Word: eca
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...agencies in Western Europe have put on a concentrated campaign to convince Europeans that America is a very friendly and generous country. Most of this convincing has emanated from the various information missions of the Economic Cooperation Administration which pays out Marshall Plan Funds. ECA in France publishes a slick-paper monthly magazine, makes little instructive cartoon movies about the Marshall Plan aid, and runs a traveling agricultural exhibit supposed to convince French farmers that they could use a bright new ECA tractor. Other missions largely duplicate this pattern; all rely heavily on hand-outs to the local press...
Opposing these agencies are well-organized and financed Communist parties in almost every one of the Western countries. These parties, especially strong in France and Italy, are tightly organized on a ward-boss level; their newspapers have huge circulations. And so far, as the ECA poll shows, they have been winning the propaganda war with very little trouble...
...American propaganda agencies have been bungling badly. U. S. propaganda is aimed at the "more intelligent clements" in the various countries, although ECA in Italy has been making a genuine try to reach "the Italian in the street"; the Communists are steadily plugging away at farmers and factory workers...
...Western European governments, many of which contain strong Communist representation, have been afraid to let the U. S. propagandize as much as it wishes. The French government has appointed a special officer to make sure ECA's propaganda is carefully limited...
...time or another, he had spoken out for cuts in defense spending, greater economies in ECA operations, and a tighter rein on atomic energy appropriations. As for the farmer, Sawyer told a luncheon group in New Orleans' International House: "I don't hold with this idea of giving the farmer special treatment . . . No one has any idea how much the Brannan plan would cost. I think that's one place we could make big savings...