Government Controls in War and Peace

Extract

The nation is just emerging from a state of wartime economic mobilization involving a degree of regimentation of its business life without precedent in this country and hardly surpassed by the most dictatorial régimes abroad. At the peak of the war effort a typical manufacturer was largely directed by the government as to what he might make, what raw materials he might use, to which customers he might sell, in what order, and at what price. He could not enlarge or substantially alter his plant without governmental authority. He was limited in both directions as to the wages he might pay. While not subject to direct coercive control in the selection of manpower, he could generally not hire workers beyond a semi-compulsory employment “ceiling,” and his manpower pool was radically limited by the demands of selective service and of competing war activities. His most important trade journal had become the Federal Register. While his discretion was not completely circumscribed, he moved within a framework so confined as to be tolerable only when the national existence was at stake.