January 1948 – Can the Star-Gazing!

In our many years in the business world we cannot recall a period when there were so many shortages as there are today.

Every basic commodity—ability, acids, alcohol, anchors on down to zwieback—is in short supply. Every necessity, including food, clothing and housing, can be had only at a premium—and then only after a long wait.

Many of these shortages are due, experts say, to the lack of transportation facilities. Further, they add, one of the most important elements of our transportation system, the automotive industry, will not catch up with the demand for two years.

This transportation shortage is serious because it aggravates all the other shortages. But underneath it—and all the other shortages—lies the acute labor situation, which after all is said and done, results from the one basic shortage—the shortage of labor. Without labor, factories cannot turn out transportation facilities, labor-saving machinery and other production equipment. Without labor, no one can build homes or highways, tank cars or generating equipment.

The labor shortage is created by the high pay and no work fallacy promoted by the sob sisters of communism. This dangerous policy has slowed production of necessities in the face of the current high demand created by the pent-up wants resulting from curtailed production during the war years.

With the help of government regulations and restrictions, it has sabotaged the high production facilities of our factories, mills and mines which were revealed during the war when we produced more ships, tanks, planes, trucks and guns than all the other nations of the world combined.

This same high production, directed along civilian lines, could still be accomplished if business were permitted to have a free hand in running its own show, and were not handicapped by the endless regulations and rules laid down by the government and by short-sighted labor leaders. Removal of these hampering restrictions soon would bring the era of shortages to an end.

It was free enterprise and a “the-sky’s-the-limit” policy that built this country. And that policy is the only one that will get us back on the track again.

To our way of thinking, there is too much prognosticating, too much government planning, too; much lawmaking and too many theories. Let’s forget this star-gazing (that’s what most of it boils down to) and get down to business.