VIII

The Straitjacket on Production

'Victory, without the use for abundance of the powers we have developed for
production in war, would be indeed a hollow victory.
'We must plan for security and abundance together/

President Franklin D. Roosevelt

THE LEADERS OF THE BASIC INDUSTRIES ARE AS FAINT-HEARTED

as they are powerful. They always see danger in abundance. They
believe that low profits, glut and depression must result if, in time of
peace, they allow the nation to use to the full its resources of human
skill, mechanical power and new technology, its mines and fields and
factories.

This is why, at the end of the second world war, they put the
country into a Straitjacket of managed scarcity, and with it a good part
of the world; why, over the average of the first six post-war years,
American industry produced twenty per cent less than at the height of
the war, in 1944; why hundreds of billions worth of goods which
could have been turned out and were badly needed to fight want and
poverty at home and abroad, were not produced; why the strait-
jacket was loosened only after the Korean outbreak; yet why even
in the first half of 1952, during the new armament boom, the total
industrial output of the United States was still 13 per cent below the
highest level it had reached during the war, or actually 24 per cent less
per head of the country's greatly increased population.

Few Americans knew about that first, decisive post-war action of the
giants of industry against the concept of 'peace through plenty*—
until, in 1947 and 1948, some of those reponsible for it were invited by
Congressional committees to defend themselves. Even then, the
popular press revealed little about that dramatic spectacle.

The accused were the rulers of the steel industry who held pro-
duction down in order to keep prices up, prevented the expansion of
their own and other industries for fear of competition, and thereby
set the post-war pattern for America and many other nations.

Among their accusers were first of all the delegates of the nation's
33,000 independent processors of steel: small and medium manufac-
turers, solid businessmen who cut fine figures at chamber of commerce
meetings and bargaining sessions with the labour unions, but who live

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