While the majority of Marshall Plan funding was devoted to emergency food and fuel shipments, one of the key programmatic goals of the Marshall Plan was to increase productivity in Europe to match the torrid pace of production in the United States. To this end, the Marshall Plan’s Productivity Program organized several exchange programs, including a one-year program for young European workers to study and work in the United States. In 1952 the Mutual Security Agency, the successor to the original Marshall Plan administration, held a conference to speak on the impacts of this work study program. The proceedings of this conference give a better idea of what the Productivity Program’s motivations and long-term goals were. Everett Bellows, then a key administrator in the Productivity Program division, gave the introductory remarks to this conference. His introduction provides a succinct explanation of how the work study program worked, and how Marshall Administrators hoped to achieve their long term goals.
Related Subjects: German Visitors, Labor Relations: German Unions
Productivity Machines 