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SPAN

The End of Polio?

By Wendy Orent

Polio-Free India

By Lea Terhune

Publisher

Francis B. Ward

Making the Visit

By M.ichael Macy

Editor-in-Chief

Kiki S. Munshi

Parting the Silk Curtain

Editor

By Pramit Pal Chaudhuri

Lea Terhune Associate Editors

Arun Bhanot

The First Empire Builder ByM.inna Morse

A. Venkata Narayana Editorial Assistant

K. Murhukumar Art Director

Suhas Nimbalkar

Your Mail Has Vanished

By Michael Specter

The Commute Text and Photographs by Mark Haven

Deputy Art Director

Hemanr Bhatnagar

It's Big, But What Does It Do, Anyway?

Production/Circulation Manager

Rakesh Agrawal

By ALun Bhanot

Research Services

AIRC Documentation Services, American Information Resource Center

Rai Treasures at the Library oJ Congress

By Pran Nevile

Lost in the Stacks Front cover: As our cover reveals, SPAN is commemorating its 40th anniversary. Art Director Suhas Nimbalkar has designed the special cover recollecting the journey of SPAN through the past four decades. See story on page 34.

Note: SPA does not accept unsolicited manuscripts and materials and does not assume responsibility for them. Query letters are accepted.

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By

Matthew Battl.es

Letter from the Editor What SPAN Means to Me

By Stephen Espie

Suzan Woodruff-Feminine

By Lea Terhune

Injtiol in the Dust A Poel11 by Christine Krishnaswami

Inscope

A LETTER

T

FROM

his issue of SPAN salutes several historic milestones: the 40th anniversary of SPAl , the bicentennial of the Library of Congress (LOC) and, in the second in an ongoing series of articles, the 50th anniversary of USAID in India.

Our cover feature is a light-hearted reminiscence of the SPAI years. SPAl was first published in ovember 1960. Through four decades it has changed a bit in style, but the goal of addressing issues of mutual interest to Indians and Americans and presenting America to our friends in India has remained the same. We salute the Library of Congress bicentennial in "It's Big, But What Does It Do, Anyway?" by Arun Bhanot and "Raj Treasures," by Pran 1 evile. The former views the history of the Library and the work done at the New Delhi field office, one of LOC's most important outposts. Then we go into the archives, as Nevile gives highlights of his researches in the Main Library in Washington, nc. "Lost in the Stacks" by Matthew Battles combines philosophizing with library trivia that reflects just how much has changed since the library burned in Alexandria: "The digital objects of today are the incunabula of a not-toodistant tomorrO\v; we bury in them the future's handy truisms about ourselves."

Polio eradication and immunization drives have been a major project of the 50-year-old USAID India. In "The End of Polio?" Wendy Orent looks beyond polio eradication to issues that will confront the medical community once the scourge of polio is wiped out. "Don't expect that the fact that we eradicated polio means we can forget about it," says virologist Mikhail P. Chumakov. Here on the home front, experts rate India's progress toward becoming polio-free in "Polio-Free India."

In this new millennium we have been focused on "cyber communication." But before there was Bill Gates, Microsoft and the Information Highway there was James J. Hill, the Great Northern and the railways. "The First Empire Builder" by Minna Morse profiles tllis entrepreneur who blazed a technological trail, built a fortune and

THE PUBLISHER

was among the first targets of antitrust legislation in the United States.

Ever wonder what became of that lost e-mail message that was never received and never returned? Michael Specter tries to track down what happened to his, going so far as to pay a visit to his server, in "Your Mail Has Vanished."

"Parting the Silk Curtain" by Pramit Pal Chaudhuri analyzes the impact of Clinton's visit on Indo-U.S. relations, particularly in the area of economic cooperation. "The broad expansion of Indo-U.S. cooperation in so many fields is expected to cause a paradigm shift in bilateral ties," he says. Foreign Service Officer Michael Macy gives an insider's view of the Clinton visit in "Making tlle Visit."

"The Commute" by Mark Haven takes us along on the autllor/photographer's daily commute in upstate New York, brought to life with prose and pictures. And "Feminine Inscape" looks at painter Suzan Woodruff and her work, recently exhibited in New Dellii.

This issue also introduces a new regular feature, "Consular Focus," to keep you updated on visa requirements, the easiest way to apply, and developments that affect those who wish to travel to the United States.

We hope you enjoy this issue, and continue to enjoy SPAN. I was a SPAN enthusiast long before I came to India. For three of my four years in this wonderful country I have had the privilege of being the publisher of SP . Everywhere I have traveled in India I have met people who have told me how much they have enjoyed SPAN. This warm response has been a great inspiration to our SPAN team. With this issue, I come to the end of this memorable tour. For the immediate future, I must take my leave of India and SPAN. I want to thank both that energetic, creative SPA team and the community of SPAI readers everywhere. Namaste!

The End of

Polio strikes rich and poor alike, but soon this ancient scourge will be eradicated worldwide. What then?

Ross B1eckner,

The Tenth Examined Life oil/canvas, linen J 991.

Courtesy Mary Boone Gallery, New York.

This article is reprinted by pemlission of The Sciences and is from the March/April 2000 issue. Individual subscriptions are $28 per year.

Write to: The Sciences. 2 East 63rd Street, New York, NY 10021.

I

met Jonas Salk at a conference once, four or five years ago," says William Lutz, a Rutgers University English professor and a polio survivor. "He was a very gracious gentleman. He asked me, 'Why didn't you die?'''

Good question, from a man who would know: who better than Jonas E. Salk, the physician who developed the first safe and effective polio vaccine, would understand Lutz's ordeal and his recovery from a childhood case of one of the deadliest forms of polio? Salk's vaccine removed the shadow of polio; those of us who have grown up outside that darkness can hardly imagine its horror. In the 1940s and early 1950s, polio killed or crippled thousands of children and young adults each year in the United States. Parents, beside themselves with worry, kept their children indoors and away from crowds, parks and other children all through the still heat of July and August, the dreaded "polio season." No one knew then how polio spread, though swimming pools were suspect; no one understood why paralysis would strike one infected child and not another. The mystery of the disease added to its terror.

In the summer of 1945, Lutz's parents agreed to let him go on a single outing. The five-year-old was allowed to accompany a friend's family to the Wisconsin State Fair. "We had tickets to the pit area, where the stock-car drivers went," he recalls. "There wouldn't be a crowd there. My parents thought I would be safe."

The disease that Lutz caught that day was bulbar polio, which invades the brain stem and can suppress breathing; many who were less fortunate than Lutz had to endure the infamous iron lung; many died. The episode left Lutz with permanent weakness in his legs and throat, and an abiding appreciation for the vaccine that began, in 1955, to lift the affliction from the earth. When he became a father, he was particularly grateful to be spared the dread his own parents bad suffered. "I didn't have to think about it," he says, "because my son was immunized."

By the mid-1960s, thanks to vaccines, polio had lost its hold in the United States and Western Europe. But the disease has remained a problem in many of the less industrialized nations.

In 1988 the World Health Organization (WHO) embarked on a campaign to send polio the way of smallpox: into oblivion. The target date for that goal is the end of this year, and since the campaign began, the annual number of new polio cases has dropped by more than 80 percent. "Days of tranquillity"brought antitruces arranged between warring paliies-have polio vaccine to hundreds of thousands of children in Afghanistan, Angola, Somalia and Sudan.

But despite the intensified immunization efforts, polio has not yet been eliminated. More than 6,000 cases were repolied in 1998, and an outbreak in Angola in April 1999 took 89 lives.

China, until recently thought to be polio-free, has been struck again: this past October a 16-month-old boy in Qinghai Province was diagnosed with paralytic polio, and the government responded by vaccinating more than seven million people.

Such outbreaks have made it far from celiain that the target date for eradication will be met. Yet WHO officials are still preparing for life in a world without polio. When that time

comes, all the samples of poliovirus being kept for research purposes in laboratories around the world are to be tracked down, consolidated and placed in high-security storage facilities-a process known as "containment." Those remaining stocks may eventually be destroyed, though there is no plan to do so now.

Most problematically, the health officials who developed the polio eradication program believe that once polio has been banished from nature and laboratory samples of the virus have been locked up, vaccinations can safely cease. The eradication project, of course, if successful, would be a public-health triumph.

And a halt in polio vaccinations, in particular, would also be an enormous financial boon, since they currently cost the world $1.5 billion a year. But the road to those goals runs through a minefield. It will not be as easy to get rid of polio as officials once thought. And, once eradication has been achieved, we may find that the post-polio world has perils of its own.

ily Picornaviridae-small RNA viruses that mutate rapidly and cause a range of diseases, including the common cold and meningitis, as well as polio. You can think of a particle of poliovirus as a perfect, twenty-sided crystal, so small that it acts like a light, invisible dust. It drifts along the mucous membranes of the intestines until it reaches a bump or marker called the poliovirus receptor, on the surface of a celL Once the virus attaches itself to that receptor, its genetic material steals inside the cell and begins to replicate.

That is not necessarily a problem. Most enteroviruses, including poliovirus, grow quietly in the intestinal tract, where they do no harm; the body's immune system generally routs the infection before it can enter the bloodstream. But though they initially replicate in the intestines, some enteroviruses, including polio, also have a strong affinity for the motor neurons of the spinal cord and the brain. And on occasion, perhaps as a result of an

The eradication campaign has come under sniper fire from polio virologists, all of whom applaud its goals, but many of whom question the wisdom of ceasing vaccination once WHO declared the world virus-free.

T

he eradication of smallpox, which is usually held up as a model and an inspiration for the anti-polio campaign, is actually a false analogy-and more like a cautionary tale.

Although a worldwide immunization effort drove smallpox from nature by 1980 and vaccinations have since ended, the virus has never been truly contained and has yet to be destroyed.

The original plan was to consolidate all the remaining laboratory stocks and consign them to the autoclave in 1993. By 1991, however, U.S. intelligence had learned about a secret, decadeslong program that had run in the former Soviet Union, in which smallpox was grown by the ton and sophisticated delivery systems for spraying it into the atmosphere were developed, making the virus a potentially devastating biological weapon. In addition, it is now thought that smallpox virus may have fallen into the hands of terrorists or rogue states such as North Korea. Once it became clear that smallpox had not been contained, destroying the remaining laboratory stocks made little sense. So, despite WHO's success in stopping the natural spread of smallpox, the world is by no means free of it.

The eradication of polio is more complex than that of smallpox, and it is only now, as the goal nears fulfillment, that those complexities are becoming clear. Smallpox spreads more slowly than polio, and it leaves unmistakable footprints: you either have the disease, complete with obvious pustules, or you don't. Polio, by contrast, moves like ripples in water-silently and rapidly.

Only one in a hundred people who are infected by it suffer from paralysis, or worse. As a result, polio is much more difficult than smallpox to track and eradicate.

Polio is an enterovirus, a genus of viruses that colonize the lining of the digestive tract. Enteroviruses are members of the fam-

inadequate immune response, the virus breaks out of the intestinal tract into the bloodstream. From there, it either enters the brain or reaches the nerves through muscle tissue, particularly if the infected person suffers a strain or an injury. The illness caused by poliovirus, poliomyelitis, is marked by flulike symptoms, muscle spasms and paralysis that is sometimes permanent.

A

lthough polio is an ancient disease (a stone tablet from ancient Egypt shows a priest with what appears to be a withered leg typical of paralytic polio), it did not surface as a major threat to human health until the 20th century.

In the past, polio, which usually spreads through contaminated water, infected nearly every child shortly after birth. Babies acquired permanent immunity through that early exposure, and only the unfortunate child who somehow managed to avoid infection in infancy-the Egyptian priest, perhaps-was at risk.

With the improvement of the water supply early in the 20th century, however, infants were no longer automatically exposed to polio, and so did not develop immunity. On the rare occasions that fecal matter carrying poliovirus did get introduced into a modern water system, therefore, the disease struck hard. One of the terrors of polio was its unpredictability. At the hospital, Lutz recalls, his father once pointed out a little girl whose father was one of the wealthiest men in town. She wore metal braces on both legs. "To polio it doesn't make any difference if you're rich or poor-she has to wear those braces and you don't," his father told him. "It was a very democratic disease," Lutz says now.

In 1955, when Salk announced that clinical tests had proved that his vaccine actually worked, church bells rang across America. The modest, genial Salk, a relative unknown, was

thrust into the role of national hero. Vaccines function by provoking an immune response in the recipient without causing the disease. Salk's vaccine was made from dead poliovirus and administered by a shot in the arm. UnfOliunately, the vaccine was rushed into production too quickly: in that same year the Cutter Laboratories in Berkeley, California, cultivated batches of vaccine but did not treat them all thoroughly enough with formalin, the formaldehyde solution used to kill the virus. More than 200 children, inadvertently injected with living wild virus, contracted polio from the shot that was intended to protect them.

The incident shook the public's faith in Salk's vaccine.

Meanwhile, Salk's archrival, Albert B. Sabin, had developed a different kind of polio vaccine, one made from live but weakened virus and administered by mouth. By the early 1960s Sabin's oral vaccine, having proved safe and extremely effective, had all but replaced Salk's injected vaccine-delightful news for those who preferred sugar cubes to needles.

S

choolchildren were not the only people who favored the oral vaccine. The two vaccines work according to different principles, and lead to different kinds of immunity.

Salk's injection of dead virus causes antibodies against polio to develop in the blood, resulting in what is called humoral immunity. The injected vaccine protects the individual and, when prepared according to Salk's specifications, is extremely safe. But it does little to prevent colonies of poliovirus from growing in the gut. For that reason, Salk-vaccinated people exposed to poliovirus cannot get the disease, but they can become transient carriers, capable of infecting others for a few weeks, after which the virus naturally clears itself from their intestines.

Like the Salk vaccine, the Sabin oral vaccine causes antibodies against polio to develop in the blood, thus conferring humoral immunity. But the oral vaccine also induces colonies of live, weakened virus to take up residence for a while in the gut, creating what is known as mucosal immunity, a localized immune response by cells in the intestine, which from then on will be inhospitable to poliovirus. As a result, the oral vaccine not only protects people from coming down with polio, but also prevents them from becoming carriers of the disease. Furthermore, a person who has received the oral vaccine can bring health benefits to an entire community. P<;ople infected with wild poliovirus excrete it for between six and eight weeks in their stool.

Likewise, people who get the oral vaccine excrete the weakened form of the virus for a similar period of time. If Sabin-vaccinated people happen to "infect" others during that period, they are in effect passing on the vaccine, thereby enabling the unimmunized people around them to develop their own immunity.

The oral vaccine has other advantages as well. It is much easier to distribute than the injected vaccine, since there is no need for sterile needles or trained nurses. The oral vaccine is also less dangerous than the injected vaccine to produce, because, unlike the injected vaccine, its manufacture does not require that huge amounts of live wild poliovirus be grown in the laboratory. In addition, the oral vaccine is cheaper to make, in part because it

does not require careful treatment with formalin. Oral vaccine does have one disadvantage (which it shares with the injected vaccine): it spoils when it is exposed to heat; in fact, maintaining a "cold chain"-that is, keeping the vaccine refrigerated throughout its journey from manufacturing to administrationhas been one of the principal hurdles for the eradication effort in tropical countries.

Given its many advantages-reduced cost, ease of distribution and community and mucosal protection-oral polio vaccine has been the weapon of choice for eliminating polio epidemics.

Although Salk's was the first effective vaccine, it was not the one that eradicated polio from the Western Hemisphere; that honor goes to Sabin. But oral polio vaccine is not without its troubling aspects. Indeed, nothing about the small, deadly crystal that is poliovirus is simple-least of all its eradication. The closer we get to a world free of polio, the stranger and more disturbing the entire issue becomes.

W

ild poliovirus mutates extremeJy rapidly. The problem with the oral polio vaccine is that it mutates as well, and in a dangerous fashion. A single nucleotide change in the so-called 5' noncoding region of the viral genome causes the weakened virus in the oral vaccine to become neurovirulent-orl in other words, capable of causing paralysis.

And the mutation occurs frequently-at least halfthe time, within about a week of vaccination, according to the vaccine specialist Philip D. Minor of the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control (NIBSC) in South Mimms, England.

The mutated virus from the oral vaccine is still far less harmful and less contagious than wild poliovirus. In the vast majority of cases it causes no harm. But it can cripple and kill. In the United States, for instance, a small number of children who have received the oral polio vaccine, and some of their caretakers, have died or become permanently paralyzed. The phenomenon, known as vaccine-associated paralytic polio (VAPP), is rare, given the vaccine's strong tendency to revert to neurovirulence: the rate is one case of paralysis for every 2.4 million people vaccinated.

That low rate does not reflect the true potential of the mutated vaccine to cause harm in an unprotected population, however, because practically everyone nowadays who comes into contact with a Sabin-vaccinated person has been immunized.

Why do a few people have such tragic reactions to the oral polio vaccine? In spite of what many American parents who oppose oral vaccination seem to think, it is not a question of "bad lots" of vaccine. "The vaccine is always the same," says Vincent R. Racaniello, a polio virologist at Columbia University. Instead, the problem is likely to be a rare and previously unrecognized immune deficiency in the patient. And Racaniello thinks that in some cases, another enterovirussuch as enterovirus 71 or one of the coxsackieviruses, which can also cause paralysis-is probably at fault. The difficulty is that, in a given clinical case, it is often impossible to know for sure which virus caused an infection. Nerve tissue cannot be (Continued on page 52)

Making the Visit A personal account from a cog in the wheel

W

hen I first heard rumors that President Clinton was planning a trip to India, I knew that I had to work on the visit. Working on one of President Clinton's overseas visits is always exciting. Hundreds of people at work on thousands of details, all of which have to be perfect during the actual visit, create an intense atmosphere unlike any other kind of event. Presidential visits always combine pageantry, diplomacy and theater. Each visit is different because every country presents its own challenges and delights. Events during state visits normally take place at the most impressive sites in the host country.

An American presidential visit to India would be the dramatic combination of the most powerful Head of State visiting the extraordinary capital of the largest democracy in the world. For me, it would also be an opportunity to return to India, where I had been a student and did voluntary work with my wife. It was our first adventure as a married couple.

People come from all over the world to work on President Clinton's trips. Many of them are volunteers, who leave their regular jobs to be of service to President and country.

The teams that are assembled for each visit are different. People are divided by task and represent all the different elements of the American Government. The most important element is security, which is controlled by the U.S. Secret Service, who walk over every site the President will visit

and drive every mile that the motorcade will take to assess the risk. All teams work closely with the host government.

Keeping the President's communication lines clear at all times is the responsibility of American military communications personnel, including engineers, electricians, telephone technicians and computer specialists. Air and land transportation is also looked after by the military and all vehicles and equipment are flown in by the Air Force on C-130 cargo planes.

But before any equipment arrives, visits are made by advance teams to develop th.e best plan. First comes the survey team, which does a preliminary review of the places that the President is likely to visit in order to determine feasibility. For the visit to India, there had to be advance teams at every city the President planned on visiting: Delhi, Agra, Jaipur, Hyderabad and Mumbai. When it became apparent how many people would be needed, a call went out worldwide for people to staff the visit.

I immediately responded. The American Embassy in New Delhi replied in an e-mail that they would be happy to accept my offer and directed me to ask for leave from my Ambassador. At that time, I was the Public Affairs Officer in the American Embassy in Mali, West Africa, and a long way from India.

The first order of business was to get an Indian visa, a request which was quickly processed by the Indian Embassy at Brussels. Then I had to find a flight. I went

via Paris, where I met up with other people heading to Delhi from all over the U.S. and Europe. It seemed like everybody was bound for India, drawing together strands from American missions across the globe.

When I an'ived at New Delhi it was as if I was coming home. The sounds and smells were so familiar and welcoming, but as we drove to the hotel I realized that Delhi had changed in 10 years since I had last visited.

It was livelier, brighter, cleaner and more vibrant than when I lived there. The message T had received before leaving was that if there was no one to meet me at the airport, 1 should just go to the Hotel Imperial.

When I had lived in Delhi, the Imperial had been a bit run-down, a shabby remnant of what it had been when built. I thought, "Oh, well at least it is India." 1was shocked when 1 walked into the newly rebuilt Imperial. It was beautiful. The hotel became a symbol for me of the vibrant energy of Delhi today.

EvelY visit starts slowly and then builds to frantic pace, which levels out when the President arrives, But the intensity is retained until "wheels up"-the President leaves-and then everybody collapses.

This event was no different. My first few days in Delhi were spent meeting old friends, getting familiar with the rest of the advance team, and marveling at the changes in Delhi. I was assigned to work with the team arranging transportation for the press corps that travels with the President. That meant non-stop meetings, visiting every place the President was go-

ing to visit and trying to figure out how to move buses full of journalists through Delhi traffic so that the press corps would be at every site before the President.

The most challenging site seemed to be Raj Ghat. The road from Maurya Sheraton through Delhi to the riverside seemed to be a constant wall of vehicles. We wondered if we would ever be able to get the press there ahead of the President and back again in time to file their stories. All the worry was for naught; the Delhi Police made sure that everybody arrived on time and were able to get back to the hotel with very little trouble.

Every step of the visit is reviewed many times so that it becomes similar to a lengthy play acted out over many days on a number of different stages. It is rehearsed, discussed and dissected from every different angle, until everybody realizes what has to happen and when. There never is a chance to do it twice, so everything has to work the first time. But the human element often takes over and the President is human after all. One unscripted move of his was one of his arrivals at the Sheraton. The path from the door to the service elevator had been screened off, and no one should have seen the President arrive, but as he walked down the red carpet, he suddenly turned and went off the path into the kitchen and began greeting the hotel staff. It was a human touch, appreciated by everybody but the security staff.

Since security takes precedence over everything, it is over security issues that

were the Indian Americans who accompanied the President to the land of their parents. It was amazing how many recent immigrants to America from India are now in prestigious positions. For example, the Air Force officer, who was the advance for Air Force One, was the son of a former Indian admiral. My site partner's parents had come from South India. It was clear that Indian immigrants to the United States were making a significant contribution to America's melting pot.

The third group that impressed me was the Indian bus drivers who worked incredible hours, were always pleasant, and drove like dervishes, whirling their buses through the Delhi traffic. It was always entertaining to watch the faces of the passengers as the bus drivers moved in an out of the endless variety of vehicles, people and animals on the roads of Delhi.

There are magic moments that stand out in the midst of the frenzy, also. I will always remember the surprise and delight on my friend's face when we took a scooter rickshaw across Delhi at midnight and he saw his first elephant calmly walkvery visit, of course, has its diffiing down the road next to us. There also culties, but they are always outwere the smiles ofthe children who waved weighed by transforming moments of magic. And there were more than one of as the motorcade went by and the beauty of looking down Raj Path toward India these moments during the President's visit Gate early in the morning; and the experito Delhi. For me there are several that stand out. One was at Hyderabad House. . ence of being totally lost in a city I thought The first time I visited it seemed like a I knew and meeting the father of an old friend who was out for walk and who took sleepy vestige of a former time. A few great delight in helping me on my way. days later it had been adorned with a beauOne rule of presidential visits is that tiful pavilion that seemed to have sprouted somehow everything works out. President from the very ground of the garden, and Clinton's visit to India was no exception the fountains had come to life. to this rule.

It was a lot of hard work for Another delightful surprise was the hundreds of people from both India and tireless energy of the Indians participatthe U.S., but in my opinion it was worth ing in all aspects of the trip. There were three groups that made an indelible im- every minute of it. Anything that improves relations between the world's two largest pression on me. The first was the Indian democracies is worth whatever work it staff at the American Embassy. They brought energy, dedication and a sense of takes. I am proud to have been part of that effort, and grateful for the opportunity to humor to every aspect of the trip. They visit India, which will always have a were the perfect bridge between the two cultures. Even in the middle of the night special place in my heart.

0 after a long day, there was no problem too daunting for them, including finding a About the Author: Michael Macy is the public affairs officer at the American Embassy in Bagood paan long after paan wallahs should mako, Mali. He studied law at Aligarh Muslim have been asleep.

University and was a volunteer with the Hope Also making a significant contribution Project in Nizammuddin in New Delhi.

problems occur. Delhi was no different.

We needed to get video film delivered from camera crews at each site back to the press center located at Maurya Sheraton as fast as possible. To do this we arranged for embassy staff to use motor scooters to run between the sites and the center. We arranged security passes for the scooters to get into the hotel. I thought we had covered all the problems.

Then I got a message that our couriers were not being allowed into the hotel drive. I needed to get them permission to get in, but I could not find out who had stopped them. The Delhi Police assured me that we had the right permit and they did not object. The Secret Service told me that if the Delhi Police were satisfied then the scooters could come in, but there still was a problem. Then I found out it was against hotel policy to allow scooters on the grounds. Once I talked over the problem with the head of hotel security everything worked out, and then scooters were able to deliver the film.

The economy shows the way to solid Indo-U.S. ties.

"If it weren't for India's contributions in math and science, you could argue that computers, satellites and silicon chips would never have been possible in the first place, so you ought to have a leading role in the 21 st century economy-companies with names like Infosys, Wipro and, of course, Sat yam."

-PRESIDENT

to an audience of infotech professionals

BILL CLINTON,

in Hyderabad

hen President Bill Clinton came to India in March this year one of his goals was to push relations between India and the US. out of a decades old rut filled with missiles, bombs and the detritus of the Cold War. As his Secretary of State Madeleine Albright explained in New Delhi during the visit, the President wanted "to talk about the fact that there was a huge and varied relationship that we can have with the world's largest democracy, and that we ought to be talking about issues that are beyond and around the nonprol iferation issue." Breaking through what C linton called the "s ilk curta in" that had separated the two countries for so long.

Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had spoken about the possibility of a wider and deeper relationship during an address to the Asia Society in New York City two years earlier. "I see no conflict of interests between the two countries," he told an American audience. fndia and the US. were "natural allies in the quest for a better future for the world in the 21 st century." U.S. diplomats have echoed the phrase "natural allies" in the years

since. Clinton was also to echo the sentiment when he came to India. As he said while in New Delhi, "In a world of increasing globalization, our futures plainly intertwine."

The traditional media focus on Kashmir and nuclear weapons路 has made it easy to ignore the plethora of bilateral agreements on topics ranging from science and technology to public health, from the environment to trade and investment, that followed in the wake of Clinton's visit. Both governments tried to go beyond rhetoric and establish permanent bodies to oversee and promote Indo-U.S. relations in each specific field.

Putting tangible flesh on this verbal skeleton was a key component of Clinton's visit. The follow-up that is needed, a task for both governments gnd private players, wj.\1be the most important task of the two countries in the near future.

The cornerstone of this blossoming of bilateral ties will obviously be economics. Clinton, while speaking to the Indian Parliament, declared that the first challenge "is to get our own economic relationship right." It is no accident that so much of his trip was spent on putting together a framework designed to ensure this goal could be reached without mishap.

The fairy tale of the ever growing beanstalk of US. investment into India is well known. Almost nonexistent before 1991, U.S. direct investment into India reached $192.6 million in 1995-96 and touched $687.4 million in 1997-98. The total book value of U.S. investment in India is now estimated to be about $10 billion, of which $4 billion is in the form of direct investment. The potential for further U.S. investment is considerable. Consider the numbers thrown up by the old and stodgy infrastructural sectors.

To sustain its present rate of economic growth, the Indian Government estimates it will have to ramp up power generation from the present 84,000 megawatts (MW) to I] 1,500 MW by 2006. This means an estimated investment of $178 billion in the next six years, an amount far beyond the ability of domestic sources of capital in India. U.S. energy firms like Enron have already blazed a trail for further foreign

investment in these areas.

A similar capital gap exists in telecommunications.

India presently has about 17.7 million telephone lines. Its target for 2006 is 52 million lines. This will carry a bill of an estimated $55 billion. More tens of billions of dollars will be needed to expand India's ports, build its new international airports and planned national highways.

Despite concerns about red tape jungles and sanctions, U.S. companies have generally found India to be a profitable place to do business. A 1998 survey found that some three-quarters of all U.S. companies that have invested in India achieved or bettered their targets, whether it was turnover, sales or product launches.

Seventy percent experienced growth of 10 percent or more over 1997. Thirteen percent experienced growth of over 100 percent.

Mean growth for all U.S. firms in ~ndia that year was 60 percent-and this during what was a recessionary year for most Indian companies.

By going out of his way to visit Hyderabad,an up and coming center for information technology, Clinton stamped a White House seal of approval on India's prowess in knowledge-based industries. It was noticeable that after bringing India's infotech industry even fUl1her into the global limelight, heads of government from Turkey to Japan, Germany to Iran, have spoken of a desire to be pal1ners in India's high-tech economic revolution.

Clinton also served to highlight the remarkable economic and technical interface this has created between India and the U.S. Today, data and personnel flows back and forth from Indian cities like Bangalore to Californian high-tech centers like Palo Alto match any that exist between technology centers of the developed world. As the U.S. President told his audience in Hyderabad, "Our nations are already working together to seize the possibilities of the information age."

Software and computer related services notched up a turnover of a mere $150 million in India a decade ago. In 1999 they touched $4 billion, employing nearly 300,000 Indians. Over 60 percent of software exp0l1s from India go to North America.

Future projections have this figure heading for the stratospheresomewhere in the region of $50 billion by 2008. This extrapolation is drawn from the simple fact the Indian infotech industry has consistently grown at an explosive rate, doubling turnover every 18 months.

Where exactly the cYbernomics of one countly ends and another begins is hard to say, especially in the case ofIndia and the United States. Clinton repeatedly quoted the statistic that 750 companies in Silicon Valley are run by Indian Americans. Nearly two out offive persons in Silicon Valley's workforce is oflndian origin. Even as the best known names of U.S. infotech companies-Microsoft, Oracle, IBM and Intel-are busy setting up

plants in Bangalore or Chennai, Indian firms like Infosys and Wipro are putting together plans to spend hundreds of billions of rupees to buy high-tech firms in the U.S. Capital markets are already blurring. Indian companies have flocked to U.S. stock markets, notably the technology oriented NASDAQ, for funds. In the meantime, U.S. financial institutions have invested most ofthe billions of dollars they have brought to lndia in the country's infotech and services sectors. The latest phenomenon is venture capital, the risk absorbing money that helps pay for much of the innovation in cutting edge technology.

An estimated $200 million in such funds has made its' way from New York City to India. More often than not, there is an lndian American at the head of the U.S. team deciding which Indian infotech proposal is worth investing in.

It is a mutually beneficial relationship. Indian software companies would be hard put to maintain their furious 50 percent annual growth rate if they did not have access to the tens of thousands oftempormy work visas in the U.S. that allow them to send programmers to do customized jobs for clients. On the other hand, as U.S. infotech tycoons like Bill Gates and Andy Grove have publicly acknowledged, their companies would have found success much hard to attain without the steady stream of Indians coming to American shores with binary code on their minds. The Intel Chief Executive Officer, Craig Barnett, underlined how interdependent the two infotech sectors have become when, during a recent visit, he declared Intel would pay to train 100,000 software teachers in India. As Clinton said while in India, "We want to see more Indians and more Americans benefit from our economic ties, especially in the cutting edge fields."

here

is steady pressure on U.S. legislators to keep open the golden door to knowledge workers. The numbers of HI-B temporary work visa issued each year has been rising steadily. It is expected legislation will soon be passed by the U.S. Congress to increase the number to 200,000 a year. Roughly half these visas go to Indians. Observers have " noted how common interests on immigration policy have led to the Indian American community and the U.S. infotech sector to form a political alliance on Capitol Hill.

Indian firms already have a fifth of the world's total market in software development and customized softwm路e. In the past few years they have begun moving up the value addition ladder, away from low paying bodyshopping activities. Satyam has seen low value added jobs fall from 40 percent of its work to 13 percent in just three years. U.S. clients are impressed that Indian software fulfills the highest standards. For example, 35 Indian companies are certified on the basis of the Software Engineering Institute-

On the job at Sat yam. Indian and U.S. firms increasingly work in tandem in the infotech revolution. Next up: e-commerce and Internetrelated services.

Capability Maturity Model. Ofthe 19 firms worldwide who have the institute's level five certification, 12 are Indian.

Now Indian and U.S. firms are working in tandem to prepare for the next stage of infotech evolution-electronic commerce and Internet-related services. India already has a foothold in the latter. About 25,000 Indians are already employed in such work.

McKinsey and Company has estimated this figure could rise to as much as 3 million in the next 10 years. Distance services like medical transcription, accounting and payroll services are already being done in India for U.S. firms like Delta Airlines and IBM. General Electric's legendary chief, Jack Welch, has said he would like to see 70 percent of all his companies' back office operations to be done in countries like India.

E-commerce has potential for India both domestically and overseas. The National Association of Software and Service Companies oflndia has forecast that India could earn at least $1 billion from the export of e-business software solutions by 2002.

Knowledge industries come packaged in forms other than little squares of silicon. India is a competitive player in high-tech fields like pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, and in services like consultancy and health care. Analysts already see Indian technological capabilities meshing nicely with U.S. service and knowledge-based requirements.

One example is health care. With an aging population and spiraling health-care costs, U.S. insurance companies are contemplating using India's much cheaper health-care facilities to contain costs. Coronaty bypass surgelY in India is one-fjfteenth the cost it is in the U.S. The Economist Intelligence Unit has calculated India is competitive for 70 percent of the world's heart operations. The economic gains all around are considerable. In percent of the developing world's elderly come to the Third World for treatment of ailments, it could mean a windfall of between $30 billion and $50 billion of savings for the North and earnings for the South. Indian films like the Apollo Hospital Group are already eyeing this mat路ket. The likelihood of some sort of tie-up will dramatically increase as India opens its insurance market to U.S. firms.

Again, a key role is likely to be played by the Indian American community, especially the thousands of doctors and medical scientists in their rank. In addition, it is estimated between a quarter

and a third of biotech nolo gists and pharmaceutical researchers in the U.S. come from the subcontinent.

Money isn't everything of course, least of all when it comes to knowledge. Clinton's visit was also an opportunity to refurbish and revive what was once one of the most vibrant North-South scientific and technical cooperative relationships in the world.

Much of this was vitiated during the Cold War years-so much so that it took a presidential visit to end a lengthy ban on India and the U.S. sharing innocuous meteorological information.

The U.S. President announced the creation of an U.S.-India science and technology forum with a 14-person governing body to promote scientific cooperation between the two countries.

Cooperation in the private sector may prove to be of even greater scope. Clinton mentioned in Hyderabad that a partnership of Indians and Americans were planning to raise a billion dollars for a global institute of science and technology. U.S. companies like DuPont are setting up research and development facilities in India, or tying up with India's many laboratories as well.

Similarly the two countries signed an agreement on fighting global infectious diseases like AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

This would help resuscitate a partnership that, in past, had led to such widely used treatments as oral rehydration therapy.

Another momentous agreement signed during the presidential visit was an agreement to explore Indo-U.S. exchanges t!u'ough the Clean Development Mechanism (COM) that is envisaged under the Kyoto Protocol. Under the mechanism, developed countries are expected to reduce the greenhouse gas produced by their economic activity in an attempt to slow the threat of global warming. Another means a developed country can fulfill its quota of greenhouse gas reduction is to transfer funds to Third World countries, which are then used to reduce their carbon emissions. For example, this could be done by paying for more efficient power generators or reforestation programs in the Third World country.

The U.S. has expressed a desire to have India be one of its partners under the COM, a move welcomed by Indian corporate groups like the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and nongovernmental organizations like Development Alternatives.

The broad expansion of Indo-U.S. cooperation in so many fields is expected to cause a paradigm shift in bilateral ties. What

State-of-the-art medical care such as that provided by Apollo Hospital, New Delhi, may forge another Indo-American link in the future, particularly as India opens up its insurance market to U.S. firms.

Coronary bypass surgery in India is one-fifteenth the cost it is in the U.S.

is particularly interesting is that much of the present relationship is being driven from the bottom down, by individuals and companies and nonstate players. If bilateral ties are to be strong enough to survive the odd kerfuffles over security issues or the odd bout of interest group lobbying, what is required will be a broad interaction of the civil societies of India and the U.S. Economics, especially knowledge-based economic activity, is clearly ahead of the pack in creating such a relationship. As two U.S. analysts, Teresita and Howard Schaffer, commented in August last year, "The countries with which the U.S. maintains relationships of real substance almost invariably have a major private economic dimension." The Indian economist, Jairam Ramesh, has made this point from the Indian side of the fence: "No country has become an economic powerhouse in the post-World War II era without close economic cooperation with the U.S." For the first time, the outlines of such a relationship are visible.

Knowledge-based economic activity has the added advantage of requiring a huge amount of individual interaction between citizens in both countries, something that is bringing a deeper dimension to the relationship in the form of immigration.

'J'

hiS is not to say governments do not have a role to play.

But, as Clinton stressed repeatedly during his visit, their role should be one offacilitators, of ensuring they do not hamper private players from interactin~with each other. The U.S. President sought to put in practice what he said. The U.S. ExpOli-Import Bank announced it would for the first time allow trade guarantees to be sanctioned in rupees, making life much easier for Indian expoliers and impOliers. Three institutional bodies-an Indo-U.S. Financial and Economic Forum, an Indo-U.S. Working Group on Trade and a Joint Consultative Group on Clean Energy and Environment-were established to smoothen out any rough edges that would arise during Indo-U.S. economic interactions.

To help ensure things do not flag in coming years, the two governments pledged that U.S. Presidents and Indian Prime Ministers will hold "regular bilateral summits" as well as an annual foreign policy dialogue at the Secretary of

State-Foreign Minister level.

Some people are looking further into the future. NASSCOM is lobbying for an Indo-U.S. totalization agreement that would end double taxation for indian workers in the U.S. on social security payments. Others have called for the return of the B-1 visa, which allowed Indian programmers who are employed in India to go on business to the U.S. for short periods. Two Washingtonbased economists, Arvind Subramaniam and Ajitabh Mattoo, have proposed a free trade agreement between India and the U.S.-an idea seconded by a recently released CII repOli. One reason the two governments are more relaxed about relations is that there has been a mutual recognition by Washington and ew Delhi that in the post-Cold War era shared values mean a lot more than they did before. And there is a lot of common ground for the world's two largest democracies in that sphere.

The bilateral 21 st century vision statement signed by Clinton and Vajpayee near the. end of the visit was shot through with this belief. The Vision Statement spoke of sharing "a new and purposeful direction" to Indo-U.S. relations because the two countries had, by different routes, "come to the same conclusions: that freedom and democracy are the strongest bases for both peace and prosperity, and that they are universal aspirations, constrained neither by culture nor levels of economic development."

Vajpayee underlined this at a press conference. "We both agreed that our commitment to the principles and practices of democracy constitutes the bedrock of our relations and for our cooperative efforts internationally."

When Vajpayee spoke in New York City in 1998 he argued that the Indo-U.S. relationship could be "the key element in the architecture of tomorrow's democratized world order." Clinton could not have agreed with him more. He told the Indian Parliament of his vision of a "world of tomorrow" dominated by peace, prosperity and tolerance. A world, he said, bound by a "common acceptance that the humanity we all share is even more important than the differences among us." He added, "I know that the 0 world will never be that way unless South Asia is that way."

About the Author: Pramit Pal Chaudhuri assistant editor of the Telegraph.

is a Delhi-based

senior

The Fir~t

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01

: ,,~ohgbeforer!3ill Gates, James J. Hill built a high-tech ~~netw6rl(~a"massea~amf6rtunem,'""an'amwas""amo the first "monbpOlists wgo tested"the U.S. Government's tolerance forbi-bus

I

na sunny morning in the U.S. capital, the Attorney General's office announced that it would be bringing one of the country's largest and most profitable corporations up on antitrust charges. The head of the corporation had emerged as an industry giant before he was out of his forties, and was both admired and despised for his achievements and tenacitY. He was a family man, an aJi collector, a philanthropist who donated fOlwnes to schools and libraries. But first and foremost, he was a man consumed with his business-obsessed with cutting-edge technology and with its potential for carrying commerce into a vast new landscape.

The gentleman in question was known to write late-night missives to employees and associates-but at a rolltop desk, not a computer keyboard. He sought to control the means of transport not through cyberspace but through lands rich with natural resources. And he was called on the government's carpet not at the end of the 20th century but at the century's beginning.

His name was James J. Hill, a man known far and wide as the "Empire Builder of the Notihwest." He helped make possible the metropolis of Seattle that a cetiain modern-day empire builder calls home. And in 1902-in a landmark case that launched empire Theodore Roosevelt's reputation as a trustbuster-Hill's became the first real target of the antitrust legislation that has been so much in the news oflate.

At the forefront of the greatest technological and societal shift of his day, this portly powerhouse brought the rails of progress into the Northwest, and thousands of immigrants and homesteaders along with them. "Give me enough Swedes and whiskey," Hill is said to have declared, "and I'll build a railroad to Hell." From his base in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Hill drove his the Dakotas, Montana and on to roads ever westward-through Puget Sound-creating communities, controversy and an enormous fortune on the way.

The late 19th century gave birth to many such fortunes, of a magnitude never before seen in the New World. It was a time of tremendous growth, emerging technologies and industries, and few laws prescribing how business should-or shouldn't-be conducted. Those who had the will (and generally, the wile) to take full advantage of these circumstances made names for themsel ves that sti II resonate today: Rockefeller, Carnegie, his Gould. Outside of Hill's adopted city of Saint Paul-where somber fortress of a home still dominates Summit Avenue-few today remember the name of James J. Hill. But in his day, there wasn't a soul in America who didn't know the name, or have some opinion of the man.

"Who made the world, Charles?" a fictional teacher asks her student in a 1902 magazine aJiicle. "God made the world," the Left: Engines nearly touch headlamps as workmen prepare to pour wine over a final tie, dedicating the juncture between the Atlantic and Pacific, the old and the new railways forming an overland Northwest Passage. James J Hill, following some inexpert starts by others, was to build this link into one of the first monopolies.

student replies, "in 4004 B.C. But it was reorganized in 1901 by James J. Hill, J. Pierpont Morgan and John D. Rockefeller."

Hill was born into a Scots family in the fall of 1838, near Guelph, Ontario, in Canada. Fifth in a line of firstborns named James Hill, this one decided to distinguish himself with a middle name. Obsessed with Napoleon Bonapatie-to whom he was similar in stature and, arguably, in temperament-but afraid that the middle name Napoleon might seem too pretentious. Hill took the name of the emperor's brother, Jerome.

At 17, he boarded a train to Toronto, continuing on to New York and America's Eastern Seaboard. He'd always dreamed of visiting the Orient-even of operating a fleet of steamboats on the Ganges. But he soon discovered that the only way to the Far East would be as a common sailor on a merchant ship. So he "took a notion" to go west instead.

Saint Paul, lying at the head of navigation of the Mississippi, was an obvious choice for a young man'fascinated by trade and steamboats. Though still a dusty frontier town, it had become the hub of trade for the Minnesota Territory and points beyond.

Hill quickly secured ajob as a shipping clerk in the town's burgeoning steamboat business. When the Civil War came, many of his fellow future magnates-John D. Rockefeller and Jay Gould among them-managed to avoid active service. Hill actually tried to enlist, even though he was not an American citizen (and would not become one until 1880). Rejected because of a childhood injury that had left him blind in one eye, he returned to clerking. But by war's end, Hill-and the countrywere poised for change.

In 1865 he stepped out on his own, securing exclusive or nearly exclusive contracts with the Northwest Packet Company and two local railroads: the Milwaukee and Mississippi and, in 1866, the Saint Paul and Pacific. Early on, a local paper wrote: "Go it, James! We always knew you could do a heavy business, but we confess to a little surprise in seeing you ...monopolizing to such an extent."

In 1872, he formed the Red Ri vel' Transportation Company with Norman Kittson, a steamship operator and fellow Scot. Under Kittson's tutelage, Hill honed his craft as a competition-crusher, engaging in rate-slashing and other tactics (including, on one occasion, "accidentally" ramming a competitor's steamboat).

Steamboats, however, were on their way out, and Hill knew it. In 1862, U.S. Congress had passed the Pacific Railway Act, granting select railroad companies huge swaths of land to build transcontinental lines. After the war, construction began in earnest, and on May 10, 1869, at Promontory, Utah, the first such line was completed.

That same year, a long-neglected charter for 19 mill ion hectares of Northwest land, the famous Northern Pacific (NP) charter, fell into the hands of Civil War financier Jay Cooke.

Cooke sent agents to Europe to encourage emigrants to buy and settle his property between the Great Lakes and Puget Sound. His efforts to raise $100 million for the railroad, however, ended in 1873 with the bankruptcy of his large and established firm. That, in turn, led to panic, a 10-day shutdown of the New York Stock Exchange-and the worst depression the country had yet experienced. More than 18,000 businesses-including most railroadswent bankrupt in the years that followed.

One of those lines, to Hill's delight, was the local Saint Paul and Pacific, with which he had once worked so closely. Hill calculated that with a total investment of $5.5 million, carefully (Continued on page 57)

Empire-builder James J Hill in his trademark hat at the launch of the battleSliip USS Minnesota, 1903

YourMail Has â&#x20AC;˘ What happens to the messages you never got?

No technology has become ubiquitous so fast.

E-mail may put some post offices out of business in decades to come.

N

ot long ago, I sent an e-mail to a friend of mine who works at The New Yorker. There was nothing unusual about that; I send a lot of e-mail. But this message never got to him. Somewhere between my desk, in Rome, and his, in Manhattan, the note disappeared-vanishing among the millions of similarly unimportant messages that must have crossed the Atlantic that day. Most people seem to accept those periodic losses as part of a cyberian life. I assumed that my friend had somehow overlooked my note, but he swore the message wasn't there. So I

Allpver Aineri~at'j, scientis,ts are scrambling tQa}ind ways to cram ever .IDorelight~ arid therefore more data-into 'the roughly 16 million kilometers of fiber-optic cable tunneling through the nation. ~

.,

iEi

retrieved my copy from the "Sent Items" folder and sent it again. I also wrote to two other people with "newyorker.com" in their addresses. This time, everyone had received the mail when I called to check, less than five minutes later.

How could that be? How could some of my messages navigate through thousands of miles of cables-across a continent, beneath an ocean, around the East Coast of the United States (with, as it turned out, a regular detour to Illinois)-plow into the intense electronic maze of New York City, switch from my Internet service to their Internet service, and then pop up on several desktops simultaneously about 14 seconds later? More important, how could that other message have failed to do the same thing? Was it out there coursing hopelessly through the ether, or had it broken apart into thousands of meaningless bytes-like one of those rockets that reenter the atmosphere at slightly the wrong trajectory?

I

take e-mail very seriously, and, judging by just about any statistic you wish to consider, I am not alone. In the first quarter of 1999-j ust three months-57 million new e-mail boxes. appeared on the planet, bringing the total to nearly 400 million. The United States accounts for about 60 percent of them, but the figures everywhere are growing so fast that it's hard for anybody to keep track.

Not every American has an e-mail address, of course. Some people have several, and many of the other addresses are corporate mailboxes. Still, every survey-and there have been dozens-shows that e-mail is by far the most frequently used and highly prized feature of the Internet. Not eBay, or MP3s, or the card catalog at your local library. Not even pornography. Just mail.

No technology has ever become so ubiquitous so fast. It took the telephone 40 years to reach its first 10 million customers; fax machines were adopted that widely in less than half the time. Personal computers made it to 10 million American homes within five years after they were

introduced, in 1981, but e-mail reached that many users in little more than a year.

In fact, in 1995, the amount of electronic mail delivered in the United States surpassed the amount of "snail" mail printed on paper and handled by the United States Postal Service. Among those few people who noticed were worried postal officials; recent predictions suggest that the volume of first-class mail delivered in the United States will peak in 2002. After that, the trend lines all point seriously in the wrong direction. It is impossible to predict how many of America's 38,019 post offices will be around in a decade, but, unless the Postal Service manages to ship a large percentage of all future purchases made on the Internet; the number certainly isn't going to be anywhere near 38,000. So e-mail matters.

But when something matters, it has to be reliable-like the telephone. That's one reason that the lost message bothered me so much. I decided to call the people who maintain the computer networks at The New Yorker and try to find out what happened. They told me that the servers in the building-the central computers that hold the mail when it comes in and act essentially as local electronic post offices-had been working without any problem that day. Then I called their counterparts at Conde Nast, whose servers control The New Yorker's servers. Nothing was wrong there, either.

That suggested the trouble had to lie in the only other link in the electronic chain-my Internet service provider, the IBM Global Network. I called the local support number in Rome, pushed a button that meant I would prefer to get my help in English, and was immediately connected to a woman in Dublin who told me very gently that my message was gone for good. She was polite, but she clearly thought I was worth about 30 seconds of her time, especially after I admitted that I had kept a copy of the original message, that it wasn't important in the first place, and that the second time I sent it the message got where it was going without delay.

She laughed, obviously having encoun-

tered people like me before. "I can't imagine what your problem is then, sir," she said in a rich, untroubled brogue.

"There is nothing wrong with our system today. Nothing wrong anywhere in the world. Sometimes these things just happen and they can't be explained. I suggest you chalk it up to fate."

I don't believe in fate; I believe in technology. So I decided to continue the search. I wasn't optimistic about the prospects of finding my message, but r wanted to know how something can simply disappear into a telephone wire and never come out again. It soon became clear that the next place I would have to look was Schaumburg, Illinois. Schaumburg, about 24 kilometers from Chicago, is the home of AT&T Global Network 'Services. IBM sold Global Network Services to AT&T in 1998, because AT&T is in the bandwidth business-the pipelines that connect the dot-coms on the Internet-and IBM is not. AT&T is now doubling its bandwidth capacity every six months, as are most of its biggest competitors. All over America, scientists are scrambling to find ways to cram ever more light-and therefore more datainto the roughly 16 million kilometers of fiber-optic cable tunneling through the nation.

It took me a few days to find anybody willing to discuss my problem. (AT&T was skittish, no doubt, because pointless allegorical quests don't interest the company much.) Still, the people there said they were willing to show me how the system works. So, before long, I found myself in suburban lllinois, standing in a giant parking lot and staring at a thoroughly unremarkable II-story office building. All around me, hundreds of tons of late-model SUVs were whizzing along 1-90, toward O'Hare International Airport.

I told Nancy Smith, who handles public relations for AT&T, that 1 wanted to see where my mail was stored and how it got there. She was incredibly helpful, but, before she said a word, I think I heard her sigh. She told me straight off that you can

never fully trace a lost e-mail; it's hard enough to trace mail that gets where it's supposed to go. She also said that people often imagine giant e-mail depots to be the modern equivalent of the great publicworks projects of earlier eras-like the Grand Coulee Dam, for example. "1 know what you are expecting to see," Smith had told me before I set off. "You won't find it. It sounds very dramatic, but it's not.

There is actually very little there. Some boxes and wires really. You could be disappointed."

I didn't think so. My visions ran more toward the control room at Cape Canaveral. I imagined a place full of technicians determined to orchestrate the flow of the world's e-mail as it pulsed through enough fiber-optic cable to strangle the earth. It wasn't such an irrational thought. The economic and technical realities of this virtual world are like those of no place that has ever existed: they really do seem to be greater than the sum of their parts (as anyone who has invested in the e-stock market may have noticed). ow that AT&T owns the IBM Internet service, it has 2.5 milIion customers in 52 countries. There are about 6,500 such Internet service providers in the United States. Many of them are little local services, and others, like EarthLink, which recently merged with MindSpring, are growing rapidly. insignificant Even the surprisingly Microsoft network has been on a roll last year. But only America Online, which dwarfs all its competitors, with more than 20 million members, is bigger than AT&T. Every piece of mail sent to an attglobal.net address-whether the owner of the mailbox lives in Vladivostok or Paris or Shaker Heights-makes at least a quick stop at a postbox in Schaumburg, and it sits there until it's collected through one of about 1,350 local phone numbers that AT&T maintains for that purpose. I have moved around often in the five years since first signing on with IBM, and I was curious to see my server. I knew, of course, that it's just a hard drive, a small

chunk of magnetized metal that I share with about a quarter of a million people, none of whom I will ever meet. But that's a little like saying that my American Express card is just a little piece of plastic. That server is a pulpit, a launchpad and the communal hub of my life.

Whether I'm in Moscow or Miami, or anyplace between, my principal connection to the rest of the world sits on a metal rack in Schaumburg. The thought that every piece of e-mail I have received since 1995 had to pass through this one building left me feeling a little woozy.

When 1 got there, I was going to have the opportunity to become one of the few Americans ever to visit their POP server-the computer' that stores your mail when you are not connected to the Internet. POP stands for "post office protocol," and the server, in this case, runs a software package designed to handle email. Once you sign on, your e-mail program asks the server to deliver your mail, and under normal circumstances the mail is then taken from the server's hard drive and forwarded directly to wherever you happen to be.

Nancy Smith had also promised to gather some specialists for my benefit.

One of them was Rick Gretsch, an affable man who helped launch the IBM Internet Connection Service, and is still in charge of the team, although he was tradedalong with the wires, the cables, the servers and several thousand of his colleagues-to AT&T in the sale in April 1999. When 1 arrived at his office, Gretsch told me, â&#x20AC;˘â&#x20AC;˘E-mail isn't as different from regular mail as people think. You have a message you want to send, it has an address, and we are catTiers whose job it is to figure out how to get it from one place to the next."

S

ounds simple enough. But in fact the complexities of e-mail are vast, and, other than being undeterred by rain, sleet or dark of night, it has little in common with traditional correspondence. First, when you

It's likeDtbe !1'Rapidlfr~;"sifL Oper'aJion~!1I. Command "Ce~t!er of the NewL!!YorkL

subway system.!L' Traffic can often be diverted, held up, or rerouted to avoid delays on a busy trunk route.

send a message bye-mail-whether it's headed toward a computer a mile away or one on the other side of the world-the mail gets chopped into digestible pieces of data, called packets, which are easier to push through crowded phone lines and easier to recover. During times of real congestion, each packet can take a different route to the same place-it's as if every page in a letter were delivered by a separate mailman. But each packet is assigned a unique identification number by standard Internet software, and when the packets arrive at their destination they are stitched back together and delivered in their original form. If they don't get back together, they don't get delivered. That's one reason some messages arrive so quickly, others take a while, and a few never make it at all.

Obviously, nobody can sit around and "figure out" electronic mail routes when a message sent from Rome usually takes less than a minute to get to New York. In that time, if you use AT&T, the message will typically pass through the company's network hubs in Milan, Berlin, Southern England, suburban Maryland and two or three places in New York. The decisions have all been programmed into computer software that can send a piece of mail by. the quickest, or cheapest, or most efficient, route. (And no, the quickest or cheapest way is not always the most efficient.) The route can be quite simple or astonishingly indirect.

goes. That puts a record at each stop along the way, a detail that is stored in a "header" at the front of the e-mail. Those headers often get long and technical, so most e-mail programs or Internet service providers strip them off or hide them from the recipient.

They are not often missed; after all, does anybody send a package of cookies to a child at camp and then wonder which roads it traveled to get there?

For the adventurous, there is a program called traceroute, which can be run in a DOS window. If I run a trace on the route of an e-mail I sent to a friend in the Hamptons, I can watch it bounce along from city to city until it switches to what seems to be a local AOL server in New York. This particular trip took about seven seconds. Most are shorter. Here is an e-mail I received from Brian E. Carpenter, who is the chairman of the Internet Architecture Board and the program director for IBM's Internet Standards and Technology. He was trying to explain how a message he sent found its way to my computer: Michael, If 1 look up "newyorker.com" in the Domain Name System, I find that SMTP mail for newyorker.com is to be sent to a machine called cnpsm.condenast.com.

So then I logged into a Unix machine at the IBM Hursley lab in England and typed traceroute cnpsm.condenast.com and Unix replies thus: traceroute to cnpsm.condenast.com

E

ssentially, all Internet e-mail today follows a protocol-a kind of electronic recipe-called SMTP, which stands for "simple mail transfer protocoL" SMTP has become standard in just the way the basic engineering for a microwave oven or a VCR is now universal.

Whether you are using Eudora or Netscape Mail or Microsoft Outlook, it's really just all SMTP under the covers, governing how the mail gets routed from place to place. And, as the e-mail travels from source to destination, it leaves a little trace of itself-like a few electronic bread crumbs-everywhere it

(204.252.201.4),30

hops max, 40 byte packets

5 portlbrl-I-5-1.pt.uk.ibm.net (152.158.23.250)

34 ms 62 ms 47 ms

6 port I br3-10-1-0.pt.uk.ibm.net (152.158.23.27)

267 ms 171 ms 133 ms

7 nyorlarl-0-7.ny.us.ibm.net 146 ms 124 ms 136 ms

(165.87.140.6)

8 nyorlsr2-1 O-O-O.ny.us.ibm.net (165.87.28.117)

144 ms 117 ms 149 ms

9 nyc-uunet.ny.us.ibm.net (165.87.220.13)

161 ms 134 ms 143 ms

10 105.ATM2-0.XR2.NYC (146.188.177.158)

164

illS

I.ALTER.NET

123

InS

142 ms

11 294.ATM6-0.XR2.NYC4.ALTER.NET (146.188.178.106)

142

illS

145 ms 162 ms

12 188.ATM9-0-0.GW2.NYC4.ALTER. NET (146.188.178.141)

134

InS

147 ms 150 ms

13 cnprouter.condenast.com (204.252.200.33)

152

InS

165

InS

165 ms

What this tells me is that the routing is through three routers at rEM Hursley, then #4 is a quick hop across the IBM Global Network (which IBM recently sold to AT&T), then there are five hops across 18M. ET and three hops across Alternet, which must be the Internet service provider used by Conde Nast.

After that, we get a bunch of asterisks, which tells me that Conde Nast is hiding its internal network layout from my prying eyes. That's a common security precaution. The figures such as "152 ms" are round-trip times in milliseconds (measured three times).

In Schaumburg, Gretsch and several of his colleagues explained things while we sat in a conference room, eating a techno lunch: bananas, double-chocolate-chip cookies, and Diet Cokes. They told me that every router on the Internet constantly sends out messages that measure which paths are open and which are backed up, so that it can move traffic efficiently. (A router is a special device that determines the next place on the Internet to send a packet of data.) It's like the Rapid Transit Operations Command Center of the New York subway system. Traffic can often be divetted, held up or rerouted to avoid delays on a busy trunk route. (In fact, when the World Trade Center was bombed, in 1993, the folks at Schaumburg-who were routinely monitoring the activity of several major cus-

tomers in Manhattan at the time-noticed that something was amiss in the building even before one of their most impottant World Trade Center clients did.) After we talked for a while, Gretsch took me to see where my mail was kept.

The United States Government won't describe in detail how it protects NORAD missile silos. It's difficult to believe, though, that they are defended more vigorously than the five AT&T servers in Schaumburg. "We run an entirely secure worldwide business out of this one building," Gretsch told me as we started our tour. There was some discussion about whether I could identitY the building that houses the servers. The AT&T people were nervous, but, recognizing that the information is already publicly available, they decided that I could at least mention the town. "People need to know that their e-mail will be there tomorrow," Sid Overbey, a vice-president in charge of Internet-access services, told me. "We have done evelything possible to make celtain it will be, no matter what tomorrow brings. A nuclear blast would take us out, of course.

But we are as close to a hardened missile site as you can get without being built into the side of a mountain."

Sound like an exaggeration? I certainly thought so. But the five AT&T servers, which together cost about a million dollars and carry between seven and 10 million of the Internet's estimated three billion pieces of mail each day, are accessible to fewer than a dozen people, each of whom has the coded ID needed to gain entry to the server room.

(By contrast, the United States Postal Service would require thousands of employees to carry, S01t, store, direct and deliver those 10 million pieces of mail each day.) The walls of the server room are made of the latest fireproof resins, and beneath the floor is a reservoir of halon, the best fire-suppression system commercially available. All this for five POP servers. (Mine is POP 6, but No.2 was taken out of service a couple of years ago.)

The company has arranged to receive

half its electricity from the city of Schaumburg and half from a neighboring town; that way, if one loses power, the building should be able to rely on the other. Beside the fire-detection systems, and the fact that the servers are backed up every week, AT&T has fort.ified its Internet facility as well as any survivalist awaiting Armageddon. In the basement (the cleanest industrial space I have ever seen), scores of giant batteries fill a room the size of a cafeteria-to power the building in case of a blackout. Four times each month, the technical-suppott team cuts the building off from both utilities to make sure that the batteries can do their job. But, even if they should fail, not to worry: there are still four 2,000-ki lowatt diesel engines in the basement. They are always fueled up and ready to take over within 45 seconds. And, should things get really rocky out there, the company has buried 100,000 liters of additional diesel fuel in a secret location within easy reach of the turbines.

T

he servers are kept in a clean white room full of hard drives sitting in metal racks. The only . colors one sees are from the red, blue and green fiber-optic cords snaking around the floor. Nothing moves. There is no clock. In a way, Nancy Smith was right: the room is small, and is filled with wires, cables and computers. It's a boring little room, but one of those metal boxes was labeled "POP.6." It took me a few seconds to realize that I was staring at my server. "There's your mail," Mike Casidy, an official who was on the tour with us, said slyly, eager to see how I would react.

"Jsn't it thrilling?"

It was, actually, but I can't say why. By this time, I had abandoned my quest for the vanished e-mail I sent a month earl ier.

As Gretsch explained it, one of my packets might have been corrupted, or a telephone switch might have failed, and that would have shattered the whole piece of mail. Or it could have been destroyed at anyone of the intermediate stops it had to

"We

aren't

even';:

halfway to;;,

where we are going. E-mail js impoverished.

It has flaws ....

E-mail is postcards, not letters. It's a CBradio. It's primitive and raw, and if somebody wants to listen in he will."

make on its journey to New York. And that was clearly as close to an inquest or a corpse as I was going to get.

One day this fall, I was having lunch with David Singer, who has worked on the central structure of the Internet and has thought about the basic uses of e-mail since long before either existed in the public mind. Singer is a senior software engineer with the Internet Technology group, at IBM; we were in the cafeteria at IBM's Almaden Research Center, gazing out at the rich brown scrublands above Silicon Valley.

"You know, this whole revolution was a bit of a fluke, really," Singer said. "We built a network at IBM for file delivery.

That was our goal. We wanted to make virtual files out of these giant bundles of punched cards we had. It was a way of moving the cards, and when we did that we realized we could also send messages to each other. Pretty soon it became the point. Then it became more than the point.

But we aren't even halfway to where we are going. E-mail is impoverished. It has flaws; there is no tone of voice with email. No subtlety and certainly no privacy.

E-mail is postcards, not letters. It's a CB radio. It's primitive and raw, and if somebody wants to listen in he will. Yet the energy it has unleashed is hard to describe ..

It has already changed everything we do and changed it for good."

S

inger believes in the Web completely, but, unlike some of his contemporaries, he is also willing to express ambivalence about the world he is helping to create. "The 24/7 society is wonderful as long as you are not required to be there all 24/7," he told me.

"That is one of the things e-mail does for you. It lets you choose terms for communicating. I love the idea that I can get a prescription filled or buy a book at three in the morning. But I am very annoyed at the sense that I could be on call at those hours.

I want my privacy, but at the same time I want total access. That is what e-mail gives you. That's where the revolution is."

It is sometimes hard to assess all the

claims made for e-mail: that it has contributed to a renaissance in written communication, that it changes the way people relate to one another or think about time, that it eliminates hierarchies that have existed, literally, for centuries. Too often, it seems caught in some middle space-not quite writing, yet more than typing. It is a medium where you are permitted to use words in a way you wouldn't anywhere else. It is easy to be snobby about e-mail; but for many people the words "You've got mail" have become among the most comforting they can hear all day.

In Sylvia Brownrigg's novel, The Metaphysical Touch, the main character, Pi, is a deeply troubled philosopher who loses her books and all her work in the fire that ravaged Berkeley in 1991. Her mind, formed by words and contemplation, goes dark. She won't read or write or think about her past in any way. She is on the run from her intellect. Then, one day, a modem arrives in the mail: But Pi's asceticism didn't know what to make of e-mail. E-mail seemed permissible to her. It was quiet; it didn't require immediate response, as a voice on the telephone did; it was in her familiar medium, print, so it emerged through the loved language of her fingertips. But it didn't require a physical body of print on paper.

Ontologically, e-mail was not in any recognizable category: neither voice nor paper, neither pure mind nor pure matter. And uncategorizable items often make it past regulations that don't know how to understand them. Pi's edict might have been to stay out of touch, but when she read her two pieces of e-mail she replied to them instantly.

It is, after all, almost impossible to turn away from e-mail-and that is not always a good thing. "All this technology is wonderful," David Singer said over lunch that day. "But only up to a point. It is not supposed to replace human relationships.

It's just supposed to make them easier.

People sometimes get confused about that, I'm afraid."

0 About the Author: Michael Specter is a Rome-based correspondent of The New Yorker magazine.

The

Commute

I

began to photograph the 560-kilometer stretch of highway between Rochester, New York (where I teach photography), and New York City (where I reside) as a way to deal with the tedium of the commute. But as I began to look at the highway through my camera, to stop and to talk to the people along the way, I found that the drive was deepening my sense of America. We are a country of cars and commuters, forever in transit. The road, the rest stop, the diner, the gas station and the loneliness of the longdistance commuter define our culture. The special landscape of the highway, man-made and strange, is usually ignored by the motorist flying past at eight kilometers above the legal speed limit. After photographing along Route 17 for three years, I have learned to slow down and enjoy the ride.

0

Mark Haven is an editorial photographer and a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He has been published in numerous magazines.

lie :tibratyof es -the 0 ederal cultural institution in tlie United States--eelebrates 200 years of its existence this year. It has the world's largest collection of books, periodicals, manuscripts and other items such as phonograph records and audio and videotapes-more than 119 million items.

The collection now includes nearly 15 million books (5,600 of which were printed before AD 1500), 39 million manuscripts, 13 million photographs, four million maps, more than three million pieces of music and more than half a million films. Each day the three massive buildings-the Jefferson Building (1897), the Adams Building (1939) and the modern Madison Building (l980)-that house the Library of Congress on Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C., receive around 31,000 items, approximately 7,000 of which will become part of its permanent collections. Nearly two million researchers, scholars and tourists visit the Library of Congress each year and millions more use its services.

To amass such a collection, the Library has established a large acquisitions network, including several overseas offices. One of the oldest is the office housed on the top two floors of the American Center in ew Delhi.

It is part of the Library of Congress' Cooperative Acquisitions Program, the origin of which dates back to the 1950s when American researchers and academics felt a paucity of non-European research material available

C'iiCC=~._._,

Top: Exterior of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Above: The Asian Reading Room.

Left: At the Library of Congress field office in New Delhi a staffer operates the Fuji microfiche camera/processor.

m

The Thomas Jefferson Building, built in the 19th centwy, is an architectural showpiece. Clockwise from left: One of its stately corridors; an aerial view from a balcony of the Main Reading Room; a staircase in the Jefferson Building.

in American libraries. Since opening its doors in December 1961, the New Delhi office has collected thousands of books, journals, music and videos from India and neighboring countries in the region for the Library and other research institutions in the United States. In addition to acquiring books for American libraries, the office works with local institutions to preserve India's printed culture through microfilming projects. Recently, the 38-year-old New Delhi office has launched a project under which voices of Indian authors will be made available to members of the U.S. Congress and to the public through the Library of Congress' Archives of World Literature on tape. "Now not only will Indian authors be read, but they will be heard, too, in the United States," says Lygia Ballantyne, field director and head of the ew Delhi office.

The success of the Library's New Delhi office also underlines the historical link of the U.S. Library of Congress with India throughout its existence. After all, it was a translated version ofKalidas' Sanskrit epic Shakuntalam, among others, in the personal library of U.S. President Thomas Jefferson which helped resurrect the Library of Congress after it was burned by the British in 1814.

he Library of Congress was established on April 24, 1800, when President John.Adams approved legislation that appropriated $5,000 worth of books "as may be necessary for the use of Congress." The first books, ordered from London, arrived in 1801 and were stored in the Capitol, the Library's first home. The collection included 740 books and three maps. The following year, on January 26, 1802, President Thomas Jefferson approved the first law defining the role and z functions of the fledgling institution. He created the post of _ ~ Librarian of Congress and gave U.S. legislators the authority to ~ establish the Library's budget and its rules and regulations. . ~ Even today, the Library cannot be separated from the prin~ ciples and ideals of Thomas Jefferson, its chief patron. A self~ confessed man who "could not live without books," Jefferson ~ took a keen interest in the Library and its collection during his fi. presidency. Says Ballantyne, "When the Library was founded, it had a limited collection. But after the British invaded Washington and destroyed the Capitol, including the 3,000-volume Library, Jefferson (who had by then retired) offered to sell his personal collection-the largest and the finest in America at that time-to Congress to revive the Library." The purchase of Jefferson's 6,487 volumes for $23,950 was approved in 1815.

Ballantyne continues: "Congress appropriated funds and bought the collection ... which immediately changed drastically the nature of the collection because Thomas Jefferson was a man with wide interests. His library included books in many languages, including Greek, Latin, German, French and Italian. The collection also included a copy of Shakuntalam translated into English by Sir William Jones, the first Indian work to be acquired by the Library."

With books on architecture, the arts, science, literature and geography, the Library grew beyond the bounds of a purely legislative library for the use of American lawmakers. Through the 19th and 20th centuries the Library of Congress has grown from a national institution to an international resource of unparalleled dimensions. Today its vast and comprehensive collections encompass the entire globe, with materials in more than 450 languages and in different media.

posters, and audio and video cassettes-in all regional lanThe diversity of the Library of Congress is, indeed, amazing. guages. From works published in the hill dialects of the north to It serves as a legislative library and research arm of the U.S. Congress; the copyright agency of the United States; a center for those written in the Malayalam scripts of Kerala, the Library scholarship that collects research material from throughout the procures whatever material suits the requirements of Congress world in many languages and media; and a public institution that and the participating research libraries.

The program runs on a cost-recovery basis. Libraries that paris open to anyone. The advent of the Internet has made it even more accessible. Many of its unique collections have been digiticipate pay for the costs of the books acquired for them, for their tized. Says Ballantyne, "The materials that were accessible only transpOltation and for a share of the overhead costs. EvelY libraty to the readers who went to the Library for special research on patticipating in the program, including the Library of Congress, specific subjects are now available to anybody anywhere in the benefits from the economies of scale. "Instead of 44 librarians from libraries in the United States trying to acquire and catalog the world through the Library's web site at www.loc.gov."

She continues: "The project has also evolved with the technolsame books in 15 different languages, from so many different local ogy. The current Librarian, Dr. James H. Billington, saw it vendors, one library-the Libraty of Congress -does the work for coming. We statted very early, when people did not have a good all others. We have a lat'ge cataloging section with 16 professionidea of what would come out of the als who can select and catalog books in Internet. He really saw the potential of the all languages," says Ballantyne.

Internet very early and pushed for digitizaThe acquisition progratn remains the tion of our collections." To finance this primaty activity of the field office. The project, Billington approached the private vastness of th~ Indian publishing scene sector to supplement Congressional approensures that the Library acquires publipriations. "The Library's web page has a: cations on all subjects. "I am truly ~ Z amazed won many awards and is tremendously by the volume of published ~ popular. .. .You wouldn't expect a library as material that emerges out ofIndia every site to be so popular, but it is. It gets an . ~ year. But we not only cover India, our ::; incredible number of visitors evety day." ~ jurisdiction extends to neighboring Lygia Ballantyne, director of the Librmy of Among the collections of unique matericountries like Bangladesh, Bhutan, Congress field office in New Delhi. als available on the web are presidential Burma, Nepal, Sri Lanka and even papers, legislative documents, historical Mongolia. We also catalog materials acquired by our sister office in Islamabad from Cambodia, Laos photographs, maps and architectural drawings. The portal also has a section that is designed for children and families and Thailand," adds Ballantyne. [www.americaslibratycom). Carol Mitchell, deputy field director The New Delhi and other overseas offices of the Library also participate in an extensive exchange of publications. The Library in New Delhi, explains that "Whereas the main pOltal is designed for people who are fairly knowledgeable about the libraty and how in Washington sends to the field surplus books from its collecto negotiate it-people doing scholarly studies-this section has tions, which are then "offered to South Asian libraries and institaken some of the Libraty's collections and presents them in a fun tutions in exchange for their own materials," says Ballantyne. way," she says. "The content is exactly the same, but it has been put Many valuable government documents, academic and nonin a format that is more accessible to the users. It's aimed at chil- governmental publications are acquired for the Library of dren, so it's much more playful. In effect, it is introducing children Congress through this exchange program. The office then purto serious research materials in a playful manner." chases additional copies for the patticipating libraries.

Ballantyne admits that selecting books for the program is a daunting task. "We judge each publication by its content. Is it a he Library of Congress' determination to extend its reach and influence is very much evident in the functioning of scholarly text by a good publisher, or is it by a renowned author? the Library's New Delhi office. Here Ballantyne presides Does it offer new research or new insights? Does it add to our over a staff of more than 60 employees and six field representaknowledge of the subject?" tives in neighboring countries, and oversees the process of acquirIt is a challenge that has become even more complex in today's ing and organizing a wide variety of infonnation materials into Information Age, with all its new technologies. In the words of coherent packets for easy access by libraty users and researchers.

Librarian Billington, the Libraty of Congress is "becoming an even The New Delhi office not only sends materials for the Library of more important catalyst for the educational, competitive and creCongress in Washington but also to academic libraries and other ative needs of [America]." The acquisition program in South Asia and the programs elsewhere continue to extend the reach and influinstitutions under a cooperative acquisitions program.

"The program is designed to distribute publications to ence of the Library of Congress, still guided by Thomas Jefferson's research libraries in the areas of their interest, and is open to any beliefs that "democracy depends on knowledge .... All topics are library," she says. The field office acquires published materials impOltant to the libraty of the American national legislature, and 0 in all kinds of formats-books, newspapers, serials, maps, therefore, to the American people."

i

(TI

Haj Trcasurcs

Af fh£ Library 01 (ongr£§§ A favorite pastime of this Raj connoisseur is browsing in the archives of

America's great treasury of publications, and be has made some rare finds.

or several years, I have been exploring the fascinating field ofRaj literature to reconstruct the social and cultural scene in India during the British period. The British libraries and museums were my favorite haunts. It was in the course of a probing exercise for my book, Nautch Girls of India, that I stumbled upon an interesting eyewitness account of an Indian nautch performance by an American writer Lily Strickland Anderson, published in the August 1925 issue of AsiaThe American Magazine on the Orient. 1 was deeply impressed by the tone and tenor of the account and the writer's eloquent appreciation of Indian music and dance. This write-up, along with rare photo illustrations, aroused my interest and goaded me to study early American writings on India and also their collections of contemporary pictorial material.

The Library of Congress, the national library of the United States, was the obvious choice for carrying out this mission.

I had visited Washington, D.C., several times but only viewed the imposing edifices of the Library from outside. It was in 1993 that I made my first exploratory visit to this august destination of scholars and researchers from all over the world. At the entrance I was delighted to receive a smiling reception as I displayed my British Library identity card

1. The India issue of Asia magazine (March 1923), found in the archives at the Library of Congress. 2. The double takes on these pages are part of the treasure trove uncovered by Pran Nevile. These are stereographs, meant to be used with a viewer to give a three-dimensional image. They date from the 1870s to the 1920s and are unique finds, according to the author. The stereographs were produced by leading American companies of the day. The first depicts Lord Curzon opening the Indian Art Exhibition, Delhi, 1903. 3. Professional dancing girls on the streets of Old Delhi. 4. Elephantine splendor at the Delhi Durbar, 1903.

which substantiated my claim to be a research scholar. As I had no specific project in mind, I went around surveying the place, looking at the guide maps, notice boards and the souvenir shop crowded with tourists. Then, I took the elevator and reached the cafeteria where I enjoyed a steaming cup of coffee while gazing at the panoramic view of Washington, D.C., and its enchanting landscape. I decided to pick up the first fruits of my labor from the Prints and Photographs Division.

After learning the modus operandi from the Library staff, I studied the catalogs and drew up a list of visual material on India. My voyage of discovery commenced with the fabulous Carpenter collection of early photographs of the Indian scene (see "Frank G. Carpenter Collection: Early (Continued on page 48)

This card, now housed in Harvard's Widener Library, was replaced six years ago by an electronic record in the university's on-line catalog. In his essay "Discards" (collected in The Size of Thoughts, PS3552.A4325 S5 1996), Nicholson Baker imagines the digital catalog as a monstrous, tentacular database with the capacity to turn even the coolest of library patrons into a gibbering fool. He extolls the relative vitiues of the card catalog-that elegant labor of generations of librarians-eulogizing, among other things, the palimpsests of fingertip smudges, such as those visible here. Earlier in this century, however, some perceived the newfangled card catalog itself to be but an instrument of automation, menacing in its size and esoteric in its taxonomies. In 1910 the librarian Edmund Lester Pearson described the scene he observed taking place amidst "these cabinets of drawers": "Dozens of han-owed individuals are seen trying to think whether the name of Thomas De .Quincey will be found in the drawer marked De or that labeled Qu. Then they make the choicealways wrong-and are seen, with pain only too apparent on their brows, dashing off to the other drawer." Much like our own anxieties in this digital age, Pearson's frustrations may have had less to do with the baffling complexity of the catalogs than with the metaphysical implications of the universal library, which takes as its mandate the acquisition, organization and preservation of a representative inventory of information, within which knowledge mayor may not lurk.

Libraries are burned, razed or taken in conquest throughout Edward Gibbon's masterwork, and antiquity's most famous burned repository, at Alexandria, furnishes the present-day research library with its origin myth. The Ptolemies founded their Alexandrian libraries (there were two of them, burned at various times by various hands) as models of the Greek universe.

Callimachus, the first Alexandrian bibliographer, compiled the Pinakes, a catalog that likely contained in its 120 long-lost volumes an index of the entire literary output of the Hellenic world.

But Alexandria's universal program eventually buckled beneath the weight of some 500,000 papyrus scrolls. Callimachus's successors gradually abandoned comprehensive indices in favor of selective lists such as the Canones, which established the great authors in the various genres and exiled less Parnassian writers to obscurity. Canon-making intensified as the Roman empire declined; in medieval Europe only ecclesiastical works were regularly copied and preserved. We like to blame Caesar and Omar 1 for the loss of learning collected and cataloged at Alexandria. The truth is both more troubling and more mundane: the greatest loss of books in Western history was caused not so much by burning as by bibliography.

Gibbon, Edward, 1737 The istory of the pire, y Edward Gibbo due 'on, noieR, append Lo don, Methuen & ,1__ S~190f.

7 v.

front. (v.

Vol. i-5":

Vo 1.

ed., London,

1.,3 are

new

1. Rome-Hist.-Empire, B Bury, John Bagnell, 1861-

For roughly 1,300 years after Rome's fall, librarians counted themselves among the Stoic followers of the Roman philosopher Seneca, who, in his Epistulae Morales (BJ214.S4 E73), wrote that "it does not matter how many books you have, but how good they are." As the Renaissance gave way to the Reformation, however, the old canons proved too procrustean to contain the hordes of books unleashed by Protestantism, science and the invention of movable type. By 1605 Francis Bacon had divided and subdivided books, according to their contents rather than their merits, into three kingdoms of knowledge: Memory, Reason and Imagination.

But Bacon's proto-Linnaean taxonomy lasted only briefly. It, too, was overwhelmed by the sheer size of the collections librarians in modern societies have increasingly sought to gather. In the universal library information is a resource like salt or silk, and the more of it the better.

ly fold.) plans.

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This call number belongs to Harvard's "Old Widener" system, a subject-based catalog developed in the early 20th century. Here, "AH" is for Ancient History. Numbers in the 7000s index works on Ancient Rome; 7650 is reserved for editions of Gibbon's Decline and Fall. This degree of specificity marks a radical change from earlier catalogs-such as Harvard's first, published in 1723, which was no more than a list of titles arranged by size alphabetically in Latin. By the late 1800s, fattened on Gilded Age largesse, libraries had developed subject catalogs of enormous breadth and detail-epistemological mappae mundi by which the swelling ranks of patrons could navigate the ever-expanding labyrinth of the stacks. Today, although Old Widener's increasingly archaic classes still exist ("Ott" for Ottoman empire, "Mol" for Moliere), they are no longer used to catalog new books. The world of empires, proverbs and heraldry that they mapped has become ever more unrecognizable.

"A book ...is not, then, an article of mere consumption, but...of capital," wrote Thomas Jefferson, whose personal collection of 6,487 books (sold to his countrymen for $23,950, or $185,212 in 1999 dollars) has grown into America's own best approximation of the universal library, the Library of Congress. Although other call number systems persist-most famously, Melvil Dewey'smost academic libraries have adopted the opaque numerology of the Library of Congress scheme. The Library's card service was among the first attempts at bibliographic automation, and for decades it was astonishingly successful, selling as many as 80 million cards a year, including the one shown here. But libraries found they were waiting longer and paying more for cards to catalog increasingly esoteric collections. By 1980-long before the advent of truly comprehensive on-line catalogs-the Library of Congress was producing fewer than 20 million cards annually.

(Continued on page 50)

E

Letter

from the

Editor

very magazine or newspaper has its culture, and SPAN is no different. In the course of 40 years SPAN has seen II editors, supported by a loyal and highly professional editorial, design and production staff. Even after the staff was reduced from an ample 15 to eight (including myself and our office helper), those who remain strive to retain the SPAN style. When I came on as editor three years ago the last of the old guard, Managing Editor Krish Gabrani, was about to retire, his position eliminated and merged with my own. Despite downsizing of staff, and reducing its frequency from monthly to bimonthly, we have somehow contrived to weave the SPAN tapestry according to old, familiar lines.

How do we know? Our readership tells us. Now that we are a bimonthly, we do not have the space to print the many letters to the editor that we receive--though we are indulging ourselves this time and printing a few reader comments as part of our special anniversary feature. Our mail is remarkably positive and enthusiastic, considering the ambivalence there has been in India about America over the years. Take this recent comment from GJ. Chinneswararao in Berhampur, Orissa: "1have been an avid reader of SPAN and though it has shrunk in size, it has not compromised on quality."

There are letters of complaint, of course. Some think SPAN is boring or too American.

Some lament the editorial shift a few years ago to a stronger business emphasis. Many more decried SPAN's reduction to a bimonthly. We get complaints from people who haven't received their copy, or who were dropped off the mailing list. We get many suggestions, often very good ones. Many of those suggestions require resources of former days, but we appreciate the input, anyway. Some letters are touching and a little sad, like that from an elderly man who said he had enjoyed reading SPAN for decades, but now that he is old and his sight failing, he is retiring from the world and reluctantly requests us to stop his subscription-but not without thanks for enriching his life for more tban30years. We get mail from every part of India. Often it's amanila postcard with sentiments in cramped writing that fills both sides. We have frequent requests for permission to reprint alticles. (Sometimes we notice our articles or art-

What SPAN Means to Me M

~

~

The author was editor of SPAN from 1972 to 1977 and 1995 to 1997.

In the history of SPAN he was, in his own words, "a living legend."

ore than once in the past 20 years budget cutters came close to abolishing SPAN. I would tell them: "This magazine is a mystical entity. Even without funds, or staff, or a printed product, SPAN will always exist."

Colleagues with greater political sensitivity than mine told me to shut up because I was saying the wrong thing to the wrong people. Maybe. SPAN still has funds and staff. SPAN exists.

Happy birthday, Mystical Entity!

Well, that was one way of starting this article.

SPAN Editor Lea Terhune asked me to write an article for the 40th anniversary of this grand old magazine.

What's another way to start this mticle-tribute, memoir, occasional piece, expose, confessional?

What to write?

Well, I know what not to write: Don't talk about SPAN's effectiveness, what impact it had in the 1970s on Indian magazine journalism, what "good things" it has done in

work appearing without thatformality.) The best feeling comes, though, when readers write that they or their organization have benefited from information supplied by SPAN. Professor S. Saraf from Madhya Pradesh summed up the feelings of many who take the trouble to write us when he wrote, after reflecting that he has read SPAN fOTfour decades, "I recall how it has widened my mental horizons and academic range in regard to the latest developments in science and technology, economy and cultme, that have taken shape during these decades, on one hand, and how the political scenario of cooperation between the two big democracies have fostered greater understanding and mutual concern in the midst of a milieu of occasional mistrust and disaffection, on the other."

To me the idea has always been to get the good word out-on technology, alts, environment, global issues. Or get a debate going, on issues that aI'e controversial or things that need change. Or give news and views from experts and provide networkingjpformation to people in every field. It is not about propaganda, but about cooperation and, one hopes, fdendship.

There are many peopleto thank for making SPAN what it is, from the publishers, editors and staff toc!ndia's best printing presses, Thomson and Ajanta.

Thomson Press has printed SPAN for most of its l~fe. But expertise is nothing without an audience, and so we must thank our readers, who keep us regularly informed through their comments about what we are doing right or what we are doing wrong.

Whatever you, the reader, may think about it, we try to give you an accurate picture of American culture and thought, tell you about what Americans are doing, and, increasingly, what Indians and Americans are doing together. Perhaps more than any

nth", ,"n, ;n it, 40 yems, SPAN Hnk, fudia to Ame'i~~~

40 years. That's for Indian readers to write about.

So what to do? Make it personal. Not what SPAN did for Indo-American relations, but what SPAN did for me.

It was a great job. Best and most interesting I ever had. I was young in my first SPAN tour (40 to 45) and went on to bigger and better positions with the U.S. Foreign Service (USIS). But no job before or after was as exciting and intellectually stimulating as being editor-in-chief of the USIS magazine for India.

SPAN was special. The SPAN staff was the most talented I ever had in all my years as a magazine editor. "The best and the brightest"-although my managing editor would never have let that cliche through text editing. The SPAN staff over four decades deserves the credit for any greatness people may find in this publication's 40-year history.

Life as SPAN editor was a seamless web. There was no division between work and play. My parties were all connected with SPAN. Sometimes we (my wife and I) would invite the SPAN staff on a Saturday afternoon, with their spouses and children. The children would swim in the four-foot-deep pond in the patio of our Nizamuddin West house. Adults could jump in the pond too and I always did. In late afternoon, the chil-

dren disappeared (I never knew how), and the spouses would gather upstairs with my wife to do quilting while the SPAN staffers would play poker downstairs. At cocktail hour we'd have a wine tasting of eight different varieties of wines plus a "mystery wine" (one of the eight) and whoever guessed the mystery wine got a prize. The evening would finish with dinner and impromptu dancing or singing. These were the most wonderful parties I've ever hosted-mainly because the crowd were the most wonderful guests.

My American colleagues at USIS India sometimes argued with each other about what was the most important thing USIS did. Libraries? Cultural exchanges? Press contacts?

Fulbright scholarships? Explicating U.S. foreign policy? I would always say SPA was most important. I'd quote a favorite professor at Delhi University who told me my first month in India (June 1972) that, in spite of American foreign policy, Indians who read SPAN regularly had a good feeling about America because it showed them the America above and beyond that country's foreign policy.

But explication was the thing the USIS directors talked about most because it was the main way USIS got Congress to give it money every year. One day the director of US IS came

At one of the famous SPAN outings circa 1975, staffers and their families pause a moment for the photo.

Steve Espie (circled) puts rabbit ears on his young son. Other SPAN staffers are: Suhas Nimbalkar (1), Krishan Gabrani (2), S.R. Madhu (3), Gopi Gajwani (4), B. Roy Choudhury (5), Nand Katyal (6), Ms. Carmen Kagal (7), Kanti Roy (8).

The photograph was taken by Avinash Pasricha, photo editor.

to me and said, "Espie, when are you and your not inconsiderable SPAN staff going to do more to explicate American foreign policy?"

"No one on the staff knows what explicate means. Is it sort of like 'triangulate' -when surveyors used a couple of fixed points to try to find something they know exists but don't know where it is?"

He patiently explained that I should forget about any dictionary definition because in USIS it simply means to explain and advocate U.S. Government policies.

A week later I came back to the boss and said: "Some SPAN staffers can explain American policy but not advocate it; others can advocate it but explaining it baffles them. When anyone tries to do both, the policy moves-like electrons in Heisenberg's famous principle of indeterminacy."

Anyway, USIS directors subconsciously liked the idea that their magazine was increasingly seen as a cultural publication.

The "Director" also carried the title of "SPAN Publisher."

When he traveled through India people (especially in the mofussil) were puzzled about "who" and "what" was the "director of USIS." Then he'd say, "And I'm also publisher of SPAN." "Ah! SPAN!" Enlightenment. The ice would break and the doors would open.

The Delhi professor had said to me: "In the dark days of the Indo-Pakistan war over East Bengal, which was the nadir of Indo-U .S. official relations, many Indians hated America. But not SPAN readers. Why? Because SPAN showed us an America that was a model for how a civil society should operate, an America full of culture and kindness. And it was credible because it showed an America with warts and all. None of the articles sounds like propaganda. People save their SPANs and reread them-as they do with National Geographies."

Another Indian friend said to me, "SPAN is an ongoing

bridge." I know what he meant and was flattered by his perception, although Paul Klee's famous painting came to mind, the one where segments of a bridge are marching around.

But I fear I'm getting off the track. I was asked what SPAN meant to me. Very serious question. Very personal.

The great Trinidadian novelist V.S. Naipul once called India "an area of darkness." This is true for many foreigners who come here and get overwhelmed by the chaos of negative impressions. I was similarly overwhelmed my first few months here in 1972. But SPAN opened doors for me.

Wherever I went, the editor of SPAN was an honored guest.

SPAN gave me acquaintances and friends-and some precious friendships-mostly among the luminaries of journalism, academia, the creative intelligentsia, but in other fields too. These were people who lived in two worlds, equally at home in both-the world of Western learning from PlatO to the present, plus the world of the Indian heritage, the Vedas and everything afterward ("The Wonder That Was India," as Basham succinctly puts it).

It was heady stuff. It transformed me, as a literary friend in New York told me, "by a sea change into something rich and strange." (Another American friend thought I was just "strange"-with "all this Indian stuff.")

SPAN opened the doors ofa remarkable assemblage ofpeopie-writers, editors, philosophers, artists, academics and others-who taught me The Wonder That Was India. I take the opportunity on this SPAN anniversary to give thanks to these people. They include (in alphabetical order): M.l Akbar, Yogi Arya, Romesh Babu, Supreo Bonnerjee, Amitabha and Neepa Chowdhury, the Dagar Brothers, Jatin Das, Eric da Costa, Chidananda and Suprea Dasgupta, Subhir Dasgupta, Rupin Desai, Priya Devi, Nissim Ezekiel, Sisirkumar Ghose, RH. Anniah Gowda, Satish Gujral, Akhileshwar and Rama Jha, Anees Jung, S. Kalidas,

Hironmay Karlekar, S. Krishnan, Shiv Kumar, P. Lal, T.K. Mahadevan, Iqbal and Amita Malik, Vinod Mehta, Narayana Menon, Mario and Habiba Miranda, Dom Moraes, Leela Moraes, G. Murali, Pritish Nandy, C.D. Narasimhaiah, VK. Narasimhan, VN. Narayanan, A.G. Noorani, R. Parthasarathy, Mickey Patel, Aroon Purie, Nirmal Mangat Rai, Satyajit Ray, Amitava Roy, Sunil Roy, Nayantara Sahgal, Chanchal and Lotika Sarkar, Paritosh Sen, Sunil Sethi, Khushwant Singh, Patwant Singh, Rahul Singh, Jug Suraiya, J. Swaminathan, Romesh and Raj Thapar, Aruna Vasudev and S.G. Vasudev.

These people gave me penetrating insights and interpretations of India. Many of them gave me hundreds. It adds up to enlightenment. Forgive me for those I've forgotten to put in the list.

I am not mentioning the names of my Indian colleagues on the SPAN staff in the I 970s, most of whom became my friends. They are too special and too close. They also are the "meaning of SPAN" but in a different way-in a closer way-too close for words. I honor them, treasure them, bless them in silence. As Wittgenstein wrote: "The truths of silence, when spoken, are no longer true."

I'm not, moreover, mentioning the names of Indians who greatly influenced me in the "post-SPAN years"-during my second tour of duty in Delhi (as deputy director of USIS India in the 1980s) or during the last decade (the 1990s) when I was living in India in blissful retirement (I retired to India because of what SPAN did to me). Sai Baba is one of those influences of the 1980s.

In sum, the meaning of SPAN, for me, is the people it enabled me to meet. These were the people who led me away from Naipul's "anarea of darkness" into "the heart of light."

So, in a larger sense, for me the "meaning of SPA "is the "meaning ofIndia."

SPAN opened the doors of perception to the mind and soul of India. SPAN gave me enlightenment.

T remember in the early 1990s watching a cremation in a rural Bengal village and thinking of the lines from the Bhagavad Gita: "Burnt clean in the blaze of my being,! in me many find home."

I felt it was not only Lord Krishna speaking those words to Arjuna, but "India" speaking those words to the world-or at least to me.

A little further on in the Gita, Krishna says something else, which I also think of as India's speaking to the world: "Whatever path men travel Is my path: No matter where they walk It leads to me."

0 About the Author: Stephen Espie, editor of SPAN in the 1970s, returned to India as the deputy director of US1S India in the 1980s when he supervised the SPAN editOl~After retiring to India in 1990 (to a village in Bengal), he was called back to be editor of SPAN from 1995 to 1997. He now lives in Bangalore.

This painting for the cover of SPAN shows the American Revolution as seen through the eyes offamous Indian painter, MF Husain.

In his own exuberant mannel; cartoonist Mario captures the spirit of Indians in America.

This SPAN portrait of Ezra Pound was commissioned to the eminent paintel; the late J Swaminathan, who said about the portrait: ''For his anti-Semitism, I made him look a little like a rabbi. His fascist sympathies I attribute to the smallness of man: his poetly was the gift of God. "

S~tW 'lfeM&

Teamvvork Span team at work, seated, from left: Copy EditOr A. Venkata Narayana, EditOrin-ChiefKiki S. MW1Shi Publisher Francis B. Ward: Associate EditOr Anm Bhanot, (standing, from left) EditOrial Assistant K. Muthukwnar, Deputy Art DirectOr Hemant Bhatnagar, Art DirectOr Suhas Nimbalkar, EditOr Lea Terhune, Office A,sistant Ali Mohammad and Production/Cirmlation Manager; Rakesh Agrawal.

'" ~ ~ ~ ~

SPAN has a great support system: 8. Computer operations team MN Hemrajani (foreground), Anand Pardhy and P Yoganand (not pictured) keep our computers shipshape. 9. Documentation specialist Asok Samanta helps us dig through the archives.

10. Vikas Narula puts SPAN on the embassy home page.

11. Researcher Jehanara Wasi in search of information at the AIRC Library.

12. Printers at work on the big machine at Thomson Press, Faridabad. Times have changed dramatically 11 since SPAN was typeset by hand and cranked out on a letterpress.

Now Thomson has the most sophisticated offset press in India.

1. Lea Terhune.

2. Arun Bhanot.

3. A. Venkata Narayana (now associate editor).

4. K. MuthukumQ/: ~._,_ 5. Designers Suhas Nimbalkar and Hemant Bhatnagar plot a layout.

6. AU Mohammad keeping things in orda 7. Rakesh Agrawal discusses requirements for an upcoming issue at Thomson Press.

Rakesh also supervises our hard-working circulation staff, who ensure SPAN reaches its readers.

OR

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span

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Quotes & Comments

and we are ready to others. But we and social factors nations wherever

I affirm that we stand for freedom, and therefore for a pluralistic world. We reject the very idea that a single economic system-ours included-could or should be imposed everywhere. We are proud of our system to make what we have learned available recognize that historical, geographical will produce different economic combipeople are free to choose for themselves.

-Ellsworth Bunker U.S. Ambassador to India, SPAN, December 1960

Late in his life, in connection with his despair over weapons and wars, Einstein said that if he had to live it over again he would be a plumber. This was a balance of seriousness and jest that no one should now attempt to disturb. Believe me, he had no idea of what it was to be a plumber; least of all in the United States, where we have ajoke thai the typical behaviour of this specialist is that he never brings his tools to the scene of the crisis. Einstein brought his tools to his crises; Einstein was a physicist, a natural philosopher, the greatest of our time.

-Robert Oppenheimer SPAN, April 1967 I have been regularly receiving copies of SPAN for the last many, many years and enjoy reading it. It covers most of the burning problems like water, pollution, growing population, protecting the consumers, etc., with special reference to India. I am a farme/: I find many usefUl articles in it.

-Umesh

P. Varma

West Champaran, Bihar

Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game-and do it by watching first some high school or small-town teams. The big league games are too fast for the beginner and the newpapers don't help. To read them with profit you have to know a language that comes easy only after philosophy has taught you to judge practice.

-Jacques Barzun SPAN, October 1962

Water rules our lives, like love.

The unborn child crouches for nine months in a sac of water. Grown, he plunges into water, no alien element.

He encloses it between stone walls and forces it to turn wheels and illuminate cities. He coaxes it to leap through fountains for his aesthetic pleasure. But he remains its servant.

No man can live without water, as no man can live without love.

-Dom Moraes SPAN, January 1970

Please select articles from the fields of science and human behavior. I would like to see SPAN as a monthly magazine as it was some years back.

-Dr. Azmal Hossain MaIda

To be free to choose from a full palette, no matter how unusual the results, has always been the prerogative of the modern dance.

Modern dance?

To me modern dance is a licence to do what I feel is worth doing, without somebody saying that I can't do it because it does not fit into a category.

-Paul Taylor SPAN, January 1967

The articles in it are interesting that I generally read it twice or thrice. It's at par with Reader's Digest, Time and National Geographic. All issues are worth collecting. Please keep it up.

-Ajay Harlalka Calcutta

[Margaret] Mead is a general among the foot soldiers of modern feminism. The bitterness that has characterized the latest chapter of the women's movement baffles her. Perhaps because, among all of us who have paid a price for liberation that leaves us somehow incomplete-those who shucked husbands only to have their egos shredded by jealous sisters, those who gave birth to themselves as writers or publishers at the price of not having children, or as politicians who found that their name attached to a bill was the kiss of death, the runaway wives who did not find their latent genius baking clay in Big Sur, and certain celebrity feminists who by now, bored and spent with their sexual athleticism, confess to a craving for one night of zest with an umegenerate male chauvinist pig-among these minions there is still no one quite as self-liberated as Mead. In her general's role, she is a prophet in her own country. As a woman, she was a deviant in her own culture.

-Gail Sheehy SPAN, January 1974 As a medical professional I expect more articles about medicine. Be it about good, heathy lifestyle, be it about advances in the field of medicine from around the globe. I read SPAN within a day or two, once the issue reaches me, many topics are of interest to me.

-Dr. Manwatkar Avinash Selu, Maharashtra

The last time I was in the [United] States I was a guest of an old friend, Dr. John Hazard, Professor of Soviet Law at Columbia University. He had written advising me to take a cab from the airport: "It will be between eight and nine dollars. Don't let the cabby take you for a ride. You know what cabbies are!" Mine had an Italian name and what I later learnt was known as a Brooklyn accent. It didn't take him long to sense that I was not familiar with the sights.

He started pointing out the various landmarks. I didn't pay much attention because my eyes were glued on the meter. I would pay up to nine dollars; not a cent more. "You noo?" he asked me. "Yeah," I replied in my best Yankee. "Foist day! Foine city, Noo Yok. I live on the way. Come and meet the missus. She's never met a Hindoo with a toybon."

He was a sharp one. I said no thank you. I was getting late.

The meter showed $8.50. Another 50 cents to go. Just as he pulled up he slammed down the flag. He couldn't trick me because I had seen it read 8.50 and Dr. Hazard was at the door waiting for me. "How much?" I demanded in a not too friendly tone. "Nuttin," he replied. "Its your foist day in my country. Let it be on me." 'I was taken aback. Was this some kind of confidence trick? I insisted on paying the fare. He gave in. "Okay, we'll call it four dollars."

I learnt my lesson; never generalize about a people, never believe in the stereotype-not even the cab driver. I recalled a cryptic remark made by the late Prime Minister Nehru on the eve of his visit to the United States. "I have been advised by my friends," Nehru had written to a friend in Boston, "that no one should be required to see America for the first time." It sounded very clever but I did not understand what it meant except that every time I go to the United States it seems like the first time.

-Khushwant Singh SPAN, November 1976

Writers and artists of this century may well ascribe to their work a new and real importance. If art is the creation of contexts, and so is everything else, how false or trivial can art be? Is not the Linnaean system of classification a poem among poems, a provisional coherence selected out of chaos? It has always been possible for artists of every kind to sniff at science and claim for art special, transcendent and priestly powers. Now it is possible for artists to have and eat that particular cake by adding that, after all, science is in one (rather attenuated) sense "mere" art; art is all there is.

-Annie Dillard SPAN, Februay 1982

I would urge the importance of pragmatic adaptation to the circumstance and situation of India's stage of development. I would urge that maximum freedom be given to individual initiative and to reduce, to the extent possible, the scope of permissions-the bureaucratic control of industry. But it is also my view that at a later stage of India's development, one must have affirmative control. ~John Kenneth Galbraith SPAN, December 1988

If there were editions of SPAN in Bengali, Oriya, Telugu, Tamil, Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Hindi and Urdu languages, a vast majority of Indians, not knowing English fully well, would have been benefited. Anyway, let it be left as a plan for the future. ~Sivaram Kundo Bartaman Bharat, Chandannagar, West Bengal

One of the important things that I learned while teaching at Indore was that all cultures are equally valid and that none of us really live in one culture. None of us anymore is just a Westerner or Indian or Chinese or Japanese. There is no longer just a Hindu culture or a Muslim culture or a Christian culture. In a sense we are all drawing on one another. ~Ainslie Embree SPAN, April 1990 I feel really happy that I have been a regular reader of SPAN during the past three decades or so. I always liked it for its contents, presentation and production. ~Professor P.B. Mangla Delhi University

Each time he went for an appointment, he signed his name on the compounder:S slip and sat in the waiting room with his wife and the other patients as shyly as ifhe were visiting his in-laws, flicking through old copies of SPAN magazine. ~Amit Cbaudburi Waking, Granta 57: India the Golden Jubilee

It is emerging as a magazine of thinkers. This is particularly evident from the issues published in 1999. There is plenty of useful material for activists who want to be engaged in constructive and innovative work in various fields. ~Dr. P.K. Muttagi Mumbai

Jam yet to retonctl e myself to the fact that. SPAN has become bimonthly instead of monthly. To waitfor my favorite magazine for two months is rather too long.

-Dr. M. Saleem Kidwai JawSharlalNehru University,Ne~pelhi

It was the heyday of USIS in India when SPANthology was brought out in several Indian languages, including Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Telugu, Assamese and Tamil.

T

housands of Indian students every year seek admission to graduate courses in American colleges and universities, especially in professional and technical fields.

The application procedure is timeconsuming. Very often the entire process takes a full year. The cost of study is usually quite expensive. It varies widely among colleges and universities and from one location to the next. After the rigorous exercise of application is compl~ted, the concerned institution issues Form 1-20 which indicates the student's intent and eligibility to pursue the course of study in that particular college or university.

Form 1-20 is, of course, an important document required by any student at the time of seeking visa. The Form 1-20 is not a visa, nor does it guarantee a visa. 1-20 indicates tuition fee, cost of living-including details of room and board-and the financial assistance or fellowship the institution shall offer to the student.

Soon after 1-20 is received, students must apply for F-l visa, commonly called the non-immigrant student visa. This may be done at consular offices in New Delhi, Chennai, Calcutta and Mumbai. Although there is no fixed yearly quota for F-l visas to be issued to students, the consular officer can refuse a visa to any student, even after the applicant has received Form 1-20. With an ever-increasing number of Indian students seeking admission in American institutions, the task of consular officer has become even more daunting.

There are special procedures and documents necessary to apply for the non-immigrant student visa. The basic requirements for this category of visa are: passport, valid for at

least six months after the date the applicant plans to leave; a 5 x 5 cm. photograph, with the applicant's signature in English on back; certificate of eligibility for non-immigrant student status (Form 1-20); affidavit of financial support form and evidence of support; and proof that the student has sufficient knowledge of English language.

"Student visas are subjected to Section 214(b) of the Immigration and Naturalization Act, which requires that the applicants present convincing evidence that they have a residence and that they intend to return after completing their studies, and that they have financial resources to pay the cost of their education abroad," explains Colwell C. Whitney, consular officer at the American Embassy in New Delhi.

Visa officers also examine the applicant's resources in covering both the "published" costs and "hidden" costs of study in the United States. The hidden costs include pers~nal expenses, costs when the hostel rooms are closed, health insurance and medical expenses, etc.

The applicant must furnish details of both immovable properties and liquid assets in support of his or her financial position. Since the student needs immediate funding for study, the visa officer scrutinizes the papers relating to liquid assets, bank balance for the past one or two years and the income-tax returns for three to four years. The consular officer also considers the sponsorship of close friends and relatives. "However, the applicant must establish the real degree of relationship over the years between him and the sponsor," says Matthew D. Murray, former vice consul.

"The sponsor must fill in Form

1-134 which is a formal affidavit of support. This document is basically a statement of intent and is not legally binding upon the person who swears the affidavit; for this reason the degree of real relationship sometimes becomes an issue," he adds.

The applicant must argue his or her case convincingly and satisfy the visa officer that the intention is not to permanently stay in the United States beyond the course of study, but to return home after the course is completed.' It is difficult to know about the real intention of each applicant over a period of four to six years. So the applicant must marshal arguments and offer logical explanations the best way possible. "The U.S. visa law presumes that everybody applies for a visa with an intention to immigrate. The law places the burden on the applicant to prove otherwise.

The consular officer, nonetheless, gives each appl icant every opportunity to overcome the presumption of law," said Wayne S. Leininger, former consul general in New Delhi.

J- J and M- J Visas The other two categories of visas issued to students are J-l and M-l.

The J-1 visa is issued to medical students, scholars and professionals going to the United States to participate in a program of study or research. Students pursuing study under this category generally receive stipend from the institutions they are attending. The M-l visa is issued to students who pursue their study in vocational training, not academic study. Students, such as pilots, for example, who undergo training and orientation courses, are issued the M-l visa.

Drop Box S.ervice

H'路' Visa H l-B visas are issued to professionals hired by an American employer for a temporary period. Employees who are hired for these occupations need to have a bachelor's degree or its equivalent in their field of specialty.

Professionals who fall into this category are computer professionals, doctors, medical personnel, engineers, professors and researchers.

Three bills have been introduced in the U.S. Congress this year to enhance the Hl-B visa quota limit and are being considered by Congress. Many observers expect the cap to be increased from the CUITentlevel of 115,000 annually, but there continues to be a significant debate on the issue, and even those who favor an increase disagree about the final number and the conditions under which an increase would take place. The proposed bill is likely to increase the limit on H I-B visas to 200,000 per year for fiscal years 2001 through 2003, and would set aside 10,000 of the 200,000 visas for employees of higber educational institutions, and government and non-profit research institutions, and 60,000 visas for individuals who hold degrees or equivalent degrees.

Change in Visa Fee Reflecting the current exchange rate at Rs. 45 per U.S. dollar, the U.S. Embassy announced that the application and issuance fee for all categories of visas has been revised with effect from June 5. The following is the revised list of visa fees: NON-lMMIGRANT

VISA

Application fee: Issuance fee: IMMIGRANT

VISA

Application fee: Issuance fee: RETURNING

Rs.2,025 Rs.3,375

RESIDE

'TS FEE:

Rs. 11,700 Rs. 2,925 Rs. 2,250

Visa applicants who meet any of the following criteria listed here may place their applications in the drop box for the speedy process of the visa fonn. This service is available at the Consul General office in New Delhi and all consulate offices at Calcutta, Cbennai and Mumbai.

You have traveled to the United States on any kind of nonimmigrant visa in the previous seven years.

You are an employee Program.

of a company

in the Business

Express

You have made multiple trips to the following countries in the past five years, namely Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and certain European countries (Belgium, France, Gennany, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, et aD. You or your spouse is over 55 years of age, have adult children in legal status ill the United States who have given you a fmancial sponsoroShip, and have proof of the child's legal status ill the U.S. You are a child (aged 16 and under) or spouse of a person who has a valid nonimmigrant visa. Children's applications must be submitted with original birth certificates.

You are a mentally or physically handicapped person travelillg with an immediate family member (parent, brother, sister) who holds a U.S. visa. A doctor's letter explaining the disability must be submitted. , Government officials, police or military officers traveling on diplomatic or official passports or traveling on documented official qusiness.

U.S. Government-sponsored programs.

applicants for "J" exchange visitor

Seamen with a previous C-lID visa and a letter from an established shipping agency in the New Delhi area (or Calcutta/Chennai/Mumbai as the case may be). ,... ReturningF, J, Hand L yisa applicants and their immediate families (spouse, children).

Diplomats, officers of the Indian Administrative Service, commissioned officers in the Indian military and their immediate families (spouse, children) with appropriate proof of employment.

"Yes, but take away the rodent droppings and the occasional shard of glass, and you've still got a damn fine product. " © 1999 The New Yorker Collection 1999 Jack Ziegler from Cartoonbank.com.

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ONIHE LIGHTER

"1 called you all in here on a Saturday morning because 1can. .. " Drawing by Roy Delgado. Reprinted with permission from Across the Board. © 1999 The Conference Board. All rights reserved.

SIDE HOW LONG HAVE ~OUBEEN WORKING HERE, GILBERT?

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ew Yorker Collection 1999 Arnie Levin from Cartoonbank.com.

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Suzan Woodruff

Feminine nscape Suzan Woodruff is an artist committed not only to the aesthetics but to the message. Recently Woodruff and her husband, writer Bruce Bauman, were resident artists .fitSanskriti while Art Konsult mounted an exhibition of her work. Her abstract paintings are strongly feminine in the primprdial sense. She consciously works with feminine symbolism: "I was working on triangles as the oldest feminine symbol," she says, and adds that her artistic territory is the "feminine inscape."

Concerned about the invalidation of women in society, she tries in her art "to promote the power of the feminine, take back our power." Her art is a combination of introspective and political forces. "I want to do art that has universal meaning to people, yet a political message that is poetic and beautiful. There is something powerful about that," she says. Art, for her, has also been a means of surviving domestic abuse. "It is a personal salvation for me, and my interest in the whole issue of women's rights is because I am a survivor."

Bauman describes how her paintings evolve out of reading, conversations and contemplation: "All the conscious reading she has done and talks with people goes into this big, unconscious pot and comes out and becomes a little more subtle in her art."

Their first visit to India has opened new areas for each of them. Woodruff: "The color, the sensations, are just like an explosion. I just don't know what to look at first." She adds, "The women's strength is really very impressive, their dignity and strength in all that they are going through." Writer Bauman chips in, "The mass of contradictions has been great, totally invigorating, a new language is evolving."

Woodruff and Bauman currently live and work at an arts cooperative, the 18th Street Arts Complex in Santa Monica, California, which provides studio space, a theater and residential apartments to aJ1ists.

Environment

series

Mixed medium on paper.

Mandala series

Acrylic on Gesso board.

Mandala series

AClylic on papa

Meditation series

Acrylic on canvas.

Rai Treasures

Illhe Library01(ongress

continuedfi'om

page 31

Snapshots of India," SPAN, May/June 1999). Dating from the late 19th and early 20th century, this unique collection contains rare images of the picturesque and exotic India and its people. This find alone prompted me to study the entire visual material on India held in the Prints and Photographs Division and so I had to repeat my visits to the Library a number of times in recent years.

In the course of exploration, 1discovered a vast collection of photographs of practically all major historic monuments and also those depicting scenes of principal Indian cities with a bewildering diversity of people. Many of these photographs dating from the 19th centUly were taken by the leading commercial photographers of the time in Calcutta and Mumbai, like Mis. Bourne & Shepherd, Johnston & Hoffman, John Burke and Barton Son & Co. I also came across a few collections donated to the Library by the descendants of American travelers. One of these, gifted by Mrs. Percy Hamilton Davis in June 1947, contains rare views of the cities of Mumbai and Agra during the period 1905-20. There are also

pictures of historic events of Imperial impOitance, for example, the Prince of Wales' visit to India in 1875, Lord Curzon's Durbar in Delhi in 1903 and King George V's famous Delhi Durbar of 1911.

Another pile of photographs that struck me was of the American soldiers and the war activities in India during 1942-43.

Taken by American cameramen, these pictures were sent home for publication by

the U.S. Office of War Information, then located at Janpath, New Delhi.

I noted that a sizable number of photographs on India stored in the LibralY of Congress are not available in the holdings of the British Library in London, the chief reservoir of this visual material, as well as in some other archives. I am surprised how this photo treasure escaped the notice of the distinguished American photo-historian

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

Clark Worswick, well known for his anthology of Indian photographs called The Last Empire-Photography in British India, 1855-1911, published in 1976. While acknowledging the sources such as the British Libraty and some American collectors, he makes no mention of the Library of Congress. A similar omission is noticed in Judith Mara Gutman's Through Indian Eyes dealing with the history of photography in India, published in New York in 1982.

The most rewarding outcome of my wanderings in the Prints and Photographs Division was the discovery of a remarkable collection of stereographs of Indian panorama dating from the 1870s to the 1920s. These double photograph cards, produced by juxtaposing two views taken simultaneously but from slightly different angles present a 3-D solid image when seen through a binocular viewer of stereoscope. One of the most popular diversions of the Victorian era was the stereoscope.

Through the illusion of three dimensions, people were not only entertained but also

enlightened about the landscape and people of other countries.

I have not so far come across a single collection of stereographs in any other library or museum that I have visited. This rare collection in the Library of Congress presents a reservoir of information about the life and times of yesteryear through the eyes of its cameramen. The range of stockpile on India is quite extensive, covering not only the sights and sounds of the country at large, but also the picturesque facade of Empire, including historic events like the majestic Delhi DUI'bars of 1903 and 1911 with all their regal splendor and dazzling pageantry of the native princes.

During the late 19th century, many American photographers came to India to take stereo pictures. Most of the stereographs cany the imprints of the American companies like Underwood and Underwood Publishers and Keystone View Company, the leading producers of this novelty.

My exploration for early American

A fakir on his bed of spikes.

A ghat on the Ganges, Banaras.

The Kashmiri Gate, Delhi Native women at the spinning wheel.

Morning ride of a lady of Calcutta in her palanquin.

writings on India led me to the Periodicals Section where I wanted to study the old yolumes of Asia. I was struck by the variety of Indian themes covered by the American contributors which included, The Flute of Krishna, The Snake Charmers, India's Soul Power, Gandhi and Ford on the Same Road, The Singing Voice of India, Maharajas and their Jewels, and The Tactics of Motor-Car Selling in India.

But, above all, I was simply astonished to see a special issue of this magazine (March 1923) devoted entirely to India with contributions from the leading personalities of the time, including an eight-page insert of exquisite photographs of the famous historic monuments of India.

I look forward to my next visit to the Library of Congress to continue my voyage of discovely and also examine the treasures in the Manuscripts Division.

0 About the Author: Pran Nevile is a former diplomat and author who specialized in the study of social and cutural scene in India especially during the British period.

Jorge Luis Borges was not only a poet, essayist and author of short fictions; he was also a librarian. Before assuming the directorship of Argentina's National Library after the fall of the Peron regime, he toiled as an underpaid municipal library assistant. He understood well the terrible vertigo and uncertainty that may be experienced in the modern research library. In a short story called "The Library of Babel," the most recent English translation of which appears in Collected Fictions, Borges imagines the universal library taken to its fanciful philosophical extreme: an infinite labyrinth of reading rooms stocked with books containing (or so its librarians alternately hope and fear) all possible combinations of the alphabet and its attendant punctuation. Such a collection, one can calculate from Borges' specifications, would total101834097 volumes and fill a building larger than the universe itself. The librarians of this universe of books are wandering, speculative mendicants. They search out variously the secret of life, the name of God, or the library's catalog. Some of them believe that all three are in fact the same.

As libraries expand their uses of digital technology beyond their now-ubiquitous on-line catalogs (such as Harvard's HOLLiS, whose record for Collected Fictions is shown here), notions like "library" and "book" risk becoming handy, albeit quaint, metaphors. Internet start-up netLibrary, for instance, offers a collection of web-based "eBooks" that patrons may access and "borrow." And yet a yearning for books persists. That "information scientists" call their databases digital "objects" betrays a nostalgia for the heft and smell and texture of glue and paper and ink-even as books themselves are daily transubstantiated into shimmering, parchment-colored arrays of pixels and light. Digital objects do have material foundations, however, and these have proven far less durable than the moldering codices of old. The compact discs and magnetic tape upon which computers store information "decay" at an astonishing rate. Meanwhile, the software we use to encode and access information quickly grows obsolete. "Science historians can read Galileo's technical correspondence from the 1590s, but not Marvin Minsky's from the 1960s," counterculture entrepreneur and futurist Stewart Brand observed in The Clock of the Long Now (BD638.B728 1999).

Brand and others have proposed a library that would seek to preserve our texts by continually reformatting them as our technology evolves. The goal: a universal digital collection with a shelflife of lO,OOOyears. But will not future historians be as concerned to preserve the "trail of bodies of extinct computers, extinct storage media, extinct applications, extinct files" that Brand sees strewn in the wake of each new technology? Will they not search for beauty and truth in the code our programmers mean to make invisible? Will they not regard our electronic catalogs through the soft focus of nostalgia and turn words like "database" and "digital" into metaphors? Almost certainly they will. The digital objects of today are the incunabula of a not-too-distant tomorrow; we bury in them the future's handy truisms about ourselves.

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Who knows what the world's archives may contain? Who knows what may be lost in the books and artifacts our overflowing libraries necessarily discard? Where among the 43 books published in Nepal in 1980, or the 31,602 published in China in 1983, or the lost tablets of Assurbanipal's library at Nineveh, or all the scrolls burned when Caesar flamed his ships at Alexandria, might we have sought the formula for the philosophers' stone? To which of Madagascar's five daily newspapers should we look? Did the name of God get carted off to the bookbinders in a ripped manuscript stolen from Salisbury Cathedral during the troubled reign of Hemy VIII? Or incinerated in an Ottoman manuscript when the Serbs shelled the Bosnian National Library in 1992? The shelves of the universal library groan with the weight of not only the sublime but also the ridiculous, the indecent, the virtuous, the fallacious, the pathetic, the trivial, the nonsensical-an infinity of attributes bound in buckram and vellum-and even the resources of ignorance may carry the trace of accidental truths. Here the written word takes on a life of its own in the jumble of incipits, explicits and colophons; of pages recto and verso; of manuscript in hands uncial and Beneventan and Merovingian compressed; in palimpsests and lacunae; in sewn signatures from folio to octavo to sexagesimo-quarto; in chain lines and watermarks, in papyri and CD-ROMs; in the Pandectarum and the Index Librorum Prohibitorum; in subject, author and title cards; and in the digitally encoded subfields of the on-line catalog.

In 1899, the year Borges was born, the typical research library contained a hundred times fewer books than it does today.

Harvard's libraries, the oldest in North America, will make room for nearly 300,000 new books this year. The Library of Congress, the largest collection in the world, contains more than 100 million items and adds 7,000 more to its 850 kilometers of shelves everyday. If our libraries still relied on card catalogs, the scope and extent of the conglomerated cards would cause Nicholson Baker unimaginable ecstasy and Edmund Lester Pearson unimaginable pain. The Library of Congress would need almost 2,500 "cabinets of drawers," which, if stacked one atop the other, would soar to an altitude of over 12,000 feet. Whether our texts endure or not, they will almost certainly continue to increase in number. Laser printers and Xerox machines have unleashed a plague of junk mail, newsletters and zines. Although publishers report diminishing sales, more periodicals and books are published every year. Each day thousands of sites are added to the more than 800 mi'llion pages now on the web. According to a recent study, even our fastest search engines index less than one-fifth of this expanding universe; cabinets of cards would fare far worse. As our world comes increasingly to resemble the Library of Babel, the possibility of any single library being universal grows exponentially more remote, a comprehensive catalog exponentially less conceivable.

In the words of Borges: "The impious maintain that nonsense is normal in the Library and that the reasonable (and even humble and pure coherence) is an almost miraculous exception."

D

The End

pglio? continued Fom

page 5

examined unless the patient dies.

At any rate, in a population free of wild poliovirus, the risk that even a few people will get paralytic polio because of a vaccine is too high. This past January I, the United States officially switched to a new, more potent version of Salk's original injected vaccine. The move will prevent fUlther cases of VAPP, because, unlike the oral vaccine, the dead Salk virus cannot revert to a disease-causing form. But the switch will also spell an end to the many benefits of the oral vaccine. For example, as I mentioned earlier, coming into contact with someone who has recently received the oral vaccine creates some immunity to polio-and that benefit holds for everyone except a few immunocompromised people, even if the virus has mutated and become neurovirulent. And because vaccination coverage can never be absolute, losing the benefits of community immunity poses a risk-particularly during what is, in Racaniello's words, a "fragile time" in the eradication campaign.

For example, someone from a developing country who was infected with polio could come to the Untied States. The chances are small that such a person would have direct contact with an unimmunized person. But remember, the injected vaccine pennits poliovirus to grow in the gut, even though the recipient of the vaccine is personally protected. Hence one foreign visitor could initiate an ever-widening network of infection in the intestines of immunized people, a "silent" spread in which no one exhibited the symptoms of polio or even realized that exposure had taken place.

It would then be possible for polio to reach the rare unimmunized person. The risk is small, but more than theoretical. Racaniello thinks it would have been wiser to have switched to the injected vaccine only after polio had been eradicated worldwide.

the National Immunization Program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia. "We're entering a world where polio may be one of thousands of perceived threats. You can't vaccinate against paranoia."

But others, including Konstantin M. Chumakov, a virologist at the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, say it would be ilTesponsible to stop vaccinating. "We are creating with our own hands an entire population of susceptibles," Chumakov says. Chumakov is well acquainted with the polio of old: his father, the famous Russian virologist Mikhail P. Chumakov, a friend of Sabin's, introduced the Sabin oral vaccine to the Soviet Union and stopped an epidemic in the Baltic states. Today the younger Chumakov endorses the inclusion of the polio vaccine in the diphtheria-tetanuspeltussis shot that children already receive. His critics point out that sophisticated manufacturing methods in industrialized countries allow for such an addition but that it might not be available to children in the other paIts of the world. "What is this," Chumakov asks in response. "Equal. misery for all?"

W

hat worries Chumakov and other polio virologists about ending immunization is the difficulty of ensuring that poliovirus has vanished from nature and that laboratoryheld stocks have been safely contained. There are many ways in which the virus could linger unobtrusively.

Civil unrest, for instance-in Afghanistan, Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)-is the biggest problem still facing the eradication campaign. "Can you vaccinate every final outpost?" asks the virologist Bert L. Semler of the University of California, Irvine. In other words, if the vaccine does not get to every mountain village in Nuristan, Afghanistan, to every child in the lturi Forest, DRC, how can officials be cerhe eradication campaign has come undet sniper fire from polio virologists, all of whom applaud its goals but many tain that eradication has been achieved?

Furthermore, whereas WHO plans to lock research stocks of whom question the wisdom of carrying it out as it has known to include poliovirus in specially designated high-conbeen designed. Part of the problem may be the false analogy with smallpox. "How Smallpox Showed the Way," declares tainment facilities, some virologists argue that other polio samthe title of an article by the public-health expert Donald A. ples could easily be overlooked. For one thing, freezer samples of stool and cerebrospinal fluid could carry live poliovirus withHenderson of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. out anyone's knowing it. Once immunization has ceased, the disBut what way is that? The three-step program for smallpoxeradication, containment and destruction-has not worked, and posal of such a sample could cause an outbreak of polio.

In addition, some samples once known to carry polio may the prospects for vanquishing polio are more doubtful still. have been shoved to the back of someone's laboratory freezer Wiping polio out of nature will not be easy. Deciding when and how to end vaccination will be even more difficult. And ensurand forgotten. In 1996 the physicist and immunologist Alan P. Zelicoff of Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New ing that the earth is truly free of polio, so that destruction makes Mexico, asked investigators at several laboratories whether they sense, will be all but impossible. were storing any plague or anthrax bacteria. They all said no.

As the campaign is planned now, vaccination against polio will cease worldwide sometime after WHO declares the world to Then Zelicoff did a search. Sample after sample of both plague be free of the virus. And why not? Supporters of the plan are and anthrax emerged from the refrigerators. The scientists themselves were dumbfounded. Polio, which Chumakov calls "the adamant: Who needs an extra shot-or four or five-once poliovirus has been driven from the earth? Why not save the crown jewel of molecular biology," has been studied more than money for, say, the eradication of measles, which still takes the any other virus; the number of samples that have been stowed lives of more than a million children each year? "Do you want away could be immense.

Another drawback to ending vaccinations is the danger posed the world to spend a billion-and-a-half dollars a year to vaccinate against something that does not exist?" asks Stephen L. Cochi of by poliovirus that may live on in human hosts. Certain immuno-

T

Iron lungs, Los Angeles County Hospital, c. 1952.

compromised people who are infected with either wild poliovirus or the mutated, neurovirulent virus from the oral vaccine may continue to excrete it for years, instead of the usual six to eight weeks. Throughout that period such people remain potentially infectious to those around them. One patient, whom Racaniello calls the Typhoid Mary of polio, excreted poliovirus for nearly 10 years before he died. And polio, unlike the smallpox virus, can survive for months in sewage. According to Racaniello, a recent Israeli study recovered live poliovirus that, on the basis of genetic analyses of the degree of mutational drift, had been circulating in sewers for months. Yet current polio surveillance programs generally monitor only cases of paralysis, and WHO has no plans to begin monitoring water systems.

Even if poliovirus itself disappeared tomorrow, the threat of poliomyelitis could remain. A recent paper by Eckard Wimmer, a prominent poliovirus investigator at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and by the Russian virologist Alexander E. Gorbalenya of the Advanced Biomedical Computing Center in Frederick, Maryland, made a startling suggestion: in the absence of circulating poliovirus antibodies, other enteroviruses might evolve the ability to affix to the poliovirus receptor. Recall that some enteroviruses that are closely related to polio are also highly mutable. ''It may take one or a thousand years," says Wimmer.

But it is a risk that he is not willing to discount.

Worrisome, too, is the manufacture of vaccine once polio has been eradicated. No one is optimistic enough-or foolhardy enough-to suggest that maintaining emergency stockpiles of fresh vaccine will be unnecessary. But which vaccine? And how can vaccine workers themselves be protected, yet prevented from becoming dangerous poliovirus carriers? If vaccine work-

ers were protected with the oral vaccine, they could bring mutated, neurovirulent virus into an unprotected community. Ifworkers were protected with the injected vaccine but were making the oral vaccine, they could still shed mutated oral virus; if they were making the injected vaccine, they could shed wild poliovirus that they had acquired before the virus was killed in the manufacturing process. And how could large quantities of vaccine be manufactured under the stringent biosafety conditions-biohazard containment levels of three or three-and-a-half out of four-that would be required after eradication?

A

nd, finally, there is another problem that the eradication campaign must confront, perhaps the most serious problem of all: Could poliovirus serve as a biological weapon? Polio is a relatively small and simple virus. It is made up of about 7,500 nucleotides (smallpox, by contrast, is a DNA virus made up of 186,000 pairs of nucleotides). The nucleotide sequence for poliovirus has been publicly available since 1981. With today's technology, making infectious poliovirus would require nothing more than "a graduate student, a synthesizer and three months' time," Chumakov says. In 20 years, or 50, who knows? A high school student with a grudge might be able to do it.

What kind of biological weapon would polio make?

Smallpox, anthrax, plague and tularemia are the usual suspects when one thinks of biological weapons. No one mentions polio, and for good reason: there is not much point in launching a weapon that is not going to hurt anyone. But in five or ten years, if vaccinations have ceased, people will be living in a different, susceptible world.

Polio-Free India

A

few years"!ago a man named Richard Franco, then the !!Rotary International spokesman, appeared everywhere there was a journalist, pushing the stOly about polio eradication in India. Thatwasin 1996. NoW; four years later, the tenacity of Franco and his ilk has paid off. Most of India is on the verge of being polio-free. After a series of)'-Jational Immunization Days Q"JIDs), which are coordinated efforts byNGOs, donors and government agencie~, India has moved much doserto polio-free certification.

Besides Rotary Jutemational, which has funneled millions of dollars into the drive against polio in India, significant contributions are being made by two United States' agencies, USAID and the Center for Disease Control (ODe). The CDC works under the auspice搂 Of the World Health Organization (WHO).

According to qSAID Director for Population, Health and Nutrition, Victor Barbiero, the ~ency channels about $4 million a year into polio eradication and surveillance projects in India. The results of the combined effort are, he says, "Fabulous. Any program that can immunize 130 million kids in a oneweek period is C!. tremendous public health accomplishment. It is imJ20rtant this continues, because India is the largest reservoir of the 'polio virus remaining in the world."

John Andrus, regional adviser with the WHO, secunded to WHO by the CDC, is

winding up seven years of work on India's polio eradi.cation program. The CDe is one of the largest donors, giving about $10 million a year in addition to the technical expertise of people Iike Andrus.

Money is used to provide vaccine, storage facilities, computers and training of local health workers. Andrus gives a lot of credit for success of the program, which had no government commitment initially, to strong pattnerships. Groups like Wl;IO, UNICEF, the TaskForce for Child Survival, Rotary and the CDC were able to work together to galvanize commitment. They set up a Regional Technical Consultative Group. Andrus explains that it consists of "international experts on polio who review the progress in the presence oftbe partners and donors, and have very frank and open discussions about wbere we are and what we need to do: what are the gaps in resources, what' are the gaps in our management, or in our technical strategy? Today we have unprecedented commitment." He points out that President Clinton made a special stop to give polio immunization drops when he came to India.

But both Barbiero and Andrus say that while there is good news, there is also much room for improvement. "We have tWo Tndias," says Andrus. "We have the fudia! of the Soutb where progress has been. extraordinary. From 1988 to 1989 there was an 83 percent reduction in polio cases. However, in four bighrisk states of the NOlth-Delhi, Uttar

Experts differ on the viability of polio as a biological weapon.

"I would say that it is not an efficient weapon," says the medical epidemiologist Harry F. Hull of WHO. Racaniello does not agree: the rapid infectivity and silent spread of poliovirus, he thinks, could make it a serious threat in the future. Poliovius would be easy to release into a public water supply. In a city such as New York, even if only one out of a hundred people developed paralytic polio, the consequences are appalling to contemplate.

The virologist Olen M. Knew of the CDC, one of the principal forces behind the eradication campaign, acknowledges that the potential for terrorism exists. But such a weapon would be so

Pradesh, Bihar and WestBengal-reduction was only II percent. This yeat路, in a state like Bibar, if we look at the number of cases due to wild polio virus, the nrst four montbs this year compared to the first four months last year, there is actually a fivefold increase. That's disappointing." He recounts a recent meeting he attended in Patna where tbe additional commissioner surprised him by announcing at the beginning of the meeting that.it was informal. This was news to Andrus, senior WHO executive路 responsible for channeling millions of dollars to Bihar for polio eradication activities. It typifies the problem in Bihar, he says: "We have no accounts of what is happening with the financing.

We have no expenditure statements." He says partners in the eradication effort are thinking about alternative anangemeofs for places like Bihar. "We have to think of creative ways of financing this operation in Bihar because the money is not reaching the point o( service." It is not just the vaccine and the "cold chain" for safe vaccine storage that costs money, so does petrol and other Tequirements for delivery. He suggests tbat it might take a major, hands-on drive like the one Rotary Intemational mounted.in 199拢 to insure children in hard-to-reach areas are immunized. Rotary International has been a key force in the polio eradication effort. Over 100,000 Rotarians, their fatnilies and friends joined the Indian Government in immunizing mi Ilions of

horrendous, he asserts, that no one would dare use it. "Polio wouldn't make a very good terror weapon," he says. "You wouldn't want six-and-a-half-billion people mad at you."

A

lthough they disagree about the wisdom of stopping vaccinations, most polio virologists concede that it will happen eventually-mostly for pragmatic and financial reasons. Yet few expect polio to go down quietly. Both Semler and the virologist James M. Hogle of Harvard Medical School predict that even after eradication appears to be complete, the disease may flare up again. What then? The injected

Preiiident ~,Bill Clinton administers polio vaccine at Mahavit Hospital in Hyderabad during his visit to"lndia in March

children;jn L99S.'Despite isolate ..'k; mu~ hecome a routine. Eradication is ets, the'polioa:adicationoutlookillLlndia :not'routilIt~: it is exceptional." is generally very positive.

J01m Andrus ~grees drat the polio .sucHow do We sustain tl1e]JOlio~cc€sScesse~'must'!he used as a model for prees and transfer t~em, into programs to v:ention '~f other diseases. It should not control other!ili§eases?,IJ;Jat is a ql'lestion Mendd!Uj)Jike ..Lthe smallpox eradication being asked bii)1iblfc-health WorKers drive, 'Which did nothing to create sus'" now, a1}.d parus;ulaJ;,focus ofLJSAID!1!tliiUable~;'pfograms. "It was a military and uNrCBF.Victo.riIBarbierQ wan~fu : "Qperation,'~'says Barbiero. "'We, want to see the cUrfeni:B~tem,oecQ:tP.ealrouti~~,!lrconti~ue!the system, use it for developBut the public-health, organizatltat is expanded. t;;iJ:leJude:'disea~~s liKe", measles' anll tetanu§. "By ..tll~Lijme . he must be Ieady to cope, Andrus leaves India-in twpityears~t;h~~ays, '"Jj1(:I" When surveillance is stepped up, like to see polio Elradicated: cases are reported, and the infraWe. are very close"!to·ceroficat10n. ...structureshould De there to deal with it.

Specifically, ;I'd'like 10 ,i~a s~iOific~ntc >'Ri~ht" now India is at a stage where reductjpn ofviruseij if),Lrttm;Pradeijh: a dm~asles! laboratory diagnosis can be L~ate where"ULSAl~~:lsparn.~~arlYlW:?~:. sti~n~~ened:. ~'In, that setting we caIt" mg, and ,make an oper~onaltrans~jf~}I,.deter.tnme thlS lS an outbreak of measles. from polio eradicaticmt()su~tained maiIl~~; 1t's tl0t:Rubella,it's not dengue~ it'.s not tenance of immJuJization pr,.egrams~ some other hemorrhagic fever, it's increasing coveragefronr21 percent .,measles.I:hat will allow a. furge!ed So percent. }'d likemeasle~.:~over~e a'2tion:.va6c.ination, looking at the coverraised to 60 . perce:n~' and te4;(,sl£ tQ''90:& 'Fage,itheifoWines~rvice~ Why did this outpercent.,usrng,a system built UpOJ1 what!£' break' WtBpe:n?;'ke children being treat" we have don; in eradioatingHp61:j.o. ed? Are:mthey being given vitatninA dur. " = ...

Zero

vaccine is not suitable for stopping such epidemics, because it allows wild virus to spread silently. But the oral vaccine is problematic, too, because people who receive it excrete neurovirulent virus into the environment. In today's world, in which almost everyone is vaccinated, the impact is minimal. But once vaccinations have ceased, that reversion to neurovirulence could prove much more dangerous.

There may be an alternative. The potential problems with the existing polio vaccines suggest that it makes sense to seek new vaccines-though five or six years ago, heady with the early successes of the eradication campaign, WHO discouraged such work.

ing theidllness? Those are the't;biJ:lgsthat will come Qutduri11gthat;;phase. ThenFas tpe system matures, you can 100kat every case because your overall capacity is.. tltere to respond. It's one thibg tQ col1eGi~inform,atiop, but it's_another tlti1}gtOLjuse the.information for. action." This also goes along with the GDGlUSArDKPhilosophyof trainingpeoplei:t\ the fielqi' giving them teclmicaI know-how and tools. to d\) their job~. By doing that, ;;Andfns , says~ "We i;lre giving them' the·anrhorit:y to analyze the data! arid;;use1J1e data fOf !% ~ction. We are'giving them the.aUthQ:Tity tb rneet\~~tlt. communitY leaders, >hospital directors and gettinginvol~ed' witIi"the commu~ty resp~onse;;to illness. 't/l~!afe!M giving them. the capacity to create what, I tlrlnkis a culture of prevention which has far-reaching implicfl.tion~tt" He adds~ tlrlnk this is the mQst iIDB0rtantpoint Will. come' away wjth ,.from"hJ,dia" you invest in people, tltat.is the. !;post ~ffective investment.·"i?

Signifi_cantPtogresshas beel1rnade in India, but a substantial number o£:polio;; cases still go unreportefi. Effective and reliable s1:u;yeillatlCi:l.iscrit~l, Though; polio may be eradicatedwitltirf the n.ext two years, it .will take at 1east.:"Mother three years ofsurveJllance for ~rtification; The year 2005 is the~iWHOfat;g~t daib Jor the complete elimig.atiori" polio woddwlde.PoliticaJ advocacy needs to'incre~e to sllstain thePthi~~ ~ the finish line. Prohlem areas like" Bihar asidEl, AndrUs remains optimistic~ "Certainly th~ experience in tlte .lest of lndi~i1sllowsthat'wb:en these sfrat~'gies are done well, it is absohrtcly amaZllig.,I think right now it's the mostr,cxciling ;r ;;; place in the 'World to wo:i:k.!'

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This past January, however, WHO sponsored a meeting in Geneva to discuss how to control outbreaks of polio in the post-vaccination era. Among the topics covered was the potential usefulness of alternative vaccines. Coming so close to the agency's own deadline for eradication, such willingness to explore new vaccines suggests a new pragmatism, and perhaps a certain failure of nerv:e.

One of the most promising new vaccines is being developed

by Philip Minor and two associates, Andrew J. Macadam, a colleague of Minor's at NIBSC, and Jeffrey W. Almond, of the University of Reading in England. Their vaccine shows no propensity to mutate back to neurovirulence. Minor's team

This photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt shows the impact of the polio epidemic on a family in Hickory, North Carolina, in the 1950s .

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began with a weakened viral strain of the oral vaccine, then replaced several nucleotides in the 5' noncoding region with other nucleotides. The result is a sequence that has the same number of hydrogen bonds as its counterpart in the Sabin virus, but that is crippled in a way that prevents dangerous mutations.

Test-tube and animal tests have demonstrated the vaccine's probable safety, though to prove that it would be safer than the Sabin vaccine's track record of one case of paralytic disease for every 2.4 million vaccines administered, Minor and his associates would have to test it on six million children. In a Europe that is virtually free of polio, that is not going to happen.

If vaccination is halted after eradication, the nations of the world stand to save a great deal of money and human effort, which can then be directed toward other public-health issuesmeasles, tuberculosis and malaria, among others. But Kew, who has dedicated years of his life to the eradication campaign, points

out that its real achievement is the saving of human lives. There are, after all, 550,000 children each year who are spared crippling disease because of the worldwide effort to vaccinate against polio. That in itself is an incalculable savings, and an incalculable good. Kew recognizes the problems with halting immunization, and is not so naive as to believe that eradication automatically means an end to the financial burden of making, distributing and administering vaccines.

For his part, Chumakov says, "Don't expect that the fact that we eradicated polio means we can forget about it. Polio will always be with us. It will always be an issue."

D About the Author: Wendy Orent is a writer based in Atlanta, Georgia, who has contributed articles on biological wmfare, communicable diseases and related topics which appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Sciences, The American Prospect and Discover.

The First

Empire Builder

continued ji-om page J 4

spent, the Saint Paul and Pacific's purchasers could have a railroad and land wOl1h some $19 million. He recruited the help of Kittson and two Scottish Canadians with far deeper pockets: the chief commissioner of the Hudson's Bay Company and the president of the Bank of Montreal.

Together, they made sure the propel1y looked shabby for the Dutch investors who now controlled it; undersold the railroad's potential; and-with the aid of the foreign investors' own adviser, New York financier John S. Kennedy-were able to purchase it for a song. Even before the papers were signed in 1878, Kennedy became the fifth pal1ner in Hill's investment group-with no apparent concern over the conflict of interest.

Hill was the junior member of this bunch, but it was clear from the start he had the most knowledge of railroads, and the greatest vision for the renamed Saint Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba Railroad. Within one year, he had completed construction north to the Canadian border; within four, he was named president of the railroad.

Where Jay Cooke's agents had sung the praises of the "Mediterranean of the orthwest," Hill's men in Europe declared the area around his railroad the ''Nile of the North."

Starting in the 1880s, they helped Hill sell land to tens of thousands of emigrants-mostly Swedes and Norwegians. The newcomers were promised cheap passage to the West if they agreed to settle and farm the land along the Manitoba line-thus becoming dependent on Hill and his associates to transport their produce by rail. By 1889, Hill had bui It a branch to the Great Lakes and had extended westward into Montana.

Over the years, Henry Villard, who had taken control of the bankrupt orthern Pacific in 1881, and extended it westward, often asked Hill ifhe would sell the Manitoba-but Hill wasn't interested. He saw the mistakes Villard had made with his roadgrades too high, curves too deep-and he determined to make a more efficient line to the Pacific.

Hill toiled nearly round the clock. "1 often worked in my office until one in the morning," he once recalled. "One night my wife said she would go to the office with me and bring me home at half past ten. It was a summer night and I gave her a book and a chair by the window, where she presently fell asleep." At 2 a.m., he woke her and esc0l1ed her home.

A stickler for detail, Hill often visited the men on the line to make sure they were doing their work properly. Farmers had gotten used to seeing the Sh0l1, bearded man studying their fields himself in search of the lowest, most even tracks of land. Where such stretches weren't available, Hill would have his workers move tons of earth to create them. Leveling the landscape to make for lower grades, he knew, was an expensive investment, but one that would enable him to carry more tonnage more quickly and efficiently.

It was Jim Hill's dream to create a network of railroads from the Great Lakes to the Pacific Coast, bringing the products of the industrial N0l1heast to new markets in the n0l1hern plains and

0l1hwest, and bringing the riches of that region-grain, cattle, minerals and lumber-back to the rest of the country. And behind that dream lay the presumption that his railroad would ultimately rule transp0l1ation in the region, unencumbered by competition.

When a group from Minneapolis began building a parallel road westward from the Twin Cities, Hill became incensed. He encouraged his workers to thwart the progress of the new linesoon brawls began among by whatever means necessary-and the workers of the two roads.

When the owner of the two copper mining firms in Butte, Montana, needed a site along a railroad for a water-rich smelter, the options were nearby Helena, on the Northern Pacific, or the more distant Great Falls, on Hill's Manitoba line. Hill made the choice an easy one by slipping the businessman 1,500 shares of his Great Falls Townsite Company.

Often accused of bribing legislators as well as businessmen, and certainly "guilty" of using his power and influence in the halls of government, Hill could not abide it when others did the same. In 1886, President Grover Cleveland vetoed a bill to give Hill a right-of-way through a reservation in Montana, apparently under pressure from allies of the Northern Pacific. To one of the NP's allies, Hill allegedly vowed to "nail everyone of your crooks to the doors of the Capitol by their [expletive] ears" if they ever dared to intervene again. (Ultimately, he got his right-of-way.)

In facing what was perhaps his biggest hurdle-the Rocky Mountains-Hill hoped to find a more direct route west, and an easier pass over the Continental Divide, than that taken by the N0l1hern Pacific. In 1889, Hill's chief engineer found the perfect route in Marias Pass, the lowest crossing of the 011hern Rockies, along the southern border of what is now Glacier National Park.

By 1893, Hill had brought his line into Seattle, making the railroad-hungry p0l1 city the Empire Builder's terminus on Puget Sound-and the Pacific Coast. To best the Northern Pacific once more, he had promised Seattle a beautiful train station, but it would be 13 years before he made good on his word. For the time being, he offered only this bit of wisdom: "He is a wise farmer who develops his farm before he builds a palace on it."

In the meantime, Hill-now 55, with a stately paunch, bushy gray beard and his signature western-style homburg hat-had --~~~-built his own palace. He and Mary, his wife of26 years, had recently moved into a magnificent 3,350-squaremeter red sandstone mansion overlooking the Mississippi, replete with a grand foyer, 13 bathrooms with modern plumbing, and a sky-lit art gallery (with pipe organ) for Hill's growing art collection. Hill had purchased homes in New York and Paris, contributed heavily to political campaigns, and even bought into the famous retreat of America's richest families: Jekyl Island, off the Georgia coast.

He had become one of the wealthiest, most powerful men in

America, a member of a new elite of financiers and captains of industry. His roads would prove instrumental in the economic development of the Northwest-filling his coffers and those of his fellows through trade in lumber, copper and iron ore, and other commodities transported by rail.

More than any other industry in the era following the Civil War, the railroads stimulated the u.s. economy, and in the process, utterly reshaped it. Americans had access to material goods that before had been beyond their means, if not their imaginations. But at the same time, American businesses and industries had become unimaginably large.

Monopolistic business owners engaged in predatory pricing to keep competitors from getting a foothold, then raised rates to whatever the very-narrow market would bear. Without competition, they were also free to underpay and overwork labor, since workers often had few other options. Because the rail-

This cartoon from Puck, May 11, 1887, shows the railway monopolist in the grip of the long arm of the law.

roads profited most from heavy tonnage, their owners bent over backward to secure the business of large shippers, offering low rates and rebates-and assurances (so central to the big antitrust dispute of our day) that they would carry no competing products. Long hauls were often cheaper than short ones, or shipments in one direction cheaper than the return trip. Farmers, laborers and small businessmen felt suddenly powerless in the face of big business. Particularly in the newly settled West, many Americans were grappling withand coming to sorely resent-what a century of industrialization had wrought.

It was in this context that the U.s. Congress passed the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 and the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. The first came in response to a controversial court ruling that found that states had no jurisdiction over interstate trade,

made ubiquitous by the growth of the increasingly unpopular railroads. The second, sponsored by Ohio Senator John Sherman, was also intended, in part, to quell public unrest over big business. Congress needed to do something to pacify the angry masses, Sherman argued, lest the country be vulnerable to "the socialist, the communist, the nihilist."

John Sherman-the younger brother of William Tecumseh not antibusiness. and former Secretary of the Treasury-was He favored an open market in which businesses competed fairly for consumers. But the new industry giants, he argued, "are not satisfied with ...competing with each other, and have invented a new form of combination ...that seeks to avoid competition ...."

The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 passed nearly unanimously through Congress. It declared "every contract, combination in the form of a trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several states, or with foreign nations" to be illegal. Likewise, any "attempt to monopolize" a part of that trade or commerce. But Sherman Act or no Sherman Act, in the coming decade, the railroads and other big businesses advanced pretty much unchecked-at least those that survived a devastating depression in 1893.

Hill's railroad-redubbed the Great Northern Railway-was the only transcontinental to survive the depression. Not only did his road reach Seattle that year, but by drastically cutting costs-laying off more than a thousand workers and slashing the pay of those who remained-Hill's company continued to provide its investors with solid dividends.

For the workers who had relocated to the West, and had no other means of employment in the region, however, the depression of 1893 was disastrous. Of the hate mail Hill received from bitter railroad men, at least one letter quite literally hit home: "It would' be a fitting climax if you should be taken by your employees and hung by the neck till dead, from one of the triumphal arches so recently erected at the expense of the very people you are now defrauding of their hard earnings." The letter was sent in care of Hill's wife.

That painful year saw the birth of the largest union of railway workers yet organized, the American Railway Union (ARU). In spring of 1894, when workers heard that Hill was sending agents to Helena, Montana, to fire any ARU members there, the union launched its first strike-against Hill's railroad. Federal mar- . shals were too busy with other populist uprisings to lend Hill a hand. But later that year they were only too eager to break the ARU's famous Pullman Strike-as a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Ironically, the Sherman Act was often employed during the l890s not against corporate giants but as a means of union-busting. Strikes, after all, could easily be construed as "restraint of trade." In point offact, the courts ofthe 1890s consistently made their disdain of antitrust law quite clear-and business responded in kind. Between 1896 and 1900, at least 60 industrial combinations were formed whose capital exceeded $10 million-53 of them in the last two years of the century.

Hill rushed to join the merger mania. To the south of Hill's line lay the competing NOlthern Pacific, a nearly parallel road that had been one of the fatal victims of the 1893 depression. Though blocked from an official merger (by a Minnesota law and a populist state attorney genera!), Hill recruited the help of J. Pierpont Morgan to reorganize the bankrupt railroad and develop a cooperative agreement between it and the Great Northern. The two would "form a pelmanent alliance, defensive, and in case of need offensive, with a view of avoiding competition ...." In 1896, the otthern Pacific, for all practical purposes, became part of the Great Northern empire.

The next step for Hill was acquiring a link to Chicago-in the form of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad. But Hill was not the only railroad man who wanted that line-nor was he the only one to have profited from the 1893 depression. By 1901, Edward H. Harriman-Hill's match in intensity and determination-had also managed to amass an enormous Western railroad network, and he, too, wanted the Burlington. again by J.P. Morgan, and favored by the Hill-backed Burlington's owner-emerged with control of the railroad. But Harriman was not one to give up a fight. If he couldn't have the Burlington, he would have control of the larger feather in Hill's cap: the Northern Pacific. The Hill-Morgan syndicate was easily the largest shareholder of NP stock, but it still owned less than half. With the help of William Rockefeller (John D. 's brother) and banker Jacob Schiff, Harriman began secretly buying up shares ofNP stock.

HiU was out West when he noticed a sharp and sudden rise in the price of Northern Pacific stock. Legend has it he had the tracks cleared, and made haste in his private railroad car for New York City to confront Schiff and his colleagues. He then charged into the House of Morgan to let them know they'd been caught sleeping on the job-only to find that Morgan was, in fact, resting in the Alpine resort of Aix-les-

Bains. By wire, Morgan gave his associates the go-ahead to start buying up $15 million of NP stock for Hill.

When the market opened on Monday, the price of NP stock stood at $114 a share. By Thursday, it had soared to $1,000.

Firms that had sold shOtt went under. Other stocks plummeted.

Money dried up-and panic set in. The New York Times called Hill and Harriman "cowboys on a spree ... shooting wildly at each other in entire disregard of the safety of the bystanders."

(Asked for his comment, Hill quipped: "I have no statement to make. I have been too busy today buying locomotives.")

To stop the turmoil, the Hill-Morgan and HalTiman-Schiff contingents hammered out a truce. They created a "holding company"-the NOtthern Securities Company-which would oversee the management and finances of all of Hill's concerns: primarily the Great Northern, the NOtthern Pacific, and the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy. For all the bother, Harriman hadn't managed to gain control of the Northern Pacific; nonetheless, he was given a seat on the board and stock in the new company. Hill and Morgan, of course, retained controlling interest.

Rather than waste energy in needless competition, and risk such disturbances of the market as they'd just experienced, Hill and his associates argued, the formation of their holding company was a stabilizing influence, and made the management of the roads far more efficient.

It also put the railroads of a region into the hands of a very few men.

Hill, it seemed, had not only survived the worst attack of his career-but thrived. He now controlled the largest transportation conglomerate in the country, perhaps in the world: stretchhe'd ing from the Great Lakes to Seattle, and onward-as always dreamed-via' steamship to the Orient. But his troubles were not over.

On September 14, 1901, President McKinley died from an assassin's bullet. His Vice President, Theodore Roosevelt, would now take his place. Hill's old colleague John S. Kennedy assured

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him that though Roosevelt was young (just shy of his 43rd birthday), "I have every confidence that he will conduct the affairs of the country wisely and well." He is "thoroughly honest," Kennedy added, and has "the courage of his convictions." But what Kennedy did not understand was that among the new President's convictions was the notion that business should not become so big that its leaders need not answer to the people.

"There had been in our country," Roosevelt would later write of this period, "a riot of individualistic materialism, under which complete freedom for the individual...turned out in practice to mean perfect freedom for the strong to wrong the weak. The total absence of governmental control had led to a portentous"-and dangerous-"growth in the financial and industrial world."

On February 20, 1902, Roosevelt's Attorney General, Philander C. Knox, announced that the government intended to break up the Northern Securities Company.

J.P. Morgan rushed to Washington to meet with the President. "If we have done anything wrong," he implored, "send your man to my man and they can fix it up." Roosevelt coldly explained that he had no interest in fixing anything up. "I have ordered taken down the fences of a very great and very arrogant corporation," Roosevelt would later declare. In the meantime, he assured Morgan that he had no designs on the financier's other interests, "unless we find out that. ..they have done something that we regard as wrong."

Morgan was, in fact, most concerned with those "other" interests and might have been willing to sacrifice Northern Securities to pacify Roosevelt. He was pal1icularly worried about the fate of his recent, carefully orchestrated creation of U.S. Steel, the largest corporation ever known. But Hill was determined to fight. "The fOt1unes of railroad companies are determined by the law of the survival of the fittest," Hill argued. Competition was wasteful and combinations "merely an incident on the road to efficient service." Surely the courts would appreciate that, even if Roosevelt refused to.

On April 9, 1903, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Saint

Paul decided unanimously against Hill. When a Minnesota court, in a parallel suit at the state level, ruled a few months later that no law had been broken, Hill found reason to be optimistic. In March 1904, he and Mary bought a unit in a building on Jekyl Island called-hopefully, or ironically-"Sans Souci" (Without Worry). But before the month was over, the U.S. Supreme COUl1 had weighed in with its decision: 5 to 4 against the Northern Securities Company.

Hill's empire was broken into its component parts-and not in the end, he still controlled the same empire. It easily-but was simply an empire that would not, at least until long after Hill's death, be united in a single corporation. Roosevelt's bravado sparked a new era in the government's relationship with big business. He initiated 41 more antitrust suits during his administration, and he pushed for tighter regulation of railroads. Within a decade, legislation was enacted that would forever strengthen the Sherman Act. Hill would do battle with Harriman again (and emerge victorious) as he continued to build his empire in the NOl1hwest. Before his death in 1916, Hill devoted much of his energy and celebrity to promoting agriculture in the plains of Montana and the Dakotasa region that, at the time, was receiving an unusual amount of rain.

Only after his death, when the plains dried up, would his effOt1s prove foolhardy, and disastrous for thousands offarmers. Suddenly his name, if not the land he had promoted, was mud. For years, schoolchildren would recite the rhyme: "Twixt Hill and Hell there's just one letter. Were Hill in Hell we'd feel much better." During his lifetime, however, Hill's only great failure-as far as he was concerned-was the breakup of Northern Securities.

"I've made my mark on the surface of the earth," Hill once declared, waving his hand across a map of the nation, "and they can't wipe it out." No truer words may be said. Hill and men like him forever changed the physical and economic landscape of America. Their conduct, meanwhile, raised questions about power and progress that we continue to struggle with today. 0 About the Author: Minna Morse is an assistant editor at Smithsonian magazine.

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Men you look at a petal closelyas though for the first time) it grows transparent: you look through it into the abyss.

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Everywhere I may go yet) you snake around my body) being; out and in) forked memory darting here-there withdrawn-vanishing as startlingly into some hidden) cavernous and liplessmaw ....

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