{"value"=>"<p>The correspondence and papers of this department are among the most informative files in the collection. In a publicity announcement of a projected progress survey, NCF expressed the belief that the twentieth century would be devoted to the settlement of economic issues, just as the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries dealt with political issues . <div class=\"note\"><p>Industrial Economics Department, box 193, folders 5 and 6</p></div> Organized during a period when public interest in socialist theories was high, the Industrial Economics Department (chaired by Nicholas Murray Butler and later by John Giraud Agar) set out to neutralize the effects of socialist criticism of American institutions by studying and publicizing solutions to industrial strife between employers and workers.</p> <p>In the department's early years, awareness of encroaching socialism is apparent in an analysis of the essential differences in the political and economic objectives of the trade unions, the Socialist Party, and the Industrial Workers of the World, and the methods used by each group to achieve its ends within the labor movement. After the shock of Eugene Debs' strong showing in the presidential election of 1912 an element of panic crept into the public announcements of the department's projects. The close to one million votes that Debs received triggered a strong reaction by Easley and the department. It also provoked Seth Low's alarmed comment that there were at least six million socialists in the United States. In a letter to Andrew Carnegie in 1909, Easley expressed similar distress at the rise in the socialist vote in the 1908 presidential election. [<a href=\"#footnote_3925603590\" class=\"footnote-link\">1</a>] In July of 1912 Low responded to Easley's call for an all-out campaign against socialism with the statement that NCF should not get involved in the controversy with the socialists, but that it should calmly continue to criticize their theories. [<a href=\"#footnote_3925604473\" class=\"footnote-link\">2</a>]</p> <p>Confrontational anti-socialism soon became the driving force behind the department's work. The Executive Council restructured the department to carry out a national survey to determine whether there had been social, economic, and industrial progress in the United States since the 1870s. [<a href=\"#footnote_3925605770\" class=\"footnote-link\">3</a>] William D. Foulke, for one, questioned NCF's objectivity. [<a href=\"#footnote_3925606280\" class=\"footnote-link\">4</a>] NCF was vulnerable to such criticism, given that the progress survey was the offspring of anti-socialist meetings (see sub-subseries 5 below), and was intended to counteract socialist criticism and bolster anti-socialist organizing. NCF publicly claimed that the progress survey would be disinterested and impartial, a questionable claim in light of NCF's fear of socialism and close ties to the Republican Party and big business. The progress survey had an estimated initial budget of $50,000 to be funded by subscription. The preliminary projected time for completion of the survey was six months.</p> <div class=\"footnotes\"><div id='footnote_3925603590' class='note'>1 - <span class=\"note_contents\">. Industrial Economics Department, box 184, folder 3.Ralph Easley to Andrew Carnegie, January 19, 1909.</span></div><div id='footnote_3925604473' class='note'>2 - <span class=\"note_contents\">Industrial Economics Department, box 188, folder 1. Seth Low to Ralph Easley, July 22, 1912.</span></div><div id='footnote_3925605770' class='note'>3 - <span class=\"note_contents\">Industrial Economics Department, box 193, folders 2 and 3.</span></div><div id='footnote_3925606280' class='note'>4 - <span class=\"note_contents\">Industrial Economics Department, box 187, folder 2. William Foulke to Ralph Easley, September 1912. Foulke was a writer, a former president of the American Woman's Suffrage Association, a member of the National Municipal League, and a member of the platform committee of the Progressive Party.</span></div></div>"}