The Lesson

For six weeks a House Special Committee, headed by Tennessee's Republican B. (for Brazilla) Carroll Reece, has been probing into the doings of the nation's tax-free foundations. Are the foundations--most of which were established by America's most successful capitalists--promoting socialism, or perhaps even subversion? By Recce's standards there seemed to be some evidence that they are.

To start things off, the committee's Research Director Norman Dodd submitted a preliminary report that blandly hinted that there is something sinister about the foundations. Among other things, said he, they have been concerned with "internationalism," and some had even been guilty of "training individuals and servicing agencies to render advice to the Executive Branch of the Federal Government." As the hearings went on, a troop of witnesses added other bits and pieces. One denounced the Kinsey reports, which had been partially financed by the Rockefeller Foundation; another blasted Studebaker's Board Chairman Paul Hoffman, former president of the Ford Foundation, for backing UNESCO. Finally, last week, fed up with such charges, supported, he felt, largely by quotations taken out of context, Ohio's Democratic Representative Wayne L. Hays decided to teach the committee a lesson as to just how silly its proceedings are.

At the time Hays pulled his stunt, the committee's Assistant Research Director Thomas McNiece was on the stand trying to prove that the foundations had been backing a planned American economy.

Representative Hays interrupted, saying that he had a quotation or two about which he wanted McNiece's opinion. The quotations:

P: "But all agree that there can be no question whatever that some remedy must be found, and quickly found, for the misery and wretchedness which press so heavily at the moment on a very large majority of the poor." P: "Every effort must therefore be made that fathers of families receive a wage sufficient to meet adequate ordinary domestic needs . . ." P: "For the effect of civil change and revolution has been to divide society into two widely different castes. On the one side there is the party which holds the power because it holds the wealth . . . On the other side there is the needy and powerless multitude, sore and suffering . . ."

Said McNiece when Representative Hays had finished: ". . . All of these--I do not know your source--are closely comparable to Communist litreature that I have read..."

Said representative Hays: "The first and last [ quotations] were from the Encyclical of Pope Puis XI.

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