Yes, I think that's true. We make machines that act like men and we try to make men who act like machines — little automatons — but we are not yet aware of it.

**WALLACE:** May I give you a kind of Rorschach test, Dr. Fromm, by putting some words to you? I would like you to define them, if you will, from the way that we perhaps view them and the way you believe they should be viewed — good and bad words. First, happiness.

10

[LC]

**FROMM:** I would say that what people really mean by happiness is unlimited consumption. We are a society of consumers, we and the whole Western world, more and more. I think if you ask people what their concept of Heaven is, they would say, if they were honest, that it is a big department store with new things every week, all the money to buy them — and maybe a little bit more than the neighbor — and they would go around buying, buying, buying. Actually we are the eternal suckling, the eternal baby who wants the bottle.

**WALLACE:** And happiness should be ...?

**FROMM:** Happiness should be not an aim in itself but something that accompanies intense relatedness to many things — to man, to nature — a relatedness that does not exclude deep sadness, because one cannot remain sensitive and responsive to the world without often being deeply sad.

**WALLACE:** "Equality"?

**FROMM:** Equality? I have the impression that what most people today really mean by equality is sameness, that everybody is equal inasmuch as he is the same, and if he is not the same as everybody else he hasn't quite the right to be equal.

**WALLACE:** And equality really should be ...?

**FROMM:** As I see it, in the philosophical and religious tradition of the Western world, equality should be, if I can put it theologically, that we are all created in the image of God; and, philosophically, that no man must be the means for the ends of another, that every man is an end in himself and that is the only equality there is.

**WALLACE:** Let me ask you about a couple of political words: democracy and socialism.

**FROMM:** I would define democracy, as it is developed today in practice, as consent by the governed, achieved by manipulation and not by force.

11

[Lc]

What I think democracy was once meant to be — and I hope will be — is the active participation and responsibility of each citizen in the whole social life and not just being a little cog who is satisfied that he is manipulated in the right way.

WALLACE: And socialism?

FROMM: Socialism is one of those bad words. Why are people afraid of it? I think what most people mean by it is being subject to a governing bureaucracy and materialism in the sense that one only cares for material goods and has no interest in spiritual values. This is, incidentally, a strange thing, because if that is socialism we are approaching it very rapidly. We are more and more bureaucraticly run in our society, and while we believe in spiritual values and principles and talk about them on Sundays, actually our main interests are production and consumption, in having more things. Besides that, the word socialism is connected with Hitler's nazism and Stalin's communism, which in reality have nothing to do with socialism. Russia is the most reactionary, conservative, autocratic society there is in Europe. The words Marxism and socialism are chosen by them as a very convenient symbol but I am sure that if Marx had lived in the thirties he would have been shot as an agent of capitalism by Stalin.

WALLACE: From reading your *The Sane Society* I would gather that you are a kind of Socialist.

FROMM: Yes, indeed, I always have been.

WALLACE: The thing I find difficult to understand is that you talk about the individual, about realizing himself, about human dignity, and yet does not socialism demand that the individual put himself at the disposal of the State and thereby lose the very individuality you talk about?

FROMM: Well, I am indeed a Socialist, a Democratic Socialist, for the very reason that my main con-

12

[LC]

cern is the individual. I think that Marx shares something with the Old Testament, if you will pardon the comparison, in that everybody talks about it but nobody has read it, or read more than a little bit of it. But if I may answer the question in this way: what socialism meant to Marx was to be radical; he defined it as going to the root and the root is man — to have a society in which man is the supreme purpose and this means the full unfolding of his powers of love and reason.

**WALLACE:** Dr. Fromm, it would seem that what Karl Marx said his socialism constitutes is beside the point. What does count is what has happened with his socialism. This calls for the government's seizing of land, for an oppressive centralized state that controls practically everything, even the education and the private lives of its citizens. All of this is pretty carefully outlined in the Communist Manifesto. It seems to me that the Soviet Union has done a pretty good job of putting into action what Marx talks about in the Manifesto and has completely done away with the human dignity and human relatedness that you talk about.

**FROMM:** It has happened again and again in history that an idea has been misused. If you think of the Catholic inquisition and what they did, you would say that this was certainly not the teaching of Christ. I don't mean to compare the teaching of Christ to the teaching of Marx. People have a way of quoting a few lines of Marx, quoting certain things and not the whole. You, Mr. Wallace, join in that. This is a great disservice and confirms the propaganda of the Russian claim that they represent Marxist teaching, when they actually represent exactly the opposite.

**WALLACE:** Well, now, wait a moment. May I read from the Communist Manifesto: "The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a

13

[L.C]

Communist revolution.” It seems to me that this un-dignifies, de-dignifies human freedoms.

**FROMM:** It is awfully difficult to take one quote and discuss it. I could quote you some sentences from Robespierre, on whom modern democracy is based, and you would find arguments.

**WALLACE:** Perhaps I should reread my Marx and perhaps I should reread my Erich Fromm. We have just thirty seconds left, Dr. Fromm. Are you pessimistic about what's happened to us?

**FROMM:** I am worried only in one sense, namely, the danger of war and our possible inability to avoid it. But I am very optimistic, or rather I have faith in our world, in the development of our democracy. I think one thing is necessary: to face reality rather than believe in fiction, and to be aware that we will have vitality only if we are able to fulfill that which is essential to our whole tradition; that is to put man back in the saddle.

**WALLACE:** Thanks so much, Dr. Fromm, for taking this time to come and talk with us... Whether or not one agrees with his solution, Dr. Erich Fromm points to a pressing problem. As he sees it, America tends to worship machines instead of men. We seem to prefer success to sanity. A society that is politically free, says Dr. Fromm, should guard against this kind of spiritual enslavement.

14

[LC]

# The Fund's Study of the Free Society

The major program of the Fund for the Republic is a study of the basic issues underlying a free society. This study is directed at clarifying fundamental questions concerning freedom and justice that emerge when the forms and principles developed by eighteenth century America meet the ideas and practices of today's highly developed industrial society. One of the aims of the study is to widen the circles of public discussion of these questions. It is for this reason that the Fund is assisting in the presentation of the Mike Wallace Interviews.

The task of clarification is being undertaken by ten distinguished Americans acting as a Central Committee of Consultants to the Fund. These men are:

**A. A. BERLE, JR.**

Attorney, author, former Assistant Secretary of State

**SCOTT BUCHANAN**

Philosopher, author, former Dean of St. John's College

**EUGENE BURDICK**

Political scientist, University of California; novelist

**ERIC F. GOLDMAN**

Professor of history, Princeton; Bancroft Prize winner

**CLARK KERR**

President-elect, University of California; labor economist

**HENRY R. LUCE**

Editor-in-Chief, Time, Life, Fortune

**JOHN COURTNEY MURRAY, S.J.**

Theologian, Woodstock College; editor of Theological Studies

**REINHOLD NIEBUHR**

Vice-president and graduate professor, Union Theological Seminary

**ISIDOR I. RABI**

Nobel Prize scientist; Higgins Professor of Physics, Columbia University

**ROBERT REDFIELD**

Professor of anthropology, University of Chicago; former president, American Anthropological Association

**ROBERT M. HUTCHINS**

President of the Fund, serves as Chairman of the Committee

[LC]

The Fund for the Republic

60 EAST 42 STREET, NEW YORK 17, N. Y.

Board of Directors

**Chairman:** ELMO ROPER
Elmo Roper & Associates
New York, N. Y.

**Vice-Chairman:**
**GEORGE N. SHUSTER**
President, Hunter College
New York, N. Y.

**HARRY S. ASHMORE**
Executive Editor, Arkansas Gazette
Little Rock, Ark.

**BRUCE CATTON**
Editor, American Heritage
New York, N. Y.

**CHARLES W. COLE**
President, Amherst College
Amherst, Mass.

**RUSSELL L. DEARMONT**
President, Missouri Pacific Railroad
St. Louis, Mo.

**ERWIN N. GRISWOLD**
Dean, Law School of Harvard
University, Cambridge, Mass.

**OSCAR HAMMERSTEIN, II**
New York, N. Y.

**PAUL G. HOFFMAN**
Pasadena, Calif.

**ROBERT M. HUTCHINS**
President
The Fund for the Republic, Inc.

**WILLIAM H. JOYCE, JR.**
San Marino, Calif.

**MEYER KESTNBAUM**
President, Hart Schaffner & Marx
Chicago, Illinois

**MSGR. FRANCIS J. LALLY**
Editor, The Pilot
Boston, Mass.

**HERBERT H. LEHMAN**
New York, N. Y.

**M. ALBERT LINTON**
Director
Provident Mutual Life Insurance Co.
Philadelphia, Pa.

**J. HOWARD MARSHALL**
Vice-President, Signal Oil & Gas Co.
Fort Worth, Texas

**JUBAL R. PARTEN**
President, Woodley Petroleum Co.
Houston, Texas

**ALICIA PATTERSON**
Editor and Publisher, Newsday
Garden City, L. I.

**ELEANOR B. STEVENSON**
Oberlin, Ohio

**HENRY PITNEY VAN DUSEN**
President, Union Theological Seminary
New York, N. Y.

161

[Lc]

Adlai Ewing Stevenson, Governor of Illinois from 1949 to 1953 and Democratic candidate for the presidency in 1952 and 1956, is currently engaged in the practice of law, with headquarters in Chicago. A graduate of Princeton, he received his law degree from Northwestern University. He has served the United States government in various capacities. His books include "Call to Greatness" and "What I Think."

[LC]

**WALLACE:** This is Adlai Stevenson, former Governor of Illinois, twice the Democratic candidate for the Presidency of the United States. Governor Stevenson says: "'Politics' and 'politician' are too often words of disrespect and contempt" ... here in the United States. In a moment we'll find out why he says that and what he thinks should be done about it.

**ANNOUNCER:** The Mike Wallace Interview, presented by the American Broadcasting Company in association with the Fund for the Republic, brings you a special television series discussing the problems of Survival and Freedom in America.

**WALLACE:** Good evening, I'm Mike Wallace... American politics is the machinery that makes our democracy work. We can boast of city, state, and federal governments all elected by the people and responsible to them. At least it works that way in theory. Tonight we'll try to find out how it works in practice — how much power the voter really has, and how much we as citizens are in the grip of political and social forces over which we have not enough control. Our guest, one of the major political figures of our day: Adlai Stevenson.

Governor Stevenson, first let me quote to you what some social critics are saying about our country. For instance, sociologist C. Wright Mills writes: "Our economy has become dominated by two or three hundred giant corporations ... our political order has become a centralized executive establishment ... the military order, once a slim establishment, has become the largest and most expensive feature of our government." And these groups do seem to control our fate as a nation. Therefore what real control does the individual citizen have over his own fate?

**STEVENSON:** Well let me say that I made a speech once upon a time that you remind me of, in which I said that I thought if there were two things that I feared most about our country, the first, of

3

[LC]

course, would be war, and I said I thought the
second might be bigness — bigness not only in
the corporations, but in government and in labor.
It is mostly a manifestation, however, of the
basic apprehension that I guess we all have,
which is conformity, an iron rigidity — that
more and more we are emerging as more and
more alike. We eat the same things, we read the
same magazines and newspapers, we travel in
the same sort of transportation, we wear the
same clothes, and sooner or later sometimes
many of us even begin to think alike.

WALLACE: And what's to be done about it?

STEVENSON: It would be a very sad thing, indeed, if we lost the precious diversity from which most ideas, most enterprise, most vitality spring. We have also naturally, as progress has increased, lost control over our economic destiny. This was inevitable. Even the farmer can no longer control his prices. He has somebody else who controls how much he has to pay for gasoline for his tractor, for the expenses of maintaining his equipment, for the prices he gets for his commodities. The man on the work bench has little control over his wages. They are fixed by union-management negotiations and so on. Little by little we have lost control of our economic destiny as individuals and we are even losing the regional differences that have been interesting in this country — between the East and the West and various sections of our country. We are beginning to look more alike, talk more alike; even accents are, I think, disappearing.

But what does this mean? I don't know, Mr. Wallace, whether it means we're all going to be identical as time goes on and we are all going to work for big government or big business or big labor. Personally, I don't think so. I still have great hope. I think that now we are examining again our education. We're putting more emphasis on the quality of individual excellence rather than merely adjustment to the group. I think we must. I think it is extremely important to advance the specially good student, to have recognition and respect for excellence, for the

4

[LC]

fellow who stands out rather than for merely
conformity. Likewise, I think that we've had
something that has contributed to this domina-
tion that we hear so much about of money, press,
government. When they all fall into more or less
the same hands, you have a situation which has
not been common in our country. But there have
been many intervals when we haven't conformed
... we've collided. Take the case of the Roosevelt administration. This was a collision between
government and big business — in contrast to
what Mr. Mills says — in the emergency of the
social revolution of the thirties.

WALLACE: But we needed a catastrophe, Governor Stevenson, in order to bring that about . . .

STEVENSON: You mean the depression?

WALLACE: Yes.

STEVENSON: Perhaps that's so, but the fact is that it did come
about.

WALLACE: Well, the point is that you underline again what a serious problem we are facing in the sameness in which we seem to be becoming more and more enmeshed. But is it possible to stop this trend toward sameness, toward becoming enmeshed in big government, big labor, big business, big military?

STEVENSON: I haven't lost hope by any means that we're all just cogs and that we're all enmeshed in this bigness. I think the expansion of power has helped with new inventions, with new technology, with new organizations and new businesses emerging. One of the most serious things to me in recent years has been the disappearance of the small businessman, who is being crushed between the great millstones, the wave of mergers that have been taking place in the country, the elimination of individual entrepreneurs. The chain store, the supermarket — all of these have replaced the little druggist and the little grocery store and the private enterprise.

But I think that it's not without hope. As a
lawyer I am conscious of the fact that we have
the Sherman Act to resist trusts, excessive mo-

5

nopolization of industry, restraints on trade. And with more technological developments, with more inventions, with more electric power — the way the city is spreading into the country — we are going to have more and more little businessmen, I think, which may put this somewhat into balance. I certainly hope so.

**WALLACE:** Let's talk for an instant about the individual citizen in relationship to big government. We are told all the time that we should be active, more active, politically. We should be interested in the party. One hundred years ago or so, a man could attend a town meeting with about two hundred other men, and perhaps make himself felt. But today, in the big cities, the average citizen, it seems, feels rather powerless when he tries to work for a tremendous political party. He feels that the professional party workers, in a sense, own the party and therefore he becomes an insignificant cog, What's he to do about that, Governor Stevenson?

**STEVENSON:** I must say that I can understand the feeling that the average man frequently has — if he takes any interest in politics at all — that he's a powerless cog. But I don't believe he is. I think there's a very healthy movement going on in this country. I have personally witnessed it in many places, more and more young people trying to get into politics. They come to me — not an occasional one — they have come to me by the scores — over the last several years. "How do you get into politics?" — "Is it worthwhile?" — "Is it worth paying the price for it?" I know that new clubs are starting, political clubs, and old ones are being rehabilitated. I know that discussion groups are becoming more and more common about public affairs. Young people are trying to participate in government, to run for public office. They are willing to start in at the bottom as precinct captains and so on. I think there's quite a movement of increased participation going on in this country. I wish there were even more.

**WALLACE:** That brings us to this point. There are about 40 per cent of our people in this country who do

6

[LC]

not register or vote, ever. Sixty per cent don't vote for Congressmen in non-Presidential elections. We've had recent Senatorial elections in which less than 30 per cent of the population voted. Why?

**STEVENSON:** It is very sad and I think it is one of the major reflections on our concern for democracy, which our ancestors spilled their blood to win and to preserve for us. But it is a curious thing that the older a country gets and the more secure it has been, the less people participate. If you recall, Mr. Wallace, after the French had been occupied by the enemy during the past war, in the first public election, the participation was on the order of 94 per cent, I think it was, maybe 93. People when they have been imperilled — people who have known freedom and liberty and self-government and have lost it — are much more concerned with it. This is why we often find the immigrant who comes to this country much more conscientious in the discharge of his duties as a citizen, his responsibility to vote, and so on, than people who have lived here for generations. I think we have taken too much for granted and I hope very much that programs like this and programs like those that the Fund for the Republic is doing can invite attention to the fundamentals of democratic continuity.

**WALLACE:** You once wrote, Governor Stevenson: "It seems to me that 'politics' and 'politician' are so often epithets, words of disrespect and contempt." Why are they? Why do so many Americans have a low regard for politicians?

**STEVENSON:** I suppose in some respects it is justified. I explore it, but it's well to remember that behind every corrupt politician is someone who corrupted him. It is well to remember that the weak and the ignorant are often people who have become that way because they want to stay in politics as a career because they have nowhere else to go. And often because stronger people, better people, better educated people, people of higher ethical purpose, don't care to go into it. I remember very well, when I was in Italy dur-

7

[L.C.]

ing the war, I read a public-opinion poll in this country that said it's all right for your sons to come and fight and bleed and die to preserve this country but seven out of ten parents didn't want a child of theirs to go into public life or public office. This is what I mean.

**WALLACE:** What was that you said? A fair number of people go into politics because they are unemployed and have no place else to go?

**STEVENSON:** No, I said that after lots of people who go into politics have been in it for a while they find that to stay in politics they have to make all sorts of compromises to satisfy their supporters and that it becomes awfully important for them to keep their jobs because they have nowhere else to go.

**WALLACE:** Oh, I see.

**STEVENSON:** They have lost their law practice, they have given up their profession, whatever it was. They have made the sacrifice of changing their lives to go into politics and public office. I think the only answer to that is to have fewer elected people. You have more people at the executive and administrative level who don't have to risk the hazards of public service and public office. The saddest thing in the world is what happens to the politician in this most cruel and hazardous of businesses who is ultimately rejected. Now I don't think all political organizations, however, are by any means bad. They want to win offices; they know that good candidates attract support and attention and respect. Let me just read you something, because I knew you were going to ask me this question. You mentioned a speech of mine. Here's another in which I quoted from an old philosopher, long ago.

He said: "Politics is the most hazardous of all professions. There is not another in which a man can hope to do so much good to his fellow creatures; neither is there any in which he may do such widespread harm; nor is there another in which he may so easily lose his own soul; nor is there another in which a positive and strict veracity is so difficult. But danger is the inseparable companion of honor. With all the tempta-

8

[LC]

tions and degradations that beset it, politics is
still the noblest career any man can choose."

Now it seems to me lamentable that "politics"
and "politicians," instead of being words of
respect, have become words of disrespect so fre-
quently in a government by the consent of the
governed. But that's the fact and I think it's often
our own fault. It's not due to the genus *pol* him-
self. It is due to the people, who will get just
about what they ask for. "Your public servants
serve you right," somebody once said.

**WALLACE:** Tell me this, do you still feel that politics is the most noble enterprise that a man can get involved in, Governor Stevenson?

**STEVENSON:** In spite of my misfortunes I still would like to see more better people who are willing to pay the sacrifice, who are willing to take the chance, willing to be repudiated, willing to risk ingratitude and abuse for service to their fellow-man.

**WALLACE:** Governor, I think that many Americans may have the idea that a political candidate is chosen not because the people at large want him but rather that he has been selected, that he has the backing of other influential and powerful men, other politicians, labor leaders, businessmen, the political boss. From what you know of politics, is that a fiction? Does it happen occasionally or does it happen more often than not?

**STEVENSON:** Well, obviously people are selected for advancement in politics by organizations in places where there are political organizations — and they are frequently too narrow, frequently dominated by a handful. But this isn't always the case by any means. Most people run in free and open contests and then they are selected by their peers: the people. But there are some limitations on primaries too. I think the Presidential primary, if you will let me digress, is almost a useless institution. I am not by any means persuaded that the Presidential primary is a good thing to have.

**WALLACE:** Why?

**STEVENSON:** For a variety of reasons. In the first place, a man who aspires to the Presidency is presently en-

9

LC

gaged in an important task — let's say he is a Governor of a great state or a United States Senator. Frequently he is a politician in public office, as things work out in our country, rather than a private citizen. If he's conscientious about his job, he hasn't got time to run in a primary. Could I, as Governor of Illinois, have come out and spent hours and days and weeks and months away from my desk, from an enormous executive responsibility like that? I don't think you can, not consistent with the responsibility to the people that elected you. That's one thing. You literally can't afford the time. Another thing is that the Presidential primaries evoke relatively few people. Relatively few people vote in a Presidential primary, perhaps not more than 25 per cent of the people. Assuming that the parties are divided 50-50, not more than one half of the Democrats vote in the Democratic Presidential primary. Likewise the states have no uniformity about the rules, about what the Presidential primary means, about how it binds delegates to a convention. Finally, it is terribly expensive; it's exhausting physically; you burn up yourself, you burn up your ammunition, you burn up your means. I think that it's a very, very questionable method of selecting Presidential candidates and actually it never does. All it does is destroy some candidates.

**WALLACE:** I think this is coming directly to the issue, because what we are trying to find out is how the individual citizen can make his will felt. It would seem to me that what you are suggesting is another means of taking away participation by the individual citizen in the choice of his representatives. How, if we do not have a Presidential primary of some kind, can the various people from the various states make their will felt in the choice of the man who will represent them in their particular political party?

**STEVENSON:** By getting into a political party and working in it. By having a part, something to say about the choice of delegates, and how they are elected, to the Democratic or the Republican national conventions. The delegates are elected by the people

10

[LC]

in their party elections. The people can get into
the party. They can work from within or they
can take an active part in organizations that are
interested in politics. I think much of the trouble
here, Mr. Wallace, is that we have been indif-
ferent to the responsibility of a democracy. It is
the hardest, most difficult, most expensive, and
perhaps the most inefficient political system
there is, but it is the only free one, totally free
one. If we want it as badly as I think we do, we
are going to have to pay a heavier and heavier
price for it, and the most important price that we
can pay for it is participation in it, not taking it
for granted every four years, not being willing to
have, if you please, slot machines in the club but
forbid them in the corner saloon, not be willing
only to take advantage of the privileges of life
in this country for ourselves and to deny them to
others but recognize that it treats us all alike and
that we will get out of it exactly what we put into
it. It is like a pump. What is pumped up is a
pretty fair sample of what we are. So I think it
is our own fault for the most part. I think, as I
said, your public servants serve you right.

**WALLACE:** Let's go now, if we may, to how a politician is sometimes elected, Governor Stevenson. Aldous Huxley has written a series of articles called "Tyranny Over the Mind," which have been appearing in the Long Island newspaper, *Newsday* . . .

**STEVENSON:** Yes, I think they are an excellent series. I had the good fortune to read them. I think it was very enterprising of *Newsday* to run them.

**WALLACE:** He wrote: "All that is needed" — talking about electing a candidate — "is money and a candidate who can be coached to look sincere. Political principles and plans for specific action have come to lose most of their importance. The political candidate is merchandised as though he were a deodorant." What do you think of that suggestion by Mr. Huxley?

**STEVENSON:** I am afraid there is some truth to this. We have become very conditioned in this country to advertising, to advertising techniques of appeal to

11

[L.C]

wants, and appeal to fears, and simplicity and repetition. The use of slogans has become commonplace in public life. It always was, more or less, but by constant repetition, by the use of these methods of merchandising, perhaps it's had more effect than it should. You remember "Time for a change" — at least I remember it — in 1952, and "Peace and Prosperity" in 1956; and in the Russian revolution it used to be "Bread and Land," appealing to everything that the people wanted. If they were proletarians in the city, they wanted bread; if they were peasants in the country, they wanted land. This kind of method of trying to capsule public issues that are intricate and involved is, I think, one of the hazards that we have to confront and be able to see through. I think it's one of the things that merchandising methods and tactics in politics have given us and I am sorry about it. Campaigns should be to educate, to inform. The basic condition of classical, successful democracy is an informed electorate. We have to be able to make choices. This is what is meant by self-government. We have to know what the choices are and we have to understand the alternatives that are before us. How can you do that unless you are willing to listen to the issues, unless they are actively presented by the candidates, unless they are elaborated and honestly presented by the press? Now, insofar as advertising does this, well and good; insofar as it tends to obscure the issues and create merely emotional responses, then I think it does us an injustice and I think there's been too much of that.

**WALLACE:** There is one thing I would like to come to now. Senator Neuberger of Oregon has claimed that it requires a campaign wallet of at least one million dollars to be elected to the Senate today from any big industrial state. Presidential campaigns have been estimated to cost as high as $75 million, with a good deal of it coming in the form of small fortunes donated by wealthy and influential men.

**STEVENSON:** I wish I had seen more of that.

12

[Lc]

**WALLACE:** Do you think that this is a healthy situation, for large sums to come from ...

**STEVENSON:** No, I do not. I have been a great believer in the idea of small contributions from many people. This is part of participation — lots of people making little contributions gives them a wider stake in our parties and makes the candidates less vulnerable and also less beholden to a few.

**WALLACE:** How can we better finance our campaigns? I believe the American Heritage Foundation is suggesting that each family give a dollar to the party of his choice. Does that sound sensible?

**STEVENSON:** Yes, it does, and it's being embraced at last, I am happy to say. We urged it in 1956. Now it's being embraced by both parties.

**WALLACE:** Final series of questions. I don't know whether we'll have time to do all that we would like to on it. It's been suggested that men like Jefferson, Adams, Madison, some of our first leaders, were an elite elected by an elite — an elite of property owners, highly educated, intelligent, aware people — but that today anybody can vote regardless of his capacities, and so we see politics, like water, seeking the lowest level, the level of the mass, rather than the level of the elite. What do you think of that claim?

**STEVENSON:** I think that this was true at one time when they had property qualifications and relatively few people were entitled to vote. I think however that there are much better reasons for it, and that was the enthusiasm, the spirit, the heart, the risk of our fortunes and our honor and everything that went into the early days of our republic. If we were animated by that spirit more I don't believe we'd be too much concerned with this problem. But the price of popular choice is popular choice. By all of the people. We simply have to develop better methods of communication with the people because we know that there is no better system than ultimate reliance on the discriminating choice of the people. But they have to be informed. The first responsibility is information, is truth. We have to serve the truth

13

[L]

as candidates for public office and not mislead, misguide, misdirect the people merely to provoke emotional responses and win votes that way. This is why I feel very strongly that it doesn't do any good to go back and talk about the elite electing the elite. We don't have that. We have a basic, fundamental democracy and what we have to do is make it work.

**WALLACE:** But the men that I talk about — Jefferson, Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Madison, Monroe — these were men of political stature and intellectual stature. Do you feel that our leaders, let's say just in this country alone, measure up intellectually, measure up as leaders?

**STEVENSON:** Of course, that was the richest flowering politically in all history that you are speaking about. It was the birth of a revolution and a great new nation and a new concept of freedom on earth. But I remind you we have had Cleveland, I remind you we have had Woodrow Wilson, we have had Theodore Roosevelt, we have had Franklin Roosevelt. We have had great leaders in contemporary times. Not always. We don't always elect the best, for some of the reasons I have discussed here tonight. I think I ought to know something about that. At all events, we have done extremely well and I think if we serve the truth a little bit better, if we demand of our candidates that they address themselves to the real issues and discuss the alternatives before the people honestly and fairly and not mislead them, then I think we are going to get that sort of people to re-emerge. I am sure they are here among us.

**WALLACE:** Governor Stevenson, I thank you for taking a half hour out of your busy schedule to come and speak with us.

An old political axiom says: "People get the kind of government they deserve." Only we can make sure that government fulfills its proper role in a democratic society. And if our government, if our political system, fails to serve us properly, the blame in the long run rests on us.

14

[L.C]

**A. A. BERLE, JR.**

**SCOTT BUCHANAN**

**EUGENE BURDICK**

**ERIC F. GOLDMAN**

**CLARK KERR**

**HENRY R. LUCE**

**REINHOLD NIEBUHR**

**ISIDOR I. RABI**

**ROBERT REDFIELD**

**ROBERT M. HUTCHINS**

[L.C]

The Fund for the Republic

Board of Directors

Chairman: ELMO ROPER
Elmo Roper & Associates
New York, N. Y.

Vice-Chairman:
GEORGE N. SHUSTER
President, Hunter College
New York, N. Y.

HARRY S. ASHMORE
Executive Editor, Arkansas Gazette
Little Rock, Ark.

BRUCE CATTON
Editor, American Heritage
New York, N. Y.

CHARLES W. COLE
President, Amherst College
Amherst, Mass.

RUSSELL L. DEARMONT
President, Missouri Pacific Railroad
St. Louis, Mo.

ERWIN N. GRISWOLD
Dean, Law School of Harvard
University, Cambridge, Mass.

OSCAR HAMMERSTEIN, II
New York, N. Y.

PAUL G. HOFFMAN
Pasadena, Calif.

ROBERT M. HUTCHINS
President
The Fund for the Republic, Inc.

WILLIAM H. JOYCE, JR.
San Marino, Calif.

MEYER KESTNBAUM
President, Hart Schaffner & Marx
Chicago, Illinois

MSGR. FRANCIS J. LALLY
Editor, The Pilot
Boston, Mass.

HERBERT H. LEHMAN
New York, N. Y.

M. ALBERT LINTON
Director
Provident Mutual Life Insurance Co.
Philadelphia, Pa.

J. HOWARD MARSHALL
Vice-President, Signal Oil & Gas Co.
Fort Worth, Texas

JUBAL R. PARTEN
President, Woodley Petroleum Co.
Houston, Texas

ALICIA PATTERSON
Editor and Publisher, Newsday
Garden City, L. I.

ELEANOR B. STEVENSON
Oberlin, Ohio

HENRY PITNEY VAN DUSEN
President, Union Theological Seminary
New York, N. Y.

161

[L.C]

Cyrus S. Eaton is one of the leading industrialists in the country, organizer of the Republic Steel Company, member of the banking house of Otis and Co., chairman of the board of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway, Steep Rock Iron Mines, Ltd., and the West Kentucky Coal Co., owner and operator of the Acadia Farms in Ohio and the Deep Cove Farms in Nova Scotia. Born in Nova Scotia in 1883, Mr. Eaton came to the United States in 1900 and was naturalized in 1913. His international conferences in Pugwash, Nova Scotia, in recent years have become famous.

[LC]

**WALLACE:** This is Cyrus Eaton, an industrialist who heads a two-billion-dollar empire in coal, iron ore, and railroads — a man who says that the way to preserve the American way of life, under which he's prospered, is to woo the friendship of the Soviet Union. As a first step, Mr. Eaton has sponsored several conferences between scientists from the Free World and the Communist nations. In a moment, we'll find out why he sponsors those conferences, and why he charges that the cold war is slowly but surely destroying our freedoms here at home.

**WALLACE:** Good evening. I'm Mike Wallace. In our fight to survive and stay free, we as a nation have had to modify some of the very freedoms we want to protect. Tonight's guest, Cleveland industrialist Cyrus Eaton, is one critic who says that we've gone too far — that in our efforts to cure a cold, we're killing the patient. Let's find out why. . . . Mr. Eaton, you've made considerable news with your meetings up at Pugwash. You've financed conferences among scientists of the free world and from Communist countries like Russia and Red China. What do you think that you accomplish when scientists who are devoted to communism meet and talk with British and American scientists?

3

[L.C]

**EATON:** We demonstrated that men of different languages and different philosophies can get together and discuss crucial questions, come to a common understanding, and part great friends. One of the most important things we agreed on was that an all-out war between Russia and the United States would be a catastrophe of the first magnitude. For instance, there was no difference of opinion that in the first hour of such a war 75,000,000 Americans would be killed and 25,000,000 would be seriously wounded. These scientists left Canada to go back home and tell their governments of the great hazards we face unless we bring common sense to bear on our international problems.

**WALLACE:** Why do you hold these meetings up in Pugwash, which is in Nova Scotia, instead of in the United States?

**EATON:** It would probably be impossible to hold them in the United States because of the restrictions. The Chinese would not be permitted to come in; if the Russians got in it would be with very great difficulty.

**WALLACE:** What kind of restrictions? You mean that our government would not permit . . . ?

**EATON:** They would put many obstacles in the way and subject the people coming here to very great humiliations, which I don't think any self-respecting scientist would submit to.

**WALLACE:** I gather you are not in sympathy with these regulations?

**EATON:** I think they are unwise and unnecessary.

**WALLACE:** Were the American scientists who went up there to talk with the Russians and Red Chinese willing to exchange ideas freely with their Communist colleagues, and was there equal freedom on the other side?

**EATON:** I think everyone was astounded at the freedom with which the Communists discussed any sci-

4

[L.C.]

entific problem. They astounded everyone with their profound knowledge of scientific progress. I would say that perhaps of all the representatives who gathered there the men who were a little more cautious for political reasons were our brilliant American representatives.

**WALLACE:** You say the Americans were more cautious for political reasons. What do you mean?

**EATON:** If they were professors from Harvard or M.I.T. or the University of Chicago or Illinois — if they said anything that offended the political forces of this country — they would be aware that they might be called on the carpet and subjected to serious examination. And I think most of our American participants, when they got back home, were probably visited by the FBI and asked what went on and what they said.

**WALLACE:** And as far as you know, they told what went on?

**EATON:** Oh, very completely, because there were no secrets. The discussions were completely above board. Everyone said just exactly what he thought without any fear of getting into trouble.

**WALLACE:** You mentioned the FBI, Mr. Eaton. Let's turn to some security measures — most of them products of the cold war — that are taken by our government with citizens here at home. For instance, you. Our research shows that as an officer of certain corporations engaged in defense work you yourself have been fingerprinted and investigated by the FBI on three occasions. I wonder if you'd tell us why, and what your reaction to this fingerprinting is?

**EATON:** The officers and directors of the companies with which I am associated — and that's true of most big American corporations — do some work for the government. Some of it is called "classified." Why it is called that I do not know, because none of it is really very secret. At any rate, some of it is regarded this way. And for that reason, on each of these occasions a separate group examines the history of each officer

5

[LC]

and director. The investigators consult all the people who have known him — in my case for a great many years, as old as I am — to see if at any time in his past there was anything he ought to be ashamed of. They fingerprint him and go through all those performances. This, to my way of thinking, is quite a humiliation for a loyal and devoted American.

**WALLACE:** What is wrong with finding out if a loyal and devoted American, if indeed he is, is all those things? You say there is some doubt about the necessity for doing this because you're not sure the work should be classified. Do you believe that these screenings, etc. are superfluous?

**EATON:** I think so. They keep alive the spirit of suspicion which is one of the evils that plague us. But there are no secrets in the industrial or the scientific world. Any idea that anything we can do in America is a profound secret if it is done industrially, with workmen and all other sorts of people engaged in it, is just a hallucination and an emphasis on the importance of the police side of our government.

**WALLACE:** You say the police side of our government. Do you have any further views on the work of the FBI as it relates to individual freedom?

**EATON:** I think it's had a tremendous build-up. It has enjoyed wonderful propaganda and sold itself in a marvelous way. But I always worry when I see a nation feel that it is coming to greatness through the activities of its policemen. And the FBI is just one of the scores of agencies in the United States engaged in investigating, in snooping, in informing, in creeping up on people. This has gone to an extent that is very alarming.

**WALLACE:** Let's stay with the FBI for just a minute. From the time that J. Edgar Hoover was appointed its director in 1924, more than 200,000-odd convictions have been recorded in cases investigated by the FBI. That includes the cases of Alger Hiss, atom spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Harry Gold and David Greenglass, as

6

well as Russian spy Rudolf Abel, who was captured last year. Are you in any sense suggesting that this work is unnecessary and that the FBI should go out of business? In these areas?

**EATON:** I don't think necessarily that it should go out of business but it should confine itself to legitimate police work. I think its importance is enormously exaggerated and that it makes no such contribution to the upbuilding of this country or to our respect abroad as its literature and those who support its publicity suggest.

**WALLACE:** The fact remains that the FBI has served to the satisfaction of five Presidents. It recently had the overwhelming support of Congress when it asked for protection of its secret files. And as J. Edgar Hoover himself has said, the FBI is "zealously watched by the executive, the judicial, and the legislative branches" of the government. What more can you want?

**EATON:** If we want a police state that is all right, but add to the FBI the scores of other agencies that are engaged in the same thing; for instance, the Central Intelligence Agency. One of its jobs is to check the FBI to see whether it is doing its duty. You get one organization checking another and you get to a state of affairs that I think this nation is not going to be proud of. I am just as sure as I am alive that one of these days there will be an enormous reaction against this in the United States because every department of government now has its own investigators and, in many cases, its own police force, to creep up on the citizens. I am a farmer. Even the poor farmer now has a representative of the Agriculture Department coming out to see if he's sowing more crops than he ought to. And so it goes, through almost a hundred other governmental agencies with investigatory and police powers.

**WALLACE:** Well, let me ask you this, sir. Obviously these branches, these police branches, if you will, are being established at the suggestion of persons who feel they are necessary. Why do you think

7

[Lc]

we are, as you suggest, turning into a kind of
modified police state ourselves?

**EATON:** Well, you know, you create an agency to remove some abuse. But when you remove that abuse you may create twenty others to take its place. This way you throttle and restrict your people. Take it in connection with scientists. I think our scientific development in this country has been enormously retarded. The scientist is conscious that the FBI is breathing down the back of his neck all the time, scaring him. He is not even allowed to talk to his wife about secret things. We've gotten so enchanted with the value of these security measures that we have carried them to an enormous extent and we have even praised the FBI for violating the rights of free men. But if you were to take the police forces of the cities and of the counties and of the state and the governmental agencies and add them up, Hitler in his prime, through the Gestapo, never had any such extensive spy organizations as we have in this country today.

**WALLACE:** You really think we have a more serious, more far-reaching spy organization, and you say this seriously, than the Gestapo of Adolf Hitler?

**EATON:** I believe it profoundly and if we had time I would take nearly every governmental agency and show you its secret intelligence force. Take the Treasury Department with its fifty to sixty thousand employees and tax agents, working in that field. Take the Department of State with all of its supervision over visas and passports and the coming and going of people.

**WALLACE:** We must be a very insecure people if we feel the need for this kind of police supervision.

**EATON:** Yes, I think we have less confidence in our people maybe than any nation that I know of on earth. We're certainly worse in that respect than the Russians.

**WALLACE:** How did we get this way? Here was an America that was free and independent and suddenly we

8

[L.C.]

have turned into, if we are to believe what you say, a frightened and insecure people.

**EATON:** Two world wars and the prospect of a third have created these conditions. We are always afraid we would be accused of doing something for our enemy. Recently our enemy was Germany and Japan and everyone was suspected of being pro-German or pro-Japanese. Now we are suspected of being maybe not friendly enough with Germany and Japan. Also, we are under suspicion if we are friendly to Russia and Red China. It's a spirit of suspicion that is unworthy of this nation; it must be abandoned.

**WALLACE:** Let's come, though, directly to the issue that is involved. If we do feel insecure, we are that way because, vis-à-vis Russia, we believe that perhaps they want to take us over, they want to attack us, and we have to defend our way of life against an unfree way of life. Last winter, in a news conference, Mr. Eaton — and this is a quote — you said: "There is more spirit of war in the United States than in any other country in the world." You've made similar charges before and since. On what do you base them?

**EATON:** Take the pronouncements of the State Department or our representatives in the UN. Almost every week you'll hear this said: "We're in a position for massive retaliation, at the times and places of our own choosing, with the most deadly weapons the world can create." Almost every day there goes out from some department of government in the United States — either Defense or State — a boasting of our great power and what we're going to do to the other fellow if he doesn't behave himself. And when we say behave, we mean we want him to give up his philosophy and his way of life and adopt ours. Now ours, no doubt, is better. But I don't believe we have any right to threaten him with death if he doesn't accept our way of life and theory of human destiny.

**WALLACE:** I'm sure there are many people — many Americans — who differ with our foreign policy, but

9

[LC]

they don't make the charges you have done that the cold war is America's fault. What people, what forces in America, are behind making the cold war America's fault?

**EATON:** Mainly politicians, people in government office. They have believed that communism is a frightful thing that ought to be destroyed and that any suggestion that it be allowed to live is betraying our country. All of that is folly. We can't destroy communism. It's there to stay. Russia, China — there's nothing we can do to make them give up communism or to overthrow them. They have more military power than we have. I don't for a moment say that they are not without their very serious objectionable qualities. I think the original Communist thought that maybe he could persuade the world to accept his doctrines. But I am sure that any intelligent Russian has given up any notion that the United States could ever become Communist. We are the only nation that doesn't have a single Socialist in its Senate or its House, the only nation that doesn't have a large representation in its Parliament of people who believe in government ownership of everything. America is a capitalist country. It's one that's devoted to free enterprise and democracy and there's just no power in the world that could overthrow those institutions. They could kill us all, but they could never make Communists out of us. And to imagine that they could convert us to communism is just silly.

**WALLACE:** Nonetheless, if it is silly, a good many of our politicians, not just the Republican politicians you have been quoting up till now but Democratic statesmen as well, have been responsible for this cold war. You yourself said: "Twelve years ago, in fact, the United States declared war on Russia." And that was a Democratic....

**EATON:** That's right. You see, Mr. Dulles started with the Democratic party in the State Department and he continued right along with the present regime. But he has become more positive in the doctrines that obtained then and expanded

10

[LC]

them. Conditions have changed vastly. In that
time Russia has performed scientific miracles
that have astounded the world and she has
demonstrated that her power of retaliation is
immense. But we still go on talking as if we
were the strongest nation in the world, just as
if we could make any nation adopt our view of
life and our way of living.

**WALLACE:** But is not the issue this? You object to certain police powers that have been arrogated by the State, that have been taken over by the State. You suggest that we are losing certain of our freedoms. Someone who disagreed would say we are going to have to give up or at least modify certain of our freedoms to defend ourselves against a Communist threat. You are suggesting that there is no Communist threat — not that there is none, but that there is less than a good many of us fear. That is your interpretation. But President Eisenhower has said: "The Soviet State daily increases its power, and its rulers make clear their purpose to use that power to dominate the world." Soviet Dictator Khrushchev has told Americans on television: "Your grandchildren will live under Socialism." And he snarls at Western diplomats: "Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you." What I don't understand is, how can any responsible government be anything else except suspicious and tough with Russia, and careful about security measures at home?

**EATON:** I don't mind being tough with them to a certain extent, but to threaten them with massive retaliation when we ourselves would go down in smoke and dust does not seem to me to exhibit much common sense. There are no Communists in America to speak of except in the minds of those on the payroll of the FBI. Those of us who see Americans every day as I do — in every walk of life — educators, capitalists, working men, farmers, labor leaders — none of them are Communists and they are never going to be. We don't need any power of "massive retaliation" to keep them that way. But we are creating back-breaking debts and we will wind

11

[L.C]

up impoverished and giving up our freedoms, all for hallucinations. Russia has taken on all the territory she can handle.

**WALLACE:** Mr. Eaton, may I just interrupt for a second? Was it not the United States which started unilateral disarmament immediately after the second World War and wasn't it the United States which proposed world disarmament with a meaningful inspection system and the United States which helped to establish democracy in West Germany? On the other hand, did not the Soviet Union and communism outrage the free world by subjecting Albania and Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia and Rumania and Hungary more or less to the rule of bayonets?

**EATON:** I think probably we exaggerate what Russia has done there. I think if you take a vote in those countries you might be surprised. But, however that might be, we have no power to change it. We demonstrated that in Hungary. We don't dare interfere. We have got to let them work those things out. One reason I'm in favor of interchanges of citizens between East and West is that the more they see of us the more they are going to admire our way of life. Russia is putting such emphasis on education that its scholars will modify its internal system and change its attitude externally.

**WALLACE:** You predict a modification of the internal system in Russia. In what way?

**EATON:** As Russians become acquainted with what's going on in the world, as they make these great strides in economic development, they are not going to be interested merely in military power. They're going to want to enjoy our way of life — a better way, better food, better houses, better clothes, more automobiles — all the wonderful things that make life so attractive here. They have people of vast intelligence and have provided an educational system that is now the marvel of the world. If we have any faith in humanity, we'll let natural forces modify the Russian in his internal and external attitudes.

12

[LC]

**WALLACE:** We are constantly told in the free world by people we respect that it is necessary to have a massive force that will deter the Russians from wanting to attack us. Is this unnecessary?

**EATON:** If I can be sure of anything, it is that in Russia today the people and their scientists don't want war. I have seen the Russian. He loves his children, his grandchildren, his country. He wants to get along. We are constantly baiting the Russian bear and I think we ought to give it up. Only two weeks ago Mr. Dulles in a big press conference said: "What we all must think about is how we can most effectively fight what we most hate." "Fight what we most hate." Those are terrifying words to use in speaking of a proud and powerful nation — of people who have overwhelming military strength. Those are unwise and foolish words and oughtn't to be said by any responsible statesman here.

**WALLACE:** How do you relate all he says and our stance against Russia with individual freedoms for individual citizens in the United States?

**EATON:** To carry on an all-out war against Russia we would have to give up every freedom, subject ourselves to a dictator to get things done, and give up all the things we love. We would have to take on a crushing burden of taxation that would finish us as a capitalistic nation.

**WALLACE:** Let me ask you this question which we have asked of other persons recently. The British philosopher Bertrand Russell has said that if it came to a choice of a third world war and almost inevitable incineration on the one hand and living under communism on the other, he'd take communism. What about you?

**EATON:** I don't think that choice will ever have to be made. If we have an all-out war, that's the end of all of us and all that civilization has created. All of our great enterprises would go.

**WALLACE:** Would you, to avoid a third world war, suggest you could be content to live under communism?

13

[LC]

**EATON:** No one in the world would be more unhappy under communism than I, because I am dedicated to the other principle. But I am sure that such a choice will never be presented. I would be most unhappy if I had to consider it. I like life and want to live. I am sure we won't have to fight to avoid communism.

**WALLACE:** Is freedom necessary? Certainly it hasn't been necessary in the Soviet Union.

**EATON:** No, the Russians have never had freedom and it would take them some time to know what to do with it. But we in the Western world have had it. I sometimes think we are speaking euphemistically when we refer to ourselves as the "free world" with all the secret intelligence and police agencies and the vast and ever-spreading controls of government over us. But we love freedom and we'll go back to it very quickly. The situation will arise very soon when we'll say: "Away with all these government restrictions and security investigations . . . let's be good old-fashioned Americans."

**WALLACE:** Do you think, or hope, that that time is coming?

**EATON:** I know it will come. The American people will demand that we turn away from the waging of war to the preservation of peace. And when we do, the activities of these secret police and investigating agencies will be sharply curtailed.

**WALLACE:** Mr. Eaton, I certainly thank you for coming here from Cleveland and spending this half-hour with us. As an industrial giant and financier, Cyrus Eaton has helped to make America great. This does not necessarily make him an expert on history, communism, or democracy. But when a man like Cyrus Eaton is alarmed it should prompt the rest of us at least to be concerned about freedom's future. We have just heard one side of this issue. In the course of this series we plan to explore all sides. We plan to have at least one spokesman who believes that the so-called liberal mind is in itself a threat to our survival and freedom.

14