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activities. It was willing to accept the supervision of the government.This was the general objective of the codes of practice. Critics objectedthat business wanted to plan for scarcity—they called it protectingthemselves against overproduction. Business said that orderlyself-government in business would eliminate most of the causes thatinfected the organism with the germs of crises.An example of this planning would be that outlined by MordecaiEzekiel, chief economic adviser of the Agricultural Department, andalso one of Vice-President Wallace's advisers. Under this plan—which he called "Jobs for All"—industry would be organized intocategories, that is into trade associations. The planning would actuallybe done by the employers. In the shoe industry, for instance,the producers and distributors in each locality would determine thenumber of shoes needed by the people in that community. All thelocal groups would unite in a regional council which would coordinatethese estimates. The regional councils would be broughttogether in a national council or federation or commission or corporativewhere employers and employees would be represented. A programof shoe production for the whole period under survey wouldbe outlined together with all the related problems of labor, financing,etc. Sitting over all this would be the government commissar.A program would be agreed on including the number and kinds ofshoes to be produced, each region would receive its allocation orquota which in turn would assign to each community and its producerstheir quota. Then the whole industry would be directed toproduce that many shoes, and the government would underwritethe operation, taking off the hands of the producers the surplus, ifany, which they could not sell. Thus "full-blast employment," touse a favorite phrase, would be assured in the shoe and every otherindustry. This is one type of what is called planning for abundancerather than scarcity.The vogue of the Planners cannot be explained without attentionto one or two features of the passing show of the last twenty-fiveyears. For a long time socialism had made a powerful appeal to theintellectuals. Though he voted consistently the Democratic or Republicanticket, the "intellectual" felt called upon to avow a spiritualacceptance of the socialist philosophy, at least in principle. But the194