ABSTRACT
The achievement of the five per cent amendment was a bright spot in what from the perspective of business-community relations was a dark decade. The strains of continuing depression, the challenge of the New Deal to business freedom and power, and other evidences of popular disenchantment with managerial leadership combined to foster a touchy defensiveness among businessmen. In 1935, community chest leaders, flushed with their hard-won victory, turned with new hope to the 1935 Mobilization for Human Needs. Significant as the effort to establish corporate philanthropy on a regular and legal basis ultimately proved, the depression years raised far more urgent questions concerning the role of business in American society. The New Deal posed a fundamental challenge to the primacy of business leadership and initiative. Doubts and disagreements about the position of management, the relationship of business to society, and the proper scope of corporate philanthropy all characterized business thought in the 1930s.
