‘derhaII iin Cumberland, on the first Brit- slogan is stdl “No coyectlon wlth the control of the_Mmistry of Supply.

of the_Mmistry of Supply. That

“ishlndustrlal power pile to generate
electricity, and a slte is being chosen €or’
the first breeder pile to exploit ,the re-l
sults of the pdot 7breedp developed at
Harwell and to producemore atomic
fuel than it consumes In conception it
wlll be, Independent of the bieeder pile
’ bullt #bythe United States Atomic En-
ergy ‘Gommission at Arco, Idaho. The
1
firm ‘opposite.” , .
4
The government seems determined
t o disengage atomic developments as
much as posuble from its dlrect control
and to open the way for prlvate enter-
prise. A committee under Lord Wavef-
-1.ey is examining,. n o t the desirabillty,
but the -means of doing so. At the n ~ o -
-ment ,the program is d,irectly undeJ
may not be &e most suitablearrange-
ment, but any attempt to hand over to
privatecapital the only industrythat
was concelved and born nationallzed
will mean one of the bltterest political
struggles that Parliament has -ever seen.
Otherwise, Britain, ten years after
Churchrll’s yarning, -is wellset u p rn
-the-atomic-energy.buslness. ’ ._

, - . - I
.,. ~
- -the. 1

. . “IF YE tu& up the:gas In the darkest
heart,” ’Mr. .Dooley liked’ to say; “ye’ll
find it has a good reason-a good
cera1 Electric, .,writing in- the‘Army Ord-
all our Influence In -the ‘world :for ,such
‘purposes as-we see fit. and by such means
-ncqzce Joamd as far back as 1944, felt
-we ought to bC less secretme about such
as we see -fit? “America does not go
0

varchous-reason-for the worst things it
-done. - L k e .protectm’ the llbertles of
mankind.or needin’ the money.’”.
“So soon as you have a milltary class,”
Woodrow .Wilson agreed with Dooley,
:orders: “War has been inevitable in OUT
abroad,” John Qumcy Adams corrects
-him, , “ m search of monsters-to destroy.”
-humah affalrs as an evolutionary force.
.
-. . Let us make the threeLway partner-
’ Monsteisenough roam the local wil-
derness. Watching Luce and McCarthy
ship [industry, gokernment, army] per-
-manent.” The. conservatlve edltor of battle is lrke watching two dinosaurs ,go
’

:“elections are of minor importance, be-
cause they-dete~~n=‘,the’political pollcp,
‘and back of h a t -political- pol~cyIS the
* constantpressure of ,men trainedto
arms, enormous bodies of disciplined
“ men wondermg if they are never going
’ io be allowed to use :their ,education and
‘therr skrll and ravage some great people
w ~ t hthe-
’ force of arms. That IS the
meaning of armamentis.”
IlJnrted; Stater- New.s,, David Lawrence,
-at each other-it dsesn’t make any dif-
’ f ere-nce which wlns because theytre both
‘began to get the drift a couple of years
later: “Our whole government 1s begm-extinct. If they’re-not, then we are-the
ning to adoptthephilosophythat great confident majorlty ‘of Americans
the
United States must haveabig whom Adla1 Stevenson described as “the
army,
navy, and air force, andthat miiitarygenerousand ~ the uniligliiened, h s e “
demonsbration, instead of the language
-who are proud of our strength_and sure
~ of- reason and justice or self-denial, i s
Of our goodness and who want to work
with each In trust, to advance the honor
foremost. This is the only solution that
Hitlerfound for Germany’s troubles.” of the country ”

Five years have passed since we began, It no longer suffices to ’express our
once agam, to rearm. Do we therefore SAY I’M STANDING knee-deep - and doubts prwately. The out-loud kmd of
feel morp safe agamst attack thanwe. slnking in the muddy waters of the doubting whlch rescued American
did five years ago? Do we find ‘ourselvesLittle Calumet. Some anxious’patriot - though’t in the twenti,es from t h e fiibes
wrth more friends in the world? Have paddles up to bring me comfort and joy: wherethe McCarthys and McCarrans
OUT rights as free men been made more if the Little Calumet were the Volga, he and Jennets of that decade had locked
secure? Or have we only demonstrated says, I’d be up t o my ears. And he pad- it is what we most need.in the timorous
that when we keep in private hands in- dles away as contentedly as if he’d really- fifties. W e need someone to takethe
dustries which,depend for profitupon done something for me. place of Dreiser and Menken, Slnclalr
’

warandpreparation for war, we are Nor does it help me to be told ‘that I Lewis andVeblenand Steffens. ,
putting ahot-car #thief in charge of a better stop saying Ouch when McCarthy Again the littleedltorlal fellows In
parking lot? gives the screw +other turn-lest the the London collars are hawkmgthe
Just as the Russians use the charge of Kremlin overhear my yip and tape- alarm on every newsstand that only by
Zionism to blanket criticism by terror, record it for broadcastipg to Europe. napalm and thunderjet can the American
so our air-force magnates use prtchmen The insistence of these r q a i n d e r e d in- . way of life .be saved, that no man can
like McCarthy and Velde to keep- orders *-tellectuals on the short leashes that we nowcall himself loyal whowillnot
mounting. Charles E. Wilson, of Gen- don’t have any motion of what a real .pledge allegiance to the commander of
drive for conformity, ‘such as goes on in the nearest Amencan Legion post and to
NELSON ALGREN i s the author o f the U. S . S. R., can he llke reveals loy- the mob-mindedness for which he
“The Man with the Golden AWE”and alty to nobod1 save Henry Luce. W h o stands By placing economic boycotts on
“Chicago: City on the Make.’’ h a s decided’ that we shouldnowexert dissenters, we are told that we will in-’
I

306 The NATIQN


sure the liberties of conformlsts, by hob-
bling sclentlsts and teachers we wdl
guarantee academlc freedom; if-Ge can
but budd a space platform before any-
’ one else we will Insure natlonal contenk-
ment.
When we can make a half-hero out
of a subaqueoLs growth IlkE Whlttaker
Chambers and then place a government
employee under charges because unlden-
tified mformants allege that “hls convlc-
tions on the questlon of clvd KlghtS ex-
tend sllghtly beyond that of the average
individual,” .it is time to call a halt.
“Rlsk for rlsk,” the wonderfully
named Judge Learned Hand wntes, “for
myself I had rather take my chance that
some traitors wdl escape detect~on than
spredd abroad a spmt of general snspi-
cion and distrust whlch accepts rumor
and goss~pIn place of undmnayed and
MONOPOLY’S NEW DEFENSE
Countervailing Myth
THE brazen, unmltrgated monopolatlc
power held by a-few corporate glants in
the Unlted States amounts to a coniplracy
agamst the
general
welfare A mere
fractlon of 1 percent of all corpora-
tlons controls some 50 per cent of tptat
corporate,wealthAttheturn of the
centuryglgantlcmergers took place In
011, copper,lead, sugar, paper, salt,
powder, cans: whrskey, coal, steel, and
other lines. By the late 1920’s more than
half o l all publlc-utlllty companies were
contlolled by threc corporatlons and
ailothcr thud by ten holdmg companies.
In WorldWar 11, 10 manufacturmg
canpanles recelved 30 percent of the
dbllar volume of war contracts and 100’
’ companles 6 6 2 / 3 percent; In’ the Ko-
reanwar 10 companies recerved 40 per
cent and 5 0 comp‘anles 66 2 / 3 per cent.
Blg busmess is constantly becommg more
concentrated- and more powerful.The
end can only be the replacement of free
enterprise by l n d u s t r d feudalism.
LELAND E . T R A Y V l C K ZJ nssocrcrfe
PI ojesso? of ~ C 0 1 2 0 1 1 1 2 C Snl Mzchgnn Slnbe
College.
unmtmxdated inquiry. 1 belleve that that
community IS already io process of ci~s-
solutlon where each man begins to eye
his nelghbor as a possible enemy, where
non-conformity wlth the accepted creed,
polltlcal as well as religions, IS a mark
of disaffection; where denunciation,
without specification or backmg, takes
the -place of evidence; where orthodoxy
chokes freedom of .dissent; where falth
in the eventual supremacy of reason has
become so tunid that we dare not enter
our convlctlons in the open lists to win
or lose. Such fears as these are a solvent
whlch can eat out the cement that bmds
the stones together; they may in the end
subject us to a despdtism as evil a; any
that we dread; and they can be allayed
only in 50 far as we refusetoproceed
on suspicmn, and trust one another until
we have tangible ground for misgivmg.
..
” e by Leland E. Traywick
Yet opyosltion to monopollstlc power
is tradltional In thls country. Although
Americans haveadmlred the successful
careers of Rockefeller, Morgan, Carne-
,ole, Vanderbdt, Mellon, and Ford, they
havecondemned their tactics. And the
feelmg agamst the great Impersonal
corporations has been even stronger It
used to be-that a Jury would almost un-
fadinglybring in averdict of gllilty
against a bank, an insurance company,
or a rallroad.The Idea of economic
slavery was extrenlely repugnant to our
people.At present,however,profitable
and powerful concentratlons of business
are bemg justified in various ways. W e
are told, for example, that concentra-
tlon of power offers no problem if It is
offset by anoth.er concentratton Thts
counterbalancmg need not be effected by
sellerscompetmgwithsellersbut by
buyers working agalnst sellers and sell-
ers agamst buyers, A firm may be re-
strlcted m its. lriarket power by those
from whom it buysas well asby those
to whom i t sells. The emphasis is
thusnot on restraints from the same
side of the market but fromopposlte
-
Themutual confidence on which a11
else depends can be mamtamed only by
an open min4 anda brave reliance upon
free discussion.”
-
“I do notbdrevqin democracy,”
Herbert U. Nelson of t h e National Asso-
ciation of Real Estate Boards differs; “I
think it stinks.”
“Those nations whoprofess to fear
s u r methods most will soon be most.
closely imitatingthose methods,”was
howAdolfput it. And d o answels:
“Whatisgood for General Motors is
good for the country.”
If you turn up the gas in the healts
A I
-of our business brass youLll dnd a good
reason-a good varchous reason-for
investing more and more heavily in the
Korean adventure.Such as protecting
the liberties of mankind.
O r needing the money.
sldes. Monopollstlc power exists, but
smce
monopolies offset monopolies,
there IS n o danger. This IS known as the
theory of countervailing or counterbal-
ancmg power.
Illustrationsale carefully chosen to
bolster the argument. In such industries
assteel, automobllcs, electrical goods,
rubber, andfarm machinery powerful
labor ‘unions hold management in check.
T h ~ sis no accldent. Smce big busmess
begets blg labor, counterbalancmg power
automatically comes into belng. The re-
verse IS also true: big management offsets
big labor.Slmdarly, strong
retaders
check strong manufacturers. The mail-
order houses, the food, variety, and de-
partment-store chains, and the coopera-
twe bnymg orSanrzatlons have a strong
mcenttve to develop coupterbalancmg
power U s q s m p l e bargainmgmeth-
ods, Sears, Roebuck wasabletosell
Goodyear tires forfrom 20 to 25 per
cent less than the
manufacturer. By
threatenmg to make Its own cornflakes
the A. and P. was ,ableto reduce the
prlce it,had to pay for cornflakes 10 per
cent D‘etroit was one of the few places
307