If we will look over the scene in America we will see clearly enough that, despite many differences in the character, customs, laws, traditions, reso… - John T. Flynn

It is born in crisis, lives on crisis, and cannot survive the era of crisis. By the very law of its nature it must create for itself, if it is to continue, fresh crisis from year to year. Mussolini came to power in the postwar crisis and became himself a crisis in Italian life. . . . Hitler's story is the same. And our future is all charted out upon the same turbulent road of permanent crisis.

In 1933, suddenly, with little or no consideration in the great disorder and fever of the collapse, Congress passed the National Recovery Act. That act authorized the President to bring about a complete and comprehensive organization of industry and to make rules and regulations governing every phase of its activities. Under practically every category of industry and finance the entire nation was organized into what the Italians would call ‘corporatives’; what we called code authorities. These code authorities, under the authority of the President, were empowered to make rules, to regulate production, prices, distribution, competition in all its phases. These regulations had the force of law and under them men could be hauled into court on civil and criminal liabilities. Some men were actually jailed for violating them. It is, I think, a fair statement that the President, under the NRA, exercised the right to make laws over at least half, if not more, of the domain within which Congress ordinarily legislates. The Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, declared this law unconstitutional and based its opinion entirely on the proposition that Congress had delegated its legislative power to the President, who in turn had delegated it to the code authorities.

Regimentation of American life means forming society into regiments, subjecting it to orders, drills, commanders… Regimentation of business means, in the minds of those who use the term, forming businessmen into regiments, bringing business under regulation, controlling production, prices, trade practices, the rules of the game. For seventy years at least business men have been, in varying degrees, in favor of this. The government has been against it.