November 1946 – Let’s Start Punching

In our editorials we have endeavored to lean over backwards with respect to government policies, Congress, the OPA, the WAA, et al., but we find it most difficult.

We are American and have always been sold on the American way. Thank God we all are able to express an opinion or fight for a cause which we know is vital to the future of business and the people of this Nation. For example, we can harp on the importance of the free enterprise system. We can sound off against the pinks and their fellow travelers and against governmental restrictions on almost everything from cradles to caskets. And it’s a job that someone must do. The press has the means to reach the people and a publisher has an obligation to his subscribers—even if sometimes he gets tired of singing the same old tune.

Sometimes we think what the hell’s the use? Let Joe Doakes do it. We think maybe we’d be better off if we’d just concentrate on trying to get more subscribers and more advertisers. But, then; our job is more than that. Someone has to carry the ball—or at least run interference.

Last fall we bemoaned the fact that a man had to consult an attorney every time he turned around; that he couldn’t fire a laggard without consulting the union agent or the NLRB . . . and that the saloons had no more free lunch. Then we hopefully expressed the opinion that better days were coming.

Maybe they are. But despite the knowledge which every thinking citizen has—the knowledge that the free enterprise system is on trial before the world—we have more strikes, more slow-downs, and more unrest now than we ever had in the past. Today you can’t get a railroad ticket, a hotel room, a steak or a refrigerator without being in the know. In fact, you can’t plan a damn thing — the Planners have already planned it.

The answer to most of these problems is simple enough: Everyone who believes in the American Way must buckle down and sell all over again the principle which made this Nation great. Selling an ideal is a tough assignment for the average business man who has been schooled in the selling of commodities, or for the production man who has been schooled in the making of those commodities.

But we must outsell the Commies and their chums who are desperately trying to inject their fallacious ideologies wherever we turn. We glow magnificently when someone comes out with a book like The Spirit of Enterprise, by Edgar Queeny, or The Road to Serfdom by Frederick Hayek, a foreigner. Everyone should read and foster that kind of thinking because it represents OUR way.

If each one of us would spend a few hours of our time selling the American idea, scarcities and strikes would become a thing of the past. The U. S. A. would be an even better place to live in, and the youth of today would have a better chance of setting a real job, opening up a business . . . or, for that matter even starting a publication like this!

Let’s start punching.