Unlike its predecessor, which limited its attention to generalities, the Reece Committee mounted a comprehensive inquiry into both the motives for establishing foundations and their influence on public life.
In the Dodd report to the Reece Committee on Foundations, he gave a definition of the word "subversive", saying that the term referred to "Any action having as its purpose the alteration of either the principle or the form of the United States Government by other than constitutional means."
He stated, "The purported deterioration in scholarship and in the techniques of teaching which, lately, has attracted the attention of the American public, has apparently been caused primarily by a premature effort to reduce our meager knowledge of social phenomena to the level of an applied science.
They also indicated conclusively that the responsibility for the economic welfare of the American people had been transferred heavily to the Executive Branch of the Federal Government; that a corresponding change in education had taken place from an impetus outside of the local community, and that this 'revolution' had occurred without violence and with the full consent of an overwhelming majority of the electorate.
The Reece Committee's report, submitted in the midst of the ultimately successful efforts to censure Senator Joseph McCarthy, failed to attract much attention.
However, the report did conclude that Some of the larger foundations have directly supported 'subversion' in the true meaning of that term--namely, the process of undermining some of our vitally protective concepts and principles.
This final report was made up by the majority in the committee, three Republicans: Representatives B. Carroll Reece of Tennessee, chairman, Jesse P. Wolcott of Michigan and Angier L. Goodwin of Massachusetts.
[3] The Republican Angier Goodwin added a note below his signature: "In signing this report, I do so with strong reservations and dissent from many of its findings and conclusions and with the understanding that I may file a supplementary statement to follow".
By contrast, the committee gave 3 days to the testimony of San Francisco attorney Aaron M. Sargent, whose political and economic thinking could be judged by his charge that the U.S. "income tax was part of a plot by Fabian Socialists operating from England to pave the way for socialism in this country."