Let's look at the men who drafted the European Recovery Program and who will administer it. The plan was formally embodied in the Harriman Report, written under the direction of W. Randolph Burgess, a vigorous anti-New Dealer and vice-president of the National City Bank of New York. All of the financial steps taken under the ERP are to be checked with an outfit called The National Advisory Council on International Monetary and Financial Problems. That is an organization which is advised by the Aldrich Committee of Bankers, headed by no less a liberal than Winthrop Aldrich, head of the Chase National Bank.
Now it may be argued that the simple, though undeniable, fact that ERP is a Wall Street plan is not important. Perhaps there is someone who will say that Wall Street may be right and that Big Business may mean only good for all of us.
Let's examine ERP on its merits and see whether or not it is designed to benefit the people of the world, including ourselves, or whether it is so stacked as to be measured only in Big Business profits.
If Europe is to really recover, it must greatly expand its industrial and agricultural production, stabilize its economy, and raise its living standards. For example, Britain must raise its output twenty-five percent above the pre-war level to equal its pre-war living standards.
Accordingly, Western Europe asked for materials to rebuild its steel industry. Instead, the State Department plans to ship them fifty percent more tobacco than they wanted.
The nations of the plan formulated a program of rehabilitation. But the State Department put them in their place, declaring that they had "laid out too ambitious plans for housing, industrial equipment and expansion, the development of utilities, and general reconstruction."
"Too ambitious for whom?" we might ask. The answer is plain: too ambitious for Big Business in the country to stomach. When did monopoly encourage competition?
The State Department offers them about one-third of the crude steel they want; none of the scrap they've asked for; and less than one-half of the steel-mill equipment and farm machinery. Capital goods and steel-making materials amounted to thirty-two percent of the total aid requested. As the State Department sees it, that kind of aid will be cut to fourteen percent.
As for the standard of living under ERP, according to official State Department estimates, by 1952 Europe will live on lower standards than in the semi-depression years of 1934-1938. In 1952, the people in the countries of the plan will use five percent less bread; twenty-two percent less butter and fats; ten percent less sugar; eighteen percent less meat; and seventeen percent less milk than in those lean years of the thirties.
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