New Supports

Furthermore, the economy has a great many built-in supports -- mostly devised by the New Deal -- to keep up buying power and cushion the severity of a slump. Government price supports keep the farmer's income relatively stable ; federal deposit insurance helps prevent any 1932-type bank panics. Strong unions keep a floor under wages; unemployment insurance tides the jobless over short layoffs. While only 15% of the U.S. labor force was covered by pension systems in the '30s, today 90% are covered, and private pension plans have grown from 720 in 1930 to 14,000, covering more than 10 million workers. An estimated $12 billion in reserves has already ac cumulated in private plans, and they are growing at the rate of $2 billion a year.

Businessmen, who have learned that their own as well as the nation's prosper ity depends upon a continually increasing and broader-based buying power, support the programs as strongly as anybody else.

President-elect Eisenhower's task is to preserve the valid legacies of the Roos velt era and at the same time eliminate the waste, extravagance and bureaucrats with which many have become encumbered. In short, he must introduce businesslike management to what has become, since World War II, the world's biggest business.

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