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SPAN 80/20 How Less Can Be More

Publisher Francis B. Ward

By Richard Koch

Defending Wildlife

Editor-in-Chief Donna J. Roginski

By Lea Terhune

Editor Lea Terhune

Frank G. Carpenter Collection Early Snapshots of India

Associate Editor Arun Bhanot

By Pran Nevile

Copy Editor A. Venkata Narayana Editorial Assistant K. Muthukumar

The Making of a Democratic Police Force

Art Director Suhas Nimbalkar

An Interview with Michael Hartmann

Deputy Art Director Hemant Bhatnagar

Schmiergeld By Skip Kaltenheuser

Production/Circulation Manager Rakesh Agrawal

Feeding the Planet ByT.R.Reid

Research Services USIS Documentation Services, American Center Library

India's Population Challenge Front cover: Wild elephants in the forest of Corbett Tiger Reserve. Photographer and naturalist Brijendra Singh has spent a lifetime documenting wildlife and supporting conservation efforts in Corbett. Singh also helped locate the domesticated patrol elephant for the reserve, funded by American donors. Story on page 6.

An Interview with Saroj Pachauri

How the Bard Won the West By Jennifer Lee Carrell

Look Who's Talking By Howard Rheingold

On the Lighter Side

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Stardust MemoriesRemembering Hoagy By Arun Bhanot

A LETTER

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mericans have always had a certain fascination for India. Thoreau speculated about it, ruminating on the Bhagavad Gita while he watched ice being cut from Walden Pond in New England, for shipment to distant places, so "that the sweltering inhabitants of Charleston and New Orleans, of Madras and Bombay and Calcutta, drink at my well." Early this century another man of letters visited India not only in mind but in body, and he brought back a photographic treasure trove. A welltraveled man, Frank G. Carpenter purchased some photos in India; others he and his daughter took them.selves. His souvenirs are a valuable legacy depicting Indian life at the turn-of-the-century. Pran Nevile discovered Carpenter's collection in the Library of Congress, where it resides. He shares his find in the photo essay "Early Snapshots of India." At the other end of the century things move at a faster pace. Population has increased astronomically in the past hundred years, and the trend will continue beyond the year 2000. In "Feeding the Planet," T.R. Reid tries to answer questions about how the planet will sustain the billions of people to be born over the next few decades. Farming techniques are important, but equally important in getting food to the people are politics, he says. To give an Indian perspective, Arun Bhanot and A. Venkata Narayana interview Saroj Pachauri, South and East Asia regional director of the World Population Council. Tigers were abundant when Frank Carpenter toured India in the Roaring '20s, but not anymore. Now wildlife protection groups are desperately trying to save tigers and other endangered species in India. "Defending Wildlife," by Lea Terhune, tells of concerned Americans who are teaming up with Indian conservationists-even donating elephants-to make sure precious species survive. Another source of concern in the world today is law enforcement. Criminal law expert and former

THE PUBLISHER

Fulbright fellow Michael Hartmann offers his views on how to build a democratic police force, while Skip Kaltenheuser, in "Schmiergeld," says the days of big bribes to government officials may be on the wane. He says it is partly due to new legislation, partly it's the "new realpolitik, in which governments recognize that ethical issues are not separate from political and business ones." When people think of AInerican society, they tend to think in terms of high technology. But there have always been conservative, traditional religious comm.unities throughout the U.S. that have led a simpler life, avoiding the complexities of the modern world. Among them have been the Amish, a traditional community famous for more than 200 years for shunning technology. Now they are engaged in serious debate about its uses, as .more community members stali using cell phones and other gadgets. Author Howard Rheingold takes the reader among the lTlOdern-day, old-fashioned AITlish,examines their history, how they cope with today's emphatically digital world and considers "vhat they can teach us about evolving guidelines for the judicious use of technological power. The 80/20 Principle may shed light on this and many other issues. In "How Less Can Be More," Richard Koch gives examples backing the theory that 20 percent of activity is responsible for 80 percent of accomplishment in any given field, be it business, divorce statistics, crim.e or the mundane fact that 20 percent of your carpets are likely to get 80 percent of the wear. Finally, Jennifer Lee Carrell's account of Shakespeare's rough and ready fans in AI11erica's Old West makes surprising reading. We hope the varied offerings in this issue entertain you during the hot days ahead.

How Less Can Be More If the 80/20 Principle shapes our world-and

he 80/20 Principle asserts that a minority of causes, inputs or effort usually lead to a majority of the results, outputs or rewards. Taken literally, this means that, for example, 80 percent of what you achieve in your job comes from 20 percent of the time spent. Thus for all practical purposes, four-fifths of the effort-a dominant part of it-is largely irrelevant. This is contrary to what people normally expect. In business, many examples of the 80120 Principle have been validated. Twenty percent of products usually account for about 80 percent of dollar sales value; so do 20 percent of customers. Twenty percent of products or customers

it does-why

don't we exploit it?

usually also account for about 80 percent of an organization's profits. In society, 20 percent of criminals account for 80 percent of all crime. Twenty percent of motorists cause 80 percent of accidents. Twenty percent of those who marry comprise 80 percent of the divorce statistics (those who consistently remarry and redivorce distort the statistics and give a lopsidedly pessimistic impression of the extent of marital fidelity). Twenty percent of children attain 80 percent of the educational qualifications available. In the home, 20 percent of your carpets are likely to get 80 percent of the wear. Twenty percent of your clothes will be worn 80 percent of the time. And if you

have an intruder alarm, 80 percent of the false alarms will be set off by 20 percent of the possible causes. The internal combustion engine is a great tribute to the 80120 Principle. Eighty percent of the energy is wasted in combustion, and only 20 percent gets to the wheels; this 20 percent of the input generates 100 percent of the output!

What Pareto Knew The pattern underlying the 80120 Principle was discovered in 1897 by Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto. His discovery has since been called many names, including the Pareto Principle, the Pareto Law, the 80120 Rule, the Principle of

Least Effort and the Principle of Imbalance; we will call it the 80/20 Principle. By a subterranean process of influence on many important achievers, especially businesspeople, computer enthusiasts and quality engineers, the 80/20 Principle has helped to shape the modem world. Yet it has remained one of the great secrets of our time-and even the select band of cognoscenti who know and use the 80/20 Principle exploit only a tiny proportion of its power. So what did Vilfredo Pareto discover? He happened to be looking at patterns of wealth and income in 19th-century England. He found that most income and wealth went to a minority of the people in his samples. Perhaps there was nothing very surprising to this. But he also discovered two other highly significant facts. One was that there was a consistent mathematical relationship between the proportion of people (as a percentage of the total relevant population) and the amount of income or wealth that this group enjoyed. To simplify, if 20 percent of the population enjoyed 80 percent of the wealth, then you could reliably predict that 10 percent

would have, say, 65 percent of the wealth, and 5 percent would have 50 percent. The key point is not the percentages but that the distribution of wealth across the population was predictably unbalanced. Pareto's other finding, one that really excited him, was that this pattern of imbalance was repeated consistently whenever he looked at data referring to different time periods or different countries. Whether he looked at England in earlier times, or whatever data was available from other countries in his own time or earlier, he found the same pattern repeating itself, over and over again, with mathematical precision. Was this a freak coincidence, or something that had great importance for economics and society? Would it work if applied to sets of data relating to things other than wealth or income? Pareto was a terrific innovator, because before him no one had looked at two related sets of datain this case, the distribution of incomes or wealth, compared to the number of income earners or property owners-and compared percentages between the two sets of data. (Nowadays this method is common-

80/20 on the Big Screen One of the most dramatic examples of the 80120 Principle at work is with movies. Two economists recently made a study of the revenues and lifespans of 300 movies released over an 18-month period. They found that four moviesjust 1.3 percent of the total-eamed 80 percent of box-office revenues; the other 296 movies, or 98.7 percent, earned only 20 percent of the gross. So movies, which are a good example of unrestricted markets at work, produce virtually an 80/1 rule, a very clear demonstration of the principle of imbalance. Even more intriguing is why. It transpires that moviegoers behave just like gas particles in random motion. As identified by chaos theory, gas particles, Ping-Pong balls or moviegoers all behave at random but produce a predictably unbalanced result. Word of mouth, from reviews and the first audiences, determines the next set and so on. Movies like Independence Day or Mission: Impossible continue to play to packed houses, while other star-studded and expensive movies, like Waterworld or Daylight, very quickly play to smaller and smaller houses, and then none at all. This is the 80120 Principle working with a vengeance. -R.K.

place and has led to major breakthroughs in business and economics.) Sadly, although Pareto realized the importance and wide range of his discovery, he was very bad at explaining it. He moved on to a series of fascinating but rambling sociological theories, centering on the role of elites, which were hijacked at the end of his life by Mussolini's fascists. The significance of the 80120 Principle lay dormant for a generation. While a few economists, especially in the United States, realized its importance, it was not until after World War II that two parallel yet completely different pioneers began to make waves with the 80120 Principle.

Zipf Explains Messy Desks One of these pioneers was Harvard philology professor George K. Zipf. In 1949 Zipf discovered the "Principle of Least Effort," which was actually a rediscovery and elaboration of Pareto's principle. Zipf's principle said that resources (people, goods, time, skills or anything else that is productive) tended to arrange themselves so as to minimize work, so that approximately 10 percent to 30 percent of any resource accounted for 70 percent to 80 percent of the activity related to that resource. Zipf used population statistics, books, philology and industrial behavior to show the consistent recurrence of this unbalanced pattern. For example, he analyzed all the Philadelphia marriage licenses granted in 1931 in a 20-block area, demonstrating that 70 percent of the marriages occurred between people who lived within 30 percent of the distance. Incidentally, Zipf also provided a scientific justification for the messy desk by justifying clutter with another law: Frequency of use draws near to us things that are frequently used. Intelligent secretaries have long known that files in frequent use should not be filed!

Juran Enlightens Japan The other pioneer of the 80120 Principle was the great quality guru, Romanian-born U.S. engineer Joseph Moses Juran, the man behind the quality revolution of 1950-90. He made what he alternately called the "Pareto Principle" and the "Rule of the

Vital Few" virtually synonymous with the search for high product quality. In 1924, Juran joined Western Electric, the manufacturing division of Bell Telephone System, starting as a corporate industrial engineer and later setting up as one of the world's first quality consultants. His great idea was to use the 80120 Principle, together with other statistical methods, to root out quality faults and improve the reliability and value of industrial and consumer goods. Juran's pathbreaking Quality Control Handbook was published in 1951 and extolled the 80120 Principle in very broad terms. No major U.S. industrialist was interested in Juran's theories. In 1953 he was invited to Japan to lecture and met a receptive audience. He stayed on to work with several Japanese corporations, transforming the value and quality of their consumer goods. It was only once the Japanese threat to U.S. industry had become apparent, after 1970, that Juran was taken seriously in the West. He moved back to do for U.S. industry what he had done for the Japanese. The 80120 Principle was at the heart of this global quality revolution. IBM was one of the earliest and most successful corporations to spot and use the 80120 Principle, which helps explain why most computer-systems specialists trained in the 1960s and 1970s are familiar with the idea. In 1963, IBM discovered that about 80 percent of a computer's time is spent executing about 20 percent of the operating code. The company immediately rewrote its operating software to make the most-used 20 percent very accessible and user-friendly, thus making IBM computers more efficient and faster than competitors' machines for the majority of applications. Those who developed the personal computer and its software in the next generation, such as Apple, Lotus and Microsoft, applied the 80120 Principle with even more gusto to make their machines cheaper and easier to use for a new generation of customers, including the now-celebrated "dummies," who would previously have given computers a very wide berth. A century after Pareto, the implica-

Dilbertian Method Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, has finally become the management, after years of portraying the mean-spirited "pointy-haired manager from hell" in his popular cartoon strip. Now with some peripheral ventures into the food business-a restaurant and a line of vegetarian burritos called the Dilberito-he has become something close to a boss. Adams employs his own application of the 80120 Principle, according to a recent Newsweek article: "Eighty percent of good management is hiring the right people. The other 20 percent is getting out of their way." It must work. The sole Dilberito exec Jack Parker-who has never met Adams face-to-face-is quoted in the article as saying, "I've worked for the pointy-haired boss, and that's not Scott Adams." tions of the 80120 Principle have surfaced in a recent controversy over the astronomical and ever-rising incomes going to superstars and those very few people at the top of a growing number of professions. Film director Steven Spielberg earned $165 million in 1994, Joseph Jamail, the highest-paid trial lawyer, was paid $90 million. Merely competent film directors or lawyers earn a tiny fraction of these sums. The 20th century has seen massive efforts to level incomes, but inequality, removed in one sphere, keeps popping up in another. From 1973 to 1995, average real U.S. incomes rose by 36 percent, yet the comparable figure for nonsupervisory workers fell by 14 percent. During the 1980s, all of the gains went to the top 20 percent of earners, and a mind-boggling 64 percent of the total increase went to the top 1 percent! The ownership of shares in the United States is also heavily concentrated within a small minority of households: 5 percent of U.S. households own about 75 percent of the household sector's equity. A similar effect may be seen in the role of the dollar: Almost 50 percent of world trade is invoiced in dollars, far above America's 13 percent share of world exports. And, while the dollar's share of foreign-exchange reserves is 64 percent, the ratio of American GDP to global output is just over 20 percent. The 80120 Principle will always reassert itself unless conscious, consistent, and massive efforts are made and sustained to overcome it.

Harmful Mental Maps The reason that the 80120 Principle is so valuable is that it is counterintuitive. We tend to expect that all causes will have roughly the same significance. That all customers are equally valuable. That every bit of business, every product and every dollar of sales revenue is as good as any other. That all employees in a particular category have roughly equivalent value. That each day or week or year we spend has the same significance. That all problems have a large number of causes, so that it is not w~rth isolating a few key causes. We tend to assume that 50 percent of causes or inputs will account for 50 percent of results or outputs. There seems to be a natural, almost democratic, expectation that causes and results are generally equally balanced. And, of course, sometimes they are. But this "50/50 fallacy" is one of the most inaccurate and harmful, as well as the most deeply rooted, of our mental maps. The 80120 Principle asserts that when two sets of data, relating to causes and results, can be examined and analyzed, the most likely result is that there will be a pattern of imbalance. The imbalance may be 65/35, 70/30, 75125, 80120, 95/5 and 99.9/0.1, or any set of numbers in between. However, the two numbers in the comparison don't have to add up to 100. The 80120 Principle also asserts that when we know the true relationship, we are likely to be surprised at how unbalanced it is. Whatever the actual level of imbalance, it is likely to exceed our prior estimate. Executives may suspect that (Continued on page 48)

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associate radio collar and tag tigers in the Royal Chitwan Park in Nepal. As he tells it, "I was lucky enough to spend four hours in the jungle with a 400 lb. tigress, and that absolutely captivated me. And then over the years my longtime friend Chuck MacDougal and I would go down and walk around the jungles in Chitwan." MacDougal is a well-known cat specialist, resident in Nepal. Weirum continues, "In 1991 he came to me with a horror story about tiger bones, and I contacted some people, wrote some letters. And without mentioning any names or slamming anyone else I realized that certain avenues were just moving too slow, so I decided to do something about it myself." Weirum started Save the Tiger fundraising trips with Mountain Travels/Sobek in 1994-the profits are donated to antipoaching efforts-and in 1995 he established the Fund for the Tiger. "When I saw how far a measly $5,000 could go if channeled into Asia, in the right place, in the field, for hard-hitting anti-poaching work-I think $5,000 literally financed anti-poaching in Royal Chitwan for one year, in terms of some rudimentary elephant patrols, rewards for information leading to the arrest and conviction of poachers, and paying for spy networks, which are basically information networks-I thought maybe in my small way I can make a difference." nd that is how he came to buy the elephant for Corbett Tiger Reserve in Uttar Pradesh. Weirum raised $8,000 and another American donor, Barbara Horton, gave $5,000 to purchase an elephant to patrol the Sonanadi Sanctuary, a remote area of the wildlife preserve. Most of the hundreds of acres where tigers, wild elephants, sam bar, cheetal, wild boar and other animals roam are inaccessible by road. Forest guards patrolled this dangerous beat on foot. Now the elephant will allow them to patrol a wider area faster, more efficiently and more safely. Ahead of his spring tour group, Weirum went to Corbett to see Sonakali, the new female elephant, installed in her new home. She's svelte as elephants go, with a gentle temperament,

but it did not stop her trudging easily through the forest as we went with the forest guard to survey the countryside. Weirum was thrilled: obviously he had found a new love. Asked why he feels wildlife conservation is important, he says it's not just because he likes tigers: "I'm one who doesn't believe that human beings deserve necessarily to survive at the peril of the animals. I think that we all live in this world together, but unfortunately, through our technology and through a certain myopic mental power we have the ability to obliterate a great number of animals on this planet, and I don't think that's our godgiven right to do. And that's basically why I'm doing this." n1998 Weirum's fund purchased a boat to be used by Corbett authorities for anti-poaching patrol on the Ramganga Reservoir and otherwise inaccessible waterways. Both gifts were realized through the good offices of the Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI), one of the most effective NGOs involved in fighting wildlife crime in India. Weirum's fund gives regular support to WPSI's program for "investigation into poaching and illegal trade of wild tigers in India." This project funds informationgathering networks, conducts sting operations when illegal wildlife products come on the market and retains lawyers to pursue cases against perpetrators of wildlife crime and habitat degradation. Weirum wants most of the funds he raises to go directly in the field, and he feels funneling it through small, committed NGOs is the best way. He elaborates, "We have virtually no overhead. I work alone out of my office, I have some kindred spirits who are on my board of directors, and it's on the top line of Intemal Revenue Service public charities, so people who contribute to the Fund for the Tiger get a 100 percent tax deduction." Mountain Travels/Sobek continues to generously donate the profits of the trips Weirum leads for them every year. The American Himalayan Foundation is also a regular donor. Weirum taps a personal mailing list of a few hundred friends, con-

Left: Brian Weirum poses with Sonakali and her mahout days after she was brought to her new home in Corbett Tiger Reserve. Weirum s NGO, Fund for the Tiger, made the major contribution toward her purchase. Top: Weirum and the Divisional Forest Officer Vinod Kumar take Sonakali on her first patrol. Above: Sonakali gets her daily afternoon bath and rubdown by her mahout, Mohammed Yar and charakata Irfan in the Sonanadi River. The elephant will make a big difference during monsoon, when the river becomes difficult to cross by any other means. An elephant can bring supplies to forest guards with ease.

tacts and former clients. "I send out a newsletter once a summer to update people on what I'm doing, and what we are doing, and I send a fund-raising letter out in December every year. And that's the extent of it. It's a small, basically one-man show, but what's important to me is that I am helping the right people in the field. Five or ten thousand dollars to either Belinda Wright or Ashok Kumar of the Wildlife Protection Society of India or Chuck MacDougal up in Nepal will go a long way." He dismisses suggestions that he should expand his operations: "There are plenty of mainstream networks in the world, and I don't want to start acting like they do, because you start spending money in the wrong places. I want 99 percent of every dollar I take in the States to get over here into the field." Brian Weirum isn't the only American concerned about Indian wildlife. Fred Bagley is a fish and wildlife biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) who has studied Asian wildlife since the '70s. He was in Delhi recently for the Millennium Tiger conference. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has contributed financial and technical support for conservation projects for decades, with money coming from rupee funds, though these

Top: A wild tusker crosses the river to investigate the new female elephant in the neighborhood. Mahout and charakata continued bathing Sonakali nearby, but kept their eyes on the male until he quietly entered the forest, curiosity apparently satisfied. Above: Wildlife preservation activities of the Forest Department are diverse. Hereforest officers release gharial bred in captivity into the Ramganga.

funds are running out. Bagley says, "There is a lot of concern in the U.S. for conservation in India and in Asia. We don't want our activities that were carried out under PL-480 to just be dropped. We want them to be sustained." Much of the work has been done in cooperation with the Bombay Natural History Society and the Wildlife Institute of India. Newer programs are the Rhinoceros and Tiger Conservation Fund, and the Asian Elephant Conservation Fund which are dollar funds. Through the Rhinoceros and Tiger Conservation Act in 1994, the U.S. Congress created the Rhinoceros and Tiger Conservation Fund to strengthen habitat and ecosystem management, create protected areas and assist local communities in buffer zones surrounding rhino or tiger habitat. The Fund also supports surveys, monitoring, inspection, law enforcement and forensic analyses. It promotes education about conservation. It is done in partnership with government and nongovernment organizations in Asia and Africa through matching grants that support wildlife protection activities. In India it works through entities such as WPSI and state forest departments. The Fund will continue supporting specific programs even after the rupee funds are gone. Bagley is concerned about keeping the work going in other areas. "At the Wildlife Institute alone we have programs dealing with park interpretation, wildlife forensics, wildlife health, forest fragmentation in the Western Ghats, biodiversity in the Himalayas and the ecology of the sloth bear," though, he says, "the institutions that have made good use of this funding in the past have developed their reputations and they should be able to go out and find enough money." He estimates the value of the FWS contribution to the current five-year program at the Wildlife Institute is over one million dollars. he project in the Western Ghats has specialists studying the impact on animals in forest areas fragmented by human development. Another project Bagley has always been excited about is wildlife health. "In India with so much livestock around protected areas, you have to be concerned about the transmission of disease between livestock and wildlife. It can have an impact on critically endangered species that people care about so much, such as the Indian rhino; also on tigers, because disease may be transferred from livestock to tiger prey. The Wildlife Institute of India and the Fish and Wildlife Service together came up with what I think is a really nifty idea around 1990." The idea was to start a network of wildlife health-care experts linked with veterinary colleges near wildlife sanctuaries. "It's pretty obvious, with all the livestock you've got in India, that one wildlife health man isn't enough. You've got to have some more help, with all the potential for disease transmission." Development of an Indian national wildlife health service would be prohibitively expensive, so they went out and identified Indian veterinary colleges that are located in the vicinity of important wildlife habitats and faculty who are interested in wildlife health, bringing them into a cooperative network. "These faculty

were brought to the Wildlife Institute of India for a nine-month training program, the same training program that park directors go through. So we had a man from each veterinary college who already had his veterinary science training, we brought him to the Wildlife Institute and gave him nine months of wildlife management training. And after that we brought them to the United States for a few months, and they moved around the U.S. and met with wildlife health professionals, they took mini-courses to expand their awareness of what wildlife health is, and specific wildlife health techniques that would be useful back home. And in the project we provided them with essential equipment. Each of the schools got a vehicle, computers and an array of wildlife health veterinary equipment that I couldn't begin to list. It even included things like fax machines. They are gradually coming online with e-mail, and when that's done, that'll mean they will be able to communicate very effectively with people in the U.K. and U.S. and worldwide who are involved with wildlife problems. So when something comes up at Kaziranga with some sort of wildlife health issue, the man at the Guwahati Medical College, Dr. Nasir Ahmed, not only has his training to depend on, but he can access the information of the world to get help." There are strategically located veterinary colleges in Guwahati, Jabalpur, Hissar, Gujarat and several other places. "Our dream is that it will be valued by the state forestry departments and that they will help support it." Bagley says it is actually beginning to happen at the Jabalpur Veterinary College, where some significant state financial support was given, and other states are showing interest. "That's what we are shooting for. This is not something that the U.S. is going to sustain, it is something that is going to have to prove its worth." The worth is in the quality of individuals committed to the work, he says: "These people at the veterinary colleges are really impressive. They work very hard, they are extremely dedicated, and I am convinced that every one of them will ultimately convince their state of the value of continuing. They have gone through a lot in this program. In some cases it has been difficult for them to get the petrol money for the vehicle. We provide the vehicle, but petrol money is money that should be coming from the state, but in some cases these guys have had to payout of their own pocket." Bagley says government programs in Assam have set an example for the world in rhinoceros conservation. "The conservation of the rhino in India and Nepal is a model program as far as providing security and sustaining the species, with the result of an increase in numbers. What you realize when you get out in the field is that the folks who are actually guarding the rhinos have had very few resources to work with. They have carried out their task with very little, both in terms of facilities and compensation for themselves." FSW, through the Rhino and Tiger Conservation Fund, has made efforts to get necessities such as clothing, equipment and up-to-date wireless networks to guards in Kaziranga National Park and the Pobitora, Orang and Laokhowa wildlife sanctuaries. Project manager Anne Wright, another longtime conservation advocate, hopes to ex(Continued on page 51)

FRANKG.CARPENTER COLLECTION

Early Snapshots of India ByPRANNE=E

An early American tourist in India, Frank G. Carpenter gathered a remarkable collection of photos that depict life in India around the turn of the last century. Since India became independent in 1947, thousands of Americans have visited the country for business or pleasure. Earlier, for Americans, India was a distant land and very few undertook the long, time-consuming sea voyage to come here. One of the earliest American travelers to visit India was Bayard Taylor who came here in 1853 as a correspondent of the New York Tribune. His fascinating account of the country's landscape, monuments and the people with their old civilization and culture was said to be highly interesting and popular with the American readers. Then there was Rev.

William Butler who wrote The Land of the Veda (1871), his reminiscences of India which carried many illustrations of Indian panorama. The most distinguished visitor to land here in 1896 was the American literary luminary, Mark Twain, who was enchanted by the sights and sounds of the country. India, he said, "is the only foreign land I ever daydream about or deeply long to see again." Frank George Carpenter, journalist, traveler and author, was the most renowned American travel writer of his time. Born in 1855 at Mansfield, Ohio, Carpenter began his career as a journalist in 1879. A small man, with frail health and weighing less than 55 kilograms, he got married in 1883. His wife was then told that he would not live a year, but he outlived her by four years after her demise in 1920. It was in 1888 that Carpenter began his global travels which spanned a period of

Above: Elephants tow a carriage in Delhi during the Great Darbar, 1903. Far left: A Hindufamity, Delhi. Left: A woman from Rajasthan displays her jewelry.

CARPENTER COLLECTION

Clockwise from above: Worshipers crowd the lama Masjid on Id, Delhi, c. 1900.; a street scene, Delhi, c. 1900; Frank G. Carpenter poses with Muslim cleric in charge of the lama Masjid, Delhi; Indian women at their daily chores in North India; a sweets shop in Delhi; and nautch girls, North India, c. 1990.

36 years and took him to nearly every part of the world. He formed his own syndicate with the support of 15 newspapers which agreed to publish his weekly travel letters. He was a prolific writer and he illustrated his popular writings with photographs which appeared as Carpenter's Geographic Readers, standard school textbooks for several decades. He wrote for ordinary people and for boys and girls who appreciated and enjoyed his writing. His books with their simple language, anecdotes and interesting description were both entertaining and educative. Carpenter was innovative in his approach and managed to take his readers on an imaginary tour and to point out in each country the distinctive features to satisfy their curiosity. His Readers include: Asia, North America, South America, Europe, Australia, Our Colonies and Other Islands of the $ea and Africa. The series of Readers on Commerce and Industry includes: How the World Is Fed, How the World Is Clothed and How the World Is Housed. In 1918 he wound up his syndicate in order to take up the revision of his Readers, but in 1921 he set up a new syndicate and began writing a series of World Travels. A comprehensive 20-volume set of popular books on geography under the title Carpenter's World Travels was published after his demise in 1924. Carpenter's fabulous collection of photographs, which he used in his lifetime of geographical writing, is now well preserved in the Library of Congress. It was in 1951 that his daughter, Frances Carpenter (Mrs. W. Chapin Huttington), presented to the Library the voluminous photographic files. The collection, consist-

CARPENTER COLLECTION continued

Left: A Muslim family, Delhi. Below: A Parsee wedding, Bombay.

Right: An American woman is served tea in Lucknow. Lower right: The Rani of Sikkim, c. 1880 .

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ing of approximately 20,000 photographs, is remarkable for its content. It includes a very large number of rare and unusual early photographs including old albumen prints from the 19th century. The photographs deal with human geography and depict economic, social and cultural life of different people as well as their distinctive customs and religious practices. Many of the photographs were taken by Carpenter and his daughter themselves, particularly those from the period 1909 to 1924. They compiled captioned albums of their foreign travels, which include over 5,000 original contact prints, many of which are keyed to the 8,000 negatives in the collection. They also acquired thousands of photographs from various commercial firms operating in the countries they visited. Carpenter and his daughter traveled to India after covering Turkey, Palestine and Egypt in 1909. Presumably, he had seen the monumental publication Glimpses of India, a photographic history of India with over 500 illustrations that came out in 1896 and which carried a letter of appreciation by Mark Twain. Carpenter was fascinated by the diversity of Indian peoples and the country's scenic splendors, historical sites, magnificent temples, mosques and palaces. There are a large number of mounted photographs of the Indian panorama, many of which were purchased from the famous Indian commercial photographers of the time such as Bourne and Shepherd, Johnston & Hoffman, Barton Son & Co. and Lala Deen Dayal & Sons. Carpenter's India collection has pictures of street scenes in cities and towns, people of different regions in native costumes, transport vehicles of varying types, shops, vendors and craftsmen at work and their environments. These pictures are interesting historical documents as they reveal the Indian scene in the last decades of the 19th century and the early 20th century. Carpenter's own appearance in some snapshots marks his personal enjoyment of his own travels and adventures. The most remarkable part of Carpenter's collection is the large number of photographs of Indian women of different classes. Even Glimpses of India hardly carried any illustrations of women who shied away from the camera wielded by a man. The photographer had to depend on courtesans and nautch girls who readily posed for the camera while women servants, lower caste and tribal women did so for a nominal payment. Only on very rare occasions it was possible to photograph women of upper classes. 0 About the Author: Pran Nevile is a former diplomat and author who specialized in the study of social and cultural scene in India especially during the British period.

The Making of a Democratic

Police Force Michael Hartmann is a legal expert actively involved with the comparative approach to criminal justice. "I am a big believer in that, " he says. "That all nations can look at other nations' problems a;nddraw possible ideas and solutions. " He has firsthand experience of this as a United Nations Judicial Systems Officer, most recently in Bosnia, where he was the Anti-Corruption Consultant and Field Representative for the UN Center for International Crime Prevention (UNCICP). He has also studied comparative legal systems in South Asia: he was a Fulbright scholar in criminal law at the University of Punjab, Lahore, in 1996, and has also spent time in India. For 15years he was Assistant District Attorney in San Francisco.

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in South Asia I studied the police, prosecution and criminal justice system. I tried to focus on criminal laws involving women as victims of crime," Hartmann says. As a prosecutor in the U.S., he specialized in cases dealing with sexual assault and domestic violence. His experiences have shown him there are analogies in the implementation of criminal justice around the world. "Let's take first the structure ofthe police and how that contributes to corruption, as well as how it contributes to deaths in custody. There are parallels. If you look at the United States at the beginning of the century-in the early teens and '20s with lesser degrees in the '30s-all the way up to the present day, you see that there has been corruption in the U.S. "There is corruption here in India that is somewhat different. The problem here stems from the way the police are organized and paid. In 1861 the law organizing the police and the methods the police should use was passed by the British. That law was not intended, at that time, for the benefit of the people of what is now India. That was intended for the benefit of the British Raj and the British rulers. It was not what we would now call democratic policing, the purpose of which is to serve the people. That law was intended to, one, keep the indigenous native population under control; two, protect the properties and interests ofthe rulers of that time, which was basically the British citizen along with some Raj types who were here. The problem is that today that law is basically the same. It is 138 years old, and it has not been changed. India has changed. Unfortunately, what has happened is that the rich and powerful Indians have replaced the British, and the structure remains the same.

"You have a sort of pyramid, which is exactly similar to the which includes not just internal police investigations but more structure, for the most part, in Pakistan. And at the bottom is the importantly structural independent agencies that provide indeconstable who is ill-trained, ill-educated, not paid well, lives in pendent checkup on the police, policing becomes better regubarracks, does not have much schooling. The training for such lated. Independent monitors are both citizen groups that have the constables is basically how to march, how to shoot and how to power to investigate as well as, in my case, for example, a prosekeep public order. They have only rudimentary skills and training cutor for the City of San Francisco. I was part of a team that had in investigation. It is like being in the army. It's a military force, it to be notified if a police officer shot someone. Ifthere was an enis not a modem police force. Compare that with theU.S. todaycounter that resulted in the death of a suspect, I or another district not the U.S. in the past. If you look in the past of the U.S. police, attorney with our own independent investigators paid for by the district attorney were informed. As district attorneys in the U.S., there are times that are comparable to India today, but it was never quite the same, because we broke away, luckily, from the we are beholden only to our boss, and the district attorney is British. We have a 200-year head start over our fellows here in elected by the people, so it's completely independent of the poIndia in breaking away from British rule. lice. So, we had an independent structure with our own investiga"But if you compare Indian police with the U.S. police today tor, who would show up at the scene along with the police and ask, for example, do U.S. police officers take bribes? Yes. investigators and do a parallel investigation that is much more Are U.S. police officers corrupt? Yes. Some are. Are they as corlikely-along with rules such as taping conversations and allowrupt or do they take bribes with frequency, or is the percentage of ing me to ask questions as well as the police-to make sure that if U.S. police as corrupt, in terms of taking bribes and such, as high there is some police officer who violated rules, he or she will be as in India? I'd have to say no. It is higher caught. Our office has prosecuted police here in India. Why? Is it because of some officers for corruption, for bribery. When inherent fluke of nature? No. Is it because police officers who have a lot to lose in a When you have a decent an Indian officer is for some reason less good job know that there's a good chance salary to start, along with a that he or she might get caught, then ethical? No. The people are the same. It is the structure which causes the change in potential for better salary and they're less likely to take a bribe. the people. Remember the old song by Kris "I think the same analogy applies here in promotion, then policing Kristofferson, where he wrote, 'Freedom's India. I have been working in Bosnia with becomes a career you don't the UN, where we were trying to turn the just another word for nothing left to lose?' If you have nothing left to lose, then why former Yugoslavian communist totalitarwant to risk. not? If! am making no money and I live in ian police, whose mission was to protect a barracks and my job is terrible and I have the state, into a democratic police force. no education, hey! Will I take a bribe, if Police officers must be made to realize that that's the only way I can support my family? I sure will. their job is to serve the members ofthe public and not the interest :'Now, in the U.S. the policemen aren't millionaires. And of the state. It is done with training on human dignity and how to certainly big drug money has shown that when you offer enough, treat people to give them dignity. That's what we were trying to you can bribe them. But to most police officers in the U.S. it is do there. I understand already in India people are trying human not worth sacrificing a 30,000-50,000-dollar job, which you can rights training. But human rights training isn't enough. It's going support your family on, to take a bribe knowing if you are caught to fail unless you also change the setup. that you lose everything. So they don't have the freedom to lose "You need to have that carrot and stick, and the stick is: an efeverything. And so they have a better vest in the system. fective, independent, discipljnary source that isn't just internal "Secondly, if you are a constable in this old colonial system police discipline, but that can actually result in prosecution and you're never going to reach the top, the well-paid ranks of the conviction. The carrot is this: You say we want people who have Indian Police Service. Because there are two levels of entering. education, we want people who will be able to make independent One is that of the constable, one is that of an officer. The former decisions, so we will give them the proper equipment; we will goes to a police college, which is mostly drill. The latter goes to a give them the proper training; and we will give them a reason police academy where you are taught more things. In my city, why they want to be police officers; we will give them something San Francisco, 25-30 years ago a beat officer-the equivalent of to lose. And it's that combination which you need for good polica constable in India-by the name of Fred Lau, a Chineseing. But it's a big change, because you have to first take the 1861 American man, he was at the bottom. Now he is chief of police. Police Act and turn it into a modem police act-take the law He is the equivalent, if you will, of the IG of San Francisco. That which was written by the British to protect a minority of outside would never happen here. When you have a decent salary to start, rulers and turn it into one that supports a democratic police force. along with a potential for better salary and promotion, then policUntil that is done, you're going to have problems." ing becomes a career you don't want to risk. Hartmann acknowledges that even when such checks, bal"When you combine decent pay and benefits with a-I think ances and incentives are in place, problems can arise. He refers to not perfect, but good-system of prosecuting bad police officers, the case of Rodney King, who was nearly beaten to death by po-

lice in Los Angeles. "Let me use that example of the carrot and stick again by citing another stick besides actual conviction of offending police officers. That is money. In Los Angeles a $5 million settlement went to Rodney King because he could sue the police force. That $5 million came out of the police force and when $5 million is taken out of your budget and you're the chief ofthe police, and you don't get that brand-new shiny car, and you don't get that brand-new shiny gun, and your nice oak desk is going to have be replaced by a boring metal gray desk, then you're going to have the reason-which is what they did in Los Angeles-to completely revamp the rules. "It's not just the bottom-rung police officer who commits the human rights violation who has to feel the sting. You have got to also make the management, the bureaucracy of the police, feel the pain. Because if they feel the pain they will have an incentive to make sure that these things don't happen again. That is another way of having a stick. And it works. If the state pays the money, it isn't going to hurt, although there are political consequences. The state gets mad and they don't put as much in the police budget. But it is better to take it out, not just on the individual police officers but on the department. And if they get stung a couple of times, then like in Los Angeles, you have some changes."

artmann says the problem he sees in India is that they don't have either the carrot or the stick: "Transfer is not enough. Transfer is the way of the police bureaucracy. If all that happens is a transfer, it won't change things much. I am told that transfer is used as a political device to punish some officers who are doing things that politicians don't like, but transfers are also a way for a police force not to punish their men. 'Oh! You raped this woman in jail?' 'Oh! You beat up this guy when you shouldn't have?' 'Well, we'll just transfer you to some place else.' That's not punishment. "That's the problem with relying only upon police discipline. No police likes to have anyone other than police telling them what to do with police. Right. But that's why you need an independent organization. Wasn't it Plato who said, 'Who shall guard the guardians?' You have to have an independent check and unless you have that, it isn't effective. "But what happens if the police do a job that's good and then it gets in the court? What about the prosecutors, the defense attorneys and the judges? If they don't do their job, then fixing the police is not going to help. You have to make the whole system work." Hartmann's exploration of women's legal issues led him to another outmoded law drafted by the British. "It is an example of how social mores have changed. One hundred twenty years ago in the Victorian era a woman was either a virgin or a slut. She either was a good

girl or she was a prostitute, to put it very bluntly. There was no middle ground. That was what the mind-set, unfortunately, seemed to be. And the most advanced evidence code for use in courts at that time, the Indian Evidence Act of 1872, was written according to this mind-set. It included Article 155(4), which had to do with impeaching a creditable witness. The creditable witness may be impeached in a number of ways by an adverse party. Article 155(4) says when a man is prosecuted for rape or an attempt to ravish, it may be shown that the prosecutrix, or victim, was a generally immoral character and the idea was this: if a women is a virgin, well, then probably she didn't consent to having sex with the man. But if a woman had actually had sex with a man who is not her husband, she was therefore a generally immoral character, the premise being that if a woman has sex with one man, she will then be absolutely willing to have sex with any other man who asks. I don't think I need to say anything more other than that in my life I've certainly found out that's not true. We certainly know that it's not true. But that's the philosophy behind this article of law. This law, by the way, was the law in California, was the law in the United States, was the law in Great Britain, was the law in and is still in Tanzania. Gradually as the world changed and mores changed, people began to realize that, in these days that we live in, it may actually be possible for a woman to decide that she wants to show physical affection to her boyfriend and not show it to every person on the street. And, therefore, to impeach a woman because she had prior sex acts was something that did not prove anything, it was irrelevant. "Now, it may well be, you may say, that if she had previous sexual contact voluntarily with the defendant, with the accused, that's something else. But that's not what this Article 155(4) is about. It talks about sex with anyone. She had sex with a college boyfriend three years ago, some passionate affair, and now she is married. Her husband doesn't even know about her previous boyfriend, but this is what is allowed to be brought up when a judge allows the evidence act. And that's how it was used. In a book titled Criminal Law a High Court decision from Calcutta is cited that makes that very point. That it's still being done now. "My suggestion is that India is in the 1990s and not the 1870s. India should follow the lead of other nations which have had the same law and which have, over the past 30 years, changed it. In California we call it the Rape Shield Law, and in the '70s we changed the law to say specifically that a woman's past sexual conduct, whether it be specific acts or reputation, is irrelevant and shall not be admitted into trial. Why? Because, one, it is irrelevant; two, this was the way in which justice was denied. It was denied because some women would not come to court. Others, when they would come to court, felt that they were the defendants because they would be cross examined brutally as to their previous sex lives. It was realized that this is erroneously causing acquittals; it is putting the victim on trial and destroying her dignity; and it also

results in not even having some cases go forward if someone doesn't want their sexual history revealed. So the law was changed in the U.S. and in quite a few European countries. It now is an international standard. When the evidence code was written for the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia war crimes trial court in the Hague, Rule 96 specifically said that a woman's sexual past or history shall not be allowed to prove her consent in this case. Under the declaration of rights for the victims of crime, 1985, the United Nations calls specifically for the protection of dignity and privacy of the victim. So I ask rhetorically, why has not India, with one of the most progressive courts in the world, done something about this? "This is not for a court to do and there have been occasional court decisions that talk about this. But the law is still there. And if a judge who is not well versed with the ideas of the progressive Indian court, wants to allow it, in this country, all a judge does is say 'Well it's under Article 155(4) of the Indian Evidence Act of 1872, why can't it be done? Of course I allow it. ' "

and beat the soles of their feet. How else are we going to get them to confess?' And I said, well, there are other techniques. But he said he had no new techniques like in the U.S., 'this is the best I can do. I have to solve the crime.' The police now in the U.S., after Miranda (giving suspects the right to an attorney), even when not using rubber hoses-usually they don't-can still get confessions." Besides human rights concerns, "there are more sophisticated methods of interviewing, better forensics, better ways to investigate have been developed. We can use everything from 911 (emergency call) tapes to various techniques and devices. And what that means is you don't have to rely on beating the crap of someone to get information. That's the type of thing that is more helpful for better policing." Concerning deaths in custody, Hartmann asks, "Why does a police officer do that? Police officers sometimes may do it because they are perhaps under orders or influence of politicians or other people to do it. Sometimes they may do it because they are police officers who really do believe that a particular person is a bad person, a It's not just the bottom-rung aving seen the way the law and the criminal." He gives the example of a police officer who commits a police work in both India and policeman, again in South Asia, who violation who has to feel the Pakistan, Hartmann realizes that admitted to killing a man who, he was things can be complicated. He encounconvinced, had raped a girl at the time sting. Make the management, tered instances where threat of rape offeof committing a robbery. The girl told the bureaucracy of the male relatives was used as a lure for men him she had been raped, described the who were wanted for a crime. "Or police assailant in detail, "but she said she police, feel the pain. use it as a scare tactic: they beat men; would not fill out an FIR; she said she they rape women. It is a technique of would not admit it because her family control or terror, especially where the pocould not stand it, and neither could lice are under the control of a gang." But Hartmann believes that, she. So she would not make the complaint." When the man was for the most part, "police officers worldwide are rational beings, found, he confessed to the robbery and the policeman made sure especially if they are given something to lose." he escaped so he had reason to shoot him. "So, why did he do it? Questions come up frequently about torture, deaths in custody Perhaps because he knew the man wouldn't be brought to jusand false encounters in which untried suspects are killed. tice; perhaps because he knows that there is 80 percent acquittal Hartmann says there are various reasons this kind of thing haprate because of the problems with prosecution. So it's not just pens. Torture, he says, may often be blamed more on poor police the police problem. It's the problem of the prosecutors. I'm a facilities than on innate brutality of cops: "A lot of times torture prosecutor and am proud of my profession but a lot of work has is used because that is the only way to solve the crime. If they to be done on working with the prosecutors and making them don't solve it, they may get fired; they may get transferred; they take their share of responsibility. And the same goes for the don't get a promotion; there are negative consequences. So they court system and the judges. have to solve the crime. If you don't have forensic techniques, "I'm not saying that India should be like the U.S. I do not think you don't have forensic labs for tests, you don't have proper that the way the district attorney or the prosecutor is structured in training, you don't know how to investigate a crime, you are not India that it can be used the way we use it in the United States. But very good verbally so you don't know how to interview a witness the principle can be used." He gives an example from the United well, you have no idea how to properly investigate and solve a States of prosecution that was conducted by a federal agency when case, then you may resort to torture. It happens in many counthe local justice system broke down during the Civil Rights tries, from underdeveloped to developed." Movement in the 1950s and '60s. "Local police officers, local Where more facilities are given to the police, brutality goes courts, local judges and prosecutors refused to enforce the law and down. He says police know they are not supposed to beat people. protect innocent African American victims in the South when They need help in other ways in which to solve crimes. Hartmann there were bombings, when there were shootings, when people says: "In the U.S., still, one of the primary ways to solve a crime protesting peacefully, following Gandhi-like tactics and Martin is confession. I was actually told once by an officer during my Luther King, were set upon by police with batons and were very stay in South Asia, 'Well of course we haOg them upside down (Continued on page 60)

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here's a hotel bar across the Potomac from Washington, D.C., with a splendid view of many of the markers that radiate the excitement of power and possibility. Plush and comfortable, the patrons well-dressed and well-behaved, the bar attracts an international clientele-not unusual in this international city. Frank Johns, who heads Pinkerton Global Intelligence Services for global security services firm Pinkerton Inc., considers the bar high-risk. Not just this bar, but many area upscale hotel watering holes. And not because of pickpockets or stickup clowns, but because of "extremely well-connected" patrons; "Everyone is either a 'prince,' or closely related to a prince, or a general, or a minister of this or that," says Johns. They all have the inside track, and for a fee, they will run a company down that track, ahead of competitors, into the land of milk and honey and business escorted to your door-sole-source bidding, official or not. "We call them 10-percenters," says Johns. "When they start buying you drinks-or introducing you to women who find you oddly fascinating-it's time to leap for the door." If fees given to Prince Baksheesh morph into payola for a foreign government official in order to obtain business, a U.S. company could be snagged and reeled in by the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). Transgressors reap

serious criminal penalties and economic derailments. The act has worked well to keep most U.S. companies from taking the bait, but the 1O-percent crowd fishes in all the world's power centers. Foreign competitors are so free with bribes that they routinely take legal tax deductions for them. It won't come as a shock that this is a sore point with American companies that feel they've unilaterally stripped while foreign competitors still sport overcoats bulging with bribe money. But a new treaty promises to level the playing field, and U.S. business groups are out in force supporting it. In 1997 the 29 member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and five nonmembers signed a breakthrough agreement-the Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions-that heralds a sea change in the way business is conducted abroad. Like the FCPA, the OECD treaty criminalizes the supply side of the corruption equation, with prosecutions of companies by their home countries. In some respects, its scope even extends beyond that of the FCPA, from which the treaty draws its spirit and much of its letter. In other aspects, it falls a bit short and must be viewed charitably as a work in progress. But if expectations are realistic and follow-up actions are aggressively pursued, the treaty offers a new tool that will en-

hance the prospects of U.S. businesses - ~l/(! selling products and services abroad. To take full advantage, companies will have to become more knowledgeable about back-channel techniques of pressuring foreign governments-and even take on the role of whistle blowers. Only a few years ago, most would have considered this treaty hallucinatory. The prevailing fatalistic view was expressed in the slang of Hong Kong when it was overrun with corruption in the 1960s, before it created its Independent Commission Against Corruption in the 1970s. One could "get on the bus" and embrace corruption, or "run alongside the bus" and not interfere. Only fools would "stand in front of the bus." Most observers believe that by the end of the year the treaty will be ratified by the threshold of major players needed to put it in play-nations that comprise the majority of world trade. The United States was edged out as first ratifier by Japan and /c. Bulgaria, but on July 31 last year the Senate unanimously ratified the treaty and passed implementing legislation needed to ) modify the FCPA. The Clinton Administration has long pushed the treaty, and even Senator Jesse Helms, not known for his fondness for treaties, has sung its praises. The only remaining step is the House of Representatives' passage of administration-sponsored FCPA amendments to implement the convention.

At this writing, Japan is the only nation to pass implementing legislation, and timetable goals in the other signatory countries may end up delayed until well into 1999. Bribing Politicians Doesn't Count ill the OECD treaty be enforced? "The worst that could happen," says Stanley Marcuss, a partner with Bryan Cave LLP's Washlngton office, "is that the treaty might .v be viewed as having solved the problem. This is a game of chutes and ladders-two steps forward, one step back. That's why the monitoring phase is so critical: Each misstep is so hard and time-consuming to correct. If done right, the best-case scenario is four or five years to see real , impacts." Perhaps the weakest aspect of the OECD agreement is that, unlike the FCPA, the convention does not prohibit bribery of foreign political parties, party officials or candidates for political office. The United States was alone in supporting this objective, with some countries arguing that political-party officials were not public officials, so the convention shouldn't cover them. Additionally, some countries have insufficient legal definitions for parties, party officials or candidates. As the U.S. public has come to know, largesse to politicians, even in the guise of legal campaign contributions, often appears to be thinly disguised bribery. Indeed, foreign governments resentful of U.S. criticism often point to the hypocrisy of U.S. campaign oddities like tobacco companies' alleged offers to run ads supporting cooperative candidates. If allowed to remain, the loophole allowing direct bribery to foreign political entities will draw in money like a black hole. However, the OECD expects to address this loophole soon. Also discouraging is the reluctance of ,countries like France to disallow tax de....... 4uctions before ratification or implementation of law. And Germany has so far resisted hot criticism that it intends not to disallow tax deductions until after there's been a criminal conviction. Even the United Kingdom has drawn

fire, with its Home Office position that an act of 1906, together with an ancient common-law offense of corruption, provides sufficient legal implementation. Indeed, the fact that no one has ever been prosecuted for the bribery of a foreign public official indicates that a little something else might be handier than lessons in legal history. Marcuss, who was on the staff of the Senate committee that produced the original FCPA, has comprehensively identified other problem areas, including the substantial wiggle room that results when strict uniformity is not required across 34 legal systems and the potential for prosecution confusion over conflicting laws with different definitions. These are issues that need to be watched and worked out over time. "A key element of the FCPA is the requirement that companies keep accurate books and records and strict internal controls regarding assets," says Marcuss. "It is worrisome that the OECD doesn't address this more concretely." One difficulty: proving a bribe has been offered and taken. How easily will bribes surface? "Adequate proof in court is often elusive," notes Pinkerton's Frank Johns. "In the late '80s, an international airport sent out requests for proposals, seeking a multidisciplinary firm involved from the ground up. A U.S. company was approached for a kickback and refused. After the contract went elsewhere, the losing company obtained the winner's proposal and found the boilerplate language was nearly identical to their own proposal. A connection also surfaced between the bribe solicitor and the winner. Someone in the government had shared the U.S. company's proposal, allowing the winning company to barely underbid it. But it couldn't be proved." Additionally, companies rarely take a publicly accusatory position. "They may have to deal with the same players down the road," says Marcuss. "Also, there's always a risk of drawing attention to themselves. Even if they are not guilty of anything, they don't want to deal with the burdens of a government investigation." But if these challenges make a victory celebration sound premature, there are

multiple reasons experts like Johns are optimistic. For one, while the United States is already pastured within the fence of the FCPA, foreign companies are wild and free-roaming. Charles S. Levy, a partner with Washington firm Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, expresses a popular sentiment, that "anything is better than what we have now. I'd rather be arguing with the Germans about how they're living up to their obligation than over if they should accept the treaty. If we move backward, we get nothing." Banks Get on Board ne fortunate circumstance is that the OECD treaty is not as lonely as the FCPA once was. Eleanor Lewis, chief counsel for international commerce at the U.S. Department of Commerce, has worked on corruption issues for 15 years, and she notes the encouraging sign that, after the Asian crisis broke, representatives from several nonsignatory nations in that region showed up in an unofficial capacity to study the substance and process of the treaty. Her office now provides an Anti-Corruption Review ([202] 482-0937 or www.ita.doc.gov/legal) that tracks anti-corruption initiatives around the world. Lewis believes the uncertainty of the new economic climate further drives the desire for "consistent, morally defensible standards," to which the OECD treaty is a response. Most international financial institutions-including the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and most regional development banks-either have formal anti-corruption policies or are soon to adopt them. Lewis also has high hopes for a WTO Transparency Initiative, which aims "to increase the transparency of processes related to government procurement around the world." Besides zapping any part of a deal in which corruption is revealed, World Bank President James Wolfensohn has also set up a special internal fraud team and hired outside specialists, including the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, to root out ethical lapses on the part of individual staff. Last September, two staffers were fired for "misuse of funds for their own

Corruption by the Numbers An effective grass-roots force is Transparency International (TI), a Berlin-based NGO formed to curb corruption in international transactions. Founded in 1993 by Peter Eigen, formerly the World Bank's resident director for east Africa, the organization now has more than 70 national chapters working toward anti-corruption legislation. Eigen, who had seen his African territory devastated by corruption, was impressed by Amnesty International's successful use of the klieg lights of publicity and thought he'd try it. All reformers count heavily on enhancing the role of the press. For example, the "corruption query" Website now being tooled up by South Africa's chapter of TI uses media reports to classifY corruption in specific categories, including locales and government levels; sectors such as religion, civil service, business, political parties, sports and media; allegations such as bribery, nepotism and money laundering; anti-corruption measures; trend analyses; the status of investigations; and specific actions and punishments. Tools like this will enable the citizenry to lock in quickly to see if local and national governments are following through on anti-corruption promises. . Another TI initiative is an annual "corruption perception index," a ranking of 85 countries based partly on the perceptions of businesspeople, experts and the general public. After Pakistan received an unenviable ranking, Benazir Bhutto's regime came under intense scrutiny and unraveled. Now Switzerland may charge the former prime minister with money-laundering crimes. Anyone who has seen a missing billion dollars of public money should get in touch. According to last year's index, Cameroon is the country perceived to have the most corruption, followed by Paraguay, Honduras, Tanzania and Nigeria (the last two are tied). Most corruption-free: Denmark, Finland, Sweden and New Zealand. The United States tied with Austria for 17th least corrupt-falling behind, among others, Germany, which placed 15th. Others of note: Canada ranked sixth least corrupt, the United Kingdom 11th, Hong Kong 16th, Israel 19th, France 21st, Spain 23rd, Japan 25th, South Africa 32nd, Italy 39th, Brazil 46th, China 52nd, Mexico 55th, India 66th, and Russia all the way down at 76th. Three years ago, Malaysia's Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad initially condemned the survey as another example of cultural imperialism, but he ultimately used the index to underpin a national awareness program. Mahathir also called for a monitor of the corruption being exported from the west, and indeed TI is exploring how to rank nations such as Belgium, France and Italy that have unusually high levels oftrade with notoriously corrupt regimes. Last September, Malaysia was host to an international TI conference on strengthening integrity, based on the lessons learned in Asia. TI doesn't shy from challenges. The chairman of TI's advisory council is former Nigerian head of state Olusegun Obasanjo, a general who once shocked the corrupt military by handing power over to a civilian government. Obasanjo was framed in 1995 for a coup plot and, after a secret trial, thrown into Nigeria's horrific prison system, from which he was only recently released. Contrast this TI knight with the late Mobutu Sese Seko of the former Zaire, who, according to the Financial Times, stashed $4 billion of bribe money and foreign aid. With grants from George Soros' Open Society Institute and other organizations, TI is forging chapters in the former communist bloc. It has already established one in Russia. Given the magnitude of Russia's problems, it wouldn't be fair to call it a day late and a dollar short. Russia was always a top index contender, along with Colombia, Bolivia and frequent champ Nigeria. Though empowered by the steam of political opposition attacking corrupt regimes, TI is nonpartisan. It's also not out to retroactively right every wrong. Instead, says TI-USA chairman and former GE official Fritz Heimann, TI takes a "systemic approach," tightening the avenues down which corruption travels. Consequently, companies that support TI include some that have been in the scandal soup before (GE among them, before considerable tightening of its internal ethics guidelines), and corporations are less afraid of its reform objectives. TI offers information at www.transparency.de. including contacts, best practices and scandal updates.

If fees given to Prince Baksheesh morph into payola for a foreign government official in order to obtain business, a u.s. company could be snagged and reeled in by the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. personal gain." The World Bank put it in a press release. Meanwhile, institutions are spawning subgroups to tackle particular hardcases. Former World Bank President Robert McNamara and former Ambassador to Senegal Herman Cohen work with the Global Coalition for Africa, making agreements with contractors and government officials regarding conduct and transparency on particular projects, therefore rooting out corruption one segment at a time in an "islands of integrity" approach. Michael Skol, who served as U.S. ambassador to Venezuela from 1990 to 1993, points to a shift in government attitudes. "This movement has long been under way in Latin America. With its Inter-American Convention Against Corruption, which the United States should also ratify soon, much of Latin America is already further along than the OECD. Anti-corruption is the most important political issue in most of Latin America-just look at the key articles in their newspapers. It's the theme in most of this hemisphere." The New Realpolitik iven that corruption has enjoyed a long run since biblical times and still has many fans, why are recent reform efforts making headway? "What you have to realize is that the world has changed," observes Mike Gadbaw, VP/senior counsel of international law and policy at General Electric Co. "Globalization in the movement of capital and trade exposes new areas to international standards. There is new political accountability. Corruption causes uncertainty as the new crowd immediately discredits the old crowd. Even repressive regimes are increasingly sensitive to pressure. Numerous studies indicate that corruption leads to bad government, to poor policies such as low education spending, and to downward spirals." Michael Hershman, chairman of Decision Strategies/Fairfax International,

an investigative consulting firm, agrees. "There's a new realpolitik, in which governments recognize that ethical issues are not separate from political and business ones. Essentially, bribery is an invisible tariff artificially boosting the cost of a contract, forcing prices up and stifling efficient free-market trade." These economic and political pressures have governments around the world running scared. The '90s ushered in bribery scandals that collapsed governments in Japan, Italy, Brazil and Venezuela and caused the resignation of important political figures in Germany, France, Spain and Belgium. Mexico went dizzy trying to understand how its former President's brother upped his fortunes by more than $100 million. Two former South Korean Presidents drowned in scandal at a depth that defies imagination, and corruption allegations derailed the regime of a third. It's a long and growing list, as corruption scandals give opposition parties and reformers piles of ammo. Downturns in Asia have sobered up many companies in developed countries who were willing to overlook the markers of corruption as long as there was doubledigit growth. As Michel Camdessus, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, observed, "Many of the problems that lie at the heart of Asia's difficulties are bound up with poor governance. In Korea, for example, opacity had become systemic." Relationships among governments, corporations and financial institutions were so "incestuous that in the long run they could only result in unclear accountability and disastrous investment and lending decisions." The lack of transparency, says Camdessus, concealed the extent of Korea's problems. Delays in corrective action helped collapse market confidence. Most recently, emerging-market investors who counted on Russian caviar look as if they've been kissed by sturgeon as they wonder where all the money

went. People are getting rid of rubles so fast, it seems like they're radioactiveand if they were, their trails would often lead to toys parked or floating near the Riviera. Russia's woes have deep roots in corruption. Will China be far behind? The black market began devaluing the yuan months ago. In China, economic reforms are bedeviled by corruption as the rule of law lags behind the rhetoric. People forget that the Tiananmen Square debacle began as a protest against corruption. Former Ambassador Skol, now managing director for Latin America at Decision Strategies/Fairfax International, consults with entities like the new Argentine National Ethics Office and with companies on anti-corruption practices. He believes the new anti-corruption measures will succeed because of business economics. "People speak of a third wave," Skol says. "It's being driven by pure economic impetus. New democratic governments are under huge pressure to provide services in education, health, etc ....Where are they going to get the money? The biggest available immediate source, outside foreign investment, is recapturing the money that is lost to corruption. In some countries, the corruption share of a deal ranges from 5 percent to a third. Either the project doesn't perform as it is supposed to, or it costs a third more." In developed countries there is another impetus for reform, based on the adage "what goes around comes around." In Germany, companies implicated in scandals abroad used to attract little attention at home. But the chickens came home to roost-in Siemens' case, when high-level managers were sentenced for creating a cartel in Munich that fixed prices for substantial public projects such as the subway system. Tax deductibility for bribes given abroad seems less clever, and doubly dumb when business is lost, as when Singapore banned Siemens' telecommunications division after allegations that

Recent reform efforts are making headway due to a new realpolitik. And downturns in Asia have sobered up many companies in developed countries who were willing to overlook corruption as long as there was double-digit growth. Siemens, with four other firms, gave millions in bribes to a utilities official. After signatories develop the laws to â&#x20AC;˘ prosecute their own companies, how might U.S. companies proceed if other nations are slow to respond to abuses? Skol thinks companies will prove more active in blowing the whistle when the treaty opens new avenues, at least informally. He also believes governments will be more inclined to apply diplomatic pressures. "When I was ambassador to Venezuela, their navy refurbished six destroyers, at well over $100 million each. We asked a U.S. company, Ingalls, why it wasn't bidding, and they said the fix was in. We found the Italians were bribing top navy officials. We knew such a bid was an expensive process, but I asked Ingalls, 'IfI can promise our full support, will you bid?' They did, and we quietly exposed the bribery. It was too embarrassing for the Venezuelan navy to go ahead with the fix, and Ingalls received the contract. Today, the U.S. Government gets similarly involved when there is evidence that a U.S. company is disadvantaged. There's also some room to bluff a bit on what can be proved, and politicians don't want to gamble." As agreements are fine-tuned, other mechanisms will appear. Since the best evidence always comes from inside, one innovation would involve linking strong whistleblower protections with rewardsa hefty percentage of fines and confiscated profits. All whistle-blower data would also go to international monitors. Such measures are self-enforcing and low-cost, and would remove any doubt over whether nations are simply paying lip service while stalling. An Inadvertent Benefit of Bribery rom mid-1994 to mid-1996, the U.S. Government received significant allegations of bribery by foreign firms in 139 international commercial contracts valued at $64 billion. In a 1996 report to Congress, the Commerce Department es-

timated that U.S. companies lost 36 of those contracts, valued at $11 billion. Firms that pay bribes, said the report, "still win an estimated 80 percent of contract decisions." Given the stealth nature of most bribery, and the salesman's temptation to blame it for a lost contract, one might well be skeptical of the various estimates. But it is undeniable that bribery cuts into U.S. firms' profits. The Commerce Department report noted that "although even relatively small bribes may be effective, recent examples exist of European firms offering agent commissions of 20 percent or more on a $1 billion contract in an Asian market if a European aircraft was chosen." However, the FCPA has also bestowed benefits. Not being able to rely on bribery forced U.S. firms to be tougher competitors, improving productivity and product quality. Conversely, relying on bribery has weakened foreign competitors to the point where many lack confidence that they can compete against U.S. firms without payoffs. Observes Frank Vogl, president ofVogl Communications in Washington and vice chairman of Transparency International, "Given the growth of U.S. investments and exports, it's hard to make the case that U.S. companies can't compete. Companies that believe strongly in integrity and transparency build credibility and reputations of excellence that ultimately attract new business worldwide. They also attract the top talent." Skol points to another effect. "Bids by U.S. firms carry a higher value, as the FCPA prohibits siphoning resources into kickbacks. Companies that pay bribesan open-ended cost-either deliver less or profit less." Hershman sees business potential in anti-corruption activities, in that investigative and competitive-intelligence firms should profit as they are hired by companies seeking to detect bribery by competitors. Skol anticipates a boon to ethics officers, auditors and others prac-

ticed in the segment of U.S. management created in response to the FCPA. In determining punishments for FCPA violations, courts look heavily at whether the companies have serious ethics programs. Should we be impressed by company actions that are motivated by protective lip service? "Sure, that's part of the dynamic," admits Skol. "But the net effect of the FCPA is far less bribery by U.S. companies than by their counterparts abroad. That's what law is supposed to do-change behavior. The motivation doesn't matter as long as it changes corporate behavior. Eventually, even window dressing says something of what's in the store." Indeed, some companies aren't awaiting intemationallaws to cultivate their own gardens of reform. According to Tony Imler, an official with Merck & Co. Inc., in 1995 his company "informally decided to adopt corruption issues as a major focus in the ensuing decade, just as it had previously focused on intellectual property protection." The Merck Company Foundation supported the Ethics Resource Center, a Washington nonprofit, in developing an ethics center in the United Arab Emirates that assists the government and private sector. Although business leaders opposed to corruption are certainly welcome, Marcuss has a caution. "It's easy for senior management to say they oppose bribery. The pressure is on the lower level, the guys who have to make the quotas, to bring in business to keep their jobs. The proof of company sincerity depends on how the senior-level statements filter down through the ranks, and on the internal control systems that are put in place." In other words, put your money where your mouth is-and keep it out of the greasy palms. D About the Author: Skip Kaltenheuser is a Washington, D.C.-based writer and lawyer who often writes on politics, international trade, business ethics, law and travel.

Can the planet produce enough food to feed the billions who will be born in the future?

n the day you read this, the population of our planet will increase by 230,000 people. Hungry people. In 1999 about 137 million human beings wilrbe born, and some 53 million of us will die. That amounts to a net population gain of 84 millionmore than 230,000 additional residents of the Earth"

every day of the year. Many of these newcomers will suckle their meals from a mother's breast for a year or so, but after that it will be up to the Mother Earth to provide them food and drink. Our fragile, overextended planet and its hard-working human population will have to feed those 230,000 hungry people day after day for the next 66 years-not to mention another quarter million tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that.

These sobering numbers raise two crucial questions: Can the planet produce enough food to feed the 5.9 billion human beings alive today and the billions more who will be born over the next few decades? And if we do manage to produce enough, do we have the wit and the will to distribute the Earth's bounty to all those who need it? Last year-just as the farmers where I live were heading out to their fields for spring planting-I traveled around the world looking for answers to these questions. I came away feeling reasonably optimistic on the first point: Up to now, at least, human production on the farm has done a superb job of keeping up with human consumption at the table. The issue of distribution, though, is more problematic. People have been debating the planet's

carrying capacity at least since Socrates' day. Many experts, at many different points in history, have predicted that the world would soon be overpopulated, leading to famine and suffering on a gargantuan scale. So far, these predictions of disaster have all turned out to be wrong. Exactly 200 years ago, when the world's population was nearing one billion, the British economist Thomas Malthus offered the most famous statement of the basic dilemma. Population, he said, must increase, because "the passion between the sexes is necessary and will remain." But food supplies could not possibly increase as quickly: "The power of population is infinitely greater than the power. in the earth to produce subsistence for man." Modem-day Malthusians have been, if anything, even bleaker. A quarter of a century ago Paul Ehrlich, a leader of the global environmental movement, warned that our world was on the verge of "famines of unbelievable proportions." The population was about 3.5 billion, which Ehrlich believed was the limit. Feeding six billion people, he wrote in 1976, "is totally impossible in practice." This year the world's population will reach six billion-and human beings overall are better fed than ever before. Thirty years ago, according to the United Nations, the global food supply represented 2,360 calories per person per day. By the mid1990s total food supply had increased to 2,740 calories per person per day. Supply will continue to grow faster than population at least through 2010, the UN predicts. The big jump in population in the second half of this century has created much greater demand for food. But supply has increased even faster than demand, and the price of staple foods has fallen dramatically. Over the past 40 years the price of wheat, in constant dollars, has declined by 61 percent; the price of com has dropped 58 percent. he ability to produce more and more food each year stems from one of history's most important inventions: the farm. For the first hundred millennia or so of our species' existence, a person's next meal

depended on which nuts shook loose from trees or which wild animals could be clubbed. But somewhere around 8000 B.c. Neolithic man-actually, some scholars say, it was probably Neolithic woman-began farming. Women figured out that if they saved some of the grain they gathered, scattered it on the ground and waited around a few months, more grain would spring up. The fust significant agricultural crops were grasses: barley, wheat, rice, etc. These grains quickly became the staff of life-so valuable that almost every early religion known had a specific god who could be invoked to guarantee the grain harvest. In Western civilization the most important grain deity was the Roman goddess Ceres, which explains why the Wheaties, Com Flakes and Rice Krispies we eat in the morning are known as "cereal." The ancients were obviously onto something, because even today more than 70 percent of all cultivated land is devoted to cereal grains. These crops provide the bulk of human nutrition; most of the calories we consume come from grain or from eating animals raised on feed grains. Traders and travelers transplanted local crops around the world, and these green emigrants often flourished in their new homes, a fact obvious to anyone who has traveled through the central plains of North America and seen there oceans of waving wheat, a plant native to the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in what is now Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Lebanon. The agricultural revolution was accompanied by another fundamental change in the pattern of life: The birthrate came to exceed the death rate, and world population began a steady growth. Of necessity, agriculture became the dominant human endeavor-and still employs nearly 50 percent of the world's labor force. To produce more food, humans expand- . ed the amount of land under cultivation and found ways to increase the yield from existing fields. For the most part this has been a success story. But each breakthrough has had undesirable by-products. Around 3000 B.c. the invention of the plow greatly increased the output from a given plot of land. But plowing left soil vulnerable to erosion, prompting the agri-

culture historian Daniel Hillel to observe that "the plowshare has been far more destructive than the sword." The industrial revolution enabled a single farmer to cultivate more land-with proportionate increases in energy consumption and air pollution. In the 1960s the new plant varieties and agrochemicals of the green revolution yielded huge increases per acre, but many fertilizers and pesticides left toxic residues behind. Despite innovations-and sometimes because of themsoil and water degradation threaten agricultural output worldwide. Still, improvements in agriculture have kept food supplies high enough to meet the growing world demand. What Malthus called "the power of population" has been matched and exceeded by the power of innovation. Global food production today is sufficient to provide everyone on Earth an adequate diet. And yet hundreds of millions of people do not get the 2,200 calories per day generally accepted as the nutritional bottom line. About 20 percent of the developing world's population is chronically undernourished; 30 years ago the percentage was twice that high, so we're making progress. But why must anyone go hungry? The problem is not production but distribution. Local food supply often has little to do with natural conditions. Some of the best-fed people live in countries-Japan, for example-that don't have enough land to grow their own food. Some people who live in green meadows washed by regular rainfall are hungry. A major reason for the disparity between haves and have-nots is politics. Most of the world's governments have the political will to assure their people the basic elements of a reliable food supply. But some don't. nthe global hierarchy of agricultural wealth, the ultimate haves are the broad, fertile, high-tech nations of North America, where a tiny portion of the population-about 3 percent in Canada, and even less in the United States-grows more food than their countrymen could ever eat.

Not long ago I traveled across the High Plains of eastern Colorado to visit a fairly typical American farm, owned by Bob and Joanna Sakata and their son R.T. Like many family farms, this one has a tale behind it: Bob grew up farming in California in the 1930s. In the wake of Pearl Harbor, for no reason except their race, Bob's family was shipped to an internment camp in the Utah desert. There Bob heard that Japanese-American farmers were still welcome in Colorado. In 1945 his whole family settled near Brighton and began to cultivate a 16hectare truck farm. Five decades later the operation is known as Sakata Farms and covers some 1,400 hectares along the South Platte

River. Bob still calls his business a "small family farm," but its output is awesome: 10 million kilograms of onions per year, 7 million kilograms of cabbage and 11 million kilograms of corn. "The only way you can stay in business as a farmer," Bob told me, "is to boost yield and reduce your costs. Fifty years ago, when we started here, an acre planted in onions would produce about 200 sacks"-that is, 50-pound [22.6-kilogram] sacks of yellow onions. "When we got that up to 900 sacks per hectare, we thought we were the hottest thing in farming. Today, if we don't produce 2,000 sacks per hectare, we can't compete with the guy down the road." Increases like that come partly from

research into new plant breeds, new fertilizers and new growing techniques, and partly from massive investment in high-tech equipment. Bob's son, R.T., who got a college degree in biochemistry before returning to Brighton to grow vegetables, gave me a tour of the maintenance building. The place looked more like a Star Wars hangar than a farmer's machinery shed. The pride of Sakata Farms' big fleet is a matched pair of Pixall Super Jack corn pullers. These enormous yellow machines move slowly but surely through a field of corn, grabbing each stalk and plucking off the ears so gently that barely a kernel is bruised in the process. The Super Jacks cost the Sakatas $160,000 apiece in 1995, and maintenance costs are astronomical:

When one of the harvesters had a flat last summer, R.T. had to shell out $905 for a new tube and tire. But these behemoths pay their way. At the height of harvest season, each one picks and bundles 240,000 ears of sweet com every day. I was overwhelmed by the size, power and complexity of those com pullers. Tilting back the dark green Sun Seeds cap on his head, R.T. did his best to calm me down. "Yeah, these machines seem pretty impressive today," he said. "But in a few years, just to stay competitive, we'll probably have to find something that harvests even more. That's why, from our point of view, it's hard to think that the world's ever going to run out offood. Somebody's always finding ways to produce more and

flooding the market. And the rest of us have to match it, and it just keeps going." he com the Sakatas produce in such abundance is a native American plant species, but it has also flourished, as a transplant, in most of central Africa. In fact, white-kerneled com, known as maize, has become a staple food of sub-Saharan Africa. People roast it right on the cob, grind it into meal, or serve it as a side dish similar to grits that is called ugali in Kenya and Tanzania, pasha in Uganda, and sadza in Zimbabwe. Even the churchyard of Holy Family Cathedral in central Nairobi has been used to plant a cornfield. "The growing conditions here are unsurpassed anywhere," said Monty Crisp, an American development worker I met in Rwanda. "In the central U.S. farm belt we have some rich soil but only one growing season per year. Here there is great volcanic soil and the potential for two or three crops per year." Yet the UN Food and Agriculture Organization notes that subSaharan Africa is worse off nutritionally today than it was 30 years ago, and hunger and malnutrition remain rampant. One reason is that the majority of African farmers cannot afford to buy improved seed varieties, agrochemicals or machinery. Their tools: a machete to clear weeds and, sometimes, a single hoe for an entire farm family. I saw this kind of agriculture in the hills of northern Kenya. A retired Wisconsin farmer named John Hooper-a volunteer for the Scottsdale, Arizona-based aid organization Food for the Hungry International-took me to visit a twohectare farm, a large operation by local standards. As is common in Africa, the farmer was a woman: Ellen Kuraki, a strong, quiet mother of eight. Ellen's husband works as a pastor, so the farm is her responsibility. Kuraki has vegetable plots, a mango grove and a chicken house set high on a post to thwart marauding mongooses. But most of her farm is planted in maize. When the weather is reliable, she produces enough to feed the entire Kuraki family, with a little left over to sell. The

farm generates about $225 a year. The biggest obstacle to earning more, Ellen told me, is time. She gets two crops of maize each year. Each harvest takes about two weeks to cut the stalks and pull the ears, and then another week or so to clear the field for the next planting. It is all hand labor. Hearing that, I began thinking about what she might do with a miniature version of the Sakatas' huge cornpuller. The same thought occurred to John Hooper. "You know, with one of those small combines they sell now," he said, "she could clear this whole field, shell every ear, and it would take, oh, half an hour or so." When Ellen overheard us talking about farm machines, her eyes grew wide. "If I

Above: Thanks to fruit-breeding research, more productive, healthy and flavorful new varieties are available every year. And controlled-atmosphere storage methods insure freshness for months. Left: Sunflowers bloom in Fargo, North Dakota. They are important for their seeds and oil.

Band-Aid. The real problem is people hating people and the political games that result from hate. If the politics were ever settled, Africa would feed itself just fine." he relationship between politics and food supply is reflected in the late 20th century downs and ups of China, which has more mouths to feed than any nation on Earth. During Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward of the late 1950s, China was ravaged by famines that killed tens of millions and reduced average calorie intake far below the recommended level. Today, with a marketoriented economy that has produced the world's highest growth rates, some Chinese have a different food problem. "It's amazing to say, but our problem is becoming overnutrition," says Ho Zhiqian, a friendly, talkative nutrition expert on the government's National Food Advisory Commission. "Today in China obesity is becoming common. We have more diabetes than the United States. Breast cancer is multiplying. I believe these are related to consumption of animal fat-you know, eggs, meat, butter-as a normal part of the daily diet." Today's increasingly prosperous China can afford meat. The Chinese already eat about as much pork per capita as Americans do; chicken and beef consumption is also climbing fast. This changing diet has forced big changes in Chinese agriculture. To meet the needs of 1.2 billion consumers, the nation is moving away from the traditional communal plots to Western-style agribusiness. I saw that change for myself at China's largest chicken farm, the Shanghai Dajiang company's operation in Songjiang, a town about an hour's drive south of Shanghai. The place is not so much a farm as a factory, with massive conveyor belts carrying fuzzy day-old chicks by the tens of thousands. Its feeding sheds hold 20,000 birds apiece. The chickens are fattened on carefully formulated feed; after 49 days of steady eating, they themselves become food. Dajiang sells a million chickens a week. Most go to China's new supermarkets, but a growing percentage are

had a tractor," she said, "we could grow so much!" And then her smile faded. "But we have no money, we have no fuel, we have no parts to keep a tractor running. It's just not possible." In other parts of the world governments help provide the seeds, tools and soil conservation farmers require. But they begin by supplying political stability. Amid the nearly endless civil strife that has beset equatorial Africa, farmers' needs have gone largely unmet. "We have always been farmers, but how can we farm now?" said an intense, angry man named Bulondo Musemakweli, whom I visited in the village of Nzulu, on the bank of ink-blue Lake Kivu. Bulondo, a short, muscular father of 12, is the headman of Nzulu, near the eastern border of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The village is home to 500 people who have been swept into a state of hunger and poverty by distant political manipulations. In 1994, Bulondo told me, hordes of refugees fleeing civil war in neighboring Rwanda flocked to the shores of Lake Kivu. Frightened and famished, they swept down on Nzulu's maize and vegetable fields by the tens of thousands, eating everything and leaving Bulondo and his people with no food and no seed for the next planting. It took two years of hunger and hard work before the village

Above: An agricultural engineer examines a sample of grain collected from this combine's grain flow sensor. Right: Wheat harvest on the Palouse Hills, in the state of Washington.

had another crop, and that crop was stolen by soldiers fighting the Zairean civil war in 1996. Last year wandering troops from both sides of that war have been raiding fields at gunpoint. "We have people here, good farmers, who no longer plant," Bulondo said. "Even if they do the work, they figure some army will come by and steal their harvest." Towns and villages all over central Africa have suffered from political turmoil. In response, international agencies and volunteer groups have flocked to the region to feed the afflicted. I met many of these volunteers in Africa-people who left lives of comfort in Japan or Germany, London or Louisville to live in faraway villages and help others-and was inspired by their example. And yet, I found many of them to be conflicted. "Sure, it's good that we're here helping hungry people get food," said Merry Fitzpatrick, a former Air Force officer from North Carolina who worked with Food for the Hungry in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. "But relief work is a Band-Aid. And the wound here goes too deep for a

shipped to the company's retail arm, Fast Food Dajiang, which competes directly with the country's most popular restaurant franchise, Kentucky Fried Chicken. "When we opened the factory we were really aiming at export sales to Japan," Liu Jian, a Dajiang executive, told me as he munched on a soy-marinated drumstick at one of Fast Food Dajiang's outlets. "But now the Chinese demand is so strong that our market is overwhelmingly domestic." For a Western hamburger lover like me, it seems almost churlish to complain if Chinese people, too, want meat on the table. But in global terms there is real concern about this shift. A meat-centered diet is an inefficient use of resources because you have to feed the animal before it's fed to people. To reach slaughter weight at 240 pounds [l08 kilograms], for example, a U.S. pig consumes some 600 pounds [272 kilograms] of com and 100 pounds [48 kilograms] of soybean meal. The retail meat yield from that animal would provide a person with the UN's recommended 2,200 minimum daily calories for about 49 days. Eating

the com and soybean meal directly, the same person would have enough food for more than 500 days. Can China produce enough grain to feed enough livestock to satisfy a billion meateaters? Many economists and agricultural experts fear not. If China becomes a dramatically larger net buyer-and it's already among the world's greatest grain importers-that may raise prices for every other hungry country. The Chinese insist that the world's most populous country can feed itself. They note proudly that they have more than tripled domestic grain production over the past half century. Wherever I went to China, officials showed me plans to expand the supply of arable fields-by terracing hillsides, converting parks and cemeteries, even creating new land. They convinced me that China has found the political will to make sure its people are fed, a commitment that is commonplace in Western democracies but one I did not find in Africa. I was reminded of that difference during a luncheon with Ho Zhiqian, the

friendly nutrition expert. Ho is a professor at Sun Yatsen Medical University in Guangzhou, and he looked the part: gold wire-rimmed glasses, V-neck sweater, striped tie and a button-down collar he had left unbuttoned. A Guangzhou booster, Ho suggested we dine on some of the city's famous culinary specialties. Lunch was fabulous. We had fresh shrimp, braised sea bass, chicken with bean sprouts, spicy pork ribs and succulent fried rice. By the final course we were so stuffed that my question seemed utterly superfluous, but I turned to my host and asked him anyway. Can the Earth continue to feed its growing population? "Oh, Mr. Reid, you've asked the wrong person," the professor replied in his amiable way. "I've devoted my life to the study of food supplies, diet and nutrition. But your question goes way beyond those fields. Can the Earth feed all its people? That, I'm afraid, is strictly a political question." 0 About the Author: T.R. Reid currently serves as a London correspondentfor the Washington Post and National Public Radio.

'n"ia~5

Population Challllnllll An Interview with SAROJ PACHAURI

At the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, 180 countries reached a landmark accord on a comprehensive approach to population and development. The "Cairo Consensus, " as it was called, was a turning point in that governments formally recognized that the health, rights and well-being of the individual lie at the core of development. The focus shifted from the pure population numbers approach to a reproductive health approach. The Population Council, a nonprofit, nongovernment organization headquartered in New York with a worldwide network of regional and country offices, has been a major participant in the ongoing population debates. Established in 1952, the Council analyses population issues and trends, conducts research in the reproductive sciences and helps governments design and implement effective population policies. In 1995 the Council relocated its South and East Asia office from Bangkok to New Delhi because "it was felt that the need was greatest in South Asia, " according to Saroj Pachauri, regional director. Pachauri spoke to Arun Bhanot and A. Venkata Narayana about the Council's efforts in meeting the population challenge in the region, and India in particular. SPAN: At the turn of the millennium, how does the Population Council view existing population trends and policies, especially in the South Asia region? SAROJ PACHAURI: We are essentially a research organization. We do research of all kinds in this field, starting from the very basic research, developing concepts of technologies, for example. Some of the basic concepts of technology, like copper-T (IUD) are developed by us. And we've been working on a large number of technologies over the years. We have an entire center in New York which focuses essentially on technology development. We also focus on policy research issues and look at issues like: how does fertility get affected by educating girls, how does child mortality affect fertility? These kinds of broader macro issues. The reason we have regional and country offices is really to respond to national needs. If

we're worbng in India or Vietnam or Thailand or Nepal or wherever, what we're really trying to look at is what are the priority operations research questions that would make policies more implementable and programs better operational. The idea is to enhance access to services, for example, and to make them more gender-sensitive so that women can access them. After all, in the case of reproductive health services, family planning and child health services, the target population are largely women. And while most of these countries have national programs, we know they have problems of access and quality. Quality is one area where the Council can be proud of its work. For well over a decade, we have done work on how to improve the quality of services. We have developed a conceptual framework that is now being used worldwide. If you improve quality of service, then the assumption is that people will use the

services. And if service utilization improves, then fertility will decline and mortality will decline. Then all the outcome indicators that we're looking at will also improve as a consequence.

Do you work in tandem with governments or on your own? How do you coordinate your activities with respective government programs? It's a very crucial question. Since our research is meant to improve performance of services, for example, we clearly have to work with the governments of the nations where we work. Besides, we are very fortunate that we can work with anybody. We can work with the government, we can work with NGOs, we can work with researchers, trainers, grassroots activists. We have that flexibility because we are a nongovernment organization. What we really try to do is to strategically think through what is the most appropriate approach in a particular context for the particular problem that we're trying to address. I'll give you an example of how the Council actually worked with the government. In early 1995 there was a World Bank mission set up soon after the Cairo conference. It was a World Bank-Government of India mission and we were part of that mission because we had done the research. It was a five-month-long mission where we had discussions at all levels and made field visits, starting with the Central Government going down to the states-we visited five states-down to the districts, down to the grassroots. We talked to the field workers, women activists, NGOs and so on, to find out whether this was an appropriate time to make a change or not. The report was submitted and it was accepted by the Government of India, which then decided to change its policy toward reproductive health. It then began to plan for a very different and radical approach. And in a country as large as this, to completely change the mechanisms of the policy and the program desired, requires a lot of planning, a paradigm shift.

You mentioned quality of programs. Given the fact that India is poised to become the most populous country in the

world, overtaking China, how do you assess India's population programs? In the past they tended to be from topdown, and therefore tended to be coercive also. Targets were set, in our country for example, at the Central level. Government would set targets for every state, then states would follow those targets, and all the way down to the last worker in the field. So the evaluation took place in terms of how many sterilization targets have been met or not met by that field worker, who therefore, tried to get those numbers by whatever means. And if she did not get those numbers, then they were concocted. So what was happening was that contraceptive prevalence was rising because the targets were being met, theoretically, but in fact birth rate was not declining in the same proportion. After several years of this exercise questions were raised. Then researchers like us pointed out the discrepancy. The figures were fictitious. And that is what eventually convinced everybody, including the government, that this was not working and the approach needs to be changed. And in fact the Indian Government did change that approach, soon after the Cairo conference. Recently, we've just done a follow-up on what has or hasn't happened as a consequence of the recommendations made at Cairo.

What are your findings? Well, there are two things. Five years have gone by, of course. But the government didn't implement the program instantly. It was officially launched by the government on October 15, 1997. And you can imagine, when a program is finally launched, for it to get to a population that's close to a billion, in all the various states and different districts and all the way to the grassroots level, is going to take some time. But we still wanted to ask the question, wanted to critique the program to see what has and hasn't happened. Talking about findings, let me give you a few, quick points. One is that definitely India has a large population. It will be the most populous country in the world. It will surpass China, we know that, by 2050. So

the numbers are definitely going to increase, and are increasing. The second issue is that fertility is declining. Fertility transition is clearly underway in this country. And it is underway in the entire country, in every state, though the pace of decline varies. There are some states where we have stabilized population-Kerala, Tamil Nadu. Andhra Pradesh is getting there. Goa is stabilized. There are other 10 states or so that are coming close to stabilizing. The difficult states, as we all know, are the least developed northern states in the Hindi belt-Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh-which constitute 40 percent of the country's population, and where all indicators of development are poor, no matter what you look at. You look at education, literacy, empowerment-any indicator of social development, it is weak. The infrastructure is weak.

Are these indicators consistently weak or do they show a decline? Are they worse than, say,five or ten years ago? Well, I'm making a comparison between this region and others. In terms of fertility and mortality, there are declines. Mortality is declining at a fairly reasonably rate, which is why also the numbers are increasing, ironically. Since we got our independence, our life spans have doubled, which means that infant mortality rates have declined. But the most significant thing about India is the diversity. If you look at any indicator and you start looking at different states, you see enormous variation. Take infant mortality. The infant mortality in Kerala is probably better than parts of New York City, the poorest areas of New York City. On the other hand, if you look at Bihar, infant mortality is declining even in Bihar. But it's the pace that is different. It's the same story with fertility. Fertility declines more in these states. Now that's one side of the coin. The other side is that throughout the country, including in the worst-off states, the least developed states, there is a huge, what demographers refer to as unmet need in family planning. In other words, if you ask a woman does she want more children, she might say no. Or you ask her if she wants

another child now, she may say no. Then you ask: Are you using a method of famil y planning? The answer is no. So the hypothesis here is that there is an unmet need. So if we can provide services of good quality to these women, they are ready for family planning.

You are saying that family planning programs have not really reached people, or have done so in a sporadic manner. Perhaps only in the urban areas. Exactly. There are major differences between urban and rural, major differences between tribal and non-tribal. You can even look at the best state-Keralaand there are pockets where services do not reach. We have a network of family health centers, sub-centers, district hospitals, throughout the country. A huge infrastructure has been established by the public sector, the government, over the last 50 years. But the reach of that public sector and the quality of services provided vary significantly from one place to another. And that's what I meant was weak in states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

Why is that infrastructure is exceptionally good in the few states? It is because of multiple factors. Take Kerala, Goa or Tamil Nadu, where we know that all these indicators have improved. It's the history of the state. Kerala has had its own history which has a significant bearing on what's happening today. West Bengal is another example. We are now moving to decentralization-the Panchayati Raj. Well, in Kerala it is decentralized to a considerably higher extent than in many other places. In West Bengal also there is a lot of decentralization: women in panchayats, one-third seats reserved for women, for example. This is not so in many other states. The policy might be universal, but the implementation of the policy rests with the state governments. It's the same thing with the services. Even if you take the family planning services, the policy making takes place in Delhi. And this paradigm shift and change happens in Delhi, but the implementation rests with the state governments. And we know that some state governments are

much more active. Tamil Nadu is an example, Maharashtra is quite good that way. You will not go to many primary health centers in Maharashtra where you won't find doctors. There is an active effort on part of the state government. So there are these political reasons. In Kerala, I would say a very important reason also is women's autonomy. Today a woman in Kerala, if she takes her child for vaccination to a government primary health center, and the doctor says the vaccine is not available, she will not leave. She demands services. It can't happen in Bihar because women are not literate, there isn't that level of autonomy, there is tremendous gender discrimination.

What is the Council's projection for thefuture? Why are the numbers growing when fertility is declining is a question one might ask. The fact is that our base population is high and when you look at the age distribution of this population, the bulk of that population in this country are adolescents and youth. About 110 million are adolescents in the 10 to 19-year age group. And if you tend to take youth in the 10 to 24-year age group, it is 230 million. That's where the numbers are. And you cannot, therefore, predict a decline in numbers because these young people will probably not want large families, at least many of them. But they all want one or two children, which is still a lot. We haven't reached that stage as in Europe, for example, where couples don't want any children. In fact, they may have the other problem of negative growth. What, therefore, happens is because the base population of youth is so huge, it will fuel the population momentum.

So actually there won't be any slow down in the growth rate in real terms? Even though the rates of fertility continue to decline, and they are rapidly declining, the population will continue to increase because of the large number of young people. Now on that issue the important thing is that we can't wish away this population. They are productive age groups and they have reproductive and sexual health needs. And we are being

faced with this enormous problem today of lifestyle changes, which are affecting the young people most, and also problems which we never faced before, like HIV/AIDS. Besides, this is the most vulnerable group of our population. So we need services that we have never really designed before for young people. In the past, not just in this country but in many other countries, all services have bypassed this group, even family planning services. But this is the group whose needs we will now have to address. And we don't really know how to even reach them at this present time. This is a huge challenge that faces not just this country but this region too. One other thing which relates to the future and which I haven't mentioned is that India is privatizing and the role of the nongovernment sector is enhanced. This is true of the social sectors as well. Soon after independence and for a couple of decades after that, the social sectorshealth and education-for example, were primarily the responsibility of the government. Looking back 50 years, we see that some things have definjtely been accomplished but I think we have a long way to go. The role of the nongovernment sector has been increasing, and the government also has to begin to think in terms of partnerships with the nongovernment sector, which would include NGOs, the private sector and so on. In the health sector, for example, there's a huge private sector. When we talk about reproductive health services and family planning services, more specifically, there's a huge private sector out there. And when you look at who is providing health care in this country, it is actually the private sector. Even in the rural areas, even for the poor-which the public sector is meant to serve. I think there is a tremendous need for partnerships. I think there is need for change in attitudes because the government has always taken up the responsibility, which is a good thing in itself, but this must change. Take the government-NGO relationship on health care. There's actually a love-hate relationship. There is suspicion on both sides. I think that needs to be changed. Neither can do the job by itself. 0

Long before Hollywood, Shakespeare had a following in the Wild West. Mountain Man Jim Bridger could quote the Bard with the best of them.

ometime late in 1863, a tall, thin man rode out of an Army camp in the Wyoming territory and headed across the prairie. He was just under 60 years old, one of the greatest scouts and Indian fighters, a man from whom Kit Carson took orders. It was the wild places that Jim Bridger liked best; following strange tales into the unknown, he was probably the first white man to see the Great Salt Lake. At that moment, however, he was headed toward people, not away from them. Not too far off, the Oregon Trail snaked westward across the landscape. Traffic had dwindled by 1863, but this "trail" still ranked as a high-

way by the standards of men such as Bridger; you could hardly follow its hardpacked earth so much as a day without running across somebody. That was exactly why Bridger was headed there. He was looking to do some trading. What he had to offer was a yoke of cattle, then worth about $125, or almost a month of his wages as an Army scout. What Bridger wanted, and what he thought he could get from a wagon train, was a book. And not just any book, but the book that an Army officer had told him was the best ever written. He wanted Shakespeare. Bridger's quest might sound unlikely, but all over the American West trappers, cowboys, miners, outlaws, proper ladies, prostitutes and Army officers regarded Shakespeare with a familiar ease and delight that might astonish the average American in the late 20th century. The history of the West, in fact, is a history of playing Shakespeare, of playing with Shakespeare, in what now may seem peculiar places and surprising ways. Bridger, for instance, got what he

wanted: someone, going west in wagons that could hold only the most necessary and precious possessions, had brought along a volume of Shakespeare. Out on the prairie, that someone judged the book not quite so precious as a yoke of cattle. For the additional sum of $40 per month, Bridger hired a German boy to read his new book to him. For though he could speak English, French, Spanish and a dozen Indian languages, and though he could draw, freehand, highly accurate maps of the West, Bridger could not read. He could listen, however, and listen he did. Bridger was already well known as a storyteller. Because he sometimes embellished the already extraordinary natural marvels of the West, and because writers and others made up wild tales and attributed them to him, he also had a growing though undeserved reputation as a liar. That winter, however, he added to his repertoire: from then on he could quote Shakespeare at length. The prospect of an old mountain man spouting Shakespeare now seems more fantastic than the same man spinning

located in 1879, the last of its original owners, John Blewett, sold out for $30,000. Blewett may have revered the Bard, but he didn't spend all his free time reading. Having sold his rights to the mine, he promptly made his way down to Gothic and won a shooting contest.

mond-mine hoax that had produced a bank failure, a suicide and substantial losses for investors. In April of that year, therefore, Co!' William G. Boyle renamed the town Shakespeare. He already owned the Stratford Hotel, and Main Street was familiarly known as Avon Avenue; soon after,

T An early photograph mountain man.

of Jim Bridger,

tales about salt lakes, glass mountains and hot- and cold-running rivers. Nonetheless, Bridger came to know Shakespeare's cadences of speech so well that his own speech could slide through the poet's rhythms, especially the insults. One of Bridger's tricks was to insert his own oaths into Shakespeare, so that his audience did not know where the playwright stopped and the mountain man began. In search of the places that Bridger and others once took Shakespeare, I find myself heading off the main roads, and then off-road altogether. Up in Colorado's Gunnison County, I wind north through a wide valley filled with quaking aspen and tall trumpet flowers. Passing beneath the mountain whose sky-hungry spires gave the town of Gothic its name, the road bounces up over a pass and creeps into a darker forest of pine and spruce. This is country that in summer is still best covered on horseback. But I am horseless, so when I give up on the car, I set off on foot. For somewhere up here, say century-old documents that briefly sound more like The Hobbit than legal records, "at the foot of the Treasure Mountain" there lies a mine called Shakespeare. It was not a spectacularly rich rrtine, but it was respectable. Two years after it was

he name is scattered all over the West: "Shakespeare" names a town and a canyon in New Mexico, a mountaintop in Nevada, a reservoir in Texas and a glacier in Alaska. But it was the rrtiners who most often staked Shakespeare to the earth. Nineteenth-century claims called Shakespeare dotted the landscape of Colorado and spilled over into Utah. The mines that still scar Western mountains now seem a curious honorific for a great poet. Yet, Shakespeare takes his place among heroes and sweethearts. In their quest for distinctive names, the miners delved into the Bard's stories. Colorado sports mines called Ophelia, Cordelia and Desdemona. There is even a "Timon of Athens," revealing that some prospectors dug into remote corners of Shakespeare as well as remote corners of North America, because Timon is one of Shakespeare's least-known plays. It is a fitting name for a mine, though, because the play's hero-a mad, bankrupt misanthrope-accidentally discovers "yellow, glittering, precious gold" while digging in the forest for roots. I did not, in the end, find the valley where modern survey maps and ancient rrtining records suggest the remains of Blewett's mine lie. Far to the south, however, I did find an entire town called Shakespeare. By 1879, Ralston, New Mexico, was short on respectability, having been the site of a dia-

Boyle organized the Shakespeare Gold and Silver Mining and Milling Company. The townsmen joined the trend, organizing the Shakespeare Guards to defend the place against Apache raids. Shakespeare was more than a name to miners, however. During the gold rush, playgoing had a prominent place among the drinking, gambling and carrying on that was the miners' usual relief from hard and dangerous work. From Colorado to Califomia, theaters that played Shakespeare more than any other playwright perched just across the street, or sometimes right up-

"The Divine Sarah" Bernhardt as Cleopatra. The famous French actress was immensely popular in America, where she made six tours. Shakespeare plays were an important part of her repertory.

stairs, from the saloons and gambling halls that were sometimes brothels as well. All over the West, towns built elaborate giltand-plush theaters grandiosely called opera houses. A few of these jewel-box theaters still survive in former boomtowns such as Nevada City, California; Tombstone, Arizona; and Aspen, Central City and Leadville, Colorado. When theaters weren't available people gathered in saloons, hotel hallways or even tents to watch actors play on stages made of packing boxes or boards laid across billiard tables and lit by kerosene lanterns; in Calaveras County, California, actors performed on the stump of a giant redwood. The greatest actors from the Eastern Seaboard played to packed houses on these stages. Edwin Booth (elder brother of John Wilkes Booth) played his first Shakespearean leads on the magnificent and makeshift stages of California. That this caliber of actor regularly appeared in such venues might have been for adven-

Far left: Edwin Booth was probably the most famous Shakespearean actor at the end of the last century. Here he is seen as Hamlet.

ture's sake, but it was also partly because there was fame and wealth to be found among the miners. In the 1850s, top actors could earn up to $3,000 a week in San Francisco; the best theaters in the East were offering only a tenth as much. But it was up in the boisterous camps that the actors struck gold. In places with names like Rattlesnake, Rough and Ready, Git-upand-Git and Hangtown, theater tickets were bought with gold dust, and cheering miners tossed nuggets and bags of gold dust onto the stage at curtain call.

he first people to carry Shakespeare into the West were trappers, who threaded their way into the Rockies along the rivers on their quest for beaver. Mountain men were legendary for gathering around campfires to tell bear stories both hair-raising and hilarious. According to the recollections of trappers Joe Meek and Bill Hamilton, however, though they might indeed be swapping bear stories,

they might just as well be sharing a little Shakespeare. Or they might even be doing both: after all, the Bard's most infamous stage direction, from The Winter's Tale, is "Exit pursued by a bear." On the frontier, Shakespeare was not "Art" to be adored in silent, solitary reading; Shakespeare was a set of stories to be told aloud, language to be tasted, toyed with, tossed about over a campfire. Bridger is a case in point: after he bought his precious book, it never seems to have occurred to him to learn to read. What he wanted from the book was specifically what was in it. Like Bridger, other Westerners might get their Shakespeare out of books, but in books they did not let him stay. The 19th century was an age of oral story-telling and public speaking; if Shakespeare was taught at all, it was taught as oratory and recitation-then parts of the most basic schooling. Since Shakespeare was seen and heard more than read, no one needed much, if any, formal education to have at least a passing acquaintance with the works. Montana rancher Philip Ashton Rollins said that many ranch owners brought Shakespeare west with them. It was not unusual to see "a bunch of cowboys sitting on their spurs listening with absolute silence and concentration while somebody read aloud." Further, Shakespeare was popular because of the poetry, not in spite of it. After listening to the blood and thunder "dogs of war" speech in JuJius Caesar, one top hand told Rollins, "Gosh! That fellow Shakespeare could sure spill the real stuff. He's the only poet I ever seen what was fed on raw meat." Among Westerners, the most popular Shakespearean plays were the tragedies and epic histories, with Richard Ill, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet heading the list. Westerners, however, were not silenced into tongue-tied awe by high tragedy. Like Bridger-who was once heard to say that Falstaff (or "Mr. Full-stuff') liked beer a little too much for his own good and might have been better off with bourbon-cowboys, outlaws, miners and trappers embraced Shakespeare. They brought it to life, retelling it in a mix of remembered poetry and the teller's own salty language.

Along with the enthusiasm came irreverence. It was common in 19th-century American theater to follow the main play, no matter how profound, with a comic song, a dance and finally a farce in which the principal actors often reappeared. In Denver in 1859, a troupe followed Richard III with a polka and a farce called Luck in a Name; in San Francisco, King Lear was once followed by a dancing horse named Adonis. Sometimes the kind of mischief that led Bridger to alter Shakespeare's oaths took over the stage completely. Audiences loved farces with titles like Hamlet and Egglet and Julius

Romeo: a "blockhead in every respect" reported one witness delighted by the wooden dummy outfitted with wig and red cambric gown, and even more by the parodic performance that followed. Because Shakespeare-as story or poetry or theater-was shared by so many people, it became a kind of imaginative meeting place. The readings organized by Bridger, for example, brought together an illiterate mountain man, a German boy and the well-educated Army officer who had first recommended the Bard. In the theater, there was no assumption that Shakespeare should be delivered in the plummy tones of the British upper class; audiences Western audiences preserved flocked to hear their favorite actors and even heightened an exuberant play Shakespeare tradition of theatergoing dating in English heavily back to the Elizabethan audiences that laden with German, Shakespeare knew. They expected Polish, French and Italian accents in to enter into the spirit of play. addition to regional British, American and Australian inflections. Sneezer, and burlesque Shakespeare was For all the intensity of their love affair popular minstrel fare. with Shakespeare, Westerners had no moWesterners also delighted in creative nopoly on it. In 1849, what is still one of casting. In Army camps, all-male perthe bloodiest riots in American history formances were not uncommon. In Texas broke out in New York City-over styles on the eve of the Mexican War, Lieut. of acting Shakespeare. A vigorous style Ulysses S. Grant was drafted into the role was said to be democratic and American, of Desdemona because he supposedly while more cerebral acting was said to looked the part. Before opening night, be aristocratic and English. Enraged by however, his superiors had to send off a supposedly elitist performance of to New Orleans for a real woman, be- Macbeth, a crowd of 10,000 surged outcause Grant failed to show "the proper side the Astor Place Opera House. When sentiment." Great actresses playing the mob turned from hurling insults to Shakespearean heroes in serious produchurling paving-stones, the New York militions were ticket-selling curiosities. The tia opened fire, shooting directly into the women's success led to the brief vogue of crowd; at least 22 people died and 150 having little girls play the major tragic others were wounded. roles; thus did Anna Maria Quinn, age 6, play Hamlet to a mostly adult male audis the frontier straggled westward, the ence at San Francisco's Metropolitan differences that had chafed in Theatre in 1854. In Deer Lodge, crowded New York were stretched out Montana, on the other hand, miners and across the continent; Westerners favored cowboys were treated to the spectacle of flamboyant acting while disdaining polan actress playing Juliet with an imitation ished elegance as snobbish and Eastern.

Less than a year after the Astor Place Riot, Shakespeare arrived along with the fortyniners in the California goldfields, and by 1856, the Californians, too, were brawling over Shakespeare. In the West, though, it was not politics but the combination of characters acting badly and actors acting badly that provoked riots. At a Sacramento performance of Richard III, the audience began to get restive in the face of Richard's mounting evil and the actor's obvious incompetence. When at last Richard stabbed one of his victims in the back, the audience began tossing any and all handy garbage onto the stage: bags of flour and soot, old vegetables, a dead goose. At the request of the stage manager, the audience allowed Richard to reappear, but when he placed his sword in the hands of Lady Anne during the wooing scene, "one half the house, at least, asked that [the sword] might be plunged in his body," the Sacramento Union reported. The actor was finally driven from the stage by a "well directed pumpkin ... with still truer aim, a potato relieved him of his cap, which was left upon the field of glory, among the cabbages." In their noisy displays of pleasure and displeasure, Western audiences preserved and even heightened an exuberant tradition of theatergoing dating back to the Elizabethan audiences that Shakespeare knew. They expected to enter into the spirit of play, and the same enthusiasm that could produce showers of either rotten vegetables or gold dust also provoked, at less frenzied moments, stamping, cheering, whistling and hooting, as well as quips and running commentary on the play, the players and the production. This freewheeling audience participation had once been common all over America, but in the late 19th century Shakespearean theater was fast becoming an elite and stately affair in the East and in Europe. Western audiences preserved longer their right to play during the play. Appearing as Othello in 1886, Tommaso Salvini was so disturbed by the laughter and popping of champagne corks coming from "Silver King" Horace Tabor's per-

val. Every summer tourists descend upon the towns of Ashland, Oregon, and Cedar City, Utah, to gorge themselves on Shakespeare brilliantly brought to life in faux Elizabethan theaters set down among the forests of the Pacific Northwest and the red rock canyons of the Southwest. Scattered over the West as well are productions aimed more at local audiences, such as the Colorado Shakespeare Festival in Boulder and the Grand Canyon Shakespeare Festival in Flagstaff, Arizona. In Boulder, you can spend a summer's evening picnicking on a wide lawn and then wander into a Greek-style amphitheater The Tabor Opera House hewn out of local red stone. in the silver mining town As the sky deepens to sapLeadville, Colorado, was phire edged by the strange, said to be the grandest stark shapes of the Flatitheater betl'veen St. Louis ron Mountains that loom and San Francisco when behind the set, you can be it opened in 1879. It was swept away to some far built by "Silver King" country on the tide of Horace Tabor and boasted Shakespeare, sharing the red plush seats and a laughter of a thousand curtain depicting the Royal Gorge, another Colorado Coloradans as Beatrice baits landmark. Benedick, or shivering with the hiss of indrawn breath as Romeo forever drinks poison a scant moment too early oday up in Leadville, you can, as I to see that Juliet still breathes. But here, as I listen to the crowds dispersing did, climb onto the stage of the Tabor Opera House and stand in front of the downhill through the trees, the laughter and the sorrow are tinged with surprise: painted scenery that once backed Romeo that Shakespeare is here, that it is so and Juliet. Facing the plush seats that good, that they have enjoyed it so much. curve toward you, you can let your voice In the frontier West, the fact that roll out into the hushed and waiting darkness on the cadences of Shakespeare. In Shakespeare tells good stories, and that those stories should be told well in the the ghost town of Shakespeare, you can, as I did, duck out of the ew Mexico sun West, was no surprise at all-at least not to Westerners. From Jim Bridger, to the into the shade of the Stratford Hotel's forty-niners, to the cowboys, the old long narrow dining room, where the desert wind will send the fine silt of wanderers would hardly recognize anything in the modern cities that rise on the crumbling adobe drifting over your skin and through your hair; there you can lis- plains and mountains, strung out like glittering beads along the Interstate freeten to the stories that the town's present ways. Yet they might recognize and be owners, Janaloo Hill and Manny Hough, glad of one thing on such a summer have spent a lifetime collecting from night: Shakespeare still plays well under old-timers. Western skies. 0 Yet Shakespeare is more than a ghost in the West. After the Bard ceased to be part of their everyday life, Westerners About the Author: Jennifer Lee Carrell is a Shakespeare scholar at Harvard University. began to pioneer the Shakespeare festi-

sonal box in Denver's Tabor Grand Opera House that he sent a note up during intermission threatening to stop the play if things in Box A did not quiet down. "My theater is a playhouse as much for the audience as for the actors," Tabor reportedly bellowed back. "If that Eyetalian wants to pray," Tabor fumed, "let him go to church." Nonetheless, changing attitudes even tually traveled westward; Lawrence Levine of George Mason University, in Fairfax, Virginia, has speculated that Shakespeare's fall from popularity in America was caused by

deeply honorable man. He is also prone to quoting Shakespeare; the poet's lyricism captivates him. "The singing masons building roofs of gold," he says at one point, quoting from King Henry V. "Ain't that a fine description of bees aworkin'? ... Puts 'em right before yu', and is poetry without bein' foolish." Following the novelists, Hollywood, too, has borrowed from Shakespeare in shaping our idea of the West that was. The film Broken Lance (1954), for instance, tells King Lear in the guise of a western, while Jubal (1956) reshapes Othello.

large-scale shifts in ideas about what is entertainment and what is art. When Shakespeare stopped being story and began to be art, it began to seem distant; when accuracy became more important than entertainment, it became boring; and when the language of Shakespeare ceased to be commonly heard aloud, it began to seem difficult. Beyond doubt, however, changing attitudes toward Shakespeare have resulted in what now looks like a paradox: Shakespeare's popularity in the American West dwindled as the West was settled and ceased to be wild. Shakespeare has not, however, disappeared from the West without a trace: it still shapes the myth of what we think the West was, or ought to have been. The novel that established the genre of the western, Owen Wister's The Virginian (published in 1902), features an aloof hero who is a dead shot and a

echnology is my native tongue. I'm online six hours a day. I have a cell phone, voicemail, fax, laptop and palmtop. I'm connected-and lately, I've been wondering where all this equipment is leading me. I've found myself asking a question that's both disquieting and intriguing: What kind of person am I becoming as a result of all thjs stuff? Of course, I'm not the only one asking. And a while ago it occurred to me that, in addition to measuring my reactions against those of others in comparable circumstances, I might learn somethjng entirely new by looking at a civilization of which I am not a member. The Amish communities of Pennsylvania, despite the retro image of horse-drawn buggies and straw hats, have long been engaged in a productive debate about the consequences of technology. So I turned to them for a glimpse of the future. Amish settlements have become a cliche for refusing technology. Tens of thousands of people wear identical, plain, homemade clothing, cultivate their rich fields with horse-drawn machinery and live in houses lacking that basic modern spirit called electricity. But the Amish do use such 20th-century consumer technologies as disposable diapers, in-line skates and gas barbecue grills. Some might call this combination paradoxical, even contradictory. But it could also be called sophisticated, because the Amish have an elaborate system by which they evaluate the tools they use; their tentative, at times reluctant use of technology is more complex than a simple rejection or a whole-hearted embrace. What if modern Americans could possibly agree upon criteria for acceptance, as the Amish have? Might we find better ways to wield technological power, other than simply unleashing it and seeing what happens? What can we learn from a culture that habitually negotiates the rules for new tools? Last summer, armed with these questions and in the company of an acquaintance with Amish contacts, I traveled around the countryside of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Everywhere, there were freshly planted fields, farmhouses with handsome, immaculate barns and outbuildings. At one farm we passed, a woman was sitting a hundred yards from her house on the edge of a kitchen garden. She wore a traditional garb of the conservative Old Order-a long, unadorned dress sheathed by an apron, her hair covered by a prayer bonnet. She was sitting in the middle of the garden, alone, the very image of technology-free simplicity. But she was holding her hand up to her ear. She appeared to be intent on something, strangely engaged. "Whenever you see an Amish woman sitting in the field like

that," my guide said, "she's probably talking on a cell phone." "It's a controversy in the making," he continued. A rather large one, it turns out-yet part of the continuum of determining whether a particular technology belongs in Amish life. They've adopted horses, kerosene lamps and propane refrigerators; should they add cell phones? Collective negotiations over the use of telephones have ignited intense controversies in the Amish community since the beginning of the 20th century. In fact, a dispute over the role of the phone was the principal issue behind the 1920s division of the Amish church, wherein one-fifth of the membership broke away to form their own church. Eventually, certain Amish communities accepted the telephone for its aid in summorung doctors and veterinarians, and in

The conservative Amish, who adhere to a 19th-century lifestyle and eschew modern technology, are now engaged in a productive debate about its consequences as high-tech makes inroads into their Godfearing, rural Pennsylvania communities. calling suppliers. But even these Amish did not allow the telephone into the home. Rather, they required that phones be used communally. Typically, a neighborhood of two or three extended families shares a telephone housed in a wooden shanty, located either at the intersection of several fields or at the end of a common lane. These structures look like small bus shelters or privies; indeed, some phones are in outhouses. Sometimes the telephone shanties have answering machines in them. (After all, who wants to wait in the privy on the off chance someone will call?) The first Amish person I contacted, I reached by answering machine. He was a woodworker who, unlike some of his brethren, occasionally talked to outsiders. I left a message on his phone, which I later learned was located in a shanty in his neighbor's pasture. The next day the man, whom I'll call Amos, returned my call. We agreed to meet at his farmstead a few days later. I couldn't help thinking it was awfully complicated to have a phone you used only for calling back-from a booth in a meadow. Why not make life easier and just put one in the house? "What would that lead to?" another Amish man asked me. "We don't want to be the kind of people who will interrupt a con-

Text by HOWARD RHEINGOLD Illustration by GREGORY NEMEC

Far from knee-jerk technophobes, these are very adaptive techno-selectives wh() versation at home to answer a telephone. It's not just how you use the technology that concerns us. We're also concerned about what kind of person you become when you use it." he Amish are famously shy. Their commitment to "plain" living is most obvious in their unadorned clothing-Old Order Amish even eschew buttons, requiring humble hooks instead. Any sign of individuality is cause for concern. Until fairly recently, Amish teachers would reprimand the student who raised his or her hand as being too individualistic. Calling attention to oneself, or being "prideful," is one of the cardinal Amish worries. Having your name or photo in the papers, even talking to the press, is almost a sin. Like most modern Americans, I assume individuality is not only a fundamental value, but a goal in life, an art form. The garish technicolor shirts and hand-painted shoes I usually wear sometimes startle business audiences who show up for my speaking engagements. My reasoning: If I think for myself, why not dress for myself? Dye technology has given us all these colors, so let's use' em! Still, I didn't want to make my idiosyncrasies the focus of my visit to Amish country. So I bought a plain blue work shirt, dark blue gabardine pants and brown shoes. I hadn't traveled so drably in many years. Amos runs a factory of sorts in the vicinity of three memorably named Pennsylvania towns: Bird-in-Hand, Paradise and Intercourse. The sun was setting as I drove slowly down his unpaved driveway. I found myself inside a tableau that must have looked almost exactly the same 200 years ago. Several men and young boys in identical black trousers, suspenders and straw hats were operating horse-drawn equipment in the fields beyond. One of Amos's grandsons pointed me to a plain wooden building beside the barn. The aroma of cows gave way to the pungent smell of diesel fuel and wood chips as I entered the workshop. The whine of a wood-milling machine made it futile to talk. This was not the serene place the words "Amish woodshop" conjure up. My host finished cutting a 12-foot-Iong plank before we greeted each other. He then lit a kerosene lamp in the small office next to his workshop and invited me in. The office had no modern technology in it, but railroad posters were tacked on the walls, and wooden locomotive models sat on the shelves. Amos had sawdust and hydraulic fluid in his beard. His bluegray eyes fastened on me as he bounced back his own questions in reply to my queries. He had received the same eighth-grade education that all Amish youth are given, but it was obvious that Amos did some outside reading. When I asked him to describe his sense of community, he started out, "Hmm, how do you pronounce s-c-e-n-a-r-i-o?" Amos runs a successful business crafting wooden furniture,

which he sells throughout Pennsylvania and beyond-primarily to the "English" (the Amish term for non-Amish). It's a trade more and more Amish are getting into. Inside Amos's home there are no telephones, radios, televisions, vacuum cleaners, dishwashers or other electrical appliances. In his shop, routers, mills and sanders are powered by specially adapted hydraulic mechanisms connected to a diesel engine located near a large open door, exhausting outside the building. This was a good case study in Amish reasoning: Far from knee-jerk technophobes, these are very adaptive techno-selectives who devise remarkable technologies that fit within their self-imposed limits. The price of good farmland and the number of Amish families are both increasing so rapidly that in recent decades they have adopted nonagricultural enterprises for livelihood-woodworking, construction, light factory work. This, in turn, has forced the Amish to adopt technologies that can enhance their productivity. And the interface with the English brings its own set of demands: When the State of Pennsylvania refused to certify Amish-produced milk unless it was stirred mechanically and refrigerated according to state health codes, the Amish installed stirring machines and refrigeration-operated by batteries or propane gas. Amos, like many other Amish craftsmen, uses electricity in his workshop for certain tools. But the electricity does not come from public utility lines. Amos runs a diesel generator to charge a bank of 12-volt batteries. The batteries' DC charge is then sent through a converter to create homegrown llO-volt "Amish electricity." To generate more, he has to haul the diesel fuel in from town on his horse-drawn buggy. To the obvious question why allow Amish electricity but not public electricity, Amos answered slowly and deliberately, "The Bible teaches us not to conform to the world, to keep a separation. Connecting to the electric lines would make too many things too easy. Pretty soon, people would start plugging in radios and televisions, and that's like a hot line to the modern world. We use batteries and generators because you can use the batteries for only a short time and because you have to fuel and maintain the generator yourself. It's a way of controlling our use of electricity. We try to restrict things that would lead to us losing that sense of being separate, to put the brakes on how fast we change." espite the reputation today's Amish have as old-fashioned diehards, their departure from Europe several centuries ago was driven by their success as innovators. They started out as radical religious libertarians-at a time when the price of religious radicalism was martyrdom. Catholics and Protestants were killing each other in a major religious war, but both sides took a serious dislike to these defiant theological purists, known at the time as Anabaptists, for their emphasis on adult baptism. (Today, every

devise remarkable technologies that fit within their self-imposed limits. Amish household has a copy of Martyrs' Mirror, a text of more than 1,000 pages that details the excruciating and humiliating public executions suffered by Anabaptist martyrs in Switzerland, Germany and Holland.) The Anabaptists developed a soil technology based on crop rotation, planting clover in their pastures, and sweetening their earth with lime and gypsum; they dramatically increased the yield of their land, and some of them became wealthy. Ironically, those same Anabaptists helped set the stage for the fast-paced changes of modem life that today's Amish reject. It was the widespread adoption of Anabaptist practices that eventually produced enough food to free other agricultural laborers, creating the workforce that would be needed for the industrial revolution. Toward the end of the 17th century, one of the Anabaptist leaders, Jakob Ammann, decided that his Swiss brethren had not been radical enough. Ammann and his followers, who came to be known as "Amish," broke with the traditional Anabaptists, moved to the New World, and started farming in Lancaster County in 1710. In today's Pennsylvania Amish country, a group of 20 to 30 families who live near one another constitute a "district." Each district has a bishop, and the bishops get together twice a year to discuss church matters. This includes raising the recurring questions about which technologies should be permitted in the community, and which banned or regulated. While the say of the bishops is binding, the Amish come to their decisions quite consensually. New things are not outright forbidden, nor is there a rush to judgment. Rather, technologies filter in when one of the more daring members of the community starts to use, or even purchases, something new. Then others try it. Then reports circulate about the results. What happens with daily use? Does it bring people together? Or have the opposite effect? Despite the almost organic ebb and flow of this evaluation process, the common goal is constant submission to the judgment of one's peers. On my visit, I was constantly struck by what seemed an alien conception of community. As a kid I was encouraged to "do my thing" while being nice to others; I've lived in five states and dozens of neighborhoods. Amish communities are not just tightly knit and immobile, they're authoritarian. Yet there is some room for disagreement; consider how the bishops judged the automobile in the 1960s. Typically, the Amish have large extended families; most have dozens of cousins within walking or buggy distance. Every other Sunday, instead of attending church, the Amish are encouraged to visit relatives and the sick. Over time, it was felt that the automobile was enlarging people's traveling radius too far beyond their extended family, to diversions and recreations not related to the community, decreasing the social cohesion and personal connection the Amish so cherish. Some bishops accepted the use of the automobile under certain conditions, while others rejected it outright. The Amish are now split into traditional "Old Order" Amish who still stick to horse and buggy, "New Order" Amish who approve use of telephones and

powered farm equipment but shun public electricity, and "Beachy Amish," named for the '20s liberal leader Moses Beachy, who permit both public electricity and automobiles. While all orders now allow diesel engines in the barn to blow silage, their use is still resisted in the fields-the bishops don't want increased efficiency to interfere with the practice of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, working together with horsedrawn machinery and handheld implements. Notably, some Old Order Amish allow some diesel-powered equipment in the fields-if it's hauled by animals. "Does it bring us together, or draw us apart?" is the primary question the bishops ask in considering whether to permit or put away a technology. The bishops' rulings can take decades. In daily life, the Amish take their directions in dress, thought, behavior and custom from a body of unwritten but detailed rules known as the "Ordnung." Individuals and communities maintain a separation from the world (by not connecting their houses to telephones or electricity), a closeness to one another (through regular meetings), and an attitude of humility so specific they have a name for it ("Gelassenheit"). Decisions about technology hinge on these collective criteria. If a telephone in the home interferes with face-toface visiting, or an electrical hookup fosters unthinking dependence on the outside world, or a new pickup truck in the driveway elevates one person above his neighbors, then people start to talk about it. The talk reaches the bishops' ears. nthe middle of Amish country, it occurs to me that Internet culture itself grew out of a kind of virtual Ordnung-the norms of cooperation, information-sharing and netiquette taught to newbies by the first generations of users. The celebrated "anarchy" of the early days was possible only because of the near-universal adherence to largely unwritten rules. But the Internet population has grown fast-so fast that the sudden influx of tens of millions of newbies has overwhelmed the capacity of the oldtimers to pass on the Ordnung. In the process, the Internet loses its unique hallmarks, coming to resemble and reflect the rest of contemporary culture. "The Amish employ an intuitive sense about what will build solidarity and what will pull them apart," says Donald Kraybill, author of The Riddle of Amish Culture. "You find state-of-the-art barbecues on some Amish porches. Here is a tool they see as increasing family coherence: Barbecues bring people together." Asked what kinds of questions the bishops will likely raise about cell phones, Kraybill replies, "Are cell phones being used 'to make a living' or just for gossip and frivolous chatter? Will permitting cell phones lead to having phones in homes, and where will that lead ...to fax machines and the Internet?" "We don't want to stop progress, we just want to slow it down," several Amish told me. Conversations about technology often turn on where to "hold the line" against the too-rapid advance of innovation. Riding in automobiles to work, but not own-

"Will it build solidarity or will it draw us apart?" is a key question posed by ing them, putting telephone shanties in fields, requiring battery power instead of electrical lines are all ways of holding the line. And clearly a lot could be learned about the Amish hold-theline philosophy by looking at those who either crossed the line or pushed it further out. So I sought out several of the more boldly experimental members of the greater Plain community (Amish and Mennonites and other religious groups sharing a kindred commitment to plain living). In ranging from farmers who ran small enterprises in barnside sheds to well-equipped machine workshops and multimillion-dollar crafts factories, I soon was directed to Moses Smucker, who runs a harness shop in Churchtown, Pennsylvania. Moses is an early adopter. He didn't mind if I used his real name, a liberty that has made him the subject of a few other journalists' stories. When I arrived at his manufacturing headquarters, I took a look at some of the harnesses on displayone of them had a price tag of $12,000. If you've ever seen the Budweiser Clydesdales Christmas commercials, you've seen harness bells from Moses Smucker's _ Church town workshop. In the back of the store, more than a dozen young Amish men were working at modem machinery powered by hydraulics and diesel-generated electricity. Upstairs, I saw a woman in traditional plain clothing seated in front of a Pc. Moses Smucker might look like Abe Lincoln, in his black suit and mustache-free beard, but he bore the same time-is-money air of any factory manager taking a few minutes out of a busy day to talk to the press. Where Amos was rough hewn and wry, Moses seemed shrewd and slick. His office was certainly in a different century from Amos's. An electronic rolodex and an electric calculator sat atop an old rolltop desk. I noticed a clock in the shape of a horse and buggy. The whip ticked back and forth. "When I started this business in 1970," Moses said, "it wasn't accepted to have a telephone in the building, even in a business. But the telephone began to be accepted through popular disobedience. More businesses put them in and the bishops didn't stop them." Will the bishops also eventually allow phones in the home? I asked. "When the telephone fust came out here, people put them in their homes," explained Moses. "But they were party lines. One time a woman overheard two other women gossiping about her. She objected. That wasn't what we wanted for our families or our community, so the bishops met and home telephones were banned." I had heard the same story from several other Amish-in fact, this story seemed to be a key part of community mythology. A writer named Diane Zimmerman Umble, who grew up in Lancaster County and had family roots in the Plain orders, traced the story to its origin, a 1986 memoir written by an Old Order

Amishman born in 1897. As a graduate student, Zimmerman Umble started investigating Amish community telephones for a course on contemporary social theory, and ended up writing a book on the subject, Holding the Line: The Telephone in Old Order Mennonite and Amish Life. Among her findings was the power of anecdote in the Amish decision-making process. Anecdote, of course, is a key currency on the Internet, so I asked Moses if he'd heard stories about it. Although he used a computer in his business, he didn't believe the Internet as currently constituted would ever be permitted. Based on anecdotal evidence, he said, "It's too unregulated, there's too much trash, and there's a worry people will use it for purposes unrelated to work." I asked another Amish workshop owner whom I'll call Caleb what he thought about technology. He pulled some papers out of a file cabinet, handed them to me, and said, "I share some of this fellow's opinions," pointing to a magazine interview with virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier. Asked for an opinion he shared with the dreadlocked-and-dashikied laron, he replied, "I agree with his statement that you can't design foolproof machines, because fools are so clever." Caleb also discussed the Amish resistance to becoming "modern." They're not worried about becoming people without religion or people who use lots of technology, he explained; rather, the Amish fear assimilating the far more dangerous ideas that "progress" and new technologies are usually beneficial, that individuality is a precious value, that the goal of life is to "get ahead." This mind-set, not specific technologies, is what the Amish most object to. "The thing I noticed about the telephone is the way it invades who you are," Caleb said. "We're all losing who we are because of the telephone and other machines-not just the Amish." In Holding the Line, Zimmerman Umble writes: "Some Old Order people feel that relaxation of telephone rules reflects a movement toward an 'uncontrollable drift' which must be halted. Others see these steps as pragmatic choices necessary to hold the community together economically. The paradox in the Old Order story is that the telephone does both: It holds people together by making communication among community members possible, and it separates them from the world and from each other. The telephone is both evil and good." _ Donald Kraybill, who is also provost of Messiah College, on the outskirts of Amish country, believes taboos about telephones are "a symbolic way of keeping the technology at a distance and making it your servant, rather than the other way around." Can they make the cell phone a servant? My questions on this score were answered mostly with anecdote. I heard of one Amish man who was going to be late to a chiropractor appointment, so

church elders when considering whether to permit or prohibit a technology. he pulled out his cell phone and called the receptionist from the bus he was on. Zimmerman Umble heard of a Plain order businessman who called his stockbroker from his company car phone, pushing three taboos at once past their boundaries. Zimmerman Umble pointed out that part of what makes cell phones so handy-the lack of a wire-also poses a special challenge for the Amish. "In the early part of the community discussion, electrical and telephone lines carried substantial symbolic freight," she said. The wires meant that anyone in the community could easily see who was using electricity and phones. "But now, in the absence of the line, behavior can't be monitored in the same way. It is harder to maintain separation between home and business when you have a cell phone in your pocket. In that sense it tests the community consensus about what is allowable." Calling around cell phone outlets in the Lancaster area, I found a merchant who has been selling cell phones to Plain folk for years. "A great percentage of my customer base is Amish and Mennonite," the merchant told me. "More Amish than Mennonite. We opened our cellular system 12 years ago. Within the first year, I had an Amish customer. He first called from his neighbor's house. He owned a painting business and told me he wasn't allowed to have a cell phone personally, but his bishop said he could buy one for his foreman to use in the company truck. It didn't take too long before I started getting quite a lot of telephone calls from the Amish." This raised quite a few interesting consumer technology questions. Ordinarily, for example, one needs a credit card (and good credit) to secure a cell phone. 'The Amish pay in cash," explained the merchant, who, along with most Amish-friendly shopkeepers, didn't want his name used. "We normally ask for a driver's license for the purpose of identification when we activate cellular service-of course, the Amish don't have driver's licenses. They weren't able to get phones for several months, since we weren't allowed to open accounts without driver's licenses. So we had to make a policy change to accommodate them. We ended up asking for another form of identification. But the Amish don't believe in photography, so we couldn't get a photo ID. Eventually we told them to get Pennsylvania state IDs without photographs. "I've sold hundreds of cell phones to them, primarily business phones," the merchant continued, adding a few details about how the phones were used. "Some Old Order Amish leave their cell phones in their shanty. Some leave the phone overnight with an English neighbor, who recharges it for them: then the Amish pick up the phone in the morning."

t'sa pretty safe prediction that when the bishops get around to their formal ruling, cell phones will not be deemed appropriate for personal use. In the 191Os, when the telephone was only beginning to change the world at large, the Old Order Amish recognized that the caller at the other end of the line was an interloper,

someone who presumed to take precedence over the family's normal, sacred, communications. Keeping the telephone in an unheated shanty in a field, or even an outhouse, was keeping the phone in its proper place. Though the Amish determination to allow phones at work but ban them at home might seem hard to accept, I appreciate the deliberation put into their decision. In fact, similar reflection might highlight conflicts between our own practices and values. How often do we interrupt a conversation with someone who is physically present in order to answer the telephone? Is the family meal enhanced by a beeper? Who exactly is benefiting from call waiting? Is automated voicemail a dark hint about the way our institutions value human time and life? Can pagers and cell phones that vibrate instead of ring solve the problem? Does the enjoyment of virtual communities by growing numbers of people enhance or erode citizen participation in the civic life of geographic communities? "What does the Old Order story have to say to members of postmodern society?" asks Diane Zimmerman Umble. "The struggle of Old Order groups to mold technology in the service of community provides a provocative model of resistance for those who have come to recognize that technology brings both benefits and costs .... Their example invites reflection on a modern dilemma: how to balance the rights of the individual with the needs of the community. For them, community comes first." Indeed, what does one's use of a tool say to other people, particularly loved ones, about where they stand in our priorities? In my own house, we decided to get a roll-over to voicemail instead of call waiting-experiences on the receiving end of call waiting convinced us that both parties on the other end of the line get pissed off when you interrupt the conversation. No matter how absorbing the flame war of the moment might be, I make a point of suspending online communication when someone in my presence attempts to talk with me. And I've come to believe that face-to-face conversation should outrank disembodied conversation via cell phone or e-mail. I never expected the Amish to provide precise philosophical yardsticks that could guide the use of technological power. What drew me in was their long conversation with their tools. We technology-enmeshed "English" don't have much of this sort of discussion. And yet we'll need many such conversations, because a modem heterogeneous society is going to have different values, different trade-offs and different discourses. It's time we start talking about the most important influence on our lives today. I came away from my journey with a question to contribute to these conversations: If we decided that community came first, how would we use our tools differently? 0 About the Author: Howard Rheingold is the author of Virtual Reality and The Virtual Community and editor of The Millennium Whole Earth Catalog.

Portrait of the Consultant as a Young Man When I was a raw student at Oxford, my tutor told me never to go to lectures. "Books can be read far faster," he explained. "But never read a book from cover to cover, except for pleasure. When you are working, find out what the book is saying much faster than you would by reading it through. Read the conclusion, then the introduction, then the conclusion again, then dip lightly into any interesting bits." What he was really saying was that 80 percent of the value of a book can be found in 20 percent or fewer of its pages and absorbed in 20 percent of the time most people would take to read it through. I took this study method and extended it. At Oxford there is no system of continuous assessment, and the class of degree earned depends entirely on finals, the examinations taken at the end of the course. I discovered from the "form book," that is, by analyzing past examination papers, that at least 80 percent (sometimes 100 percent) of an examination could be well answered with knowledge from 20 percent or fewer of the sub-

some customers and some products are more profitable than others, but when the extent of the difference is proved, they are likely to be surprised and sometimes dumbfounded. Teachers may know that the majority of their disciplinary troubles or the most truancy arises from a minority of pupils, but if records are analyzed the extent of the imbalance will probably be larger than expected. We may feel that some of our time is more valuable than the rest, but if we measure inputs and outputs the disparity can still stun us. For everyone and every institution, it is possible to obtain much more that is of value and avoid what has negative value, with much less input of effort, expense or investment. At the heart of this progress is a process of substitution. Resources that have weak effects in any particular use are not used, or are used sparingly. Resources that have powerful effects are used as much as possible. Every resource is ideally used where it has the greatest value. Wherever possible, weak resources are developed so that they can mimic the behavior of the stronger resources. Business and markets have used this process, to great effect, for hundreds of

jects that the exam was meant to cover. The examiners could therefore be much better impressed by a student who knew an awful lot about relatively little, rather than a fair amount about a great deal. This insight enabled me to study very efficiently. Somehow, without working very hard, I ended up with a First Class degree. I used to think this proved that Oxford dons were gullible. I now prefer to think, perhaps improbably, that they were teaching us how the world worked. I went to work for Shell, serving my time at a dreadful oil refinery. This may have been good for my soul, but I rapidly realized that the best-paying jobs for young and inexperienced people such as I lay in management consultancy. So I went to Philadelphia and picked up an effortless MBA from Wharton (scorning the boot-camp-style so-called learning experience from Harvard). I joined a leading U.S. consultancy that on day one paid me four times what Shell was paying me when I left. No doubt 80 percent of the money to be had by people of my

years. The French economist J-B Say coined the word entrepreneur around 1800, saying that "the entrepreneur shifts economic resources out of an area of lower productivity into an area of higher productivity and yield." But one fascinating implication of the 80120 Principle is how far businesses and markets still are from producing optimal solutions. For example, the 80120 Principle asserts that 20 percent of products, or customers or employees, are really responsible for about 80 percent of profits. If this is true-and detailed investigations usually confirm that some such very unbalanced pattern exists-the state of affairs implied is very far from being efficient or optimal. The implication is that 80 percent of products, or customers or employees, are contributing only 20 percent of profits; that there is great waste; that the most powerful resources of the company are being held back by a majority of much less effective resources; that profits could be multiplied if more of the best sort of products could be sold, employees hired or customers attracted (or convinced to buy more from the firm). In this kind of situation, one might well ask: Why continue to make the 80 percent

of products that only generate 20 percent of profits? Companies rarely ask these questions, perhaps because to answer them would mean very radical action: To stop doing four-fifths of what you are doing is not a trivial change. What J-B Say called the work of entrepreneurs, modern financiers call arbitrage. International financial markets are very quick to correct anomalies in valuation, for example between exchange rates. But business organizations and individuals are generally very poor at this sort of entrepreneurship or arbitrage, at shifting resources from where they have weak results to where they have powerful results, or at cutting off low-value resources and buying more high-value resources. Most of the time, we do not realize the extent to which some resources, but only a small minority, are superproductivewhat Joseph Juran called the "vital few"-while the majority-the "trivial many"-exhibit little productivity or else actually have negative value. If we did realize the difference between the vital few and the trivial many in all aspects of our lives and if we did something about it, we could multiply anything that we valued.

tender age was concentrated in 20 percent of the jobs. Since there were too many colleagues in the consultancy who were smarter than me, I moved to another U.S. strategy "boutique." I identified it because it was growing faster than the fIrm I had joined, yet had a much smaller proportion of really smart people. Here I stumbled across many paradoxes of the 80120 Principle. Eighty percent of the growth in the strategy consultancy industry-then, as now, growing like gangbusters-was being appropriated by firms that then had, in total, fewer than 20 percent of the industry's professional staff. Eighty percent of rapid promotions were also available in just a handful of firms. Believe me, talent had very little to do with it. When I left the first strategy firm and joined the second, I raised the average level of intelligence in both. Yet the puzzling thing was that my new colleagues were more effective than myoid ones. Why? They didn't work any harder. But they followed the 80120 Principle in two key ways. First, they realized that for most fIrms, 80 percent of profits come from 20 percent of clients. In the consultancy industry, that means two things: large clients and long-term clients.

Seeing the Wood for the Trees 80120 Thinking is my phrase for the application of the 80120 Principle to daily life. We start with a hypothesis about a possible imbalance between inputs and outputs, and, rather than collecting data and analyzing it, we estimate it. 80120 Thinking requires, and with practice enables, us to spot the few really important things that are happening and ignore the mass of unimportant things. It teaches us to see the wood for the trees. 80120 Thinking is too valuable to be confined to causes where data and analysis are perfect. For every ounce of insight generated quantitatively, there must be many pounds of insight arrived at intuitively and impressionistically. This is why 80120 Thinking, although helped by data, must not be constrained by it. To engage in 80120 Thinking, we must constantly ask ourselves: What is the 20 percent that is leading to 80 percent? We must never assume that we automatically know what the answer is but take some time to think creatively about it. What are the vital few inputs or causes, as opposed

Large clients give large assignments, which means you can use a higher proportion of lower-cost, younger consultants. Longterm client relationships create trust and raise the cost to the client of switching to another consulting firm. Long-term clients tend not to be price-sensitive. In most consulting firms, the real excitement comes from winning new clients. In my new firm, the real heroes were those who worked on the largest existing clients for the longest possible time. They did this by cultivating the top bosses of those client corporations. The second key insight the consulting firm had was that in any client, 80 percent of the results available would flow from concentrating on the 20 percent of most important issues. These were not necessarily the most interesting ones from a curious consultant's viewpoint. But whereas our competitors would look superficially at a whole range of issues and then leave them for the client to act (or not) on the recommendations, we kept plugging away at the most important issues until we had bludgeoned the client into successful action. The clients' profits often soared as a result, as did our consulting budgets. -R.K.

to the trivial many? Where is the haunting melody being drowned out by the background noise? 80120 Thinking is then used to change behavior and, normally, to concentrate on the most important 20 percent. You know that 80120 Thinking is working when it multiplies effectiveness. Action resulting from 80120 Thinking should lead us to get much more from much less. When we are using the 80120 Principle, we do not assume that its results are good or bad or that the powerful forces we observe are necessarily good. We decide whether they are good (from our own perspective) and either determine to give the minority of powerful forces a further shove in the right direction or work out how to frustrate their operation.

Living the 80/20 Life Application of the 80120 Principle implies that we should do the following: • celebrate exceptional productivity, rather than raise average efforts; • look for the short cut, rather than run the full course; • be selective, not exhaustive;

• delegate or outsource as much as possible in our daily lives and be encouraged rather than penalized by tax systems to do this (use gardeners, car mechanics, decorators and other specialists to the maximum, instead of doing the work ourselves); • choose our careers and employers with extraordinary care, and if possible employ others rather than being employed ourselves; • only do the thing we are best at doing and enjoy most; • in every important sphere, work out where 20 percent of effort can lead to 80 percent of returns; • calm down, work less, and target a limited number of valuable goals where the 80120 Principle will work for us, rather than pursuing every available opportunity; and • make the most of those few "lucky streaks" in our life when we are at our creative peak and the stars line up to guarantee success. 0 About the Author: Richard Koch is a management consultant and the author of The 80120 Principle: The Secret of Achieving More With Less.

ON THE LIGHTER

is a game where 22 b· men "Football run around/or tw h zg, strong really need th e exercise a ourssitwhile millio ns who Reprinted b ' . and watch. " . Post, © 1998. ) permIssion of the S all/relay Eve nmg

SIDE

Defending Wildlife

continued/rampage

pand this initial venture. Wildlife activists have long asked for more resources for the forest guards, with success in some states, as in Assam. Though there can always be improvement, Ed Bagley asserts, "I have to be positive about it because if you just look at the state of India now and Indian wildlife, you have to be impressed. To think you walk in these forests, and there are elephants, there are rhinos, there are tigers, bears and pythons. You know-at least in the Eastern part of the United States-we've lost a lot of our large wildlife. We used to have mountain lions and bison in the east and those things are gone. In India they are still here. And they are still there in the United States in some areas, too. But I just have to be impressed with what India has done so far. India is working very hard, sort of charting its own course in wildlife conservation, and U.S. involvement has been to give whatever technical assistance and sometimes some small financial assistance along the way. But all of the credit goes to the Indians. They've gotten this far and I'm optimistic that they'll go on and conserve these things." Watching the stunning birds and other wildlife in Corbett Tiger Reserve, one can only hope that this is so, and the equation between wildlife and their habitat and encroaching human habitation and industrialization may be resolved to the benefit of all. Activist Valmik Thapar is emphatic, however: "The situation has changed since the '80s. We have to have a whole new mind-set, a

A sam bar pricks its ears. Many roam the Sonanadi Sanctuary, along with cheetal, barking deer, sowar, wild boar-and, of course, elephants and tigers.

whole new approach. The government needs to set up a wildlife cadre to deal specifically with wildlife protection. With the population of one billion increasing by 2 percent a year, we're facing big problems." Though the government has taken steps in the right direction, he says, some wildlife protection laws offer loopholes for predatory industrialists. Conservationists also bemoan the lack of importance placed on wildlife and habitat conservation by politicians. As one dedicated forestry official put it, "Tigers don't vote, trees don't vote, but poachers have a vote." His concern is to raise awareness, so people know that forests are more than picnic sites, are important in water catchment protection and so many other ways; he hopes this will motivate them to act to stop depredations. He added, "Conservation is consensus. The local people must be involved." "Local" takes on a broader definition as the world shrinks with telecommunications, travel and the Internet, and as the understanding sinks in that environmental loss in any part of the world adversely affects us all. When people like Brian Weirum, Ed Bagley and others join hands with Indian conservationists and concerned citizens, they form a special community of locals, spanning borders for a greater goal. D

In rural Virginia, Buckingham Branch engines push freight cars across a bridge over the James River.

No matter. The railroad is still in business, doing what railroads have always done best: moving large quantities of very heavy cargo, such as stone, lumber and ore. The sprawling CSX railroad picks up BB cars at a junction and sends the freight on its main lines bound for Kentucky, Florida, Mexico, Europe and Asia. The Bryants are among hundreds of people in recent years to buy dinky, declining old feeders, or "short lines," mostly from big railroads ready to abandon them-and the rural economies they serve-as money losers. Nearly one-third of America's one-time 400,000 kilometers of railroad line has been tom up in the past 80 years; and about 3,200 more kilometers are abandoned each year. Short lines have helped save our disappearing tracks: less than 20 years ago 225 short lines existed; now, some 500 operate what amounts to more than an eighth of U.S. rail lines, in pieces as short as five kilometers. Some lines have been bought by local governments eager to keep shippers going, others by the grain elevators, steel mills or paper plants that depend on them. A few, like the 105-year-old Aberdeen & Rockfish Railroad in North Carolina, are still owned by the families that started them. But most

Engineer Robert Leighty heads a BB-line train south across the James River. His earplugs are a must, as the locomotives generate a rumbling roar.

Track maintenance is a demanding and never-ending task; here, a crew of trackmen, working by hand, remove an old cattle crossing and regauge a curve.

have passed to new entrepreneurs. The national railroads' deconstruction into main lines pumped by local capillaries is no small matter. Despite savage competition from trucks, 40 percent of intercity freight tonnage (calculated in tons carried per kilometer) still moves by rail-mostly bulky commodities tbat go more cheaply and efficiently that way: coal, grains, chemicals, ores, wood. (A 1OO-tonfreight car carries four times more than the biggest truck.) Then there are bi-

cycles, frozen chickens, lightbulbs, beer. Without short lines, a lot of this stuff would not go by rail-and some of it might not go anywhere. Big railroads, burdened by high wages and rigid union rules, have emerged from long decline in part because short lines have taken on the slow tasks of building trains one or two cars at a time, fixing decayed branches, cultivating small customers. The big guys do the more glamorousand profitable-work of tearing cross-

country at 100 kilometers an hour with fully loaded ISO-car trains. The short-line survival formula: lower wages, used equipment and nonunion employees who do a bit of everything. John Gray, a freight car repairman on western Pennsylvania's little Everett Railroad, told me one day, "We're not getting rich. But we're moving products, and people have jobs." Short lines have brought things full circle, for the first American railroads, starting in the I830s, were all short lines. By

the years just after the Civil War, the short lines had consolidated into a couple of hundred big railroads. But from the I870s through the early I900s, many more short lines were built. Each small town wanted its own rail connection. In time, big companies bought short lines, then one another. The industry boiled down to the dozen or so giants-like Conrail and CSX-that have dominated recent decades. Short lines reemerging out of them now speak again of the places they

belong to: the Wiregrass Central; Caddo, Antoine & Little Missouri; Dardanelle & Russellville; Georgia Woodlands; the Bloomer Line; Crab Orchard & Egyptian; Keokuk Junction; Bangor & Aroostook; Otter Tail Valley; Oil Creek & Titusville; Conemaugh & Black Lick; New Hope & Ivyland; Pee Dee River; Nimishillen & Tuscarawas; Thermal Belt; Waccamaw Coast; Steelton & Highspire; Logansport & Eel River; Beech Mountain; Bad Water. The Buckingham Railroad opened its

first 6.5 kilometers in 1885, serving rural roofing-slate quarries worked by Welsh immigrants. The quarries boomed as a result. In the l890s the rails were extended to Rosney, a busy timber center. Annie Bryant's father hauled "short wood"logs destined for paper mills-from his farm by horse and wagon to these trains in the 1930s. By the early 1900s, the U.S. rail network had reached its zenith, providing transport for just about everything, everywhere. Then the Buckingham served 16 stations on a 34-kilometer route, picking up local produce, molasses and tobacco, delivering coal and the U.S. mail, taking on passengers bound for nearby rural towns or distant cities served by connecting outfits. Inevitably, some of these dis-

trucks competed. In 1935 the end 6.5 kilometers of track, to Rosney, were tom up. The last passenger car ran in May 1954. Eventually the C&O razed every station except Dillwyn's-today, the end of the line-and woods began retaking much of the land along the track. By the 1980s only a few shippers remained, and CSX was allowing the track to fall apart. Dillwyn was, and is, a place stopped in time-weathered brick buildings with 1950s signs; pastures coming right into town; the wood-floored Ranson Brothers appliance store with its menagerie of armchairs, oil-lamp chimneys and long-expired canned goods. The Bryants met at 14 and were high school sweethearts, but Buckingham County could not hold them. Robert skipped his last day of school in 1953 to follow his dad into the C&O, as a telegram messenger in Richmond. He and Annie moved all over the Short lines have helped save South following Robert's promodisappearing tracks; short lines tions. By 1987 they were in have increased/rom 225 to 500 Baltimore, where he was a CSX marketing manager. Annie was a high in the past two decades. school business teacher. That year CSX decided it had too many railroads-and employees. At 53, Robert was offered early retirement. The tant railroads got bigger; the Buckingham became part of the Chesapeake & Ohio Bryants moved back to the farm they'd kept, and considered what to do next. system, later merged into CSX. Robert Bryant grew up near the line's The answer came from CSX computer New Canton station, where his father was printouts. Robert knew the Buckingham a C&O conductor. He says one of his best line was losing money, and the company early memories is a summer day when he was fixing to abandon it-elose Dillwyn and a cousin picked strawberries to pay Station, tear up the tracks, end of story. the 35-cent fare to one-street Dillwyn, the "Robert did not like that thought at all," says Annie. "He got this crazy, far-out idea county's main town. "We bought some suckers and penny candy down there at that we would run it." Robert made it sound the store and got back on the train," he simple: "Well, I had some experience in the says. "We stuck our heads out the window business, and you think: all we need is some the whole time and ended up with hair full track and some power. Then all you got to of cinders from the steam engine." do is keep it up and market it." Despite the fuzzy romanticism of Spin-offs had begun in earnest in childhood and family memory, the 1980, after the federal government deBuckingham was already in decline. In regulated the industry. This allowed big the lnOs, many county residents bought railroads to sell lines to new operators autos. Heavy timbering-probably accelwho didn't have to honor longtime union erated by rail access-denuded the councontracts. Or, they could simply sell lines many did. Many tryside. Quarries were worked out, or for scrap metal-which buyers had rail backgrounds, as manclosed when cheaper asphalt shingles agers or track contractors, though not all. came in. As roads improved (in part thanks to gravel hauled by the train), For example, when Robert and Annie

became friendly with Alan Maples, 36 years their junior, he had already bought up a short line, although he had never worked for a railroad. "I knew I wanted to pursue railroading as a career," Maples tells me nonchalantly one day when I visit him, "and it was appealing to own one." He grew up watching trains, spent high school summers studying railroad balance sheets, and collected rail memorabilia. After stints as stage manager for a magic show and tax preparer, Maples, in 1983, bought the defunct 6.5-kilometer Everett Railroad near Altoona, Pennsylvania, with the money his grandparents saved for his college education, and a lot ofloans. He was 22. The Everett is still growing and he still hasn't gone to college. From him, among others, the Bryants got free, friendly advice and a live example that, yes, this could be done. It took two years of negotiations with CSX for the Bryants to get title to the tracks and Dillwyn Station, plus an old locomotive and caboose-all for $72,000. "Oh, me! I did a lot of praying," says Annie. "Robert didn't know anything about locomotives. I didn't even know how to talk on the radio." The roadbed was in sad shape; brush and trees scraped the train from either side, and long stretches of hand-hewn ties laid in 1918 were badly rotted, presenting the specter of derailments. Local help soon appeared. Jack Yowell, a CSX engineer, offered to run the locomotives, though the Bryants could pay less than half his $70,000 yearly earnings. The trade-off: Yowell could spend more time with his family instead of working long, unpredictable hours on the far-off main line. Michael Pace, a laidoff CSX track worker, was hired as chief of track maintenance. Yowell taught Pace how to be a conductor and agreed to help him fix the tracks. "Pete" Peters, a pensioned-off CSX mechanic who had worked with Robert's father, volunteered to do locomotive maintenance for free, so that he would have something to do. (But his efforts haven't gone unrecognized. At last year's Christmas party, the Bryants named their Engine No. 1 the "Pete Peters.") Annie reluctantly gave up a teaching job

to run the office; on a Monday morning in 1989 the BB ran its first train. In the early years, cars sometimes derailed, but they didn't tip over, so the crew jacked them back onto the rails with oak blocks. Usually, things were going again in a few hours. Lacking the automatons CSX uses to detect track flaws, pull and drive spikes, install ties, pour ballast and lay rail, the trainmen did it the old way: with shovels, rakes and narrow-headed sledgehammers called spike mauls. They replaced 2,000 ties a year by hand and filled in washed-out ballast by the wheelbarrow load. They gingerly lowered 2,118-kilogram replacement rails off a handcar. When they got enough money to buy a backhoe in 1993, it was a major event. Robert pushed wheelbarrows and got himself qualified as an engineer so he could run the train. ("Only in an emergency!" he stresses. "Me running a train scares everyone, including me.") But mostly he has concentrated on rebuilding the business itself. Most shippers still won't use the train, for trucks move a lot faster, without fixed schedules, and go everywhere. The train goes back and forth only on Monday, Wednesday and Friday-the other two days being reserved for fixing the tracks. The top legal speed on the still run-down track is 16 kilometers per hour. However, the Bryants hope soon to have this up to 40; they offer personal service and low rates (about $230 a car), and even rebuilt a decayed siding for one woodyard. They've hung on to the biggest shipper, a kyanite mine, whose product is used to make steel-kiln firebricks, spark plugs and spacecraft shielding. One company ships cinders for cinder block. A quarry sends crushed slate used in landscaping. One of the now-reforested country's woodyards ships fresh-cut railroad ties to a preservation plant in West Virginia. Steve Shippee, who runs a pulpwood yard outside Dillwyn for the huge Westvaco Corporation, says he uses the BB because a company paper mill in Covington, Virginia, has a CSX siding. It takes three days, instead of three hours by truck-but costs $3 a ton less. "Service has gotten a lot better with local owners," he says. "I can call Bob whenever I need

a hand radio to tell him to pull the train forto and he'll fire up the engine. Ifhe wasn't ward. Bernard muscles over a heavy iron here, we'd probably leave." hand switch so the new cars can be moved Despite the Bryants' down-home image and local roots, they have "done well," in in from the siding. Robert backs up while Robert's words. Business is up from an ini- Bernard radios the closing distance. "Two tial 800 cars a year to 1,600, and the staff cars ...one car...15 feet. Eight feet. Five, four, two, one, couple!" Bang! the couplers has increased to 11, including part-timers hit and snap shut, raising clouds of rust and the Bryants' son, Mark. Loans taken early on from a local bank are paid off. A flakes off the gondolas' sides. This is exlot of track rebuilding help has come from actly what I remember hearing so long ago. A half hour of backing, shuffling and state grants channeled through county officials who want to keep the rails open. But sorting later, all the cars are coupled in the Robert and Annie still haven't taken any in- right order for later dropoffs or pickupsoften a complex puzzle-and Bernard has come, living instead on Robert's pension air-brake hoses connected and the caboose and part-time farming, and plowing revput back on at the end. "O.K., head north," enue back into infrastructure and higher he says, hopping into the engine cab. We salaries (Yowell now makes something rumble back past Dillwyn Station to the over half his previous pay). At this point, I must say that I am not a kyanite plant, a mile or two away. Here, fanatic about trains; but one of my long-lost childhood memories is of growing up across the highway from Not only do short lines depend a Penn Central switching yard in Kingston, New York, where the on the big brothers to whom they earth-shaking bang of coupling connect; new venture-capital freights rattled our house every outfits are recognizing they night-and gently rocked my bed, can make money on short lines, sending me to [me dreams. I have always wanted to ride one. and have begun buying them. So I am up in the cab at Dillwyn Station at 6:45 one frosty December Bernard climbs down and we repeat the morning, when conductor Bernard routine for a loaded boxcar and two empPatterson and engineer Robert Leighty (Yowell is off to hunt deer) start the 1,500 ties. Bang! Rattle, rattle. More maneuvers to get the cars in order. Then down to hp Engine No.1. The 16 giant cylinders come to a roar, and we slowly back a red Westvaco for another extended heavymetal ballet. No wonder big railroads don't caboose south across Dillwyn's main street to a weed-grown yard at the start of want to do this, I thjnk. These guys spend the tracks. Automobiles stop for us; the very little time actually going anywhere. biggest threat at this and other low-speed It is midmorning when we pick up speed-16 kilometers per hour seems short-line crossings is not trains hitting heady now-and start with 13 cars for the cars-but cars hitting trains (usually withCSX junction some 21 kilometers distant. out bad injuries). Perhaps drivers can't Paralleling the main road north out of conceive of a real, live locomotive showtown, we wave across fields to truckers ing up here. (As Alan Maples carps, "How outpacing us and take in the inverted landblind do you have to be not to see a railscape peculiar to railroad rights-of-way: road train?" Among vehicles recently selfdestructing against his engine were a the neglected backsides of everything, where teenagers hide out to share sixHonda Accord and a brand-new Chevy packs, folks dump brush cleared from the pickup.) We get safely across and prepare to fetch side yard, vine-covered abandoned sheds six empty gondolas and three freight cars decay into dust and no one ever bothers to loaded with rail ties. Bernard hops off to cut the weeds. No asphalt, convenience uncouple the caboose, then calls Robert on stores, power lines or cars; we are curi-

ously close to nature on a freight train. We come upon Alpha, a trackside huddle of three houses and five trailers. A back door pops open and two boys about three and seven in matching blue T-shirts wave enthusiastically. We wave back, and the tracks veer from the highway. Here, the train traverses miles of forest and swampland lapping the railbed. Beaver ponds sit in low spots. Occasional farmhouses and loggers' clear-cuts are visible through the trees. Three wild turkeys flap out. The trainmen point out the spot where a bobcat has been seen on the tracks. We cross twisty little Hunt Creek 13 times on wooden bridges. Relics of the ruined past constantly whisper from the woods. Hand-cut telegraph poles with intact wooden insulator spools. Woodand-iron depot signs marking graves of disappeared stations: Slate Hill, Penlan, Johnson, Arvonia. Rock-walled quarry

pits brimming with dark-green water. Bernard, a former CSX track worker, tells me his father, brother, grandfather and great-grandfather worked for the C&O-all right here. He points out a depot consisting only of 16 concrete stairs clinging to an over-grown hillock. "1 remember my father going up those stairs when 1was five," he says; we are silent for a while. As the train rounds a steep curve .before New Canton, the cars seem nearly to scrape a high rock wall covered with ferns and mosses. Bernard gestures to a hollowed-out spot. "Look, that's the hobo cave. The hoboes made campfires in there and caught trains to wherever they were going. That's what the old people say, anyway." We stare into the cave: it is empty. Even the hoboes have deserted. On the other side of the curve, the train emerges into the present, and the end of the BB line. A high steel bridge spans the

On a return run to Dillwyn. Buckingham Branch conductor Bernard Patterson waves from the caboose; the Bryants started the BB with it and one engine.

James River. On the other side is the CSX main line, in country opened to expansive, sunny cornfields. Robert gets radio permission from a CSX dispatcher in Jacksonville, Florida, to enter via an electronically controlled switch, and soon we are whizzing along on well-groomed CSX track at 40 kilometers per hour. At a rail yard, we change our full cars for an odd assortment of empties, with the usual noisy toil. Then the dispatcher tells us to wait there for two CSX trains to clear the main line. We sit and sit; finally the first roars by our ramshackle assemblage, hauling 143 identical gray-and-yellow hoppers uniformly heaped with coal; shortly after comes another with 106 of the same. No

cabooses; automatic sensors are telling the locomotive crew what is happening in back, and a computerized voice over our radio announces the condition of track ahead. Only then does the dispatcher allow us to crawl home, caboose first; Bernard radios to Robert that the crossings are clear, and pulls on a chain to blow an air horn-long, long, short, long. It is a reminder that the BB and other short lines don't exist in their backcountry enclaves as if in a vacuum. Not only do they depend on the big brothers to whom they connect; new venture-capital outfits are recognizing they can make money on short lines, and have begun buying them. The spiraling prices they pay are pushing out prospective mom-and-pop operators like the Bryants. The biggest is the San Antonio, Texas, based RailTex, a public company that now has 29 short lines. Chief executive Bruce Flohr proudly tells me, "We have seven people working fulltime in acquisitions." The problem is, to some people a RailTex is just one big brother replacing another. Buckingham residents were happy to see the Bryants; but in 1994, when RailTex offered to buy the Central Vermont short line from Canadian National, Vermonters picketed and U.S. congressmen hauled Flohr into a hostile hearing. They feared distant RailTex would run things a whole lot more ruthlessly than people like Robert and Annie, who have to look their employees in the eye every day. RailTex bought Central Vermont anyway,

and cut staff from 165 to 95, although it did retain local management. "Big holding companies usually hurt communities more than they help," claims Greg Weber, part owner of Nebraska's Fillmore- Western short line. "To them a short line is just another number in their book." With a shortage of new spin-offs, holding companies are trying to buyout small owners, even purchasing newly privatized lines in Argentina, Chile, Brazil and Britain. The Wisconsin Central Transportation Corporation has taken over the railroad on the South Pacific island of Tasmania. Omni-TRAX, an outfit owned by Denver real estate magnate Pat Broe, just acquired the single 850-kilometer line to polar-bear-infested Churchill, Canada. Such high-finance calculations seem far away at 6:30 the next morning, when I meet Bernard for a day of "gauging track." With him is jovial, cigar-chomping road master Mike Pace, and Ken Mayo, an ex-marine who has just hired on. We drive to a dirt road crossing near the hobo cave, and Mike walks along the rails, bending over every few feet with a cheap tape measure. The insides should lie 56 Y2 inches [143.5 centimeters] apart, he explains-standard gauge. With so many ties softened by age, the weight of the moving train spreads them. "Too wide and the train falls off," he points out. We come to many spots measuring 57 or 57'h [144.7 or 146 centimeters] or worse. Here, Mike yanks spikes with a crowbar almost as tall as himself. The

men attach a chain with hooks on either end to the rails and ratchet them in with a hand winch. Then they take turns slamming the spikes back in with a 3.6-kilogram spike maul. "Ask Mr. Bryant when he's gonna buy one of those machines that does this automatically," grins Mike, and lights a fresh cigar. Toward lunch, we walk past a deep cut in a track side bank, curving off into the woods. "I know this place. You're gonna like it," says Mike, pushing aside the brush. Fifty feet in, we hit the railroad equivalent of King Tut's tomb, the undisturbed remains of track connecting the BB to an old quarry. The ultimate short line. Trees a foot and a half across grow in the roadbed. Two wooden railcars sit rotting in deep layers of leaves and humus. Mike digs with his hands and uncovers one car's rusted but workable wheels, still sitting on old narrow-gauge rails. Up the hill, piled neatly, are thousands of roofing slates that never made the last shipment. We follow on up to a crumbled stone bridge embankment facing a rushing creek. Softball-size chunks of steam-engine coal lie scattered about. A single twisted rail juts over the water. End of the line. I ponder: What if the kyanite plant closes next year? Or the truckers lower rates a bit more? Might the rest of the Buckingham Branch someday look like this? At the moment, it seems impossible. D About the Author: Kevin Krajick is a freelance writer based in New York who contributes regularly to magazines such as Smithsonian, Audubon and Discover.

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badly abused and violated by the police. And what happened was years, then finally resulted in quite a few judges losing their seats and police as well. The same happened in the '60s, with the that you had federal (FBI) investigators and federal prosecutors Serpico incident and more recent cases. There are quite a few exsent to those areas to prosecute the people who were not being amples that exist now. If you have such events in the back of the prosecuted by the local authorities. Because you needed enforcement at a different level. It's done all the time. While states, for minds of the judges and prosecutors and the police, then they're example, with corrupt judges like to try to do their own what we less likely to be corrupt or brutal. But otherwise you can expect call 'stings.' If there is word that ajudge is corrupt, they may find corruption to continue. It takes someone on the top taking a stand. Because the clerk thinks if the judge is doing it, if the prossomeone who has paid a bribe or they may have one of their own agents pretend to be trying to pay a bribe and get this on video tape ecutor is doing it, if the high court does it, why shouldn't we at the sessions and district court do it? or on tape recorders so that you have And so it goes all the way up. I'm not good evidence. These stings are often saying it is endemic here. I don't knOw. done by the federal Department of If the police do a good job and I spent a lunch with local lawyers who Justice. Because if a locality has a cortold me story after story of personal exrupt judicial system, judges, prosecuit gets into court? What about perience with what I'm describing, and tors, police you need someone from the the prosecutors, the defense the fact that it does occur. It's not outside. It's rare that you have someone from the inside, though it's possible. attorneys and the judges? If they that rare. What you need are some prosto get the word out. Along "I would recommend that the USIS don't do their job, then fixing the ecutions with this, someone who is honest and have a free showing of Serpico to police is not going to help. doesn't behave criminally has to be show-besides a great Al Pacino rewarded as opposed to being isolated movie-that one person can make a difference. [Editor 50 Note: Frank because the rest of his friends and colSerpico was a New York detective leagues are taking bribes. whose revelations about police corruption in the 1970s inspired a "If you think 'Is the fight against corruption worth it? book and a movie.] One honest person can make a difference. If How will I do it? It's a fight that is hopeless and I am you had one or two honest persons to say I will not pay this clerk bound to fail' then I refer you to another movie, and that is 50 rupees in order to have him find my file. I will not pay this Mlc Smith Goes to Washington. There is a famous line when prosecutor X amount of rupees to have him agree to a small senClaude Rains, the corrupt Senator, says to Jimmy Stewart, the tence. I will not pay the judge X amount of rupees so that my case neophyte idealistic Senator fighting him: 'You're going to will be decided now and not five-six months from now. If you lose; there's no way you will win; it's hopeless; why don't you give up?' Jimmy Stewart says something to the effect of: had someone say I had enough of this; and you had people who 'I'm going to keep on fighting because it is hopeless. Because are courageous enough and able to do a successful prosecution those types of fights are the most important fights of all.' and conviction, and you have the Supreme Court allow the proseIt's got to start somewhere and I know that there are people cution and a parliament that will impeach a judge who is prosewho are trying to fight that fight. And it's a matter of trying to cuted and convicted of corruption; then you have progress. "In the '30s in New York we had a commission that failed for get other people behind them." D

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Remembering Hoagy

wore my hat on the back of my head and no tie, with a cigarette drooping from my lips, and I lazied through the entire performance," Hoagy Carmichael said describing his historic, record-breaking performance at the London Palladium in 1951. That was the image Hoagy created and the world knew and loved. Hoagy Carmichael (1899-1981) was not only one of the most popular and successful American songwriters of his day, but "the most talented, inventive, sophisticated and jazz-oriented of all the great craftsmen," in the words of critic Alec Wilder. This year celebrates the centennial of the creator of such standards as "Georgia on My Mind," "Hong Kong Blues," "Rockin' Chair," "Ole Buttermilk Sky," "St. Louis Blues" and "Lazy River." Though many of the songs Hoagy wrote for Tin Pan Alley and Hollywood films have since become standards, he will always be best remembered for his immortal "Stardust." The centenary celebrations mark a renewed interest in Hoagy's life and music and many events, recordings and publications are being planned for this special occasion. There will be another star-studded concert in London, where he remains hugely popular. There will be a concert in Indianapolis, Indiana, his home state. A Hoagy Carmichael songbook is slated for publication this year as is the re-release of his autobiography Sometimes I Wonder, and a biography titled The Stardust Road. Reader's Digest Recorded Music is issuing a single CD, The Stardust Magic of Hoagy Carmichael, as part of its ongoing Timeless Favorites series honoring great American songwriters. Besides, the Indiana Historical Society plans to release a three-volume CD boxed set, Early Hoagy Carmichael: The First Decade, of-

fering a total of 72 vintage cuts of Hoagy's compositions, as performed by himself and other artists, including Bix Beiderbecke, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, the Dorsey Brothers, Coleman Hawkins and many others. Hoagland Howard Carmichael was born on November 22, 1899, in Bloomington, Indiana. Hoagy grew up in a poor rural community and was encouraged to play piano by his mother, who helped support the family playing at the local movie house and for university dances. "Ragtime was my lullaby," Hoagy recalled in his autobiography. Largely self-taught, he continued to play even when he went on to study law at Indiana University. Then in 1922 Hoagy met and became friends with a young cornetist Bix Beiderbecke. When Hoagy played an improvised tune for Bix, the young man with the horn said, "Why don't you write music, Hoagy?" The rest of his life was the answer to that question. "Play me a Hoagy Carmichael song and I hear the banging of a screen door and the whine of an outboard motor on a lakesounds of summer in a small-town America that is long gone but still longed for," wrote author William Zinsser. It was a sound that leading jazz musicians including Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Beiderbecke, Glenn Miler, Gene Krupa, among others were happy to hear and record. "Stardust," composed in 1927, became his biggest seller, and one of the most recorded songs of all time, with nearly 2,400 covers. After his mentor Beiderbecke's death in 1931, Hoagy's interest in jazz waned though he never lost his affection for the music's early form and its performers. He began concentrating on songwriting, creating songs many of which were intro-

duced in films. Occasionally he wrote both words and music, but generally he collaborated with leading lyricists of the day-Johnny Mercer, Frank Loesser and Mitchell Parish. He became a star performer on records, radio and stage with a signature style. From 1937 onwards, Hoagy also appeared as an actor/performer in films such as Topper (1937), To Have and Have Not (1944), Johnny Angel (1945), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), Young Man with a Horn (1950), The Las Vegas Story (1952) and Timberjack (1955). William Zinsser wrote: " 'Hoagy' was no longer a peculiar name, he was a star, an American icon. He was also a guy you knew, you wished you could have a drink and share a laugh with. He had the same joys and desires, disappointments and fears you had, and some of his songs-'Lazy River,' 'Heart and Soul' -became so familiar they sounded as if no one had written them, they'd just always been there." There is a story about a musician waking up in the middle of the night with a beautiful melody in his head. He dragged himself out of bed, wrote it down and went back to sleep. In the morning it turned out to be the verse of "Stardust." In his autobiography Hoagy described his surprise the first time he heard a recording of "Stardust": "And then it happened-that queer sensation that this melody was bigger than me. Maybe I hadn't written it at all. The recollection of how, when and where it all happened became vague as the lingering strains hung in the rafters of the studio. I wanted to shout back at it, 'maybe I didn't write you, but I found you. ' " In Stardust Road, Hoagy recalled that his personal journey began the night a hungry young kid heard Louis Jordan's band and went crazy for jazz. He remembered telling himself the next day while mowing his grandmother's lawn: "No, gramma, I don't think I'll ever be president of anything. I know Mother named me after a railroad man, but it's too late now, I'm afraid. Much, much too late ...." But for making music history, he was right on time. -Arun Bhanot

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