AMERICAN BUSINESS
59
The interests of these new, or newly powerful, groups, are not tied to
old forms or old ideas. The new groups are in a position to be, and
are proving to be, more flexible, more daring, more ready to try the
new and abandon the old, than the businessmen have shown them–
selves.
During the past two decades, almost all of the major changes in
the United States have been put through by these new groups, and
against the initial opposition of the business community. It was they,
for example, that launched the Tennessee Valley Authority, the great
dams elsewhere for irrigation, power and flood control, the other vast
measures for conservation, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation,
the Export-Import Bank, the International Bank for Reconstruction
and Development, the Marshall Plan, the strengthening of Pan–
American relations, the Atlantic Pact, and all the various structural
reforms such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Fed–
eral Deposit Insurance Corporation, and so on.
It
was they who
declared that 50,000 airplanes could be produced a year, and they,
to be frank, who carried us into the Second WorId War some time
before it was formally declared. I do not wish to imply that I think
that all of these and of the other major changes of this period have
been "good." But most of them have been almost inescapable adapta–
tions to the quickly changing world in which we are living. More–
over, these changes could not have been carried through, in most
cases, without the cooperation, however reluctant, of the business
community. Roosevelt could call for 50,000 planes, but it was the
businessmen who built them. Marshall could announce his Plan, but
the bankers and industrialists have had to implement it. It is, how–
ever, noteworthy that businessmen have almost never been the first
to advocate any of these changes and actions, but have met them
with sullen or bitter complaint. In the end, they have usually gone
along, and have often, after the fact, not only accepted what has
happened but found it to be of benefit to themselves.*
*
Wendell Willkie made his public reputation as the representative of Com–
monwealth
&
Southern in battling TVA. I wonder how many 'stockholders of
Commonwealth
&
Southern have reflected on the fact that their properties, al–
most insolvent at that time, are now paying dividends, and are immeasurably
better off as a direct result of the area development brought about by TVA? Not
many, apparently, to judge by the same dreary business opposition to the pro–
jects for Missouri Valley and Columbia River Authorities.
