(See Cover) Postwar planners for whom only the sky is the limit serve a great purpose. They point to the truth that Peace on this planet is indivisible. They reflect the foresight—and the insight—that some day (100 or 1,000 years from now) the human race is likely to order its affairs as one big family, happy or quarrelsome.
But planners whose eyes dwell too much on the far horizons of things must be balanced by those who, in the American phrase, "keep their eye on the ball." The ball in this instance is postwar employment—or unemployment. And currently the keenest sight on that ball is being stimulated by the Committee for Economic Development.
C.E.D. will be a year old this week. Its chairman, Paul Gray Hoffman, 52, has been president of Studebaker Corp. for eight years, has led other mass movements in business. But none has approached the size of C.E.D.'s job. C.E.D. is working on the assumption that private industry can and must produce 40% more goods and services after the war than it did in 1940, and thereby employ at least 20% more workers than in that fat year.
The Plan. The Hoffman-C.E.D. idea is to start at the grass roots of private enterprise—with the nation's 2,000,000 employers (90% of whom employ less than, eight men)—and see what can be done about arranging for this production and this employment. If enough businessmen will do their smart part, the sum total may equal the beyond-the-horizon frontier toward which U.S. hopes are directed.
So C.E.D. has embarked on 1) a nationwide sales job (with a Field Division); 2) an ambitious study project (with a Research Division). But the most important thing about C.E.D. is that, however big it sounds, the job it has taken on is strictly confined to what business can reasonably be expected to do on its own hook. If C.E.D. achieves its limited objective—and that is still, of necessity, a big if—U.S. businessmen can truthfully say that they have done all that businessmen can do to obviate widespread unemployment after the war.
Conversely, probably the greatest danger facing C.E.D. is that, in evangelizing employers with the "business can do it'' point of view, it may mesmerize too many citizens into thinking that C.E.D.'s slogan is "business can do it alone." Paul Hoffman's job is to see to it that business does its utmost without appearing to assume responsibility for more than it can be expected to deliver.
Who is Paul Hoffman? Paul Gray Hoffman is a mild-mannered, mildly good-looking, nonsmoking, teetotaling gentleman of medium size, whose most distinctive feature is a pair of startlingly blue eyes. He is a friendly family man with a bustling, buxom wife, five sons—all in uniform today—and two daughters. He works in South Bend, Ind. and spends his meager spare time at home—in the winter in a "mildly exclusive" part of South Bend; in the summer at unpretentious Lakeside, on Lake Michigan.
His one "vice" is that he loves to gamble — on golf (which he plays in the 80s), on bridge (which he plays even better), on poker, on almost anything. His favorite tactic is to double his bets until he wins.