Ordway Tead: Freedom From Want

The NYPR Archive Collections | Jan 1, 2000

This episode is from the WNYC archives. It may contain language which is no longer politically or socially appropriate.

WNYC announcer calls this the ninth in a series of lectures arranged by the Civilian Defense Council of City College, then introduces Tead, the chairman of the Board of Higher Education.

Tead talks about unemployment before the war, the inevitability of armistice and the loss of war contract jobs. Want is a disturber of the peace.

Freedom from want requires four conditions: an absolute abundance of goods and services, practical means of distributing those goods, a desire to employ those means, and an effective set of incentives to inspire people to distribute goods.

We cannot consumer more per year than we produce per year. Assured employment. Planned programs for the rapid shift of industrial companies to peace time products. Public employment. Use of union management.

We cannot free ourselves from want unless we truly desire to.

Want and self-centeredness are companions. America fights for freedom from want.


Audio courtesy of the City University of New York


WNYC archives id: 71445

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