Maybe I had just missed it, but following the links on McClatchy's John Walcott accepting the first annual I. F. Stone award to the Nieman Foundation which gave it, I then discovered that the official I. F. Stone website has his self-published weekly journalistic newsletter the I. F. Stone Weekly now available for free download via PDF online, beginning in 1953 and ending in 1971.

http://www.ifstone.org/weekly_searchable.php

I. F. Stone got the news by reading newspapers, interviewing whom he could, and actually plowing through the government reports others seemed to ignore.

Here is an example, from the premiere volume (January, 1953), in which he points out what is hidden in the reports that the outgoing Truman administration is trumpeting. Of course, that was in the ancient history of 55 years ago, when it was assumed that worker productivity increases would lead to an increase in workers' wages & benefits, rather than the much-more-modern and economically sophisticated "yeah, that's nice, thanks for the added profits, and f*** you, and also, we took your 401K down too!"

Storm Warnings for the G.O.P.

[from I. F. Stone’s Weekly, January 24, 1953.]

Mr. Truman's final economic report is embodied in a document of 218 pages. One has to read more than half way through before one begins to get at the truth. The outgoing President's own report to Congress fills the first 27 pages with unabashed self-glorification. Marx ("the false conclusions which Marx drew from the defects of nineteenth century industrialism") bites the dust and the Democrats are credited with establishing something close to the Earthly Paradise. "We achieved in great measure," Mr. Truman said, "the kind of economic society of which the [Full Employment] Act is a symbol—a prosperous and growing economy of free men." It should have been a two color print job, to allow for blushes.

The Council of Economic Advisers begins its own annual economic review on page 35. Its wordy euphemisms are as discreet as those of a grand vizier reporting to a sultan with high blood pressure. At first nothing is said to disturb the glowing picture drawn by the President, but those who persevere will find themselves rewarded. By the time page 110 is reached the Council begins to get down to brass tacks. "Although consumption levels since 1945 have been high, total real per capita consumption has increased very little." One reason appears on page 112, "Contrary to the common impression, average hourly earnings in manufacturing . . . have not risen faster than the economy's general productivity gains, but instead apparently have lagged significantly." Page 113 informs us sotto voce, "study of data on corporate profits confirms the need for some relative shift of before-tax income from business to consumers." Manufacturing corporations averaged annually almost 25 percent profit before taxes on their stockholders' equity in the years 1947-50.

Those "defects of nineteenth century industrialism" on which Mr. Truman triumphantly blames the misapprehensions of Marx seem still to be with us. The classic lag of consumption behind output is still observable. While the national output rose 24 percent from 1947 to 1952, per capita income rose less than 10 percent. Consumption took 69 percent of production in the postwar years "up through 1950, and then, under the joint impact of the security program and a higher savings rate, tumbled to about 63 percent in 1951 and 1952." Various forms of foreign subsidy, military preparations and the Korean war have been filling that gap between consumption and output.

The years since the war have seen "an unbroken investment boom." The Council estimates that in 1952 alone about 10 billion dollars in new industrial facilities were made possible by accelerated tax amortization, i.e. paid for in large part by the U.S. Treasury through tax deductions. The vast expansion of American industrial capacity and the high level of employment achieved in the postwar years was due in considerable degree to Rooseveltianism turned upside down; a military WPA enabled business to lean profitably on golden shovels. As Mr. Truman said, one of the safeguards against an economic setback is "a level of public expenditures which, while we all want to see it lower as soon as world conditions permit, stabilizes demand and stimulates private investment." And what if world conditions permit these expenditures to be lowered ? What if Stalin should mischievously make peace ? Mr. Truman himself admits, "We may face in the future, particularly when defense spending can safely be reduced, more serious tests of our ability to avoid depression than those which have occurred since World War II."

There are other ways than war alarum to prime the pump of business and the Council touches upon them gingerly in the closing pages of its report. Social security payments are ludicrously and shamefully low. Almost two million miserable farm families need to be taken off sub-marginal lands. Every city has its open sore of slums. The country's highway system has seriously deteriorated. The schools need 600,000 more classrooms by 1958. There is a desperate shortage of hospital space and huge untapped reservoirs of power and mineral wealth to be opened up. Wistfully the Council calls for "full speed ahead with preparatory measures so that development projects . . . may be accelerated promptly as part of a total antirecession economic strategy." This, like the suggestion, that maybe business ought to pay higher wages and be satisfied with lower profits, is unlikely to find full-throated echo among the victorious Republicans.

Don't look now while the festivities are on, but something may be waiting around the corner for Eisenhower as it waited for Hoover.

Tell me that doesn't read as though you just visited your favorite independent politico-economic muckraking website. Doesn't it sound much like someone reviewing the nicer version of the situation we're in right now?

Next, I want to see if there are any collections of that other crusading famed independent U.S. journalist who made history and published his own newsletter, George Seldes and In Fact.

If anyone knows, please let me know.