78-01-B6
- Main Page \ Reagan Radio Commentaries \ 1978
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Healthy Competition[edit]
Transcript[edit]In my years of public life I have been privileged to know many fine men and women. But there have been a few who lived in memory because of their great dedication to important principles. Ed Wimmer was such a man. From the first year of the New Deal until his death last fall at 76, Ed Wimmer had an unrelenting, high-minded devotion to the great cause of his life--the preservation of the spirit of independent enterprise in a free republic. Ed knew that the liberty and prosperity of the American people depended critically upon the preservation of economic freedom. Ed's hero was the bold, daring, independent man or woman who cleared and planted, dug and drilled, built and invented, invested and produced. Without that enterprising spirit, America could scarcely have become the most productive--and spiritually strong--nation on earth. Over the four decades of his public life, Ed Wimmer was a one man army for independent business. In the Thirties he fought successfully for legislation to break up the overgrown utility holding company empires. He fought to curb predatory marketing practices, where monopolies underpriced its products purely to drive competitors out of business. Wherever monopoly raised its ugly head to threaten independent business, Ed Wimmer sprang into the breach like Horatio at the bridge. Now that gallant man is gone, to whatever special corner of heaven is reserved for those who devote their lives to preserving the liberty of a free people. But Mike and Hope Wimmer, his son and daughter, are pumping new vitality into their father's organization, Forward America. It's working today, from its national headquarters in Covington, Kentucky, to develop and promote responsible and economically sound public policies to preserve and give full scope to the vital spirit of enterprise . It is exploring the ground rules for the economy--notably the federal tax code and regulatory policies--to identify the points where the balance is tilted toward "giantism". And, at those crucial points, Forward America is proposing to reverse that tilt to favor increased opportunity for the dynamic small and medium-sized company and the enterprising individual. Forward American is not waging war on bigness as such. In our modern economy a large scale is often necessary for efficiency in production. Forward America's target is bigness unjustified by any claim to efficiency--bigness for sake of exercising monopoly power--bigness to extract special privilege from government-- bigness working to destroy genuine competitive free enterprise. Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty. Power widely diffused among the people means freedom. Thus Forward America's program aims at encouraging a widespread distribution of capital and property ownership, and discouraging the concentration of economic and political power in the hands of Big Business, Big Labor and Big government alike. Ed Wimmer, like his hero Thomas Jefferson before him, devoted his life to defending this principle. In Forward America's new program, Ed's soul goes marching on. |
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