John Dickinson Scores Harvard Professors as Know-it-Alls---Should Concede Are Groping

"Harvard professors never admit that they don't know anything," said John Dickinson, Assistant Secretary of Commerce, and formerly a professor of Government at Harvard. "They don't realize that we can't get absolute truths; we are all only gropers. I didn't like Harvard very much.

"Some Harvard professors have recently been criticizing the N. R. A. in behalf of the consumer's interest. They are wrong, I believe, in claiming that the Recovery Program will result in dangerous price-fixing and restriction of output. There may be price-fixing, but it will only go so far as to protect labor; further price fixing will not be permitted by the Government. Regulation of output, I think, is in part necessary.

The Recovery Act substitutes regulated for unregulated competition. Through the codes of fair practice, the Government gives industry the opportunity of taking cooperative action to civilize its competitive methods. If the depression has taught us anything, it has shown that practically every one of the checks and balances attributed to competition may at one time or another refuse to work. For example, under the operation of competition excessive producing capacity has not withdrawn from the field and left the market to the more efficient producers. On the contrary, excess capacity is still to be seen everywhere, and diminished demand is merely reflected in a general reduction of operation among producers. Inefficient producers have not ceased to operate, and in many cases the inefficient producer, by violating decent employment standards and under-paying his labor as well as working them too long, is able to employ greater producing capacity than his rivals who are fundamentally more efficient. This and other similar conditions show that unrestrained rivalry comes far from amounting to a system of checks and balances and an agent of adjustment. It suggests more accurately a continually descending spiral, pointing through industrial anarchy towards ultimate destruction for every one. Some sort of regulation or supervision over production has proved itself necessary. The N.R.A. is the solution.