ABSTRACT
Although the connection between the current Notre Dame Marketing faculty and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) goes back 40 years, the seeds of this relationship were planted almost a century ago. President Woodrow Wilson established the FTC in 1914. His assessment of the first few years for the FTC was captured by this phrase during his acceptance speech at the 1916 Democratic Convention: “have relieved businessmen of unfounded fears and set them on the road of hopeful and confident enterprise” (Wilson 1916). This statement runs counter to the modern interpretation that the FTC's only role was to “regulate” business. One of the initial FTC commissioners was Edward Nash Hurley, a “self-made man, an elementary school dropout [sic, see below] who built successful businesses” (Winerman 2003). The link to Notre Dame in all of this is that Hurley gave the money to build the first business building on the ND campus in 1930.
