WAR & PEACE: Plan for the Future

Into pigeonholes, filing cases, desk drawers in Washington, last week, went a slim, 18-page pamphlet labeled: “After Defense—What?” It will not be forgotten. Social planners, economists, Congressmen will take it out again, read and re-examine it as a signpost to a new world.

Months ago, Planner Franklin Roosevelt faced a group of men in the White House and in grave mood told them what they thoroughly agreed with: that the present transition of the U.S. to a wartime basis would be only a twitch in the national economy compared to the transition to come at war’s end—back to a peacetime economy. He had an assignment: outline a plan for action by which the U.S. could return to peace without convulsions of depression and unemployment.

His auditors were members of the National Resources Planning Board, of which the President’s uncle, liberal, aging Frederic Delano, is chairman. The man picked to boss the job was greying, unassuming Luther Gulick, Republican, friend and adviser of the Rockefellers, a Columbia University professor of government. Assistants were almost all top-flight economists. They went to work. Last week their brief report, written and rewritten before the President finally scribbled “F. D. R.” on it, was released.

It was only an outline but it pointed out two basic facts: 1) that any expansion of the economy can absorb only a few millions of workers in any given year, 2) that when peace comes the U.S. must find peacetime jobs for all its man power, otherwise “we shall be back in the valley of the depression.”

The report plots—not only for the past but as far ahead as 1944—the transition to a war economy that is now going on. The change:

For 1941. 1,800,000 men in military service; 4,800,000 in defense industries; 45,200,000 in other industries; 5,100,000 unemployed. National income (in 1940 dollars): $84 billions.

For 1944 (when full-out war effort would be finally reached). 3,500,000 men in military service; 23,500,000 in defense industries; 33,000,000 in other industries; none unemployed. National income (in 1940 dollars): $105 billions.

If peace does not come till 1945, the problem will then be to find jobs for the 27,000,000 who will have gone into the services and war industries.

The Plan sets up four objectives:

1) A national income maintained at $100 billions; a national production-consumption budget balanced at a high level with full employment, instead of at a low level with mass unemployment.

2) Freedom for youth and old age from the necessity of work; a 40-hour week; no sacrifice of wage standards.

3) Modified free enterprise, opportunity for personal initiative, cooperative industrial advancement under governmental leadership.

4) Nourishment, clothing, shelter, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for everyone in the nation.

How to accomplish this admittedly “colossal undertaking?” The Plan points out only directions, leaves it to other Government agencies to build the roads.

>A program of public works—in agriculture, soil conservation, power development, transportation, housing.

>Attempts to develop new products, and help U.S. industry change over to peace as it is changing over to war.

>Expansion of medical service, entertainment, education and other services that the public can use.

> New forms of social security and relief.

>Coordinated Government financial aid to help war industries turn to peaceful products. “Nothing can be more wasteful and discouraging than needlessly conflicting fiscal programs.”

> An end to isolationism. “Our foreign policy will have an important bearing upon our domestic employment program when peace returns.” The U.S. will have to help feed a starving Europe. With a return to normal international trade, the U.S. will have to buy as well as sell. “Trade is a two-way street.”

In part the chart that Mr. Roosevelt’s planners had presented him with was for a better-integrated, better-run super-New Deal. But its broad objectives were of a kind that anti-New Dealers could cheer for.