Local economic independence cannot be preserved in the face of consolidations such as we have had during the past few years. The control of American business is steadily being transferred, I am sorry to have to say, from local communities to a few large cities in which central managers decide the policies and the fate of the far-flung enterprises they control. Millions of people depend helplessly on their judgment. Through monopolistic mergers the people are losing power to direct their own economic welfare. When they lose the power to direct their economic welfare, they also lose the means to direct their political future.


Senate Hearing, 1947, reported in Michael J. Sandel, Democracy's Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy (1998), p. 243.

Estes Kefauver Quotes

Local economic independence cannot be preserved in the face of consolidations such as we have had during the past few years. The control of American...

Local economic independence cannot be preserved in the face of consolidations such as we have had during the past few years. The control of American...

Local economic independence cannot be preserved in the face of consolidations such as we have had during the past few years. The control of American...

Local economic independence cannot be preserved in the face of consolidations such as we have had during the past few years. The control of American...