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Free enterprise is also restrained by giant national unions. Because they are often more powerful than their generally small employers, the building-trades unions can demand — and get — exorbitant wage increases, make-work practices, and restrictions on the use of new methods and materials. Similar abuses are committed by the Teamsters, the maritime unions and the civil service workers. Sooner or later, some U.S. President will have to challenge union power and put an end to such enterprise-sapping practices as the union hiring hall and featherbedding. That man may as well be Richard Nixon, since the great majority of union leaders already vehemently oppose him and he has little to lose.
The U.S. should make free enterprise even more competitive and more responsive to the nation's needs. That may require some more effective form of Government planning to coordinate the resources of businesses with the spending and taxation policies of federal, state and local governments. The capitalist economy may thus eventually take on some features of socialism, just as socialism over the years has adopted some practices of capitalism. Yet a nation that accounts annually for nearly half of the non-Com munist world's gross national product, and has more individual business enterprises than many countries have people, is surely strong and diverse enough to accommodate the best features of both systems. ∙ Donald M. Morrison