Away from Washington

During the dismal '30s most of the high-powered thinking about the U.S. economy as a whole went on in Washington, D.C. Last week there occurred one more sign--Henry Kaiser's speech to N.A.M. was an earlier one (TIME, Dec. 14) --that U.S. business is now resolving to do some national thinking on its own account. Formally announced was the "Committee for Economic Development," which believes that the U.S. must have as its goal the maintenance of post-war employment at some 55 millions, the maintenance of the national output of goods and services at between $135 and $150 billions--35 to 50% above 1940.

Chairman of the C.E.D. is quiet, persuasive Paul Gray Hoffman, president of Studebaker Corp., who is not only a master salesman but a student of U.S. political economy. Chairman of its important research committee is Ralph E. Flanders, president of Jones & Lamson Machine Co., flanked by Beardsley ("Pay-as-you-go") Ruml, chairman of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, and University of Chicago's top-flight economist, Theodore Otte Yntema (pronounced Ine temma), as fulltime director.

Significant is C.E.D.'s highly decentralized "grassroots" approach. It proposes ultimately to establish up to 150 regional offices which will canvass local industry to find out how quickly it can convert from war work to peace; what is its top peacetime capacity; and how each firm plans to merchandise its products so as to create a mass market.

Still left undefined is how C.E.D. proposes to cope with the two massive problems of the '30s: stimulation of private investment in the capital-goods industries; rigidity of prices and wages. Also left vague is how to enlist labor, which is not represented on C.E.D.'s board. But Paul Hoffman has started in the right direction: to get the goal of post-war employment out of the realm of Washington dreams down to hard-boiled business estimates.

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