Trustbusting, New Style

"If the concentration of power by business was bad for our country--and it was--then the concentration of power by Government is equally bad. And it is." With that observation off his chest, ex-Defense Mobilizer Charles E. Wilson last week advanced a revolutionary method of stopping the "creeping paralysis of socialism" in the U.S.

"We have to launch a second era of trustbusting," said Wilson, "and we need a bigger stick than even Teddy Roosevelt could swing." Electric Charlie's electrifying idea: sell the Government-owned power and water projects to the people. "The potential buyers are all around us," said Charlie Wilson. "They are the people who own Government bonds . . . Bonds could be exchanged for shares of stock in the new companies to spring from the presently Government-owned plants."

One result of the plan would be to cut the national debt by $27 billion, or 10%, and "instead of tax-free power and water projects, the new companies would pay taxes approximately a billion yearly . . . The new shareholders would get a better return from their stock than they are getting from their bonds today. But most important of all ... millions would . . . acquire a personal interest in business.

They would be buying economic understanding in the only good way, as voluntary participants ... If that happens, the second era of trustbusting will be automatic. The people will break up with violence the most insidious monopoly of all, the out & out economic dictatorship of a few politically powerful men . . ."

Wilson wryly noted that he had had "some little experience with this kind of dictatorship" in the steel wage fight. Without naming the Steelworkers' Boss Phil Murray, he said: "I was overruled by a single man who . . . exercises more control over this country than the President, the Congress we elected, and the officers appointed under the Government." Harry Truman, said Wilson, had agreed to a "just" solution to the steel strike. "But the solution did not happen to give all that was wanted to one single man, this man who is able to ride roughshod over the President and the people. And he did just that. I could no longer tolerate an atmosphere that permitted so brazenly selfish an act... and I resigned."

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