Committee for Economic Development

Excerpt from G. William Domhoff, (1967) Who Rules America, Spectrum Books, pp. 74-5

Concerned primarily with issues of an economic nature, the Committee for Economic Development, which was founded in 1942 by Paul G. Hoffman of Studebaker and the Ford Foundation, is made up of representatives of the nation’s leading corporations. As of 1957, 47 of its trustees were also members of the Council on Foreign Relations. Among its chairmen have been Marion B. Folsom of Eastman Kodak; Meyer Kestnbaum of Hart, Schaffner & Marx; J. D. Zellerbach of the Crown-Zellerbach Corporation; and Donald K. David of the Harvard Business School, Ford Foundation, and Atlantic & Pacific Company (A & P). The CED has two major functions, suggesting new economic policies and promoting and improving economic education. For example, a 27-member CED commission made a study which was one of the bases for the Kennedy Administration’s tax cut. Among that commission’s members were 13 members of the CFR. As of 1957, CED’s training program in economics for prospective teachers was being used in 20 colleges, and 20 school systems around the country were trying out a program to introduce economics into the curriculum as early as the first grade. Over 19,000 teachers have participated in the CED’s summer workshops on the teaching of economics. In 1961 the committee’s information division distributed 3,716,676 books and pamphlets.’

Resources

Excerpt from G. William Domhoff, (1979) The Powers That Be, Committee for Economic Development, Vintage. pp. 67-9.