Enlightened Capitalism

Brazilians got their first look at a grandiose project that might alter the shape of postwar capitalism. In Rio last week Nelson Rockefeller, optimistic, zealous salesman of Good Neighborliness, onetime U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs, took the wraps off a brand-new idea called the American International Association for Economic and Social Development.

The ultimate aim of the plan, for months secretly abrewing among Rockefeller's high-powered brain-trusters: by mixing business (which would be handled by a special corporation) and philanthropy, to expand other countries' production, especially of food, and thus to increase their capacity to buy what the U.S. has to sell. If it worked in Brazil, where Rockefeller proposed to begin in a relatively small way, living standards would be raised, an extensive middle class would come into existence, and there would be an end to talk of U.S. and exploitation.

Salad for Brazilians. Lodged at the luxurious Copacabana Hotel, Rockefeller was immediately surrounded by Brazil's rulers, the closes productores, but insisted that he wanted to talk with labor leaders too. The press gave him a lusty welcome. Said Correio da Manha: "The American continent cannot survive while one part is strong and prosperous and the other poor and weak. Nelson Rockefeller was one of the first to realize this truth." In a front-page editorial entitled simply "Nelson," Diario da Noite said: "He returns to encourage the development of our land resources in the generous and disinterested desire to improve the lot of the great masses of Latin America. . . ."

Actually, though Rockefeller intended to spend more than $20,000,000 on worldwide schemes, his Brazilian beginnings were modest. Of three initial projects, one was philanthropic, two were commercial, with a total investment at first of around $750,000. For philanthropy he proposed to expand a pet wartime project of the Coordinator's Office that, in an effort to improve nutrition, taught starch-and-bean-fed Brazilians to eat salads, and "stimulated" farmers to start growing fresh vegetables.

Corn-Hog Program. Henry Wallace once told him that an acre of Iowa hybrid corn yielded far more than ordinary corn, and Nelson Rockefeller never forgot. This week he was to sign his first commercial contract with Brazil's only hybrid producer, Agroceres Limited of Sao Paulo. It would call for a minority investment of $200,000, and seed loans to the company, which would sell hybrid seed corn to farmers, and to other companies that wished to start production.

A hog-growing venture was already under way. Last month Rockefeller sent two experts to Brazil with 250,000 cubic centimeters of vaccine to combat hog cholera. Rockefeller will subscribe $200,000 to the project, which will probably include a demonstration farm near Sao Paulo, but Brazilians will be invited to put up most of the money.

It was still a question whether Brazil's big farmers would be willing to follow Nelson Rockefeller's gleam. And would Brazilian capitalists be attracted by anything but exorbitant profits? Still, a little success would go a long way in big, backward Brazil. And such a commercially helpful hand would be a potent implement to U.S. foreign policy.

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