V.gabond Editorials

By Jack Dionne

Have we learned anything from the three terrific years we have been through? Or is it still the same old cockeyed world?

After passing through the most tragic year of human history, would it not seem that thinking people-standing on the verge of utter tragedy and human dispair-would solemnly and prayerfully welcome another year, hopeful that it might lead us out of the wilderness? And did we?

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Were you, by any chance, out and abroad last New Year's Eve? From San Francisco to New York City and from New Orleans to Canada, millions of we thinking (?) Americans bought our rot-gut booze, reserved our tables or places, and proceeded to put on the same moronic, cockeyed show we have for years. We drank, we shouted, we sang, we spouted, we talked a line of aimless drivel that would make a self-respecting ape hide his head in shame; we sickened at the draughts we swallowed, and, showing no preference, vomited on friend and foe alike. In our automobiles we drove wildly about, zig-zagging up and down the streets, singing, honking, roaring, chortling, testifying in undebatable fashion that we haven't the brains that God gave lice. Untold millions of dollars were poured into the sewers, in a land where a multitude of strong hearts-overburdened with their loads of care and woeare breaking, and where millions of children cry for bread. 'We drove at break-neck speed hither and yon, John Barleycorn driving in one direction, and Jimmy Gin in the other. Frequently these drivers met-and human wrecks were carted away to hospital or morgue.

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Yes, we celebrated the New Year in this old land of ours ! And HOW we celebrated it ! We, who have long shuddered at the story of Nero fiddling while Rome burned, have far out.fiddled Nero !

They have accomplished one difficult thing very thoroughly that you must credit them with, and that is breaking into the front page headlines. Newspapers and magazines both are giving them freely of their space. Talk about concrete facts and figuges ! These technocracy guys would scare you to death with their conclusions if you didn't understand that there has never been a time since civilization began when statistics, devoted to that purpose, could not be arrayed with that same effect. Here's one of their marvelous conclusions:

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Two hundred men operating the most modern brickmaking equipment could rnanufacture all the brick that the United States could consume, they say. Looks like it puts all the brick men out of business, doesn't it? However, there are some pertinent facts that they do not mention. Brick are very heavy. They can be shipped only a short distance from point of production and then the transportation charges make their cost prohibitive. Brick must and will continue to be made in local territories, for regional distribution. The fact that two hundred men COULD produce as tnany brick as the world could use, is just an empty and idle statement that doesn't mean a thing to the brick or the building business.

And they fail to mention the fact that about the time we learned to make brick faster and easier, we also learned by mechanical ingenuity to use them in countless new ways and previously unheard-of places. In the old days we built walls only a few stories high. Now we hoist those fast-made brick almost to the skies, using them in quantities never dreamed of in the days of the slow-made brick.

And now there come,

"l*-o' use and everyday knowledge a new "ism" known as "technocracy." I've been reading a lot from them and about them. It appears that a technocrat is a super-economist. An economist, as all the world knows, is a man who knows everything, and can't do anything. A technocrat is a man who knows even more than an economist, and can do even less.

But these lime-light *": Jrra p.ruri"ity-seekers want us to understand that we have been, doing nothing for some time but creating machinery that will supply the needs of the world almost without human help, for which reason men hereafter will work but little and play a lot, and our biggest problem now is what to do with our leisure time. Which is plain monkey-talk that falls on willing ears only because of the stress and distress of the times. My personal opinion is that modern mechanical ingenuity has done more to MAKE jobs for men, than it has to create unemployment, and that a true array of the facts would prove that to be the case.

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