Willis J Ballinger (3 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Fair. No Jacket. Readable copy. Pages may have considerable notes/highlighting. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less.

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Fair. 1st Edition. BY VOTE OF THE PEOPLE, Willis J. Ballinger, foreword by John Chamberlain, hardcover with unclipped dust jacket, first edition (indicated by publisher's custom of putting an "A" on the copyright page), 1946. BOOK CONDITION: very good. The text block is in near fine condition, with no tears, dogears, or marks. Pages are age-toned. No signature or bookplate of a prior owner. Not a library book or remainder. The red boards are in very good condition (bumped corners and spine). The dust jacket is in fair condition (chipping and tears along edges, 8 ½ x 6, 381 pages, 20 ounces XX [From the inner flaps of the dust jacket] Willis J. Ballinger in June of 1946 resigned his position as Economic Adviser to the Federal Trade Commission after nine years of service. Teacher, journalist, government expert, he is regarded as one of the top-flight economists in America. As Economic Adviser to the Commission and Director of Studies for the Commission before the Temporary National Economic Committee, as Economic Adviser to the House Committee on Small Business, as a witness before Congressional committees and in government prosecutions, he has had a wide contact with the world of industry and trade and is particularly recognized as an authority on the troubles of small business. This book was the consuming task of ten years of a busy life of official duties and service overseas in the Army (Major, Third United States Army). He has studied history with special penetration and has reached the original conclusion that free governments generally have perished by the insidious process of by vote of the people. In a Foreword, John Chamberlain calls the results of Mr. Ballinger's investigations into the decline and fall of the great capitalistic democracies of the past extremely interesting, and summarizes them in these words: Athens, Rome, Venice, Florence, the France of the First and Third Republics, Weimar Germany and Italy all had free governments and capitalistic business mechanisms; all of them succumbed to more or less the same diseases. Of the eight democracies, five perished peacefully, by vote of the people. Rome voted away its liberties in the Age of Augustus, Germany let Hitler take over by strictly legal methods, Florence lifted the Medici to power without unconstitutional violence, Italy gladly welcomed Mussolini's advent, and the France of the First Republic accepted Napoleon Bonaparte as consul and emperor in the fond delusion that dictatorship could protect liberty. In Venice a clique fraudulently put over dictatorial government by buying up the legislature. Only Athens and Third Republic France perished by violence, the first being overrun by the Macedonians, and the second by Hitler. …

Hard Cover. First Edition. 381pp. Conservative author who feared that our capitalistic democracy would disappear by the 'vote of the people.' Foreword: John Chamberlain. Very good, except for writing in pencil in the margins on pages 5-19. No jacket. (loc 853).