How to Get Rich in Washington; Rich Man's Division of the Welfare State
New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1952. First Edition [stated], presumed first printing. Hardcover. x, 309, [1] pages. Index. DJ somewhat soiled, small tears/chips to DJ edges. Signed by the author with sentiment on fep. This book is a history of political decay; its purpose is to draw attention to the erosion of the ideal of public responsibility in the federal government since World War II. The author was a reporter and diplomatic correspondent for The Washington Star in the 1930's and into the 1940's and later was the Washington bureau chief and correspondent of the Foreign Policy Association for a decade. Edmund Blair Bolles was a Yale University. At The Washington Star, he covered the White House and the State Department and was a wartime correspondent, based in neutral Stockholm, reporting on the Axis Powers. He wrote for many publications, including The St. Louis Post Dispatch, The Toledo Blade, The New York Times and other newspapers and national magazines, as well as being the president of The American Newspaper Guild. Among his books was ''How to Get Rich in Washington: Rich Man's Division of the Welfare State'' (1952), which Cabell Phillips of The New York Times hailed as ''one of the most convincing and effective recitals of mass corruption to be published in many years.'' Other books he wrote included ''The Big Change in Europe'' (1958), an account of the growth and meaning of the consumer revolution in Western Europe, and ''Tyrant From Illinois,'' a 1951 biography of Joe Cannon, a ruthless House Speaker. Derived from a Kirkus review: The former head of the Policy Association with an expose of the graft and corruption in Washington. The Roman carnival of privilege and corruption that has engulfed Washington since the fat years of the war is the concern of a muckraking investigation of over-all governmental irresponsibility. Easy money from the government comes in three forms:- simple gifts to the favored (as for instance those made by the military to industrialists in settlement of war contracts); protection given by government to vested interests; draining off of taxes into private pockets. Favoritism in granting of wartime contracts led to corruption in disposal of war surplus (the charge that American Red Cross plasma was sold to postwar Chinese profiteers who in turn retailed it at fantastic prices as a "male restorative" is an example). More recent examples are the overnubsidization of maritime interests, the scandals of the R.F.C. (covered in three long chapters); evasion of anti-trust laws and the squeezing out of small business, and wholesale corruption of the tax collecting agencies. He names names and states cases, going far beyond the findings of the Kefauver and Fulbright and King committees; he tells stories that have their "under cover" fascination. He charts some new regulations governing the flow of tax money into- and out of- the Treasury; supervising the independent agencies; taking jobs in the Department of Justice and the Internal Revenue Bureau off the patronage lists; developing a new method of appointing U.S. district attorneys, U.S. marshals, tax collectors and their subordinates....A book that packs a wallop. Condition: Very good / Good.
Keywords: Harry Truman, William Willett, Merl Young, Reconstruction Finance, Walter Dunham, Donald Dawson, Federal Government, Politics, Government, William Boyle, William Fulbright, Joseph Sisto
[Book #55087]
Price: $75.00