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Planning for Peace: The Surplus Property Act of 1944

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Louis Cain  and
George Neumann
Louis Cain
Affiliation:
Professor in the Department of Economics, Loyola University of Chicago
George Neumann
Affiliation:
Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL
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Abstract

The Surplus Property Act of 1944 established several social objectives for the disposal of war surplus. In particular, small business was to be benefited; concentration was to be reduced. Such objectives are better considered as part of the war mobilization rather than the peacetime reconversion. While suggesting that concentration was not reduced, the evidence also suggests that concentration is not an inevitable consequence of war. Social objectives can be incorporated into war mobilization, but their realization involves a substantially higher cost.

Type
Papers Presented at the Fortieth Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , March 1981 , pp. 129 - 135
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1981

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References

1 See White, Gerald T., “Financing Industrial Expansion for war: The Origin of the Defense Plant Corporation Leases,” this JOURNAL, 9 (11. 1949), 156–83,Google Scholar and Dun, Clifford J., “The Defense Plant Corporation,” in Stein, Harold, ed., Public Administration and Policy Development: A Case Book (New York, 1952), pp. 287–311.Google Scholar

2 Kaplan, A. D. H., The Liquidation of War Production: Cancellation of War Contracts and Disposal of Government-Owned Plants and Surpluses (New York, 1944).Google Scholar

3 Public Laws, 78th Congress, 2nd Session, chap. 479, pp. 765–84.Google Scholar

4 Nutter, G. Warren, The Extent of Enterprise Monopoly in the United States, 1899–1939 (Chicago, 1951).Google Scholar

5 This appears in Bureau, U.S. of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 (Washington, D.C., 1975), series P-197, 198.Google Scholar

6 War Assets Administration, “The Disposal of Synthetic Ammonia Plants,” 4th Supplementary Report of the WAA to Congress on Chemical Plants and Facilities, 31 October 1946.

7 Economic Concentration and World War II, Report of the Smaller War Plants Corporation to the Special Committee to Study Problems of American Small Business, U.S. Senate, Senate Committee Print no. 6, 79th Congress, 2nd Session, 1946.Google Scholar

8 “Magnesium Plants and Facilities,” Report to Congress by the Surplus Property Administrator, 7 December 1945, p. 16.Google Scholar

9 Federal Trade Commission staff report, Economic Report on Corporate Mergers, printed as Part 8A of the U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on the Judiciary, Subcornnuttee on Antitrust and Monopoly hearings, Economic Concentration, 91st Congress, 1st Session, 1969, p. 173.Google Scholar

10 Economic Concentration and World War II.

11 Ibid., pp. 38, 41.

12 Ibid., p. 49.

13 Ibid., p. 24.

14 Ibid., pp. 27–34.

15 War Assets Administration, “Relations between Plant Disposal and Industrial Concentration,” 29 September 1946.Google Scholar

16 This paper is part of a larger study. Copies of the working paper from which this report has been drawn are available on request from the authors.