(This is a series of excerpts from The Progressive magazine in the 1930s that are especially relevant today. You can find other delectable items in the current issue of The Progressive, which commemorates the magazine’s 100th anniversary.)

Businessmen, Then and Now
By Scott Nearing
February 3, 1934

They strutted up and down the avenue in those bygone days, throwing out their chests and bidding the world stand to one side. They were freeborn, 100 percent American big businessmen who took back-talk from nobody.

Now they take a handout wherever they can get it.

The Reconstruction Finance Corp. has just issued its 1932-1933 diet schedule for anemic U.S. industries. The banks were the sickest, so they got the most: $2.1 billion out of a total of $4.1 billion listed as “authorized and outstanding commitments.” Other credit loan organizations got $670 million. The insurance companies got only $115 million. The railroads, $412 million. That makes $3.3 billion, or over 80 percent of the total that went directly to big business from the federal treasury.

That was just a beginning. Under other aids to recovery, other billions will be ladled into the mouths of these very individualistic big businessmen who, five years ago, were yelling their heads off about “No government interference with business.”

Then they were making profits. Like greedy pigs with both feet in the trough of private industry, they wanted to gobble down everything in sight. Now, profit-hungry, they have put both feet in the public treasury trough and are yelling their heads off for government funds.

These bank presidents and railroad magnates are as ignorant as newborns and as self-opinionated as morons. Instead of subsidies they need a nurse.

Back to the 1930s, Part IV

Back to the 1930s, Part III

Back to the 1930s, Part II

Back to the 1930s, Part I