 Dear Adolf, a letter to Hitler. The National Broadcasting Company in cooperation with the Council for Democracy presents Dear Adolf, a series of six narrative letters written each week by Stephen Vincent Benet, one of the nation's greatest writers. These broadcasts are based upon actual letters written to Hitler by Americans. Today's program, the second of the series, presents Melvin Douglas, distinguished actor of screen and radio relating the views of an American businessman as he addresses a letter to Hitler. Yes, that's the afternoon mail, Miss Smith, all signed. Yes, I talked to Major Lempert, went to meet him at the plant. Any other calls? Mrs. Benson did? Well, I can't get back for dinner. The Major and I will pick up something somewhere, you don't mind. Yes, Mr. Benson, I had lunch. You can tell Mrs. Benson I had lunch. And don't look as if I never had it. That was just last week when we got the chain specifications. No, I don't know when I'll be through. I may sleep at the plant. Take a letter, please, Miss Smith. Adolf Hitler. Bette is Godden, Germany. Now, look up the spelling. I've had this letter in my mind for quite a while. Ever since the boy got in the Air Force. All right, take the letter. Dear Adolf, this is me. This is me, one American businessman, J.B. Benson of Benson Inc. I run one plant in one town in a place called the USA. I'm 49 years old, free children and a dog. Been in the manufacturing business ever since I got out of the last war. Believe in it, too. I'm a church member and a Rotarian, the Lodge member. In politics, I usually vote the straight ticket. But once in a while, I'll split it for a good man. Sometimes Mrs. Benson says that's stubborn of me. Sometimes she says I'm broad-minded. It all depends, I say. I'm Vice President of the Chamber of Commerce in my town. I help run the community chest. And there are thousands like me all over this country. Just the plain, ordinary businessmen who sit at table 24 at the convention dinners and are out on the end of the row when they take the group photograph. That's why I'm taking time off to say, we're all against you, Adolf. The businessmen, the manufacturers, the industrialists, the men who designed and put together the whole big plant of America. We're moving against you. We're against you, and we're out to lick you. Come hell or high water. It's a big job, and we know that. We're used to big jobs in this country. We make everything from electric tosters to suspension bridges. We make gadgets and do-funnies and jiggers and things that last. We're crazy about three-ton presses and automatic lighters. About cash registers that ring bells at you and cranes that pick up tons of steel. We're crazy about feeding stuff in at one end of an assembly line and having a car drive out on its own power at the other. We're crazy about jigs and dies and tools that make tools. And that's why this war is up our alley, Adolf, because it's mechanized war. You said it yourself. You started fooling around with the tools of death. Well, we're tool makers by trade. We've delivered a few samples already. Ask your friend, the son of Kevin in Tokyo. But the real mass production's just starting on the way. It's in the plants and all the freight cars and trucks. It's crossing the oceans in convoy. It's pouring from thousands of factories all over America. The soldiers we send to fight you are going to be as well-equipped as American skill can manage. There are type founders making tank guns, locomotive works, making barbedets, tire companies, making leak-proof gas tanks. It's boiling in the converters and humming over the power lines. It's being stamped out and welded and machined and finished and marked with your address. There are plants a mile long that do nothing night and day but work at it. There are little shops that do nothing night and day but work at it. There's a fellow who used to make musical cigarette boxes. He's making airplane parts. There's a fellow that used to make children slippers. He's making canvas saddlebags for the army. There's General Motors and Ford, Alice Chalmers and Bethlehem Steel, Gary and Hartford, Pittsburgh and Young Sound, the River Rouge and Willow Run. And there are hundreds of plants you never even heard of. They're pouring it out and heat treating it and shooting it right at you. Well, there's just one reason why our resources will beat the axis. But if we don't hammer these resources into tools and planes and tanks in time, we might just as well be buried with these unused resources. No, that wasn't our government, Adolf. That was a manufacturer in Louisville, Kentucky. Want to hear another? Well, this is the most respected man in my town talking to our chamber of commerce. Gentlemen, war business is not good business. It's hard to get and it's harder to get a profit on it. It's as full of troubles as Pandora's box, but I'm taking all I can get. Because if American business does not make a success at this job, it will never get the chance to fail at another. That's one of my own men talking horse sense. We've heard what you did to your businessmen, and the only business that's running in Germany today is your gang's business, Adolf. Well, that isn't the way we want it here. Sure, some of us thought for a while that we could do business with you, even if you conquered all Europe, but we don't think that anymore. You can't do business with a man who doesn't know the meaning of a contract. You can't do business with a company who takes your goods in on a cash basis and then pays off in bum harmonicas. You can't do business with people whose whole idea of business is tails I win, heads you lose. We call those people chislers in this country, Adolf. And when they get to be too much of a nuisance, we put them out of business. And that's just what we mean to do to you. You and your friends, the Japanese warlords, because you are international chislers, and there can't be any real business done until you're stopped. Sure, we kick about a lot of things here. We kick about taxes and we kick about red tape. We kick about rules and regulations. We kick about government interference. We kick about questionnaires and we kick about the new deal. We can kick. We're free men. Your fellows can't kick. They'd be shot. It's curious, Adolf. Not one American businessman has yet been shocked by our government because he didn't agree with our government's policies. That must be curious to you, but we need to keep it that way. And as for our business objective, here's what one plant manager says. After an 80% excess profit tax and higher inventories, there won't be much gravy left for the stockholders. But that old whistle out there will still be calling men to work after this war is over. And that's more than some of Schicklgruber's whistles are doing right now. That's our objective, Adolf. Now I'm not painting a rosy picture. Things are tough. They're going to be tougher. Industries that can't convert will suffer badly. Many businesses will suffer badly. We'll all be regulated as we've never been regulated before. Some chislers may make undue profits and we'll all see many changes. But we built the big plant and we mean to keep it working for the USA, not for you, to work and to plan and to do something, to try new things and get them done, to get the cost down and the volume up so the ordinary man can have things that only the few could enjoy a little while ago, to make some kind of a profit out of brains and skill and management, and to get the world's business straightened out so that people like you won't keep coming it up. That's our hope and what it is. Nowadays, we don't even try to put that hope into words. We just keep on driving because always at the back of our minds we hear if we don't hammer these resources into tools and planes and tanks in time, we might just as well be buried with our unused resources. If American business does not make a success at this job, it will never get the chance to fail at another. That's what the clock keeps ticking, Adolf. Yes, there are those who try to divide and disunite us, set class against class, creed against creed, race against race, management against labor, business against government. But that's your game, Adolf, and we're getting on pretty fast to the very few in this country who like to play your game. A lot of us businessmen may not die in battle. We'll die of coronary and brights and the overworked diseases, maybe a few years earlier than if you'd never been born. Well, that's all right. You send a plane over tomorrow and lay a bomb on this plant and bury me under it. Well, it was J.B. Benson's plan, and he lived and died J.B. Benson, a free American. He wasn't Henry Ford, but he did all right in his line. He kicked at his government and he never broke 90 on the golf course. They liked him pretty well in his town and he paid his bills on the first. And when he figured he owed the United States a debt for value received, he paid it. He paid it by scratching around and getting things done that couldn't be done in less time than the worst to do them. And if there's a balance due, there probably is. His son and his partners and his company will take over the rest of the debt and see it's paid in full. They won't slacken and they won't tire. They won't rest and they won't fight about objectives. They'll keep the wheels humming and the draft boards busy and the plant turning out the stuff till the iron jawed axis boys who thought J.B. Benson was a sucker and a softy yell uncle. But J.B. Benson worked for money and he made plenty of mistakes. When the pinch came, the schoolbook says he would not bow to tyrants. He got up on his hind feet instead and said, let's go. He was a past grandmaster in the assorted princes of the desert. He wore plus fours when they were fashionable. Looked like hell in them. He was proud of his children and his electric razor. He liked to broil stakes on a special outdoor grill. And he made a special sauce for them that gave Mrs. Benson the willies. He'd tell you the drop of the hat about the speech he made at the convention. But he would not bow to tyrants and he worked his head off to lick them. And that's all you need to know about J.B. Benson. Except that living or dead, he doesn't intend to be licked. Yes, yes, use the company letterhead. Huh? Copy to Mussolini? No, no, I don't think we need to waste the paper. But send one to Hirohito and mark them both special delivery by Bomber. I better get over the plan. You have just heard Dear Adults starring Melvin Douglas, the second of a series of six narrative letters written each week by Stephen Vincent Benet and presented by the National Broadcasting Company in cooperation with the Council for Democracy. The program was directed by Lesbrough Keefe with original music composed by Tom Bennett and conducted by Joseph Stoeck. These broadcasts are based upon actual letters written to Hitler by Americans. Won't you send in your own letter to Dear Adults? Listen next week to an American working man's letter to Hitler with James Cagney as narrator. Copies of today's Dear Adults letter from a businessman may be secured without cost by writing directly to the Council for Democracy 11 West 42nd Street, New York City. This program came to you from New York. This is the National Broadcasting Company.