The Pittsburgh Press (April 11, 1944)
Owlett: New Deal seeks domination
Manufacturers’ head denounces theorists
Doylestown, Pennsylvania – (special)
G. Mason Owlett, president of the Pennsylvania Manufacturers Association, in a speech here last night, charged the New Deal with seeking “to gain complete domination of all industry, all enterprise and all initiative.”
He said:
We see this in the limitations being cunningly imposed on free enterprise by rattle-pated theorists who seek to make over our economic system without admitting that it’s being socialized.
Red tape curbs enterprise
Mr. Owlett is also Republican National Committeeman from Pennsylvania and a candidate at the April 25 primary for delegate-at-large to the Republican presidential convention.
He said:
When victory is finally ours, we don’t want an America where every detail of our private lives is run by government brass hats. A man has to have a little room to move around in if he’s going to do his part to build a better world. He can’t do much when he’s all tied up with regulations, red tape, restrictions and trick taxes that rob him of all chance to live his own life and plan his own adventures.
Personal initiative destroyed
Mr. Owlett said the Roosevelt administration “has destroyed personal initiative and undermined the pillars of all enterprise.”
He said:
The greatest contribution that government can make toward the steady increase in the American standard of living aside from war production, sound money, proper tariffs and fair courts, will be made if government avoids competition in industry and confines itself to the strictest protection of equality and corporate ventures into new fields.