No More Monkeying

Last week the Cabinet of Marshal Henri Philippe Petain issued its first decrees regulating commerce. In a batch of 46 laws, 26 decrees and 33 administrative orders--which for the first time in history caused a day's delay in publication of the Journal Officiel--boards of corporations were restricted to not more than twelve or fewer than three members. The president of a company must be an active participant in its management and president and board are personally liable for all the company's debts. All abuses of the capitalistic system, Finance Minister Marcel Yves Bouthillier said, evolved around the "irresponsibility of the chiefs of the corporations." The new legislation meant no more "monkeying around with other people's money."

To a nation still dazed by war, heading toward famine, and sick to death of itself, Petain expounded totalitarian economic theory in the form of three basic principles: 1) organization of professions on a corporative basis within which elements of enterprise can thrash out their difficulties; 2) arbitration by the State of all disputes otherwise incapable of settlement; 3) State control of corporations to adjust national production in accordance with domestic markets and the possibilities of foreign trade.

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