Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-75dct Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-15T18:05:32.628Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

American Business and Foreign Aid: The Eisenhower Years

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

Thomas V. DiBacco
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of History, The American University

Abstract

How well did the American business traditions of domestic “self-regulation” and foreign “dollar diplomacy” fit the economic and diplomatic environment of the Eisenhower era? Professor DiBacco suggests that the issue of foreign aid — in particular, economic assistance — provided an opportunity for articulately testing old and new business creeds.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1967

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Roper, Elmo, “Business' Public Role in 1953,” Saturday Review of Literature (January 24, 1953), 15Google Scholar.

2 Ford, Henry II, “Business is on the Spot,” Saturday Review of Literature (January 24, 1953), 23Google Scholar.

3 Berle, A. A. Jr., “Businessmen in Government: The New Administration,” The Reporter (February 3, 1953), 10Google Scholar.

4 Cochran, Thomas C., The American Business System: A Historical Perspective 1900-1955 (Cambridge, Mass., 1956), 202.Google Scholar

5 Fay, Charles N. (vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers), Business in Politics: Suggestions for Leaders in American Business (Cambridge, Mass., 1926), 80Google Scholar: quoted in Prothro, James Warren, The Dollar Decade: Business Ideas in the 1920's (Baton Rouge, 1954), 115, 209210.Google Scholar

7 Cochran, American Business System, 98-99; Prothro, Dollar Decade, 157 ff; Berle, “Businessmen in Government,” 10-11; Sutton, Francis X. and others, The American Business Creed (Cambridge, Mass., 1956), 191–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Herbert Feis believes the older “dollar diplomacy” phrase, denoting private patterns of foreign economic assistance and investment in the Taft years, has become “a term of odium.” See his The Diplomacy of the Dollar 1919-1932 (New York, 1950), v.Google Scholar

9 Mills, C. Wright, The Power Elite (New York, 1956), 78.Google Scholar That this interrelated power structure exists has been a subject of controversy, and an excellent summary of the literature in this field is found in Aptheker, Herbert, The World of C. Wright Mills (New York, 1960), 114–28Google Scholar. A brief analysis of the dangers of a political economy or state capitalism is included in Eels, Richard, The Meaning of Modem Business: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Large Corporate Enterprise (New York, 1960), 57.Google Scholar

10 The literature revealing the extent to which business has benefited from foreign aid orders alone is quite extensive: Price, Harry B., The Marshall Plan and Its Meaning (Ithaca, 1955), 67, 70Google Scholar; Library of Congress, Legislative Reference Service, U.S. Foreign Aid: Its Purposes, Scope, Administration, and Related Information, 86th Congress, 1st session, House Document No. 116 (Washington, 1959), 68Google Scholar; Kenen, Peter B., Giant Among Nations: Problems in United States Foreign Economic Policy (New York, 1960), 156Google Scholar; U. S. President, The Mutual Security Program: Fiscal Year 1961, A Summary Presentation (Washington, 1960), 123–25Google Scholar; Hansen, Alvin H., The Postwar American Economy (New York, 1964), 76Google Scholar; Jerome Jacobson Associates, The Use of Private Contractors in Foreign Aid Programs (Washington, 1956)Google Scholar: included in U. S. Congress, Senate, Special Committee to Study the Foreign Aid Program, Foreign Aid Programs, Compilation of Studies and Surveys, 85th Congress, 1st session, Document No. 52 (Washington, 1957), 267 ffGoogle Scholar; Carleton, William G., The Revolution in American Foreign Policy (New York, 1963), 303304Google Scholar; Vatter, Harold G., The U. S. Economy in the 1950's: An Economic History (New York, 1963), 279-80, 203204Google Scholar; the most detailed, graphic study is found in National Planning Association, The Foreign Aid Programs and the United States Economy (Washington, 1957): included in Senate Special Committee, Foreign Aid Programs, 844-45, 849-51, passim.Google Scholar

11 USA: The Permanent Revolution,” Fortune, XXXXIII (February, 1951), 61 ff.Google Scholar

12 Generally, American business uncritically supported the postwar plans, the details of which were often fashioned according to the recommendations of business spokesmen. See Price, The Marshall Plan, 57-59, 228; Almond, Gabriel A., The American People and Foreign Policy (New York, 1960), 166–68, 164-65Google Scholar; Chamber of Commerce of the United States, Aid to Europe (Washington, 1947)Google Scholar; Schriftgiesser, Karl, Business Comes of Age: The Story of the Committee for Economic Development and Its Impact upon the Economic Policies of the United States, 1942-1960 (New York, 1960), 129Google Scholar; Chasteen, Robert James, “American Foreign Aid and Public Opinion 1945-1952” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of North Carolina, 1958), 178, 239-45, 349Google Scholar; Bunzel, John H., The American Small Businessman (New York, 1962), 215–28Google Scholar passim; Staley, Eugene, The Future of Underdeveloped Countries (New York, 1961), 34, 43.Google Scholar

13 For a fuller treatment of this subject see the author's complete doctoral dissertation, “Return to Dollar Diplomacy? American Business Reaction to the Eisenhower Foreign Aid Program, 1953-1961” (Ph.D. dissertation, The American University, 1965).Google Scholar

14 Those business spokesmen who qualified for extended analysis in this study were the articulate “opinion-makers” whose views were widely distributed. (The term is borrowed from Rosenau, James H., National Leadership and Foreign Policy: A Case Study in the Mobilization of Public Support (Princeton, 1963, 6)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. They included the directors of large corporations who expressed opinions in nationally circulated articles and books or who were called upon to serve on official and private advisory boards which issued reports; established business organizations such as the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, National Association of Manufacturers, and National Federation of Independent Business, which regularly formulated statements on government policy and purported to speak for significant sections of the business community; widely distributed business periodicals: Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Business Week, etc.; businessmen whose reactions to foreign aid were included in Congressional hearings and the Congressional Record; and the Committee for Economic Development and the National Planning Association, business organizations of more recent birth which issued policy statements.

15 Carleton, Revolution in American Foreign Policy, 170-71.

16 “Aid or Trade? A Crisis Ahead,” Business Week (August 16, 1952), 152-53, cited in Clifton, H. and Kreps, Juanita Morris (eds.), Aid, Trade and Tariffs (New York, 1953), 150Google Scholar; “Trade, Not Aid,” Business Week (December 13, 1952), 172.

17 J. P. Spang, Jr., “More Trade — Less Aid!” Commercial and Financial Chronicle (November 27, 1952), 15, 32; Winthrop W. Aldrich, “Basis for a New Foreign Policy,” CFC (November 27, 1952), 38.

18 U. S. Mutual Security Agency, Evaluation Report, March 24, 1953, Francis, Clarence, task force coordinator (Washington, 1953), 3-5, 9.Google Scholar

19 National Foreign Trade Council, U. S. Council of International Chamber of Commerce, Marshall Field and Company, National Planning Association, and Chamber of Commerce of the United States: testimonies cited in U. S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Foreign Economic Policy, United States Foreign Economic Policy, Hearings, 83rd Congress, 1st session (Washington, 1953), 79-84, 346, 279, 282-83, 323–31, 147-67.Google Scholar Testimony of president of First Mortgage Corporation of Florida cited in U. S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Mutual Security Act of 1954, Hearings, 83rd Congress, 2nd session (Washington, 1954), 432.Google Scholar

20 Turn of the Tide: Flow of Dollars Abroad Calls for New U. S. Policies,” Barron's National Business and Financial Weekly, XXXIII (July 6, 1953), 1Google Scholar: cited in Kreps, Aid, Trade and Tariffs, 42; Coffin, Tris, “Point 4 Corporations,” Nation's Business, XXXXI (April, 1953)Google Scholar: cited in the Congressional Record, IC, 3064-66; Hamilton, C. W. (vice president of Gulf Oil Company), “Can Private Enterprise Do the Job of Economic Development?Foreign Policy Bulletin, XXXII (June 15, 1953), 4, 6Google Scholar.

21 Randall, Clarence B., A Foreign Economic Policy for the United States (Chicago, 1954).Google Scholar

22 The defeat of French forces in Indochina by midyear brought forth the question of establishing an Asian Marshall Plan on the grounds that Communíst forces would erupt elsewhere in Europe. See, for example, “What Good is an Asian Marshall Plan?” Business Week (November 20, 1954), 196.

23 Commission on Foreign Economic Policy, Report to the President and the Congress, 83rd Congress, 2nd session, House Document No. 290 (Washington, 1954), 8, 1623.Google Scholar

24 Lerche, Charles O. Jr., , Foreign Policy of the American People (Englewood Cliffs, 1960), 367Google Scholar; Crabb, Cecil V. Jr., , American Foreign Policy in the Nuclear Age (Evanston, 1960), 347.Google Scholar

25 In 1948 only seven votes had been cast against the foreign aid appropriations bill in the Senate, whereas in 1956, thirty negative votes were registered. Both houses of Congress in 1956 passed resolutions empowering committees to conduct inquiries into the program.

26 “How to Cadge Dollars,” Wall Street Journal (April 3, 1956): cited in the Congressional Record, CII (June 28, 1956), 11277.Google Scholar

27 For a similar critique see Challenge and Response,” Fortune, LII (January, 1956), 5859.Google Scholar

28 Hazlitt, Henry, “Foreign Aid Mania,” Newsweek, XXXXVII (June 4, 1956), 82Google Scholar: cited in McClellan, Grant S. (ed.), U.S. Foreign Aid (New York, 1957), 35Google Scholar. Hazlitt continued his critique of foreign economic aid throughout the Eisenhower era: Perpetual Foreign Aid,” XXXXIX (June 3, 1957), 81Google Scholar; Foreign-Aid Fiasco,” LI (May 26, 1958), 86Google Scholar; Subsidizing Socialism,” LV (May 9, 1960), 103.Google Scholar

29 Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Mutual Security Act of 1956, Hearings, 84th Congress, 2nd session (Washington, 1956), 668–69.Google Scholar

30 Ibid., 339.

31 Ibid., Mutual Security Act of 1955, Hearings, 84th Congress, 1st session (Washington, 1955), 477-81.

32 House of Representatives, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Mutual Security Act of 1955, Hearings, 84th Congress, 1st session (Washington, 1955), 581–83.Google Scholar

33 Senate, Subcommittee of the Committee on Foreign Relations, Technical Assistance Programs, Hearings, 84th Congress, 1st session (Washington, 1955), 317–22.Google Scholar

34 Ibid., 235-36.

35 Senate, Committee on Appropriations, Mutual Security Appropriations for 1955, Hearings, 83rd Congress, 2nd session (Washington, 1954), 369.Google Scholar

36 House of Representatives, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Examination and Reappraisal of the Objectives, Methods and Results of the Foreign Policies and Programs of the United States Involved in the Mutual Security Act and Related Legislation, Hearings, 84th Congress, 2nd session (Washington, 1956), 294–95Google Scholar; see also Collado, and Bennett, Jack F., “Private Investment and Economic Development,” Foreign Affairs, XXXV (July, 1957), 631 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37 William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick (New York, 1958).

38 Haviland, H. Field Jr., “Foreign Aid and the Policy Process: 1957,” American Political Science Review, LII (September, 1958), 689724CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Carleton, Revolution in American Foreign Policy, 333, 302.

39 Hansen, Postwar American Economy, 75-76; Vatter, U. S. Economy in the 1950's, 265-72.

40 Crabb, American Foreign Policy in the Nuclear Age, 417; Vatter, U. S. Economy in the 1950's, 171-74.

41 Center for International Studies, MIT, The Objectives of United States Economic Assistance Programs (Cambridge, Mass., 1957)Google Scholar: included in Senate Special Committee, Foreign Aid Programs, 43—44; Research Center in Economic Development and Cultural Exchange of the University of Chicago, The Role of Foreign Aid in the Development of Other Countries (Chicago, 1956)Google Scholar: included in ibid., 211-14. The third and dissenting report: American Enterprise Association, American Private Enterprise, Foreign Economic Development, and the Aid Programs: included in ibid., 545 ff.

42 See, for example, John R. Gibson, “United States Planners Mull Costly Projects to Prop Shaky Economies,” Wall Street Journal (January 14, 1957): cited in the Congressional Record, CIII (February 25, 1957), 2523–24Google Scholar; Castle, Eugene W., The Great Giveaway: The Realities of Foreign Aid (Chicago, 1957).Google Scholar

43 This stance was anticipated by the Committee for Economic Development as early as 1956: CED, Economic Development Abroad and the Role of American Foreign Investment (New York, 1956).Google Scholar For additional illustrations see Panuch, J. Anthony, “A Businessman's Philosophy for Foreign Affairs,” Harvard Business Review, XXXV (March-April, 1957), 4153Google Scholar; U. S. President's Citizen Advisors on the Mutual Security Program (headed by U. S. Steel executive, Benjamin F. Fairless), Report to the President, March 1, 1957 (Washington, 1957), 19Google Scholar; Rockefeller Brothers Fund Special Studies Project (report of business advisory group), Foreign Economic Policy for the Twentieth Century (New York, 1958), 22-23, 5657Google Scholar; business spokesmen before Congressional committees (Chamber of Commerce, for example), Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Mutual Security Act of 1958, Hearings, 85th Congress, 2nd session (Washington, 1958), 716–19Google Scholar; House of Representatives, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Mutual Security Act of 1960, Hearings, 86th Congress, 2nd session (Washington, 1960), 1088–91.Google Scholar

44 CED, Research and Policy Committee, Economic Development Assistance: A Long-Term Policy for Assisting Economic Growth and Encouraging Independence in the Underdeveloped Nations of the Free World (New York, 1957).Google Scholar See also the similar stance of the International Committee of the National Planning Association in Mikesell, Raymond F., Promoting United States Private Investment Abroad and A Statement by the NPA International Committee (National Planning Assn., Planning Pamphlet No. 101, Washington, 1957).Google Scholar

45 Ibid., 10-21 passim.

46 “All or Nothing,” Wall Street Journal (May 27, 1957): cited in the Congressional Record, CIII (August 13, 1957), 14532Google Scholar; “The President's Case Against Foreign Aid,” Wall Street Journal (May 23, 1957): cited in ibid.; House of Representatives, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Mutual Security Act of 1958, Hearings, 85th Congress, 2nd session (Washington, 1958), 1779–82.Google Scholar

47 House of Representatives, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Mutual Security Act of 1957, Hearings, 85th Congress, 1st session (Washington, 1957), 508.Google Scholar

48 The President's Committee to Study the United States Military Assistance Program, Conclusions Concerning the Mutual Security Program, Final Report: August 17, 1959 (Washington, 1959), 9.Google Scholar

49 Randall, , “The Competitive Struggle between American Enterprise and Soviet Communism,” included in Soviet Progress vs. American Enterprise, Report of a Confidential Briefing Session held at the Fifteenth Anniversary Meeting of the Committee for Economic Development, November 21, 1957, Washington, D.C. (Garden City, 1958), 31Google Scholar; Bullis, , Manifesto for Americans (New York, 1961), 170-71, 175.Google Scholar

50 See, for example, the Chamber's testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in 1959: Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Mutual Security Act of 1959, Hearings, 86th Congress, 1st session (Washington, 1959), 996–99Google Scholar; see also House of Representatives, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Mutual Security Act of 1959, Hearings, 86th Congress, 1st session (Washington, 1959), 575–76.Google Scholar

51 House hearings, U. S. Foreign Economic Policy, 1953, 147 ff.

52 Hazlitt, Henry, “End Foreign Aid Now,” Newsweek, XXXXII (July 20, 1953), 78.Google Scholar

53 Commission on Foreign Economic Policy, Report, 32, 69.

54 Randall, Foreign Economic Policy, 67, 72; Challenge and Response,” Fortune, LII (January, 1956), 5859.Google Scholar

55 “All or Nothing,” Wall Street Journal (May 27, 1957): cited in the Congressional Record, CIII (August 13, 1957), 14532Google Scholar; “The President's Case Against Foreign Aid,” WSJ (May 23, 1957): cited in the CR, ibid.

56 Castle, The Great Giveaway, 37; Atherton Lee (spokesman of United Fruit Company), Letter to the Wall Street Journal (February 18, 1957): cited in the Congressional Record, CIII (March 14, 1957), 3666.Google Scholar

57 The Bank's New Baby,” Fortune, LIV (August, 1956), 62.Google Scholar See also the favorable statements of Studebaker executive Paul Hoffman and businessman-governor Averell Harriman in Senate, Subcommittee of the Committee on Banking and Currency, International Development Association, Hearings, 85th Congress, 2nd session (Washington, 1958), 71-74, 145–46.Google Scholar

58 IDA'S Shady Brow,” Fortune, LX (November, 1959), 117–18.Google Scholar

59 Commission on Foreign Economic Policy, Report, 26.

60 Prothro, Dollar Decade, 157 ff.

61 Testimony of Coal Exporters Association in Regular Senate hearings, 1954, 473; Regular Senate hearings, 1955, 431-34; Regular Senate hearings, 1956, 360-61; Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Mutual Security Act of 1957, Hearings, 85th Congress, 1st session (Washington, 1957), 759Google Scholar; Regular Senate hearings, 1958, 776-77; Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Mutual Security Act of 1960, Hearings, 86th Congress, 2nd session (Washington, 1960), 600603.Google Scholar Testimony of American Boat Builders and Repairers Association in Senate Appropriations-hearings for fiscal year 1955, 338-39. Similar special interest testimonies are found in Regular Senate hearings, 1955, 469-70: Association of Marine Underwriters of the U. S.; Senate Appropriations hearings for fiscal year 1955, 239-43: National Fertilizer Association; Patton, Thomas F. (president of Republic Steel Corporation), Business Survival in the Sixties (New York, 1961), 41.Google Scholar Of course, a few special interest groups, such as the American Superphosphate Institute, based their arguments on classical tenets, i.e., foreign recipients were not using funds to purchase supplies from low bidders. Regular Senate hearings, 1956, 407-409.

62 House of Representatives, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Mutual Security Act Extension, Hearings, 83rd Congress, 1st session (Washington, 1953), 624Google Scholar; also in Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Mutual Security Act of 1953, Hearings, 83rd Congress, 1st session (Washington, 1953), 792Google Scholar; “It Doesn't Come Free,” New York Journal of Commerce (February 16, 1955): cited in the Congressional Record, CI (June 2, 1955), 7521Google Scholar; “Shipping Outlook: The 50-50 Law,” NYJC (May 20, 1955): cited in the CR, ibid., 7522.

63 Worthy, , Big Business and Free Men (New York, 1959), 2330Google Scholar passim; Lilienthal, “Needed: A New Credo for Foreign Aid,” New York Times Magazine (June 26, 1960), 11, 28. See also IDA's Shady Brow,” Fortune, LX (November, 1959), 118.Google Scholar

64 Earlier in the Eisenhower era, the aid agency adopted for a time a 50-50 procurement policy in order to relieve recession-affected American industries. Only Business Week criticized this policy. “Splitting FOA Orders 50-50,” Business Week (September 11, 1954), 152.

65 See testimony before Regular Senate hearings, 1958, 711.

66 U. S. President's Commission on National Goals, Goals for Americans (New York, 1960), 355.Google Scholar

67 Francis S. Sutton and others, 191-92. See also Berle, “Businessmen in Government,” 8-12.

68 A few final words on sources for this paper seem desirable. My preliminary investigation of methods used by other analysts of business thought revealed two main approaches, the leading proponents of each being Raymond A. Bauer and James W. Prothro. The Bauer approach (see American Business and Public Policy: The Politics of Foreign Trade) utilizes an elaborate system of polling and interviewing of Congressmen and businessmen. There are weaknesses in such an approach, however, to the extent that polling and interviewing inject an unnatural “inducement” variable which complicates the judging of historical reliability, especially from the standpoint of what Prothro (The Dollar Decade: Business Ideas in the 1920's) describes as “private ideas and secret aspirations” as opposed to public expressions.

Less exhaustive, more selective in scope, the Prothro approach, which is buttressed by the works of James Rosenau and Francis X. Sutton cited above, has a less arbitrary selector gauge than this Bauer method which, in American Business and Public Policy, analyzed 903 executives of firms with over 100 employees. In the Prothro approach, the key to the selection of business groups and individuals is the articulateness of business opinion. To borrow the terminology of Rosenau, the emphasis is on “those members of the [business] society who occupy positions which enable them to transmit, with some regularity, opinions about foreign policy issues to unknown persons.”