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"The Greatest Force." Late in August Prochnow got a telephone call from Under Secretary Herbert Hoover Jr., asking him to come to Washington to see Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, whom he had never met. He found Dulles a relaxed, amiable host, who appeared to want to talk mostly about religion. "He seemed to know all about my church work," says Prochnow, who, like Dulles, is a prominent Presbyterian layman.
The two talked for a while about the problems of church administration, then Dulles came to the point, asked Prochnow to take over the economic-affairs job. Prochnow went back to Chicago to think it over, accepted. Says Prochnow: "To me, the greatest single economic force in the world today is the determination of the common man to raise his standard of living. In some cases, private industry is trying to do the job, in others the people are being shepherded by governments. I would like to see other countries developed under the free-enterprise system, but we cannot force or compel them. We can only try to persuade them by setting a good example. America can show the world that it has developed an exceptionally rewarding society."
*Prochnow's output, if not his sales, surpassed that of another banker-author, Manhattan's Bank of New York Vice President Edward Streeter, who wrote Dere Mable, Father of the Bride, etc.