THE RIZE OF ECONOMIC ADVISES

The Rise of Economic Advisers

ECONOMISTS," Stuart Chase once remarked, "are almost invariably engaged in defeating the last slump." For long years, U.S. economists were, in fact, best known for their hindsight. But in recent years, business analysts have come out of the ivory tower and into the marketplace. Dozens of organizations, e.g., the Council for Economic Development, the Twentieth Century Fund, keep the public informed on business trends. In business and in government today, few decisions are made without an' economic "fix" from an expert.

Economics is everybody's business in the U.S. today, largely because of the spadework of Washington's Brookings Institution. One of the first U.S. organizations to realize that the economy had grown too complex to be easily comprehensible, the institution set out 29 years ago to educate the public on economic and government affairs. Last week the institution published a book designed to encourage the businessman to do still more of his own economic thinking.

The $3.00, 335-page manual, An Introduction to Economic Reasoning, was written by three top economists' Brookmgs' Dr. Marshall A. Robinson Dartmouth's Professor Herbert C. Morton and Dr. James D. Calderwood of Claremont Graduate School in Claremont, Calif. The book propounds no startling new theories, is intended only as a primer on the U.S. system. It covers the economy from consumer demand to unions, uses crisp, know-it-yourself language to unravel technical gobbledygook, e.g., "multiplier principle," "countervailing power."

Brookings Institution was founded by Robert Brookings, a St. Louis woodenwares millionaire who retired at 46 to "give my money and the rest of my life to public service." While serving as Woodrow Wilson's price control chief in Washington during World War I, Brookings was appalled at the lack of accurate information on economic and governmental affairs. Consequently, in 1919, he went to work for the newly founded Institute for Government Research, one of the first private organizations set up to study public administration. Later Brookings founded the Institute of Economics and a graduate school for advanced training in economics and government, merged all three organizations into the Brookings Institution in 1927. Its charter: "To advance knowledge and understanding of economic and political problems."

The nonprofit, nonpartisan institution has had a profound effect on government and the economy, has helped shap-national policy under both Democratic and Republican administrations. Brookings' experts laid the groundwork for present-day government accounting procedures, worked out the present system of congressional apportionment, produced the first U.S. budget under Budget Director Charles Gates Dawes. The institution also serves as a lending library of specialized technical talent. Brookings' staffers and alumni of its graduate school have advised virtually every executive agency and congressional committee in Washington on subjects ranging from highways to health insurance. When the President's Council of Economic Advisers was formed in 1946, it seemed natural to pick Brookings' Vice President Edwin G. Nourse as its first chairman.

For its first 25 years, the tone of Brookings research was set by scholarly Harold G. Moulton, its first president. Moulton was a sturdy pioneer in many areas of public-affairs research and during the '30s eloquently op posed many New Deal economic ideas notably that of a mature economy.' Under Moulton, Brookings published two of the most hopeful and accurate economic studies to come out of the Depression: Nourse's America's Capacity to Produce and Moulton's own America's Capacity to Consume

By World War II, the Government turned gratefully to Brookings for the economic know-how needed in such diverse projects as planning manpower allocations and readying the postwar reconversion. In 1947, when Congress was scrapping over rival proposals for foreign aid, Brookings drafted the plan that became the final charter of EGA Since 1952, Brookings has broadened its scope and gained new prestige under President Robert D. Calkins, 53; an able administrator and onetime dean of Columbia University's School of Business. Brookings' 70-man staff now is preparing reports on such questions as tariff reduction and budget balancing, plus a seven-volume treatise on the United Nations. The primary emphasis of the 25 new projects launched by President Calkins in the past three years is not only to sharpen economic and political tools but to place them in the hands of an ever-wider public. As Founder Robert Brookings argued, the businessman who thoroughly understands the workings of a free economy and its relations to a free government is not only a better businessman, but a better citizen.

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