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Inspired by the success of preschool in these states, advocates, foundation leaders, and business allies built a movement for universal preschool. Rather than continuing to push for the expansion of targeted programs like Head Start, they shifted to a universal strategy, believing that a program that served middle‐class families would ultimately build more enduring political support. The involvement of the Pew Charitable Trusts served as a catalyst, pouring funding into selected state campaigns, bringing together different constituencies across the country, and focusing unprecedented attention on pre‐kindergarten as a solution to educational and social problems. Support for expanding preschool relied on a strong research base that documented the promise of preschool for improving the life chances of disadvantaged children. But the movement's vision of providing “preschool for all” was challenged, both by those who preferred to target scarce resources to the neediest children, and by critics who feared increasing government's role in raising children in general.

This chapter demonstrates the Mayor's Committee for Economic and Cultural Development (CECD) that substituted the Chicago Land Clearance Commission's (CLCC) strategy of using government funds to replace razed blighted space with new industrial districts. It examines the methods used by the CECD to modernize the practices that induced industrial firms to invest in city property. It also points out how the CECD was instrumental in shaping how city leaders viewed industrial property through the 1960s and early 1970s. The chapter recounts CECD's work to resituate industrial property as a space for science-led industrial development and the rejuvenation of existing factory areas between 1961 and 1976. It cites how the CECD contributed to the government-led economic development policies that became increasingly common in the United States since the 1970s by forcing the city and industrial institutions to rethink how to promote industrial growth.

This chapter tells the story of how J. Howard Pew and a band of conservative activists attempted to infiltrate the National Council of Churches with the aim of undermining religious support for the welfare state. As with many odd pairings, financial considerations helped bring the parties together. The courtship began when the NCC’s architects hatched the idea of a National Lay Committee—a body of prominent laymen and women that would help the Council keep its finger on the pulse of lay opinion while also boosting the Council’s budget. From Pew’s perspective, the Lay Committee offered a potential backdoor into the citadel of the Social Gospel. The NCC needed money, and he was willing and able to supply it. In return, he asked only that the Council cease issuing pronouncements in favor of government aid to the less fortunate and instead transform itself into a champion of the free-enterprise system. The plan sounded simple enough on paper, yet it ultimately failed to accomplish its principal objective of prompting the NCC to abandon its commitment to a robust social welfare state. And, perhaps surprisingly, it was a group of prominent business leaders, not the alleged communists in the ranks of the clergy, who led the opposition to Pew’s short-lived Lay Committee.