Scant Comfort

Great Enterprise: Growth and Behavior of the Big Corporation, by Herrymon Maurer. 303 pp. New York: The Macmillan Company. $5.00

Mr. Maurer has provided, for anyone who may need it, a convenient refutation of most of the absurdities uttered by Liberal propagandists on the subject of large corporations. In the end, however, he gives scant comfort to defenders of capitalism. Big corporations, he claims, are “the most potent and pervasive method of social organization since ancient times”; but his somewhat vague and inconsistent comments give me the impression that he foresees a future in which corporations will produce for the sake of producing, becoming vast anthills filled with scurrying creatures actuated by “group-mindedness.” The owners will evidently have a function analogous to that of the vermiform appendix in the human body. And they will inevitably attract the attention of enterprising social surgeons. R.P.O.

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Great Enterprise: Growth and Behavior of the Big Corporation, by Herrymon Maurer. 303 pp. New York: The Macmillan Company. $5.00

Mr. Maurer has provided, for anyone who may need it, a convenient refutation of most of the absurdities uttered by Liberal propagandists on the subject of large corporations. In the end, however, he gives scant comfort to defenders of capitalism. Big corporations, he claims, are “the most potent and pervasive method of social organization since ancient times”; but his somewhat vague and inconsistent comments give me the impression that he foresees a future in which corporations will produce for the sake of producing, becoming vast anthills filled with scurrying creatures actuated by “group-mindedness.” The owners will evidently have a function analogous to that of the vermiform appendix in the human body. And they will inevitably attract the attention of enterprising social surgeons. R.P.O.