SPAN OF EVENTS HIS IS THE MONTH when some 520,000 young Americans, the product of about 2,000 institutions of higher learning in the United States, will become the proud recipients of that hallmark of education-the university degree. Following much oratory, the young men and women, suitably capped and gowned, will march to the platform to receive from the presiding officer the precious piece of parchment and hear from him the magic words which will admit them to the ranks of bachelors, masters or doctors of art, philosophy or science. Fond parents and guardians will applaud as their wards go through the solemn ritual. The convocation or commencement exercises, as they are known in the United States, are not however entirely solemn ceremonial. Graduation day is preceded by a week of festivities during which the- various clubs, fraternities and sororities have open houses and students prefer picnics to classes. Mixed with the fun and frivolity is not a little nostalgia as the scholars bid farewell to their
T
New York's skyscrapers are etched out in the city's myriad lights in the panoramic scene on the left. Below, graduates of Columbia University, New York, assemble to receive their diplomas at the annual commencement exercises. A pictorial story on the changingface of America's largest city begins on page 27.
friends, coaches and professors in the university and revive memories of the four years or longer they have spent on the campus. Of the new American graduates, the largest number-about 100,000 including 90,000 women-will qualify as educators and teachers, highlighting the great demand for education and popularity of the' teaching profession among women. Some 68,000 young people will obtain a degree in physical sciences and mathematical subjects and augment the ranks of scientists, mathematicians and researchers. Another large group, indicating the size and importance of industry in a highly developed economy, is that of "Business and Commerce" which will have an estimated 58,000 new entrants. There will be 49,000 new engineers, 27,000 more doctors and 11,000 more lawyers. FOREIGNERSARESOMETIMES puzzled by references to the existence of poverty in the United States, the richest country in the world, and by the Government's various programmes to fight poverty. In this context it is important to bear in mind that "poverty" is a relative term and its definition varies according to the general economic and living standards of different countries or peoples. As applied to a generally affluent society, such as that of the United States, its connotation is naturally different from the usual meaning of the term in developing countries where it may refer to conditions bordering on the starvation level. When President Johnson recently sent a message to the U.S. Congress calling for "a national war on poverty," he and his advisers had in mind the amelioration of the economic conditions of that section of the American population which has a family income of less than $3,000 a year. Roughly one-fifth of all American families fall into this category, and although not long ago their economic status would Continued on next page
have been labelled as average, the remarkable rise in national income and living standards in recent years has changed the picture and radically altered the definition of "poor." In Harlan county, Kentucky, considered one of the poorest areas in the United States, a survey showed that 88 per cent of the families had television sets, 42 per cent had telephones, and 59 per cent owned automobiles. There are of course isolated parts of the United States which have so far benefited but little from the general national growth. There are also some sections of the community-unskilled or insufficiently qualified workers, small farmers, the aged and the handicapped-whose problems. call for special attention. This issue of SPAN Looking at this exhibit of Indian crafts, part of "India Day" observance at Kansas State University, are Ambassador B. K. Nehru, University Presidellf James A. McCain.
Mike Kline, left, and Joe Sabbatino, make friends with Jane Witfacre during their visit to farm family in West Virginia.
carries the story of a farm family in a remote hill district of the State of West Virginia, where life can be very hard. Michael Kline, who wrote the story, and Joseph Sabbatino, who took the pictures, are both American college students. The vivid,· sympathetic portrayal on pages 32 to 38 reflects their personal, unusual experience. INDIA CONTINUESto figure prominently in academic and cultural programmes organized by American universities and art and literary societies. Kansas State University, at Manhattan, Kansas State, which has been associated with agricultural and allied development projects in India since 1956, recently celebrated "India Day." The chief guest at this function was
the Indian Ambassador, Mr. B. K. Nehru, who was accorded a traditional welcome by the university's 200 Indian students and addressed the faculty and student body at a special convocation. Seminars were held on India's economic development, food problem and farm and family practices, in which several American specialists with Indian experience participated. There was also a seminar on Tagore, at which Professor H. A. Sieber, of the University of North Carolina, read his paper "The Several Tagores." . An exhibition of Indian arts and crafts, a cultural show by Indian students and screening of documentary films on India were part of the programme. The celebrations were climaxed by a banquet which was also attended by the Indian Ambassador. The "India Day" observance, which Kansas State University hopes to make an annual event, was its special tribute to India. It stemmed from the university's active interest in the programme of agricultural education in India which it has assisted for nearly a decade. In carrying out this programme, the university 'has been collaborating with ten colleges in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat, and is currently concentrating on the establishment of a new agricultural university
at Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh. The growing American interest in Indian art is evidenced by the number of exhibitions and lectures recently organized in New York. At the Asia House Gallery an exhibition portraying "The Art of Moghul India" has attracted visitors for many weeks. Another exhibition of Moghul and Rajput paintings was held at· the Weiner Gallery, and paintings by Indian artist Kanu Desai have been on view at the Nicholas Roerich Museum. A new art course by Faubion Bowers, an American authority on dance and other art forms, includes survey of the historical and religious origins of Sanskrit drama and the four schools of Indian classical dancing. The India Council of Asia Society sponsored a seminar entitled "Toward a Modern India-The Problem for Education." Under the auspices of the Literary Committee of the Tagore Society, Dr. V. S. Naravane, an Indian visiting professor, gave a talk on "Ethics of Tagore." In the feature Books of Our Times. the New York educational television channel devoted two hours to a discussion of "Non-violent Resistance" by Mohandas K. Gandhi. Participating in the programme were authors August Hecksher and Louis Fischer, who is well known in India as a biographer of the Mahatma. •
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1964 OLYMPICS: A PREVIEW by Richard P. Wilson
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INDIA AND THE OLYMPICS by Saradindu Sanyal
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With most of the U.S. enJoymg summer weather, the picnic season is in full bloom. This photograph by Robert Phillips shows the Gordon Henderson family at a picnic near Washington, D.C. Mr. Henderson is a lawyer who lives in HoIlin Hills, Virginia, and drives to his office in the Nation's Capital each day.
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The leadership of President Franklin D. Roosevelt helped bring the U.S. out of the worst depression in its history, and it gave new hope and confidence to millions. The story of Roosevelt's first hundred days as President is the subject of an article by historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., in the July issue. The "peaceful revolution" begun by Roosevelt's New Deal is also described in the issue, and chronicles the social and economic achievements which have become part of the American fabric. The second instalment of "Politics '64," which began in the January issue, will feature an article on the political conventions where party candidates for the Presidency and Vice Presidency are selected.
NEW CENTRE FOR TECHNICAL TRAINING by Austen Nazareth
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Considered an outstanding example of Indian and American co-operation, the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur is becoming a leading centre for the training of scientists and engineers. Avinash Pasricha's photograph shows lIT students at work in a garden at the Institute. An illustrated article begins on page 17.
THREE STEPS TO VICTORY by Bob Mathias
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1964 OLYMPICS:
XVIIIOLYMPIAD will bring together top athletes from all corners of the globe to compete for two weeks in twenty fields of sport at sites scattered throughout the Tokyo area. Running from October 10 through 24,1964, it will be the first ever held in Asia, and the first since the modern Olympics were founded on June 23, 1894, to include contests in so many different sports. The ancient Olympian Games, originating in 776 RC. and held every four years in Greece to honour the god Zeus, consisted of contests in music, literature and such sports as boxing, wrestling, marathon distance running and chariot racing. But 1964's Games in the world's most populous city will feature track and field contests, horse jumping and other equestrian events, soccer, yachting, rowing, rifle and clay pigeon shooting, swimming and diving, water polo, cycling, gymnastic events, boxing, volleyball, wrestling, field hockey, basketball, weightlifting, fencing, walking races, the traditional marathon, and-for the first time-judo. But different as the modern Games are from the ancient, there remains the spiritual link between them, the common
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HE
Next October when Olympics come to Asia for first time in modern history, thousands of top athletes from all over the world will compete for two weeks in twenty sports at sites scattered throughout the Tokyo area.
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Since her first official representation at the Paris Olympiad in 1924, India has won many laurels In numerous in terna tional sports arenas.
INDIA AND THE OLYMPICS
HE ADVENT OF independence gave an impetus to sports in India, in common with many other forms of welfare and cultural activity. Sportsmen and organizers of sports began to plan for greater participation of the country in world events, and ambitious programmes of training were drawn up to equip Indian players and athletes for such participation. In the successful implementation of these programmes foreign coaches, notably American, have had a valuable role. During the last decade or so several American athletes and trainers have visited the country for varying periods under a U.S. Government-sponsored educational and cultural exchange programme or at the invitation of an Indian sports organization. And invariably these experts have been impressed with the sports potential of the country, the amount and quality of our undeveloped talent. Among the earlier visitors was Lloyd "Bud" Winter who came to India at the end of 1955 and trained Indian athletes and coaches in track and field events at Patiala. At the end of his assignment he commented: "India's athletes are wonderful. They are so eager to learn; they assimilate so quickly .... India is destined to take its place in the international sports picture. How long it will take will, I believe, be determined by the quality of top levelorganization and leadership given to a nation-wide sports programme." Similar views were expressed by Joshua Culbreath, former American Olympic star, who arrived in India in September 1961 and spent fourteen months, mainly as an instructor at the National Institute of Sports, Patiala. He said: "I firmly believe after seeing young athletes in India that they will make great contributions to the world of sports in a comparatively short time." India won its first major success in the international sports arena as long ago as May 26, 1928. Evening shadows had already lengthened on Amsterdam's Olympic arena when the Indian hockey team led by Pinniger mounted the 'victory stand.' It was a spectacular climax to India's debut in world hockey and the beginning of a glorious chapter in Indian sports history. The news of India's victory in the hockey tournament of the XIth Olympiad, flashed across land and sea, and was received with jubilation and a sense of pride by millions of Indians, to many of whom the Olympics was only a name. Since that memorable day nearly four decades ago, India has won the coveted Olympic gold medal in hockey in five successive Olympiads-a record unparalleled in the annals of sports. The Amsterdam victory, apart from imparting a new impetus to hockey, created nation-wide interest in the Olympic Games, which have since come to occupy
India IS justly proud of her strong hockey team, whose record of Olympic victories over a period of
thirty-two
In the
annals
years
IS so
of international
-Bruce Hamilton, who coached the American team for the Helsinki Games, Dr. Kenneth Doherty and Lloyd Winter to whom reference has been made earlier -took the trainees in hand. They taught the finer points of the sports to the men and women trainees, and their assessment of Indian talent potential encouraged Indian athletes to strive for world honours and give of their best. Considerable impetus to sports activity was also provided by the visits to India of a number of world famous American athletes such as Jesse Owens, Bob Mathias, and Reverend Bob Richards. These all-time greats held clinics, gave demonstrations and coaching tips to hundreds of aspiring athletes. Indian coaches profited by the experiences of these athletic luminaries, and in turn passed on the knowledge to large numbers of active athletes in the country. India's participation in the Melbourne Games was restricted and in athletics a minimum standard of performance (corresponding to eighth place in the appropriate event at Helsinki) was set for inclusion in the team. As a result, the athletic contingent numbered only eight, including Mary Leela Rao, the lone woman representative. In hockey India managed to stave off the Pakistan challenge in the final to win by a narrow margin. The country's unquestioned supremacy in this game for almost four decades was obviously in jeopardy and it was not surprising that the threat should come from Pakistan. However, the Olympic title was still in India's keeping! Four years had to go by before the scene would shift to the "Eternal City" of Rome, and the Olympics, born in Greece and banned by the Roman
far
unparalleled athletic
meets.
Emperor, Theodosius, would be held for the first time on Italian soil. During these four years India had won laurels at two other international contests, but had tasted defeat for the first time in hockey. These were, indeed, eventful years for Olympic sports in India. In 1958, at the Third Asian Games in Tokyo, India found a new athletic star in Milkha Singh, a young serviceman, who won the gold medal in the 200 and¡ 400 metres events. The "Flying Sikh," as he came to be called after his record-breaking performances in both the events, gave glimpses of his world class and raised hopes of India being able to bag her first Olympic medal in athletics at Rome. That his performance was not just a flash in the pan, was demonstrated when Milkha Singh won first place in the 440 yards race at the British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Cardiff the same year. At Tokyo, however, India lost the. gold medal in hockey to Pakistan after a goalless draw in the final match with that country, Pakistan being adjudged the champion on goal averages in the Games. And so, on to Rome and the XVIIth Olympiad and the mixed memories it has for India. Indeed, as far as India is concerned "it was the best of times and the worst of times." Here in this ancient city, India finally lost her 32-year old supremacy in hockey. Here, too, Indian athletics reached its high-water mark, when Milkha Singh became the first Indian to enter the final of the 400 metres and had the distinction of breaking the Olympic record, only to be denied a place on the victory stand. The Indian hockey team, picked and nursed with care, left the shores of India with confidence, but also with some
misgivings. While it was realized that the challenge at Rome would come mainly from Pakistan, it was equally evident that the gap between India and the other hockey-playing countries had narrowed perilously. This was apparent when India was able to beat Australia only by a solitary goal in extra time. In the next match India succeeded in beating back the stiff challenge from Britain and scraped through to a one-goal victory. But India's worst fears came true in the final against Pakistan, who won by one goal, to topple India from the preeminent position she had enjoyed for thirty-two years. The highlight of the athletic events at Rome from every point of view was the 400 metres, which proved to be the most fantastic race in Olympic history. India's lone Olympic hope, Milkha Singh, finished second (47.6 seconds) in the first round. In the second round, he was placed second with Karl Kaufman (Germany), with a timing of 46.5 seconds. Milkha Singh did better in the semi-final, finishing second to Ottis Davis (U.S.) with a timing of 45.9 seconds. The final, which proved the most thrilling event of the Games, ended on a dramatic note, with Ottis Davis finishing first, followed by Kaufman, Mal Spence (South Africa) and Milkha Singh. Both Davis and Kaufman clocked 44.9 seconds, a new world record; while Mal Spence (45.5) and Milkha Singh (45.6) smashed the previous Olympic record. Another four years have gone by since the Olympic flag was hauled down from the solitary flag-pole in the in-field in Rome's Main Stadium to mark the end of the XVIIth Games of the modem Olympiad. But, the cavalcade of the Olympic Games never ends, and, in October this year, the Olympic flag will rise in Tokyo. For India, the main interest in the Tokyo Games will be in hockey, and the big question-mark for India is whether she will be able to wrest the title from Pakistan. Last year at Lyons, India once again finished at the top of the international hockey tournament but did not have to compete with Pakistan. While the main threat at Tokyo will come from Pakistan, several other countries, notably Kenya, Australia, Germany, Holland and Britain, are formidable rivals in India's quest for world honours.
OLYMPIC FORM
John Pennel, a young college student, is an outstanding pole vault candidatefor the 1964 U.S. Olympic team. He has vaulted higher than any other champion, and has high hopes for the Tokyo Games.
Three Steps to Victory Olympic champion Bob Mathias has advised athletes in many countries of the world. In 1955 he visited India and saw Indian athletes in action. In the article beginning on the next page he suggests three basic steps to help Asian athletes win more victories in international sports events.
teams, between schools and towns and cities. In the United States, we have between 20 and 24 track meets a year at our secondary schools and colleges. I am sure that the number of competitions in India does not approach our figure of 20 to 24. And it is unfortunate; competition is the backbone of athletics. Practice is hard work. You strain and sweat. Your muscles ache. But the reward is winning, and the glitter of victorythe fun of testing yourself against other athletes-can be enjoyed only in competition. Competition is needed to perfect your form and develop your natural abilities. Every athlete needs competition to test himself. Competition gives us the extra drive we need to work harder and perform better. I love competition; I really enjoy getting into a trac1<and field event and trying, with sweat and determination, to beat my competitor. To run faster, or jump higher, or heave the shot farther. It makes me feel good to know that I can perform better than other athletes. The most exciting moments of my life have been in competition against some of the world's finest athletes. So it seems to me that one reason Asian countries do not have more intemati6fial charti~i6fis is a serious lack of competition, both among the schools within each country and among the various countries of the area. The South East Asia Peninsular Games are held every two years, and the Asian Games every four years. But to be really effective, there has to be more frequent competition, even though it may be on a smaller scale than the big events I have mentioned. There is another factor that is important to the young Asian athlete-and to the athlete everywhere. That factor is coaching, and I have seen considerable progress in this area. But many of the persons who are coaching young athletes are really not coaches; they have some experience and a burning interest in sports, but they are, for the most part, teachers of academic subjects who work with athletes, often without pay, after school hours. I am impressed with the dedication of these people. And they can make a very important contribution to the quality of Asian athletes. But they are no substitute for full-time coaches-men and women who are trained in the skills of teaching and encouraging young athletes. I do not think the value of good coaching can be overemphasized. Success in sports comes from hard work, and even the most dedicated athlete may not push himself as hard as he should. I have a little natural ability, but it has taken many hours of hard work to develop that ability. If it had not been
for a coach, I would not have worked as hard-or enjoyed the successes of competition. If I have a choice of running 500 metres or 200 metres in practice, I take the 200 metres. But if a coach is there and he says, "O.K., Bob, now you have to run 500 metres at threequarters speed," I go out and run 500. Without a coach to prod me, I think I would probably run 100 or 200 metres and call it a day. The coach is vital, not only to prod the athlete, but to know the athlete, to study his natural style, to advise him on how to improve his form. The coach can give the athlete a practice programme that will help the athlete develop his skills faster, avoid the pitfalls, and give him the stimulation and encouragement he needs. And the coach can add another vital factor: he can make it fun for the athlete. This is especially important, because if it is not fun, the hard work required just does not seem worth the effort. There is a third factor needed to develop winning athletes, and it's probably the most important. I can state it in two words: hard work. The very best body hilSt6 be trained, and this takes many hours of practice. Perhaps the best examples are men like John Landy and Roger Bannister who were the first to run the mile in less than four minutes. For many years we were told that no one could ever run a mile in less than four minutes. But both Bannister and Landy did it, and after they did it, they told us how they did it. There were no secret methods, no special equipment, no unusual drills or techniques. They simply ran more. They ran more hours per daysometimes four and five hours-up and down sand hills, in the country, on tracks. They actually punished their bodies to develop the form and condition that would make it physically possible for them to run a mile in less than four minutes. Now their training methods are being used by other runners. Now athletes work harder, run longer, give their bodies more punishment. And the reason is largely medical: more oxygen is used by the body, especially in running, and the body has to be prepared to replenish the oxygen and get it circulating in the blood stream more quickly and in adequate amounts. Landy and Bannister showed that the body can be conditioned by training and punishment,to produce the stamina required. I believe that there is a great future for all Asian athletes in international sports events. But first must come more competition, better coaching and lots of hard work. â&#x20AC;˘
Olympic pole vault champion Bob Richards, left, also visited India, agrees with Mathias that Asians are potential winners. Below, Bob Mathias, twice Olympic decathlon champion, demonstrates the form that made him one of America's greatest athletes.
New Centre for Technical Training
FOUR YEARS AGO, a tract of land, in the village of Kalyanpur about six miles from Kanpur. was half-cultivated and halfbarren. Since then this 1,200-acre tract has been transformed into the beautiful campus of the Indian Institute of Technology. The age-old humdrum routine of village life has given place to the hectic activity of young students engaged in the exciting pursuit of knowledge. Established in 1960, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, is one of the four institutes set up in four States of India. The Institute at present has training facilities for undergraduate studies in five branches of engineering and for graduate courses leading to Ph.D. in physics, chemistry and mathematics. A principal objective is to develop research standards of international quality and nine U.S. educational institutes are collaborating with the Institute under the Kanpur Indo-American Programme to achieve this goal. Among salient features of education at the lIT are tutorials, surprise and quiz tests, student counselling and a plan of earning while learning. The lIT has an atmosphere which is conducive to selfdevelopment and self-expression. Besides studies, students are encouraged to participate in sports, dramatics, debates and other extra-curricular activities and to practise individual hobbies. Continued on next page
Curriculum lays stress on the interdependence of varzous disciplines.
for the jet age, said Professor Arthur R. Bergen of the Indian Institute of Technology (JlD, Kanpur. He was not speaking particularly of aeronautics; his speciality happens to be electrical engineering, but what he was summing up in a phrase was the whole dynamic attitude of mind which pervades and motivates JlT, Kanpur. Though opened only four years ago, the Institute has made an impressive beginning. It now has some seventy professors and lecturers, and the faculty is expected to grow to 250 by 1967. Nearly 500 undergraduates are in residence, 200 in the first year and one hundred each in the second, third, and fourth year of the five-year undergraduate progranmles. The multifaceted knowledge available at JlT comprises nine departments -civil, mechanical, electrical, chemical, and metallurgical engineering; physics, chemistry, mathematics, and humanities. There is also a cOmputer centre which serves all departments. The curriculum of the Institute is being developed with the assistance of nine American institutions noted for their technological training programmes. These schools are a "Who's Who" of U.S. technical education: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge; Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Ca~ Institute of Technology, Cleveland, Ohio; California Institute of Technology, Pasadena; Ohio State University, Colombus; Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey; Purdue University, Lafayette, Indiana; University of California, Berkeley; and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. All nine schools are co-operating in the Kanpur Indo-American Programme to provide JIT with a rounded, complete programme of technical training for Indian students. "Interdisciplinary" is a word often heard around the corridors of JlT. A "discipline" is academese for a branch of knowledge or instruction, and the accent is on interdisciplinary activity because knowledge is a whole whose various parts or branches are interdependent and highly relevant to one another. This approach is emphasized from the very beginning of study at JIT. In the undergraduate programme, lasting five years, all students take common courses for the first three years. Only after that do their paths diverge, as specialization begins. There is also particular emphasis on basic scientific research, so needed in a developing country like¡India. Graduate study, particularly research leading to the Ph.D., has been going on for more than two years. There are Ph.D. programmes in physics, chemistry, and mathematics. A considerable increase in graduate study and research is expected next year. The humanities and social sciences are sometimes considered as areas of study out of place in an institute of technology. Their inclusion into JIT's curriculum is justified by Professor Norman C. Dahl, leader of Kanpur Indo-American Programme, who says: "India's problems are not only technological but also sociological. We have found in America that to stress these studies makes very good sense, and it makes even better sense in India."
T
HIS IS EDUCATION
Above, Prof I. N. Rabinowitz checks a students' "programme" problem before it is fed into computer for solution. Below, a research scholar consults books in the library.
Environment is congenial for selfexpreSSlon and self-development. HEINSTITUTE HASits campus some six miles out of Kanpur, at Kalyanpur, a suburb of the city. As lIT buildings are completed, the rural look is steadily disappearing, though it still clings to the edges of the campus. "Come back in two to three years," visitors are told. "Then there'll really be something to see." There is plenty to see even now-in terms of educational activity, as well as in brick-and-mortar. A magnificent library building, a stadium, an open-air theatre are in the planning stage, but there already are workshops, classrooms, laboratories, housing for faculty, and a large hostel block. There will be five similar hostels ultimately. As great importance is attached to the stimulation of a spirit of free and searching enquiry, students are bound not merely to academic disciplines, but are encouraged in their extra-curricular activities as well. This, however, applies both to staff and students alike. As Dr. M. S. Muthana, deputy director of lIT, puts it: "We want the environment to be free and unfettered for self-expression and self-development." A visit to the hostel is exhilarating. The rooms are fairsized, bright, and comfortable. Discipline is admirable, and maintained by the boys themselves without strict professional supervision. The Students' Gymkhana has organized hobby shops for radio-making, leathercraft, gardening, and aeromodelling. It also includes literary, musical, film, and drama sections. The student basketball team is unbeaten in the region. Even more deserving of attention is the students' "earn while you learn" plan. With only a few scholarships available and more need for them, students instead help pay their tuition by doing paid voluntary off-hours work, waiting on table in the hostel mess and helping in the operation of the lIT library. This library, which has already a collection of twenty to twenty-five thousand books, is housed in temporary quarters but is an impressive and integral part of lIT. Special emphasis has been placed on the development of library resources. Purdue University's library has taken responsibility for establishing the library; each time Purdue buys a book in the field of engineering or science, it buys a duplicate copy, catalogues it, and sends it to lIT, Kanpur, together with the catalogue cards. Amidst the tall books tacks, shelf upon shelf of them, a visitor will find tables always occupied by students, reading and taking notes. The library is also a meeting ground for facuIty members and students. Indeed, the whole staff-student relationship is informalone of the most impressive aspects of life at lIT, Kanpur. To a large extent, this easy and constant contact between students and staff is due to lIT's being completely residential. There is also the fact that the staff is young, fresh, and eager; none of the professors is over forty. Students are free to approach professors with their difficulties, and the professors are ready to explain, help and guide. This helpfulness extends beyond academic life. A student counselling programme is in operation, though still in a formative stage, and each professor is assigned as counsellor to some twelve to fifteen students. Student counselling, still new in India, is highly developed in the United States. There are, naturally, other ways in which lIT, Kanpur has, as a result of U.S. collaboration, benefited from American experience. In the U.S.A., says Programme Leader Dahl, "We have had experience with a particular type of technological education." The pattern at nT, Kanpur, he adds, is "strongly reflective of American experience, but it is not the same. It is tailored to India's needs today -and tomorrow."
T
He earns while he learns. This student adds to his allowance by serving meals in the Institute's mess.
Indian and American teachers collaborate to achieve high standards. Programme leader Norman C. Dahl confers with Dr. P. K. Kelkar, director of the Institute. ".1
various departments to have their own identity, says Dr. P. K. Kelkar, director of IIT, "but we don't want them to grow rigidly within themselves." The effort here is not to teach a few techniques, but to teach and develop the basic ways of thinking, the fundamental ideas. For such an objective, academic flexibility is essential. liT is completely autonomous and has its own regulations for the award of degrees and the conduct of examinations. The same flexibility applies also to the structure of the professorial hierarchy of the Institute. IIT's faculty, as Professor M. C. Chaturvedi of the civil engineering department points out, is a "column structure" rather than a pyramidal one-that is, there are no fixed numbers of posts in the various grades; there may be as many, or almost as many, on the higher rungs as on the lower; and ascent is determined by merit rather than seniority. The faculty has distinguished Indian and American professors working together. Two major aspects of Kanpur IndoAmerican Programme's collaboration with IIT are the work of U.S. consortium teachers and experts .at the Kanpur Institute, and the procurement of equipment, materials, and books not available in India. E WANT THE
W
lIT's newly acquired radio-frequency counter, for example, is one of many items already supplied under the Programme. The counter is so precise that it registers frequencies to a tenmillionth. The frequency is plainly indicated by rows of large illuminated figures which spin and change with dizzying rapidity and precision from one fraction of a second to the next until they finally come to rest. The majority of the members of the teaching staff are Indian, but since 1962 the American staff has grown from nine to twenty, and there probably will be thirty next year. While serving at Kanpur, they remain on the payrolls of their respective U.S. universities. The American collaboration includes loan of the services of professors Arthur R. Bergen of the electrical engineering department, Movses J. Kaldjian in civil engineering, Richard H. Zimmerman in mechanical engineering, Truman Kohman in chemistry, and Earnest B. Leach in mathematics. Knowledge cannot be confined within any national or geographical barriers. These Americans and their Indian colleagues have assembled at IIT to fulfil one of India's long-felt needs: to provide a vital and comprehensive programme of technical education to India's young technicians .â&#x20AC;˘
The Power Holders In
the American Economy
NTHE REVOLUTIONARY AGE in which we are living, when economic life is being moulded by the opening of the space age, by a multitude of technological discoveries, by great shifts of political power and by a historic cultural conflict between the free world and Russia, what is happening to power in the American economy? Thinkers about economic evolution have always had a penchant for predicting that economic or political power was about to be concentrated in the hands of some one part of the community-the workers, the managers, the engineers, or the government. The rise of big business, of big labour, of big government has led many people to believe that prophecies of an ever-growing concentration of power are being fulfilled. The prophets of greater and greater concentration of power, however, have misjudged the course of history, and widespread acceptance of this mistake has caused the public to overlook the outstanding practical problem confronting our economy. This outstanding problem is not how to check excessive concentration of power, but how to improve the decision-making processes of the economy so that the economy may better develop policies and institutions which reflect interests common to most of the population. Excessive concentration of power at some points in the economy is not incompatible with a general diffusion of power. Furthermore, some groups may be gaining (or losing) power in the market place while losing (or gaining) political power. The dominant course of development in the United States for over a century and a half has been for power to become more and more diffused, partly through an increase in the number of
I
The article is reprinted with permission of The Saturday Evening 1958 .by the Curtis Publishing Company.
Post, copyrighted
important power-holding groups in the community and partly through a tendency for the centres of power to break up into more or less independent parts. The growth in the number of power centres and the diffusion of power have important advantages-these changes strengthen' democratic ideals, make for a rich and variegated life and help the economy deal with many special problems. But the diffusion of power often reduces the capacity of the economy to pursue national interests, since it frequently enables small groups to block action desired by the majority. Hence, the general tendency for power to become l110rediffused creates the need for developing policy-making arrangements that more effectively reflect national interests. Let us look briefly at the ideas of a few important thinkers '. who have speculated about prospective changes in the distribution of economic power. Then let us review in broad outline what has actually happened in the United States and inquire into probable trends in the near future. Finally, let us deal with the problem of developing needed improvements in the decisionmaking methods of the economy. Most famous of all forecasts concerning the distribution of power is that of Karl Marx, who said that technological advance would inevitably concentrate power in the hands of the working class. Technological change was bound to produce a widening gap between the haves and the have-nots. This, in turn, would produce revolution and the seizure of industry by the workers. The state would gradually wither away, and the workers would run industry. This is what Marx meant by "socialism:~ Socialism may come, but not-in Western countries at least-in the way that Marx predicted. His theory of economic evolution was based upon erroneous notions of the effect of technological change upon labour and wages. He believed that Continued on next page
Technological change has produced, not revolution, but stable middle-class societies. technological change would undermine skills and, instead of raising wages, would produce more and more unemployment. The end result would be revolution and socialism. But the effects of technological progress have been far different from Marx's predictions. The demand for skills has grown, and rising productivity, instead of increasing unemployment, has raised wages. Hence, technological change-in Western countries at least-has produced, not revolution, as Marx predicted, but stable middle-class societies. MOST SCHOLARLY prediction of radical .changes ah~ad is that of Joseph Schumpeter, the eminent AustrIan economist who became an American citizen. Schumpeter agreed with Marx that socialism is inevitable, though he saw it coming by a process very different from that envisioned by Marx. Schumpeter thought that the "intellectuals" as a whole are incurably socialistic, that their influence with the workers is bound to make the trade-unionists sociali-stic and that, in this day of big corporations and hired managers, private property would lack effective defenders against the socialist attack. Fortunately for big business, the socialist attack has not come. No one has been able to interest the unions in socialism. Their success in appropriating for their members most of the gains of rapid technological progress under private enterprise has been too complete. They are well satisfied to bargain with private enterprise. James BlJrnham, in his brilliant book, The Managerial Revolution, published early in World War II, took a view of managers very different from the view of Schumpeter. Burnham regarded the professional managers as strong and aggressive men who are peculiarly capable of running things and who, therefore, are bound to seize control of industry. Burnham's ideas remind one of the earlier views of Veblen, who, before he
T
HE
I
mists, and wrote a
recanted, believed that the nature of modern technology made it inevitable that the engineers would take control of industry. Burnham badly misjudged the psychology of managers-just as Veblen misjudged the psychology of engineers. Managers, on. the whole, are a cautious and conventional group, well suited to run going concerns according to accepted rules and tradition, but far from fitted to grab power. Still another theory of radical changes is that of Prof. Charles E. Lindblom of Yale who has suggested that the powerful trade-unions, perhaps in co-operation with" management, would take over the running of various industries, giving us a syndicalist society. But Lindblom failed to see that, when unions take responsibility for administrative decisions, a rift develops between the leaders and the members. To hold the support of the members, union leaders prefer to remain aloof from management and to confine their role, to criticism of management. Syndicalism will never become a reality, no matter how powerful unions may become. The actual course of economic and political change in the United States has been for power to be divided among more and more groups of decision-makers or power centres. Thus far, three principal groups of decision-makers have emergedbusiness, government and trade-unions. Each of these three groups has much to say about how the economy operates. Hence, the behaviour of the economy can be explained only in terms of the influence of all three groups, or power centres, upon institutions and policies. But each of the three principal sources of influence and power contains sub-groups or centres of interest with their own distinctive objectives and interests. Thus, in the business world there are important differences between big business, small business and the farmers; in the trade-union world, between craft unions of skilled workers and industrial unions; in government, between the Federal Government, the States and the cities. On some issues the conflicts between sub-groups are intense. Furthermore, there is a tendency for the number of groups to multiply. America started out as a simple, fairly homogeneous community with one principal power centre-business. Most business in the early days of the country was agriculture. Indeed, as late as 1820 seven out of ten workers were in agriculture. Such a society readily accepted the principle of self-reliancewhich meant that there should be a minimum of free services and that people should pay for what they get-and the principle of non-interference by government with economic activities. As conditions have changed, these two basic principles of American business have come more and more into conflict with other cherished ideals of the American people-especially the ideal that opportunity should be kept open to all and that the good life should be available to all. The first big clash ca~e early in the nineteenth century over the question of free public education. Victory went to the principle of equal opportunity over the principle of self-reliance. As a result, the government took on <In important new function-supplying free public education, at least through the primary grades. As industry became less agricultural and as giant corporations emerged, divisions within the business community became sharper and more numerous, and some parts of business-the farmers and the small businessmen--began to demand more Text continued on page 26
New York's Wall Street, right, is symbolic centre of financial power and has played vital role in U.S. economic development.
Three important centres of economic power are business, trade unwns and government. and more exceptions to the principle of non-interference. These business dissenters often were joined by the increasingly numerous class of employees. Every exception to the principle of non-interference meant new responsibilities and new powers forgovernment. By 1929, the government had become an important centre of economic power and influence-not as important as business, but important enough so that the economy ,by then had two power centres: business and government. LEA VAGES WITHIN THE business community have continued to grow. The farmers and small business, though seeing eye-to-eye with big business on issues of labour policy, were developing their own ideas on other issues-witness. the demand from much of agriculture for price supports and the struggles of independent retailers for anti-chain-store legislation. An important development has been the spectacular increase in the number of self-employed professional men-doctors, dentists, engineers, accountants, architects, management consultants, advertising men, lawyers, investment counsellors. This change tended to reinforce the influence of the professional managers of big enterprises, since the independent professional men tend to share the views of the large capitalists and the professional managers on many issues. Employees, who had become the most numerous group in the country, were making valiant efforts to gain a voice in running the economy, but th~ir progress was slow and spotty. Only in the construction industry, parts of the railroad industry, the coal industry, the printing trades, the needle trades and a few other industries did trade-unions have much influence. Hence, in 1929, the employees cannot be said to have become a third power centre. The American economy was still¡ pretty largely a businessman's economy, with government playing an
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important, but nevertheless a subordinate role. The years since 1929 have seen far greater shifts in the distribution of power than have occurred in any period of similar length in our history. The great depression of the." '30's shattered the long accepted view that the best way to get things done is to give businessmen a pretty free hand to pursue profits with only moderate direction or restraint from the government. The depression produced a flood of new government controls and aids in the capital markets, in banking, in the. labour markets, in the housing market and in agriculture. In addition, it aroused an imperative demand that the Federal Government assume the responsibility of providing a minimum of economic security for nearly all parts of the population. Finally, the depression spurred the workers to make vigorous efforts to help themselves, and enabled them to win the backing of the government in their efforts. The second World War gave both the government and the trade-unions time to consolidate and to increase the power that they had gained during the depression. Today no one who is familiar with how the decisions are made would call the American economy a businessman"'s. economy. Business is still important, but philosophical differences within the business community are substantial, and the influence of business is less than it was at any time prior to 1929; government is far more important than it ever has been before; and labour has become a third major power Centre. N ORDER TO SEE how the present distribution of power works, let us examine briefly each of the three great centres of power-business, trade-unions and government. The part of the community that represents the business point of viewthe large capitalists, the professional managers of large concerns, the owners of medium and small businesses, the independent professional men and the farmers-has about as many members today, relative to the rest of the community, as it had thirty years ago, but two important changes have weakened its influence. One change is that business can no longer count on the support of the large and growing number of white-collar employees, who provide technical services, who work in offices, who sell goods or who are minor executives. On some issues these employees support the business point of view, but they have become increasingly aware that they are employees, and they are more and more disposed to assert their interests as employees. It is true that only about 2,500,000 out of 13,600,000 white-collar workers belong to unions, and that the great majority of them show little desire to be organized. But in the field of pOlitics, especially in the fields of social legislation and fiscal policy, the white-collar workers no longer accept the ideas of the businessmen. A second change that has weakened the influence of business upon economic policies has been the growing disagreement within the business community itself with respect to the relations of government and business. Instead of championing a hands-off philosophy, farmers wish subsidies, small business wishes special tax treatment, the building industry wishes government aids to construction, and other businesses wish special help through stockpiling and other methods. The old spirit of self-reliance is no longer fashionable in a large part of the business world. All of this tends to shift power and responsibility from business to government. The trade-unions now have about 18,000,000 membersaround six times as many as they possessed in 1929. More than half of the workers in construction, air, truck and railroad transportation, mining and manufacturing are pretty Continued on page 47
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The earliest known view of New Amsterdam, the little Dutch settlement on the tip of Manhattan island, which later became New York. Manhattan island was purchased from Red Indians by the Dutch Governor in 1626 for trinkets worth twenty-four dollars.
NEW YORK'S CHANGING FACE
The pace of new construction in New York City is amazingly rapid. In the Borough of Queens vacant lots and old warehouses make way for the Park City Estates, a modern government-sponsored residential project.
The 59-storey Pan American building dominates this part of the New York skyline. The roof is equipped for landing and take-off of 25-passenger helicopters so that travellers can fly to the heart of the metropolis.
Kennedy airport, New York, formerly known as Idlewild, is the world's busiest air terminal and a main port of entry into the u.s. The new TW A passenger terminal was designed by the famous architect, Eero Saarinen.
Dwarfing other structures is 48-storey Time-Life building, Rockefeller Centre.
Times Square, centre of New York's night life, blazes in the bright, changing colours of the huge advertising signs.
EWYORKCITYis three hundred years old this year but she doesn.'t , show her age, The contours of the city's skyline are so swiftly altering that whole neighbourhoods may become almost' strange and unrecognizable to '6ne:t)Vhoknows them well but has not seen' them during the lapse of only a year. It has been called "a city proliferating into a Himalaya of architecture," but it is a range of shifting peaks. More than 3,300,000 persons enter the 15.5 square miles of the city's central business district every day; to accommodate them, new officebuildings, hotels, housing complexes, and schools mount storey upon storey to completion. Last year thirty-one new skyscrapers were underway and plans had been filed for twenty-two more-a building boom unmatched since Dutch settlers purchased Manhattan Island from Red Indians for the legendary sum of $24 in trinkets. In 1626, the Dutch established a settlement and called it New Amsterdam" (see page 27). But forty years later the British came along and Colonel Richard Nicolls took possession of the community without bloodshed; the British flag went up in 1664 and New Amsterdam became New York. Since then, hardly a year has gone by without a change in the city's contours. As a former mayor of the city once observed, "New York will be a beautiful city if they ever get her finished." New York is not only America's largest city (population: nearly 8,000,000), but is also the cultural, financial, publishing, communications and garment manufacturing centre of the nation. And it is the most cosmopolitan city in America. From 1881 to 1920 more than 23,000,000 immigrants sailed past the Statue of Liberty into New York harbour: Many of their descendants still live in the city; there are nearly as many Irish in New York as in the city of Dublin, capital of the Republic of Ireland. Within the city are communities of Germans, Italians, Chinese, Greeks and many other nationalities. New York has always been a haven for refugees. Many Jewish citizens are descendants of refugees from the Russian pogroms of the 1880's. Some New Yorkers fled the Soviet revolution
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of 1917, and others are refugees from Nazi persecution. Most recently the city has welcomed many of the Hungarians who went into exile after the revolt of 1956, and a great many Cubans who fled communist-dominated Cuba now live in New York. But aside from its own residents, New York takes on much of its cosmopolitan air from the delegates of 114 countries who are now members of the United Nations. UN headquarters is an impressive group of modem buildings on a site overlooking the East River. More than three-fourths of the seventeenacre plot is devoted to lawns, flowers and shrubs. The other UN buildings are long, low structures: the Conference Area, the General Assembly building, and the Library. All of the buildings are linked by the elaborate communications system through which speakers can be heard in their own languages <\nd in simultaneous translations into the five official languages of the United Nations. As host to the United NatiOnS, New York has gained unofficial status as "capital of the world." New Yorkers appeared aware of this fact long before the United Nations was organized in 1945, however, and have, for many years, maintained leadership in many facets of"' the nation's life. Chicago was the transportation centre and Detroit makes the automobiles, but New York has Wall Street, the financial hub of America; Broadway, the entertainment centre; and Fifth Avenue, the street of fashion that sets the apparel trend for women across the country. The three largest national radio and television networks have their headquarters in New York; one of the country's most highly respected newspapers is The New York Times, and most of the mass circulation magazines, including Time and Life. are edited in New York. The millions of copies of books produced in the United States each year may be printed in Chicago, Illinois, Racine, Wisconsin, or Louisville, Kentucky-but most are published in New York City, the publishing centre of the nation. Television viewers in North Delhi (the natives pronounce it Del-high), Michigan, are urged to buy a specific brand of soap in an advertisement created in New York; the city's famous
(some Americans say infamous) Madison Avenue is the point of origin for most national advertising. According to New Yorkers there is not much that goes on in the United States that does not have its roots in one of the skyscrapers that make the New York skyline. And the skyscrapers themselves are big business: thousands of persons work in them every day and thousands more visit them in the course of business activity. Like nearly everything in New York, the skyscrapers also attract millions of tourists every year, along with such other famous New York landmarks as Times Square, Greenwich Village, the Battery, President Grant's Tomb, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Carnegie Music Hall, Lincoln Centre, the Metropolitan Opera House, subways, Rockefeller Centre with its Music Hall, the Museum of Modem Art, the United Nations, the Museum of Natural History, Macy's and Gimble's departmental stores, Broadway and off-Broadway, and Central Park, a green and lovely oasis in the deep canyons of the asphalt jungle. It is a city of superlatives; some say the words "biggest," "tallest," "newest," and "greatest" were invented in New York. And there i~i;l suggestion of proof for this in the big'birthday party New York is giving for itself this year-and~ next: the New York World's Fair. Twenty-five years ago New York was only 275 years old, so the 1939-40World's Fair commemorated the 150th anniversary of George Washington's inauguration as the first President of the United States. This event took place, of course, in New York City, then the capital of the little underdeveloped country which had only recently won its independence from Great Britain. This year, however, New York has achieved a ripe, old age that also has the benefit of being a neat, round figure: 300. And to commemorate the 300th anniversary, the Fair is offering the "biggest" attractions with the "newest" features at the "greatest" fair ever held in any place in the world. Some 70,000,000 persons are expected to attend the Fair-and most of them will also visit New York City to discover for themselves that the superlatives are justified and that New York may be 300 years old but she doesn't show her age. â&#x20AC;˘
They plough
and
sow
grains in the tired soil.
in the windows distorts the curtains in zig-zag patterns of old colour and lines; mountain people have looked for centuries upon a world stretched and squeezed through such glass. The paintless picket fence creeps around the yard. But it's unique, this house; Darlene lives here. With luck and a little rainfall the sixty acres of Jude's farm may stay almost green through summer, but rainfall has a way of spilling itself on the lowlands to the east. If Jude's hands and sometimes his eyes are hard, it is because he lives where no good living is, ploughing and sowing grain in tired soil, and pasturing his livestock on rocky hillsides.
He can be a farmer only in the evenings; by day he is a saw-mill man, cutting and sawing timber from scrubby tangled forests of thin oak and stunted pine. Still, all his labours never quite see him through. In hard times he must yield his proud independence to government aid; the social machinery in America called 'relief,' which sees to it that no man goes hungry, puts dried commodities on his pantry shelves. Why then does he stay? Why then does he not follow the road to some unknown somewhere which might be better? His wife, Pauline, has a hat for the weddings and funerals which punctuate
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in World War T.
the life of the hills; she goes at times of need to neighbours and relations; she travels as far as the nearest town to buy the things the family cannot grow. But her roots are here, in the ground, the kitchen, and her children. At some time Darlene turned away from her mother's world, her house world, kitchen, cooking, cleaning w(}[ld and reached out for the world of her father. In the vegetable patch she hitches - herself to a small iron plough with bent wooden handles and pulls it for Jude among the narrow rows of weedy corn and tomato plants. With dull iron mattocks she digs, with him, cutting
away the clinging weeded growth. (How can weeds so flourish when the plants are weary and droop?) At nightfall they milk in the shadowy stable of the log barn, Darlene with face pressed against the warm cow's flank. Jude splits fat wood and she stacks it near the kitchen door; she carries water winter-cold from the spring. Before sitting down to her supper of grits and fat-back meat, she will light the lamp in the front room beneath the picture of the old grim-faced general her father's brothers fought for in war. Her parents' roots are here. It is enough for them. And now the government's coming
again to build bigger and better roads with armies of machinery: graders, scoopers, levellers, trucks, all with huge caterpillar wheels and tracks and yellow and black paint and fuming motors. They roar and butt down the contour and vivid shapes of the land. "Hey, Mac, watch it there!" and "Back 'er easy, Jack." The surveyors squint and measure and wave their red flags in the dusty air. The old men sit and watch and talk together, quietly. "I've lived my life in these parts-a half-mile up or down the road would take care of it." And: "If I was younger, I'd get the State to learn Continued on next page
Changes bring sparks of hope in Darlene's eyes.
me t() drive one 0' them things." And, "Up the road a-piece they got a schoolthey're learning farmers and miners to work in factories. If I was younger .... " The young people don't see it that way. Swift and straight, the road beckons. Why stay home when now the road goes on? Darlene's older brother is away from home for days and weeks as a migrant fruit-picker. From orchard to orchard he goes-a dime a bushel here, fifteen cents there. With his apple-picking money he bought a car, a flashy, mudflapped, used Ford car. "I can go anywhere now," he says. "Maybe California. They got swimming pools and boats and the biggest orchards in the world in California." With other boys he wanders the highway, roaring up and down its
stretches, to Winchester, the trucking town. What's forty miles? Forty minutes, or less. And on a dare who will take Dead Man's turn at more than sixty miles an hour? Darlene's two married sisters took the road. They live in far-off places. They come home at festive times of the year, or to show off a new baby, and they tell of places all lit up at night. Jude may shake his head. The mother will stoke her cook-stove with fatwood and listen, silently. Darlene's eyes are sparks of interest. Sister Janet spent twelve dollars just to have her hair done-up in Washington. There's a million people there, and picture shows and colleges if you want to learn. At special times fifty people and more play string music all together.
And Kathleen's man makes two dollars and some an hour. Think of it! The hay is cut and everywhere is that almost sour, moist, fresh smell of freshcut grass. Jude has helped his neighbours and now they come to lift his hay into his barn. The sun is so hot-it passes through the body taking moisture from a man 'til he's dry to the hair roots, his tongue gritty, with dry upon his lips. "Bring the water, daughter." Jude drinks and gasps at the coldness, then drinks again. And it's work again, up the steep fields where the bales lie in rows. Night is coming on. Stack the bales clear to the beams of the loft. Then gun the tractor and into the field again. And sweat and drive the body 'til pitchforks scrape the empty wagon bed. The job is done. But
if the weather holds there will be hay to move tomorrow. Quiet now: the quality of evening that comes with the settling of dust and the wordless patience of animals and the fatigue of men at dark. The men come from the fields, gaunt silhouettes, wanting washing up and food and drink and some forgetfulness that they are weary. After supper others come, men and women, from the hills about to be at Jude's where the fiddle is; it is Saturday night. Darlene picks an eight stringed mandolin; her cousins and uncles tune up their guitars and banjos. They've been playing string music in this family for two hundred years and the music is two-hundred-year brilliant and clear. The fiddle gives the sound. Eyes are lowered and lips pucker-
ed to the task of plucking and bowing steel strings. Twenty pairs of hard leather shoes and small bare feet beat out the time. The fiddle soars and dips in the melody, the banjos and guitars push upward with well tuned chords from beneath the line. Faster the beat, the ever-rising sound comes faster still, the sweat runs free. Eyes close; hands pat time on the worn knees of overalls and calico skirts; lower lips are clamped by teeth. Now the mandolin breaks out with the ring of a hundred fiddles; the rest stop playing just to listen. It rings against the window-panes, that sound, and among the pines on the ridge, and over many hills. And when it is finished the faces break into laughter. By heavens, it was Continued on next page
With mandolin she sits on porch wondering .... fine, it was fine. But when they are gone and the lamp is low and the house is hushed and ready for sleep, Darlene may go, still holding her mandolin, and find a spot on the porch where she may sit. The cream separator and the shapes of traps and dusty sacks of feed are vague and unfamiliar in the darkness. The night wind comes up in the trees, a sleepy calf bawls, a fox barks over the hill; a thousand
sounds become one quiet thought, until they become no sound at all. Exceptthe far-away roar of the trucks. You hear them this way at night only, rolling away off the Big South. It is different from other sounds. Perhaps she wonders if the big trucks, which crack and whine over the hills and down the dark road, go on to the end of the world. And if, when they come back again next week, it is because someone down there stopped them and told them to turn around and go the way they came. I've often seen people come into these hills from far away, going down the hardtop road past the church and store-people I never saw before. They come into our valley to stay for a time and then to be on their way again. I never used to wonder about far-off places when I saw those
people. I reckoned if their place was so good, then why did they pack up and leave and come to my place? But now I wonder. And she will sit, feeling the smoothness of the mandolin in her hands, and seeing the moonlight in its polished wood, and tapping its back with her finger-tips to make a small night-noise that is all her own. Maybe goodness alone is not what people seek when they go to those places far-off, but something better, or maybe just something different, something to change a person. Maybe that's worth the looking. "Where will I begin to look? I wonder." Darlene. How many more Saturdays will she sit like this, after the men and women have gone back to their hills, after the music at Jude's house? â&#x20AC;˘
economy during the 19th century. They in-
WHERE THE MONEY CAME FROM IN ITS EARLY history the United States depended largely on capital from abroad to develop its basic industries. This need no longer exists, but businessmen of other countries still find the United States a lucrative country for investments, due largely to America's long history of political and economic stability. The rapid economic recovery of areas devastated in World War II provided businessmen of Western Europe and Asia with a surplus of capital for overseas investments. Between 1956 and 1962, the value of long-term foreign investments in the United States increased from $12,834 million to $20,201 million. A notable example was the estab-
lishment by the British Bowaters Corporation of the largest American newsprint mill at a cost of $116 million. Foreign capital flowing into the United States originates for the most part in England, Germany, Canada, Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Japan. Among British firms with large American holdings are Cole Cranes, which produces construction equipment, and Crosse and Blackwell, which manufactures foodstuffs. Dunlop Tyre and Rubber, operating in the United States since World War I, has several large factories that make a variety Continued on next page
of products, ranging from sporting goods to tyres for automobiles, trucks and buses. West German capital also is being channelled into numerous U.S. enterprises. The American Collo Corporation, whose parent company is located at Bonn, Germany, makes plastic products. Farbenfabriken Bayer recently teamed up with the U.S. firm of Monsanto Chemicals to form the Mobay Chemicals Company. Swiss companies operate several large U.S. factories. Ciba manufactures pharmaceuticals and chemicals. Nestle, the chocolate firm, has more than 35,000 employees in ten plants throughout the United States. The world's largest distillery is operated by a Canadian firm at Peoria, Illinois. North American Philips produces elec-
tronics equipment, molybdenum and tungsten wire, and diamond dies in the United States. Another Dutch company, American Enka, produces rayon in three U.S. plants. Investments by foreign capital are welcomed in all parts of the United States and particularly in the new State of Alaska which has many undeveloped resources. A Japanese company now operates a pulp mill at Sitka, and a group of Japanese businessmen plans to mine low-grade coal. While foreign investments in the United States are increasing, private U.S. capital is flowing abroad at the rate of almost $4,000 million a year. Totalprivate United States investments abroad were valued at $59,810 million in 1962, of which $37,145 million was direct investments. In the following pages Professor Louis
M. Hacker, a distinguished economist, tells how foreign investors helped the early development of the United States. He also refers to the parallel process, which began in the years following World War I, of investment of American private capital in other countries to assist their economic development. His comments are particularly relevant in the context of the discussions on "Investing in India" which recently took place in New Delhi between the group of American businessmen headed by Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce, and Indian business leaders and government officials. Professor Hacker lectures at Pennsylvania State College and has taught at Cambridge, Oxford and the University of Hawaii.
World zs richer by flow across nations of ideas, men and capital. HEMODERN WORLD-as far back as the thirteenth century, when Italian traders were establishing regular communications with England and Northern Europe-has been characterized and helped by interdependence rather than isolation, by the flow across land boundaries and seas of ideas and men, goods and capital. Freedom and mobility have always gone hand in hand; and only when suspicion and an exaggerated nationalist sensitivity have captured the minds of men have peoples become hostile to ,the foreigner. The foreigner has been a beneficent influence rather than an exploiting one--even when, presumably coming from a superior culture, he made his home in or brought his influence to bear on a society less developed than his own. We know that the Middle Ages-based on local loyalties and economic self-sufficiency-were breaking up in England when Italian, Flemish and German traders and money lenders were being welcomed in London and other chief port cities. The same process, on a much larger scale, went on in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as there began to develop an international movement of immigrants, trade, financing, and overseas capital investments. It is important to bear in mind that both sides to these exchanges gained; and there can be no question that the United States-when it was a young, poor and insecure nation-was as much the beneficiary of this international mobility as were the richer and stronger nations of Europe. When a nation is young and just beginning the long climb upward in economic growth, the processes of capital formation --either from its own savings or from investments of foreigners -are of first importance. In fact, when foreign investments take place at strategic points, their impact on a growing economy can be immense, even though the sums invested may be relatively small. The United States today, because of its wealth and the ingrained savings habits of its population, is ready to play the role of investor overseas on a large scale. As lenders or investors, Americans seek no special advantages from the borrowing nations. When the United States welcomed foreign funds from 1789 to 1915, it placed the overseas investors under no disabilities and gave them the equal protection of American laws. A closer examination of the subject will show fully why
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European capital-from Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, Germany-moved into the United States during its formative years. It will also show domestic conditions and attitudes existing in America that encouraged the foreigners to take the risks they did when they bought public securities and the stocks and bonds of American companies, and erected factories, and engaged in mining and agricultural activities. These, among others, were the factors that prompted their participation in American development: eThey were confident of the political stability of the United States. Except for the period of the Civil War, 1861-1865, there were no internal threats to the survival of the American nation or to the universal acceptance of the orderly processes of government. eThey were confident of the fiscal and monetary responsibility of American government: that by the management of public finances and control over the monetary supply, taxes would be collected, public debts would be paid, the credit flow would be regulated, and prices would never get out of hand. eThey were confident that the American government was one of laws and not of men: that there existed legal protection of property rights and adequate, impartial and immediate legal machinery for the settlement of disputes and claims. eAnd finally, they were confident that the foreigner as such would labour under no disabilities: in the management of his properties, in the hiring of his working force, in the repatriation of his capital and earnings, in the scale of his holdings, in the taxes he had to pay. Foreign capital, in every particular, was exactly on the same footing as American capital. In such a climate foreign investments in the United States grew from about $60 million in 1800 to about $7,000 million when World War I broke out. The war made the United States a creditor rather than a debtor nation, a lender rather than a borrower in international transactions. It was a great dividing line in American history. At a number of important points in the development of the United States, when it was still a young and growing nation far behind Western European countries in the processes of industrialization, it was helped immeasurably by the investments of European private capital. These foreigners, taking the risks
of all private investors, were prepared to buy government securities, the stocks and bonds of American companies, and engage directly in all sorts of commercial, industrial and agricultural ventures. With such foreign assistance, coming from private overseas investors, the United States got off to a good start in the first decade of its history, from 1789 to 1800. European capital flowed into the United States during the 1820's and 1830's, helping the American States to build their canals and their first railroads and furnishing the capital for their banks. Beginning in 1850, and resuming after the Civil War on a large scale in 1865, European capital for the next three decades played a strategic role in the construction of the country's great trunk railroads and in other enterprises. It was that astounding young man, Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of Treasury under George Washington from 1789 to 1795-when the young American Republic had just been established-who grasped at once the entire scope of the new country's domestic and foreign relations problems. The heart of the government was the Treasury; which was responsible for funding the country's debt, earmarking revenues for interest payments and repayment of the principal. He laid out a regular programme of taxation. He created a national bank, part of whose stock the Treasury owned and which could regulate the note issues and therefore the credit of individual States.
Hamilton knew that a new nation had to deport itself with honour and faith. Its government must live within its means, scrupulously paying its obligations. It had to encourage capital ventures and safeguard property rights. Thus, by keeping its house in order, a government could attract needed capital, foreign as well as domestic, and such investments would help to diversify the country's economy. Hamilton's analysis was justified by subsequent events. Domestic savings were formed; and foreign capital began pouring into the new country. In 1803, it was ascertained that there were foreign investments of some $60 million in the United States, as follows: of the $81 million of national debt outstanding, 53 per cent was held abroad; of the $10 million of stock of the National Bank, 62 per cent was owned abroad; of the $38 million capitalized worth of the nation's other corporations, 25 per cent was held by foreigners. Never again, in its annals, were American government and enterprise to be so heavily dependent upon foreign funds. What is significant is that when, in the first crucial decade of its history, help from abroad was needed, it came readily. In fact, when the Louisiana Territory was purchased by Thomas Jefferson from Napoleon in 1803, it was the European investor who furnished the funds. Of the $11,250,000 required in cash, the whole amount was subscribed at once by European Continued on next page
Foreign capital has a useful role zn a country) s ÂŤtake-off)) stage. money markets. London took $9,250,000;Paris raised S I,500,000; and Amsterdam contributed $500,000. The 1820's and 1830's saw another such foreign-capital movement into the United States. The country's credit was good because of the -extinguishment of the national debt and the growing importance of its cotton to the rising textile industries of Europe. The American States were embarking on ambitious programmes of public-supported banks and internal improvements-roads, bridges, canals, and railroads. Transportation is a strategic industry in a new country, for it links up interiors with the seaboards. New York State began its construction of the Erie Canal in 1817, obtaining its financing almost entirely in England. Even before the canal was finished in 1825, the tolls it collected exceeded the interest charges on the bonds that were issued. Thus encouraged, other American States, notably in the south and west, embarked on similar ventures and even financed many of the country's first railroads out of public funds. The English money market extended an open purse to these borrowers. Prom 1830 to 1850, canal mileage tripled in the United States, thanks to English invested capital; and European capital also helped in the financing of the second bank of the United States, State banks, insurance companies, and privately-built railroads. By 1837, the European capital stake in American enterprise, public and private, was, 200 million. The long economic depression of 1837-1843 dealt hard with these Europeans, for a number of borrowers defaulted on their interest payments, having built canals and roads in advance of settlement. By the end of 1840's, however, the American economy once more was sound. Immigrants, as farmers and workers, came into the country. Cotton exports expanded sensationally. Heavy imports of iron moved into the country for the railroads. And American credit abroad was restored. Thus, once again, investments from overseas stood America in good stead at a time when it was expanding geographically and industrially. A new and growing nation, as it engages in the processes of capital formation, requires foreign investment as well as domestic savings. But the foreigner-before he is prepared to take the necessary risks-must have confidence in the borrowing country's political stability, its fiscal and monetary responsibility, and its legal integrity. Moreover, the foreigner must not labour under special and unusual disabilities as regards tax payments, the repatriation of his capital and earnings, the management of his business, and the hiring of his workers. It was because the United States, when it was young and growing, could offer all these assurances, that foreigners were ready to help finance its public enterprises, invest in its companies, and set up and manage directly all sorts of businessesmanufacturing, mining, agriculture, and ranching. The result was, at certain periods in its history-notably, in the first decade of the country's existence; from 1820 to 1840; and for three decades following the Civil War-private European capital moved into the United States and gave a great impetus to key enterprises. In the post-Civil War period, the large trunk railroads, built in advance of settlement, opened up the vast Great Plains, made possible large-scale immigration and an impressive increase in the country's exports of agricultural goods that a rapidly industrializing Europe so sorely needed. American credit was
also good because of the sound management of the country's public finances and its internal credit needs. Europeans began buying American railroad securities on a large scale in 1850, with the chartering of the nation's first great trunk railroad, the Illinois Central, which ran from Chicago to the Gulf of Mexico. They helped in financing, after the Civil War, those other great trunk lines, running from the MississippiMissouri Valley to the Pacific Coast-the Union Pacific, the Northern Pacific, the Great Northern, and the Southern Pacific. In 1869, Europeans owned 243 million worth of American railroad securities; in 1914, over 4,000 million. A number of the large American railroad companies were actually controlled by European-appointed directors because foreigners had such large blocks of securities. As America continued growing, shifting its accent more and more from agriculture to manufacturing, the European investors also changed their holdings. When the Civil War ended, in 1865, most European investments in the United States were in the bonds issued by the national and State governments. In fact, a significant part of the financing of the Federal Government during the Civil War itself was obtained in Europe. Of the -something like 3,000 million of national debt outstanding in 1865, $320 million was held in Germany, the Netherlands and other European countries. In the 1870's, 1880's and 1890's, not only did American rails attract the European but there was an increasing development of direct investments-that is, of enterprises which Europeans themselves managed as branches or new companies. The following were the most numerous; land companies, particularly in the Southwest and Northwest where ranching on a large scale was carried on;. mortgage and finance companies, usually connected with financing western farms; mining and oil properties, breweries, chemical companies, flour mills, textiles, and book publishing. World War I changed all this. European governments sold the American securities and properties of their nationals to finance the war effort. German properties in the United States were taken under the custodianship of the American government when the United States entered the war in 1917. Americans bought more than $2,000million in bonds of allied governments. The United States, in short, had become a creditor nation; the overseas investment of American citizens and companies exceeded the holdings of foreigners in the United States. This process has continued. There is no reason why American private capital, now moving overseas at the rate of about $4,000 million a year, cannot continue to grow. Consistent with the maintenance of a reasonable equilibrium in the United States balance of payments and the creation of a climate of confidence in the borrowing countries, the American citizen and the American company will take more and more risks in foreign lands. The reasonable conditions they seek for present and potential investments abroad are political stability, fiscal and monetary responsibility and legal integrity. The mobility of capital-like that of men, ideas and trade -is important to the growth of new nations and advancement of all peoples. America, when it was growing rapidly in its formative years, was helped significantly by this mobility. To this extent, American economic development in its earlier years was not unlike that of the newer countries in our contemporary world. â&#x20AC;˘
NINE MEN FOR THE MOON
By THE END OF THIS DECADE some of the young men shown above will probably travel to the moon. They are of the second group of American Astronauts now preparing for earth orbital flights in the two-man Gemini spacecraft. Six others-members of the "original" Mercury one-man spacecraft programme-are also training for the moon launch. Sponsored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the first Gemini manned flight is scheduled for late 1964. For this flight Virgil I. Grissom, one of the original Astronauts who made a suborbital flight in July 1961, and John W. Young, a member of the second group, have been named as "prime" pilots. Each of the nine men shown above is an engineer and a former test pilot of jet airplanes. Each is married and has one or more children and their average age is thirty-five. The fifteen men average about 160 pounds in weight and all are less than six feet tall; they come from twelve different States. And each man is a specialist. On the following pages the new Astronauts are shown with their attractive families.
Each new Astronaut is specializing in one area of preparation for flight to the moon.
ASTRONAUT NEIL A. ARMSTRONG, thirty-four, holds his fivemonth-old son Mark while his six-year-old son, Eric, laughs. Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong met while attending Purdue University. Their new home is near Houston, Texas, site of the NASA Manned Spacecraft Centre, where all fifteen Astronauts are assigned. Armstrong's speciality is perfecting trainers and simulators needed to simulate tasks that man has never done before. "This is a crucial problem," Armstrong says. "We can't afford to wait until we are in trouble on an actual flight before we start figuring out ways to solve it. We have to think ahead and imagine all the conceivable emergencies we might face-and then come up with the right conclusions without ever leaving the ground. We can't go out and practise a moon landing. We have to recreate the conditions as realistically as possible in a kind of serious 'let's pretend.' "
ASTRONAUT ANDMRS. FRANKBORMANwere close friends in secondary school, married after his graduation from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. Their sons are Edwin, left, ten, and Frederick, eleven, who holds their pet terrier. Borman's special responsibility among the Astronauts is to work with the people who are building the big boostersthe Titan II that will launch Gemini and the huge Saturn rocket that will boost three men to the moon. One of the problems Borman has worked on is a peculiarity of the Titan called the "pogo effect." Soon after launching the booster starts vibrating up and down like a pogo stick. "From an engineering study," says Borman, who is thirty-six, "we were able to determine what caused the;"trouble, but we were concerned that the vibrations might P!~vent the Astronauts from being able to read their instn.l:nents correctly during launch." To learn how much vibration they could "live with" without reducing their efficiency, several Astronauts rode the NASA centrifuge to simulate the pogo effect. "Afterwards we told the engineers what the acceptable vibrational levels were-how much the problem had to be fixed," says Borman. "Now the Titan,is being modified. We don't expect it to ride like a limousine. just well enough to do the job for the least cost possible."
DAUGHTERSSALLY,left, seven, and Carolyn, six, sit behind their parents, Astronaut and Mrs. Elliott M. See, Jr., and David, one. Mrs. See worked as a secretary for the same company which employed her husband after he graduated from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy. See, thirty-seven, has two responsibilities in the moon programme; the electrical systems of the spacecraft, and mission planning. Currently he is working on the lighting needed to land on the moon. Will the moon landing have to be made in sunlight? Or will earthshine-the light reflected from the earth-be good enough? To help solve these problems, See flies wearing special welders' goggles to simulate lunar lighting conditions. "I am trying to determine what you can see under those conditions," he says. "I look at mountains to find out if you can see enough to avoid them. I find that as I work on details like this the whole mission becomes more real and less an adventure into the unknown."
WHILEOFF~DUTY at his Houston, Texas, home, Astronaut Edward H. White, II, takes his family on a bicycle ride. The children are Eddie, nine, and Bonnie, seven. Astronaut White, thirty-four, says he likes his special assignment, which is control systems for the spacecraft, because it involves the human connection with the spacecraft. "Pilots," he says, "have a certain basic distrust of automatic systems. In this programme we'd like to do the whole show ourselves. But we realize that the system will be a blending of man and machine." White has been campaigning for a controller that is basically similar for all vehicles in the programme. It seemed inconceivable to him that an Astronaut would fly towards the moon in the Apollo using one kind of stick, then climb into the LEM and use another kind of controller. "Now we have come up with a controller that I believe we can use in all the vehicles."
THE LARGESTFAMILYof the new Astronauts belongs to Charles Conrad, Jr., thirty-four, and his wife, whom he met while attending college. Their sons are, left to right, Thomas, six; Peter, eight; Christopher, two; and Andy, four. Conrad's special job is the design of the instrument panel and cockpit layout for all three U.S. spacecraftGemini, Apollo and the LEM, the little "Lunar Excursion Module" that will leave the Apollo spacecraft for the actual landing on the moon. He must see that the design of the instrument panel meets requirements of all fifteen Astronautsa real test of personal diplomacy, he says. "Being pilots and strong individualists, Astronauts are notorious for not agreeing on what they like to see on the panel." He adds: "If one gauge is not readable, it might as well not be there."
FrvE-YEAR-OLD SUSANsits in the lap of her father, Astronaut James A. Lovell, Jr., thirty-six, while Jay, eight, and Barbara, nine, sit on the living room floor. Mrs. Lovell attended secondary school with the Astronaut. When he entered the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, she entered college in Washington, D.C., to be near him. They were married on his graduation day. Recovery and landing systems are Lovell's special concerns in the moon programme. "I've been working on the details of the actual landing," he says, "and we don't know nearly enough about the moon's surface. It looks smooth from here, but it might be covered with jagged rocks. You could hit a rock and ruin your whole day." Some questions won't be answered until man actually reaches the moon, but Astronaut Lovell is seeking answers.
For theseAs tronautsJjirst goal in space is the moon.
CATS ARE THE family pets in the home of Astronaut Thomas P. Stafford, thirty-four, whose daughters are Dionne, eight, and Karin, five. He grew up in the same town, Weatherford, Oklahoma, with his wife. She is known as the best pastry cook among the wives of the fifteen Astronauts. Stafford stood near the top of his class in engineering subjects at the U.S. Naval Academy-Hand in just about everything but conduct," he adds. His special concern is communications and instrumentation in the spacecraft, including the telemetry information sent back during a flight and the television camera that will send back pictures from the moon. "Much of this," he says, His basic electronics, and I feel right at home with the briefcase of technical diagrams that I have to carry around." No scientific breakthroughs are needed as far as the component designs are concerned, Stafford reports. "Everything we have to have or master is within the present 'state of the art.'"
THE PETDOGreceives plenty of attention in the household of Astronaut and Mrs. James A. McDivitt. Their children are Michael, six; Patrick, three; and Ann, five. Mrs. McDivitt is a former Red Cross social worker. Astronaut McDivitt's special responsibility is to study the navigation and guidance procedures. "The moon may loom big at night," he says, "but it's about 240,000 miles away and there are no road signs to tell you how to get there. The solution, of course, is a complete mastery of navigation-which tells you where you are at any moment-and guidance, which is the art of getting where you want to go." The problem was handled with a time clock in the Mercury programme where the Astronaut was flying a pre-determined path. The ground stations told him where he was and he set the clock. The clock told him when it was time to fire the retro-rockets to come home. Improvements have been added for Gemini flights. "The most important," says thirty-five-year-old McDivitt, "is a computer which will tell us where we are at any moment and where we can land in the next few orbits. Accuracy is everything. I get kidded about this by the other Astronauts. When we go to a strange city for a briefing, I usually drive our rented car. If I make a wrong turn, someone always- pipes up: 'If you can't get from Point A to Point B, old boy, how do you expect to get us to the moon and back?' "
ASTRONAUT JOHNW. YOUNGand his wife are artists. She majored in art and often makes oil paintings; he draws cartoons of his fellow Astronauts. Their children are Sandra, six, and John, four. Astronaut Young, thirty-five, attended Georgia Institute of Technology, set world's records in 1962 for the minimum time to attain altitudes of 3,000 and 25,000 metres. In the U.S. space programme, Young's area of responsibility involves the equipment needed to protect Astronauts and keep them alive. "In Gemini," he says, "we hope to get an Astronaut outside his spacecraft and let him 'float' there in space for a while. Going outside will be part of the excitement of space flight. We won't be doing it for excitement, of course, but there were many times in airplanes that I could have saved myself a lot of grief if I could have just crawled outside for a quick look when things went wrong." Young and the other Astronauts are aware of the risks involved in space travel, but their position is that reasonable risks are acceptable in order to get the job done. "A couple of years ago I'm not sure I could even spell 'Astronaut,''' Young says. "But I have always liked a job where I could work with both my hands and my head, and this is the ultimate. I can't think of another single job I'd rather have-in this world or out of it." â&#x20AC;˘
Government today guides the American economy to an extent undreamed of a few years ago. well organized. The unions have brought the equivalent of civil rights into the factories, shops and mines of America-a great contribution to human welfare; they have had important, though unintended; effects in accelerating technological progress; and they have succeeded in causing wages greatly to outrun the growth in output per man-hour, thereby forcing a slow, upward creep in the price level. POLITICAL POWER of the unions is far less than their economic power. His limited by the fact that the structure of unions is designed for bargaining, not for political action. Hence, unions do best in politics when they operate as a pressure group seeking special legislation of peculiar interest to them rather than attempting to influence general public policies. Finally, in the last ten years the influence of unions on public policies has been impaired by resentment of the public against abuses of trade-union power during and immediately after the war. Such abuses were an almost inescapable result of the mushroom growth in union membership and power. Government, the third power centre, guides the economy to an extent that would have been undreamed of a few years ago; Where in the business world is there a board of directors that matches in economic power the men who run the Federal Reserve; what private person has the power over commodity markets that Congress has conferred on the Secretary of Agriculture; what airline management has the power over commercial air transportation possessed by the Civil Aeronautics Board? But most powerful by far are Congress and other legislative bodies that have undertaken to modify the distribution of income by taxing and spending, and that have vast powers to decree how business shall be run and what trade-unions may or may not do. One may question whether, in democracies, governments should be regarded as independent sources of power. Do not members of Congress and legislatures (the ultimate authorities in government) simply reflect the sentiments of their constituents? Is not government, therefore, simply the instrument through which various business and labour interests exercise their power rather than an independent centre of power? The fact that our government is a representative one does not prevent it from being an independent source of power. Some members of Congress or legislatures, it is true, are rubber stamps either from choice or from necessity, and there are a few well-organized pressure groups-veterans, the -farmers, the trade~unions-'-which are able to get much of what they demand on a few issues: But there have always been in government a significant number 'of men of stature and conviction who poss.ess insights into problems that men with more specialized experience lack, and who possess personal followings that accept their leadership . and give them considerable independence. Hence,¡ even in democracies, governments are not merely representative agencies-they are instruments through which able. and ambitious men mould economic institutions and policies according to their personal convictions. Two important conditions limit the actual influence of the government on the economy. In the first place, it is often better politics for the government to do nothing rather than to do something that strongly offends a fairly powerful minority group. Hence, the government has an enormous capacity for dodging problems rather: than coming to grips with them. In the second place, the most important decisions of government require approval by a majority of the legislature-and, since the views of legislators conflict, the only policy that can gain a majority is often a watered-down compromise that can have only limited practical effect. HE
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What will happen to the distribution of power and influence in the American economy in the foreseeable future? The outlook is for little change in the relative influence of business, trade-unions and government. The principal change will be a slow growth in the responsibilities and power of government. How business fares will depend largely upon its capacity to develop leaders of insight and originality who are willing to take positive and public stands on economic issues. The influence of trade-unions will depend largely upon their ability to keep themselves a reform movement and to avoid degenerating into organizations seeking special privileges for favoured groups. Business has no chance of regaining the immense influence it had before 1929. The trade-unions will remain a permanent check on business. The loss of the allegiance of the white-collar workers means that the political strength of business is greatly limited-though on a few issues, the farmers, the small businessmen, and the self-employed professional men are able to have pretty much their own way. Most important of all, the growing practice of government bodies' making economic policies weakens business, because the skills of most business leaders are administrative, not political, and in political controversies the businessmen are no match for the politicians. But business has a chance of regaining part of its lost influence, provided it develops first-class leaders of thought on issues of public policy. It will not be easy for business to develop such men. Many able and accomplished business leaders are conventional thinkers. Furthermore, some brilliant executives are reluctant to express views that reflect much imagination or originality lest they offend customers, suppliers - or associates. CHANGE, HOWEVER, may be in the making. Within the last generation there has begun to appear a growing number of executives of independence and reflection who have been willing to discuss problems of policy with freshness and imagination, and their influence upon business practices and public policies has been considerable. One example is the late- E. A. Filene, the brilliant Boston merchant, who was an outspoken champion of the responsibility of business towards consumers and employees. He established the automatic bargain basement in which goods become cheaper the longer they remain unsold, and he developed the employees' credit unions that now cover the country. Another example is the late Henry S. .Dennison, head of the Dennison Manufacturing Company, an early advocate among employers of unemployment compensation, who- established a private unemployment-compensation scheme for his own workers. The names of a dozen or more living executives who speak out in public with originality and insight come to mind. Some are found in the Committee for Economic Development, but since any list would be grievously incomplete, I shall not mention names. At any rate, there is reason to expect that in the next generation business will supply the country with many more leaders of thought than it has provided in the past. Trade-unions will be limited in adding to their economic power by their difficulty in attracting white-collar workers and also by the fact that the public no longer regards them as underdogs. Additional restrictions are likely to be placed upon the freedom of trade-unions to force people to join against their will and upon their right to conscript neutrals in industrial disputes. The public is demanding internal changes and reforms in the trade-union movement, and the unions themselves, under the leadership of Meany, Reuther, Hayes, Dubinsky and others, have begun to meet this public demand. Reforms in Continued on next page
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The economy needs decision-making processes that will better reflect national interests. trade-union administration and government, made in response to demands of public opinion, will be comparable to the remarkable changes in business management that have produced the "new American capitalism." , The reforms forced by public opinion upon trade-unions, while limiting their economic power, will help them regain part of the influence on public policy that they lost as a result of arbitrary conduct and corruption. Historically,. unions have been reform organizations, and their ability to influence public opinion will depend largely upon their success in remaining reform organizations. Now that they have great economic power, they are in danger of becoming organizations that merely seek more for those who already have much. Their problem is a difficult one. If they allow their economic power to corrupt their ideals, if they merely pursue narrow economic aims, they will have important effects on the economy, particularly on wages, but their influence on public policies will be slight. The power and prestige of the government seem destined to grow, particularly if there is no drastic limitation of armaments to make possible large cuts in defence spending. But the rise in the influence of government will be slow because the ability of the government to finance new activities will be limited by the refusal of the people to tolerate rapid growth in the government's income. Nevertheless, a variety of influences-growing population, rising per capita incomes, the cultural conflict with Russia, and the exploration and eventual invasion of space-all will lead the government to assume new activities and responsibilities. Rising population requires the government-local, state and national-to assume more responsibility for land-use planning, recreation areas, roads, and the development of natural resources; rising per capita incomes add to the demand for roads, parking space, vacation areas, public education; the cultural conflict with Russia compels the government to support education and research on a rapidly growing scale; the exploration of space will force new activities on the government because investigating space does not yield private profits and hence cannot be undertaken by private enterprise. Is the economy likely in the foreseeable future to see the emergence of new power centres-such as the white-collar workers or the scientists? I think not. The white-collar workers are a heterogeneous lot. Many of them are highly individualistic and loath to organize. Others-particularly many semi-professional technicians and some of the sales people-will form or join unions, but the organized white-collar workers will join the trade-union power centre rather than form a new fourth power centre. Scientists will exercise large and increasing influence on the economy, but scientists will not directly determine issues of economic policy. Scientists are interested in making more 'discoveries rather than in controlling the use of their discoveries. The loyalty of scientists to research is intense, and men who are absorbed in investigating do not become policy makers. A look at the American economy does not indicate that many of its problems can be traced to excessive concentration of power. Competition is becoming more vigorous~ as is indicated by the spectacular growth of technological research, the most competitive activity in the economy; the business birth rate is growing and so is the business population; ownership of industry is becoming more broadly diffused; and income is being more broadly distributed. The principal problems that stem from excessive concentration of power are the problems of agricultural policy and of
creeping inflation. The great political power of the farmers has led to the imposition of an enormously wasteful agricultural policy on the community-a fantastic policy which imposes billions of dollars' worth of taxes on the country to pay farmers to produce cotton, wheat, corn, tobacco, peanuts and other crops in greater quantities than people are willing to pay forthereby retarding the shift of agriculture into producing more meat, a commodity that consumers are eagerly seeking. The great economic power of the unions, which employers are unable to match, has caused the hourly compensation of employees outside of agriculture to rise more than twice as fast as output per man-hour during the last ten years. But the broad diffusion of power that is characteristic of America does limit the capacity of the economy to deal with important problems. The development of the country's labour policy has been stymied for ten years because management and trade-unions cannot agree on what to do. The railroads are gradually being ruined because their competitors insist that the roads be denied reasonable freedom to set competitive rates and to establish competitive services. The country has never been able to develop a trade policy that reflects the national interest. In spite of the fact that every poll that has ever been taken shows that Americans overwhelmingly favour freer trade, a collaboration of various parochial interests-sugar growers, woollen manufacturers, cotton-textile manufacturers, metal miners, lemon growers, the dairy industry, the "independent" oil producers and others-has succeeded in maintaining a wasteful system of duties and quotas that retards the development of our most efficient industries and limits the rise in the country's standard of consumption. all indicate that the economy badly needs decision-making arrangements that will better reflect national interests. Such arrangements would help correct both some of the results of excessive concentration of power, as in the case of farm policy, and also the results of the excessive diffusion of power, as in the case of labour policy, transportation policy and trade policy. There is no simple and automatic way of getting better representation of national interests. Progress must depend upon broad public understanding of the need and a resulting demand that policy makers place national interests ahead of parochial interests. The most promising single way to improve the decisionmaking process itself would be to strengthen the Presidency. The President, more than any other officer of the Government, represents the national interest. The most important single step in enhancing the power of the Presidency would be for the public to insist that the President have authority to veto individual items in the budget. If the Presidency can be strengthened and kept steadily filled with strong men, the American economy will escape much of the disadvantage that it suffers today from the excessive concentration of power in the hands of small groups on some issues, and from the excessive diffusion of power that sometimes prevents action on other issues.â&#x20AC;˘
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HESE EXPERIENCES
Symbolizing one 0/ the three great centres 0/ power in the American economy, is the White House, residence o/the U.S. President. In the background is the famous Washington Monument.