I. A Practical Approach

Extract

America has triumphed in the greatest war in all history, but we have yet to face the major enemy at home—unemployment and all the tragic waste and misery occasioned by it. By now it is hardly necessary to stress the grim fact that unemployment is a real threat. We have seen the first impact of demobilization and reconversion in many areas of the nation, especially in communities where aircraft and shipbuilding industries boomed in wartime. Some measures have been taken to cope with these short-run difficulties, and others are now under consideration. But the real danger lies beyond the present demobilization period. Fear has been creeping into the heart of all America—our returning soldiers, our war workers, our young graduates facing an uncertain future, our older and handicapped workers—a fear that relates to what will happen as things get back to “normal.” The dread lies in the word “normal.”

We know, of course, and we are constantly being reminded, that for a while one may expect activity of boom proportions—that those who have saved during the war will be purchasing the cars and radios and refrigerators that they have gone without for years, that agricultural and other exports to the devastated world abroad will be at a record peacetime high, that producers will be spending feverishly to restock inventories and replace worn-out capital equipment. However, these are temporary factors which will end all too soon. Nobody has forgotten that they quickly petered out after the last war. When backlogs at home and abroad have been filled, the postwar bubble will burst.