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Coach JewelryLast year Harold L. Ickes and Robert Houghwout Jackson handed U. S. Business the Administration's Christmas greetings in the form of a pair of diatribes about "economic oligarchy" and "the 60 families." Implication was that they would be followed by a similarly vehement message from the President to Congress, suggesting revision of U. S. anti-trust laws. Anxiously awaited by Business ever since, the business monopoly message from the nation's greatest governmental monopolist finally appeared last week. A detailed request for Congressional investigation of the whole subject of monopoly as a preliminary to future legislation to curtail it, it was chiefly noteworthy for a tone as mild as Messrs. Ickes & Jackson had been bitter. (See the legacy of F.D.R.) Simple Truths. Read to Congress the day after Governor La Follette's launching of a new party in Madison, Wis. (see p. 12), the President's message opened with some strikingly similar themes: "Unhappy events abroad have retaught us two simple truths about the liberty of a democratic people. replica coach handbagsThe first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group or by any other controlling private power. "The second truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if its business system does not provide employment and produce and distribute goods in such a way as to sustain an acceptable standard of living. hermes birkin handbags Both lessons hit home. Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing." (See the 10 elections that changed America.) Statistics. To prove his point that current concentration of economic power is unexampled, the President quoted familiar statistics from reports to the Bureau of Internal Revenue: 1) .1% of U. S. corporations own 52% of all corporate assets, get 50% of all corporate income, less than 5% of U. S. corporations own 87% of the assets and less than 4% of manufacturing corporations get 84% of their net profits; 2) even in 1929 .3% of the population got 78% of the dividends and 3) in 1936, 33% of all inheritances went to 4% of all heirs. Taking this as premise No. 1, the President proposed as premise No. 2 that the concentration was due to monopolistic trends in U. S. business. His conclusion was that "a thorough study of the concentration of economic power in American industry and the effect of that concentration upon the decline of competition" should be undertaken by the Federal Trade Commission, Department of Justice and Securities & Exchange Commission, for whom he recommended appropriating $500,000. cheap nike shoes store In addition, the President requested $200,000 more to enable the Department of Justice — whose Assistant Attorney General Thurman Arnold (The Folklore of Capitalism) was last week telling a New York audience about his plan to publicize antimonopoly prosecutions — to enforce existing anti-trust laws.