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from the Gang at SIMMONSSid Simmons

R. K. Stillwell

Bill Deuel

Mac Mclemore

Ernie Brownell

March Jackson

George McManus

Bob Krabill

Floyd Beaty

Clare Parsons

Betts Goodfellow

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By Simmons Troined Personnel

8 Yeors Dependoble Service

Ofiering The Finesl Old-Growth Douglos Fir Cleqrs from the ROSS tUtrlBER tt^ltts at Medford, Oregon

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Sfeody Growth Through Speciof Service

Getiing Industry Off The Ground

By KENNETH SMITH, Vice-President, The Pacific Lumber Company, 'San

Francisco,

California

(to Southern California Retail Lumber Association

40th Anniversary Convention, 1957)

Why are most politicians anti,business ? Why does a majority of the Congress consistently and persistently support the use of government's coercive power to take from the more productive and thrifty and give to the less productive and thrifty? The answer is obvious. A majority of the vot€rs are anti-business ! Politicians add up votes the way we add up sales.

Why then are a majority of voters anti-business? Whv do we find ourselves now so deeply committed to socialismto a garrison economy-a welfare state-in so many major ways and on so many facets of our interdependent economy, that there is now no certainty ,that we may extricate ourselves?

Why have we so undermined our revolutionary concept of a private-property, limited-government, freemarket economy that nothing short of a flaming rebirth of patriotism can prevent its continuing deterioration and ultimate destruction? Why are we now in the monstrous situation of finding the business system, which is the heart and core of our material rvell-being, under open attack by the political system ?

The answer to these questions is not so obvious, but just as iertain.

It is because we have failed to deserve and get public understanding, approval and supfort of the economic system. We have been so busy making sure our products deserve and get public approval that we have allou'ed demagogues to displace doers as the leaders of our country.

.People have listened to demagogues because rve ,let demagogues do the talking. We fell down on the job. We abdicated leadership. We failed to seek and win public understanding of what makes our economy tick, of how business serves THEIR best interest and not just OURS, and of the truth that free markets and personal freedom are notjust economic and political issues but are moral issues.

As a result, we of my generation are going to live out our lives in an economic climate created by increasingly oppressive welfare stateism and the adoption of inflation as our way of life.

Taxes on business will increase. Realprofits will shrink. The coercive power of government will continue to be used to take money away from all taxpayers to lend to selected home owners, to subsidize manufacturers who are located in public power areas, to subsidize selected farmers, to subsidize tree growing on farm land in competition with private tree farms, to aggrandize the fed- eral government at the expense of the states by the grants-in-aid device, and to squander playing God and generating ill will around the world.

But all that is no reason for business to panic. As to business decisions, it merely sets up a new and strange frame of reference, a new and unhappy economic climate in which to operate. It does not outlaw good management.

And certainly it is no reason for business to abdicate its responsibility. On the contrary, it is its own most cogent reason for re-examination of our failure, and' rededication of our resources that produced here the greatest nation yet on earth. Our cause is by no means irrevocably lost.

We know now that it was lack of awareness that lost us our heritage. We know now that we could have saved our way of life. We know now that we came into the first quarter of this century holding heaven in our hands only to throw it away.

It is easy to look only at the failure of our rear guard to reverse the trend and say nothing has been accomplished. But if, on the other hand, we look at the tremendous efforts being made by vofuntary organizations and by corporations to re-educate our people, and the growing strength of the opposition to stateism, we can see that a very great deal has been accomplished.

We see it in the widespread corporation effort with their own employes, and in the efforts of voluntary organizations using mass media to try to dissipate the economic fallacies that government can give the people anything which it does not first take away from them, that management can guarantee job security, workers can improve their real welfare by getting increased pay without increasing pioduction, that there is any system other than the free market that can provide the greatest good for the greatest number, orthat the law of'supply. and demand can be repealed.

It was forgetting that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty that got us in this mess. James Madison, when he was urging the adoption of limitations on the power of our central government, warned:

"There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by.violent and sudden usurpations."

But freedom worked too well. The revolutionary idea of a sovereign people and a servant government released the greatest outburst of human energy ever known to man and produced such an overwhelming abundance of material things that it went to our heads. We got the idea that we were successful because we were smart and we forgot the lessons of history. We ceased to be humble and forgot the teachings of Christ.

And so, while we were busy adjusting our halo, gradual and silent encroachments have abridged our freedom.

We have used up about two generations throrving away the privatb-property, limited-government, freemarket economy for which our forefathers pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor, and it may take two generations or longer to get it back.

We may have to pledge some of our sacred pocketbooks to do it, but we can and we will get it back.