f the Standard Oil Company, and the secretary of the
committee gives his address as "26 Broadway," the address of the
Standard Oil Company. The other nine members of the committee were oil
men from various parts of the country. What thinking American would have
suggested, three years before, that the Standard Oil Company would be
officially directing a part of the work of the Federal Government?

Comment is superfluous. Every great industrial enterprise of the United
States had secured representation on the committees of business men that
were responsible for the direction of the economic side of war making.

Then came the Liberty Loan campaigns and Red Cross drives, the direction
of which also was given into the hands of experienced business men. In
each community, the leaders in the business world were the leaders in
these war-time activities. Since the center of business life was the
bank, it followed that the directing power in all of the war-time
campaigns rested with the bankers, and thus the whole nation was
mobilized under the direction of its financiers.

The results of these experiences were far-reaching. During two
generations, the people of the United States had been passing anti-trust
laws and anti-pooling laws, the aim of which was to prevent the business
men of the country from getting together. The war crisis not only
brought them together, but when they did assemble, it placed the whole
political and economic power of the nation in their hands.

The business men learned, by first hand experience, the benefits that
arise from united effort. They joined forces across the continent, and
they found that it paid. James S. Alexander, President of the National
Bank of Commerce (New York), tells the story from the standpoint of a
banker (_Manchester Guardian_, January 28, 1920. Signed Article.) In a
discussion of "the experience in cooperative action which the war has
given American banks" he says, "The responsibility of floating the five
great loans issued by the government, together with the work of
financing a production of materials speeded up to meet war necessities,
enforced a unity of action and cooperation which otherwise could hardly
have been obtained in many years."

7. _Economic Winnings_

The war gains of the plutocracy in the field of public control were
important, as well as spectacular. Behind them, however, were economic
gains--little heralded, but of the most vital consequence to the fu