National Affairs: Shocking Words

THE ADMINISTRATION Shocking Words

Twenty years ago, Leland Olds, like many another New Dealer, had some radical notions about capitalism. As a reporter for a labor news syndicate, he once wrote: ". . . Capitalism in the United States is rapidly passing into the stage which has marked the decay of many earlier social orders . . . The owners exist only [as] a privileged class of parasites whose idleness and dissipation become an increasing stench in the nostrils of the people."

Last week, 58-year-old Leland Olds found these old words still echoing in the ears of Congress. In the years since, he...

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