The NRA: How Price-Fixing Perpetuated the Great Depression

The National Industrial Recovery Act (NRA) dramatically altered America’s traditional free-market system. Under the NRA, a majority of firms in any industry had government approval backed by force to determine how much a factory could expand, what wages had to be paid, the number of hours to be worked, and the prices of products. Whether or not a businessman helped write the code for his industry, he was bound by the terms and subject to a fine or jail term if he violated them.

Are Highways Subsidized?

I have always loved trains. I am an ardent cyclist, and I never particularly liked automobiles. So I always took it for granted that the reason most Americans drive and passenger trains have nearly disappeared is that our highways are unfairly subsidized. I felt particularly incensed that the Interstate Highway System, which took business from [...]

Money & Power: The History of Business

John Wiley & Sons, Inc. • 2001 • 274 pages • $27.95 Reviewed by John Hood Television can be not only entertaining but educational, as long as you are not seeking great depth or elaborate argumentation. That means that it’s possible to adapt excellent writing for television but not the reverse. In Money & Power: [...]

Sources of Pro-Union Sentimentality

I have often wondered why many politicians, journalists, members of the clergy, playwrights, novelists, and far too many others hold labor unions in high regard. From an economist’s perspective, they are merely labor cartels that exist mainly to restrict competition in labor markets. Moreover, they have a well-documented history of resorting to violence when they [...]

Billy Durant: From Carriages to Cars

Like father, like son,” runs the old adage. In the case of Billy Durant, the founder of General Motors, he was like his father and also his grandfather—even though the two men were polar opposites. The Durant story shows how family and entrepreneurship blended to start the largest car company in the world.

Durant would need help from all his family and friends when he spearheaded the transition in America from carriages to cars. During the 1890s, several mechanics had tinkered with steam, electric, and gas-powered vehicles. None had made a competitive product, however, and most carriage-makers saw no threat to their industry.

The Attack on Concentration

Editor’s Note: Yale Brozen, former member of FEE’s board of trustees and a retired professor of business economics at the University of Chicago, died March 4. Reprinted below as a memorial is his article published in The Freeman, January 1979. It is especially timely because of the government’s current legal action against Microsoft. Once we [...]

Why Wages Rise

“For low-paying jobs that already exist, public policy must aim at supplementing the income of the working poor. . . . One way would be to raise gradually the minimum wage.” —Wallace C. Peterson, Silent Depression[1] In the recent debate over the minimum wage and the working poor, I was reminded of a little book, [...]