SPAN: July 1979

~~-y3)

"

I

SPAN VOLUME

The Fourth of July is the American Independence Day, marking the successful secession of the original 13 colonies from British rule more than two centuries ago. It is celebrated (as shown on the back and inside back covers of this issue) with parades, speechmaking, fun and games. Most Fourth of July speeches are patriotic, recalling heroic acts and events in the independence struggle-like public orations all over the world on similar occasions. But there are also speeches dealing with the issues of the day, and recommending how they might best be solved in the spirit of the American revolution.

So one may expect many Fourth of July speeches this year to refer to two major concerns of the American people and their government in their relations with other countries. The first is SALT II (an acronym for the second Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union). The result of almost seven years of arduous negotiations between the two countries, though signed by the President of the' lJriiteq States (as well as his Soviet counterpart), SALT II cannot come intO-effect, under the U.S. Constitution, until it is approved by'the U.S. Senate. The treaty has for some time been the subject of considerable controversy. It has been .attacked as either going too far or not far enough. Th'ere has been concern over the possibility of the treaty's verification in a closed society. On the other hand, it has been defended as a necessary step in the deceleration of the nuclear arms race, in the best interest of both the countries involved and of the world as a whole. The question which the American people and their elected representatives will be debating on July 4 is how far to go in capping and reducing arms competition with the Soviet Union and increasing cooperation-how far is consistent with both national security tInd world peace.

A second international theme for Fourth of July orations is bound to be American relations with the countries of the Middle East, in the context of the energy crisis at home. In the six years since the Yom Kippur war of October 1973, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has first cut oil supplies, and then raised prices manyfold. Many countries, both developed and developing, have been seriously affected by the limits put on their prime source of energy and the price dislocation of their economies. Obviously, OPEC's economic actions have been related to the military and political tension in the Middle East. In the last year, the United States has worked with Israel and Egypt, the largest of the Arab countries, and the one that has borne the brunt of six Mideastern wars since 1947, to defuse the situation. An Israel-Egypt peace treaty is a tremendous first step. Territory has been returned to Egypt; borders between the two countries are opening, allowing the gradual free exchange of persons, trade, cultures. But many problems remain-primarily, how to satisfy the claims of Palestinian refugees to rights to which they are entitled. How can the United States and others persuade the Arab countries, and their supporters in world forums, to join in the process of negotiation and compromise begun by Egypt arid Israel, to prevent still another disastrous war in that area, with all its potential for expansion into a nuclear holocaust?

But Americans, like everyone else, are concerned primarily with domestic events and issues, those affecting their daily lives, their homes, their jobs, the schools their children go to. So no doubt there will be speeches this Fourth of July commemorating the 25th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Brown case that racial segregation of public schools was in violation of the U.S. Constitution. Speakers will point out that that historic decision ushered in a period of social progress-preceded by agitation and followed by reaction-for many groups beside blacks. American Indians have pressed their claims on the American conscience; so have Hispanics, Spanish-speaking Americans of Latin American origin; and so have women, not really a minority but a traditionally disadvantaged group nevertheless. Speakers may well conclude by citing a New York Times editorial pointing out that though much remains to be done, Americans have much to be proud of: Today it is clear that Brown was monumental because of how it changed American life. Our society is now less separate and more equal because the court inspired a majority of Americans to accept equality as our goal. The nation is still far from achieving that goal; the glass may not even be a quarter full. But this remains an anniversary worth observing.

-J.W.G.

XX NUMBER

7

1<4.(J.'d'e~ s ~ ~ttJJ

;:Itnt' 01(J.

Front cover: In March this year, the Voyager I spacecraft, launched by the United States in 1977, sent back to Earth some spectacular color photographs of Jupiter, including this one. The colors do not represent the true hues seen in the Jovian atmosphere but have been produced by a special computer process that enhances subtle variations in both color and shading. See story "Voyagers in Space" on pages 21-29.

Back cover: A youngster relishes a juicy watermelon, and the festive mood of a July 4 celebration in a small town, White Springs, in Florida. See page 49.

Managing Editor: Chidananda Das Gupta. Assistant Managing Editor: S.R. Madhu.

Editorial Staff: Krishan Gabrani, Aruna Dasgupta, Nirmal Sharma, Murari Saha, Rocque Fernandes. Art Director: Nand Katyal. Art Staff: Gopi Gajwani, B. Roy Choudhury, Kanti Roy. Chief of Production: Awtar S. Marwaha. Photo Editor: Avinash Pasricha. Photographic Services: ICA Photo Lab. Published by the International Communication Agency, American Center, 24 Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi 110001, on behalf of the American Embassy, New Delhi. The opinions expressed in this magazine do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the United States Governmenf. Printed

by H.K. Mehta at Thomson Press (India) Limited, Faridabad, Haryana.

Pbotographs: Front cover-NASA. Inside front cover-Flip Schulke, Black Star. 2-WHO photo by P. Harrison.

3-'-WHO photos by A.S. Kochar and J. Littlewood. 4-R.N. Khanna. 5-9-Bill Owens. 12-Avinash Pasricha; Homi Jal. 14-Peter Mensel; Bohdan Hrynewych, St~ck Boston. 15-James R. Holland, Stock Boston. 16-Richard Meek, courtesy National Academy of Sciences. 21-27-NASA. 28 bottom, 29, 30-Rockwell International. 33-BeIl Telephone Magazine, courtesy American Telephone and Telegraph Company.

Use of SPAN articles in other publicatit:>Dsis encouraged. except when copyrighted. For permission. write to the Editor. Price of magazine: one year's subscription (12 issues), 21 rupees; single copy. 2 rupees 75 paise. For change of address, send an old address from a recent SPAN envelope along with new address to A.K. Mitra. Circulation Manager.

SPAN Magazine, 24 Kasturba Gandhi Mafll, New Delhi 11000I. (See change of address form on page 48.)

.D. The 32nd World Health Assembly met in Geneva for three weeks beginning May 7.

This annual assembly of the governing authority of the World Health Organization (WHO) drew delegates from some 150 countries, including ministers, high-ranking health officials and representatives of major international and nongovernment organizations. The American delegation was led by Joseph A. Califano, Jr., the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. Following is a part of the text of his address.

I am delighted to return to Geneva, and honored once again to address this assembly. Last year, I spoke here of President Jimmy Carter's commitment. and our nation's commitment, to human rights and to human well-being for all the people of the world.

President Carter has emphasized five principles to guide our priorities in international health. _ As a matter of fundamental human rights and needs, we will focus our efforts on the poor among us in the world. _ We will help developing nations help themselves, strengthen their own institutions and their own capacities to solve health problems. _ We will work in close cooperation with international agencies and in partnership with individual nations. _ We will emphasize prevention of health problems, including malnutrition and infectious diseases. Here we will place special emphasis on immunization. _ We will mobilize our own national resources-our universities, industries and private organizations-to work on behalf of the various international health activities within our government.

Last year, in pursuit of the principles set forth by President Carter, I announced to this forum several initiatives in inter-

national health that my government was prepared to launch in cooperation with World Health Organization (WHO) and with other nations. Today I am pleased to report that each one of those initiatives is under way.

Today, I want to speak briefly about the World Health Organization goal endorsed at Alma-Ata in September 1978: an exciting goal rich with opportunity, a goal that will stretch the skill and talent of all of us, the goal of health for all by the year 2000. . .

The year 2000 is two short decades away.

Millions of people have no access to health care. The facilities, organizational arrangements, and individual skills needed to provide even rudimentary health care do not exist in many regions. And the biomedical weapons for conquering a number of formidable health problems still elude us.

Given all these obstacles, the goal of health for all by the year 2000 may seem, to some at least, utopian.

Without for a moment underestimating the difficulties, I want today to suggest the contrary; that it is possible, within the next 20 years, to "translate this ambitious aspiration into a multitude of achievements-for example, into reductions in morbidity, mortality and fertility rates.

To succeed, we must overcome some forbidding obstacles. Let me mention initially some biomedical obstacles. The precious prize for those who surmount these obstacles is nothing less than a revolution in the health of the world.

- First, malaria, which is resurgent in the world: Let us commit ourselves to developing effective control measures, including a vaccine, within the next 20 years. â&#x20AC;˘ Second, the diarrheal diseases, which attack, disable and kill millions of helpless children and adults worldwide: Let us

l

work to develop effective measures, such as new vaccines, which along with oral rehydration can help control these diseases.

-Third, rapid population growth: Let us devise effective and universally acceptable forms of family planning and make them widely accessible.

-Fourth, low birth weight in newborn babies, which is the precursor to so many infant deaths, retardation and severe developmental problems: Let us devise better ways to care for pregnant women who, without help, are at risk of having low-weight babies. And let us alert every prospective mother to the dangers of cigarette smoking to the unborn baby.

Other obstacles facing us relate to the organization and management of health services: -We must establish better epidemiological surveillance systems throughout the world, to monitor major health and nutritional problems and better to target our efforts. _ We must design and organize systems for delivering primary health care which make the best use of scarce resources, facilities and people, and which involve each community in its own health care. _ We need more effectively to link health with other sectors of social and economic development. For these three-health

Left: At a primary health center in an Indian village a woman attentively listens to a talk on family planning techniques.

Below: A medical assistant at a rural health center in Venezuela treats a youngster's injured leg. Facing page: A little girl washes her hands before meals while others await their turn.

Teaching the need for cleanliness is high on the agenda of health volunteers in developing countries.

care, social development, and economic progress-we must march arm-in-arm if we are to attain our year 2000 objective.

The final obstacles, and perhaps the greatest ones, are obstacles of political will. In too many places, even those where the knowledge and resources for better health exist, the political will to apply them broadly is sadly lacking. The collective efforts of the World Health Organization can scarcely succeed in the absence of a commitment by individual nations to improve health within their own borders.

On another subject, let me mention briefly an issue already known to many of you: the action of the U.S. Congress which now prevents the U.S. Government from contributing to the regular budgets of the United Nations and its specialized agencIes. This legislation is a distressing development to President Carter and to all of us in the Executive Branch of the U.S. Government who strongly support the United Nations and the World Health Organization. We have therefore been working energetically with the Congress on new legislation which will allow the United States to make its contributions.

I believe that we are close to resolving the current problem.

Nevertheless, the United States strongly believes that, except under specific criteria, technical assistance programs should be funded through voluntary contributions, rather than through assessed budgets. I know well the uniqueness of WHO's charter and methods of operation.

Indeed, the organization has attempted to turn away from technical assistance, which benefits only individual recipient nations, to technical cooperation, which serves our common health goals. It is important for the organization to continue to ensure that its international health cooperation proceeds in this constructive direction.

We in the more developed nat,ions must acknowledge that phenomenon which Marc Lalonde of Canada has called "the dark side of development" the prodigious use of energy, with its consequences of environmental pollution and accidents; the stress of urban life, with its consequences of drug addiction, alcohol abuse, and adolescent health problems.

In addition, as longevity increases, so do the social, economic, and health problems of the elderly. We must attack these energetically in the hope not only of solving them for ourselves, but also of helping other nations as they encounter them.

(Continued

on page 48)

NEW INSTITUTE FOR SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL COO.PERATION l.-ki:> fo1-D~~ A U.S. institute that will harness the powerful tools of science and technology to aid development and alleviate poverty will probably open its doors before the end of 1979, if legislation for it is approved.

The Institute for Scientific and Technological Cooperation (ISTC) is expected to spend about $ 100 million in its first year from its own funds and from funds for programs being transferred from the US. Agency for International Development.

Proposed by President Jimmy Carter in his March 29, 1978, address to the Venezuelan Parliament, the institute will be the first U.S. organization to focus solely on using science and technology to solve p.roblems of economic development and to mitigate conditions of poverty, disease and hunger that affect all, particularly those 1,000 million people living in abject poverty. Much of the institute's effort would go toward strengthening the capacity of developing countries to use science and technology to solve their own problems.

The institute is one proposal the United States will describe to the UN. Conference on Science and Technology for Development to be held in August 1979 in Austria.

As envisioned, ISTC will have a 25member advisory council, which will have full review authority over all scientific and technological research programs.

Eight non-American scientists will sit on the council. A projected 75 per cent of the program's budget would be spent in laboratories and universities outside the United States.

"The institute is unlike anything the United States now has," said Dr. Ralph Smuckler, chief architect of ISTC Unlike A.tD., the institute will be problem-oriented rather than couhtryoriented. Whereas ALD. works with individual countries-and that work will continue-ISTC will focus on problems that are common to many countries.

Since World War II, the United States has given more than $ 100,000 million in foreign assistance and more than two million students from developing countries have studied in the United States.

International scientific cooperation has eliminated the scourge of smallpox from the world. Here, an Indian woman is vaccinated against the disease.

Yet these efforts have not always led to the intended economic and social conditions that improve the "quality of people's lives," the goal stated in the U.S. Foreign Assistance Act. It has been found that development is a far more complex and lengthy process than first thought. Among the lessons learned from the past are that science and technology are not panaceas, and their effective use depends on the priorities and policies of a country. Those policies must be established by scientists and technicians of the country itself who are capable of understanding, inventing, selecting, adapting and marketing their own technologies and science. Development involves more than technology. Technology cannot simply be transferred from one country to another without the knowledge and skills needed to make effective use of it.

ISTC support will be given for research on such things as increased agricultural productivity and rural income; development of technologies for very small farmers and techniques for growing food in infertile tropical wetlands or semiarid lands; diseases such as measles, which kills one and a half million children a year, schistosomiasis, which affects 200 million persons, and tuberculosis, which killed over a third of a million

people in India in 1978, and affects more Americans than any other identifiable bacterial disease.

"The task will be difficult," Dr. Smuckler says. "We are never going to solve all the problems of the world, but certainly we ought to be able to get at some of them in a more systematic, concerted, sustained way than we have before." Last year, for lllstance, science eliminated smallpox, Dr. Smuckler notes. "We might have asked 10 years ago, how is anyone ever going to eliminate a disease that has been on earth for centuries ?"

ISTC would first draw together the experts, setting up an international network of the best people around the world working on the problem. They might be plant geneticists working on increased productivity offood, or biologists working on malaria, or environmentalists examining coastal pollution and subsequent decreases in fish. The experts would then develop an appropriate strategy. That might not be-rand probably will not bethe same as that used in Western countries.

As an example, Dr. Smuckler cites the therapies, chemicals and techniques used for treatment of tuberculosis in the United States and Europe. "These approaches do not work under conditions such as exist in India," Dr. Smuckler notes.

"We are not sure why Western technology doesn't work. That question brings into focus a whole range of scientific questions about the nature of immunology-man's resistance to disease under different circumstances and climates," he says.

Once the problem is defined, and a strategy planned, 1STC will sponsor research in various countries. The institute will encourage other international organizations to join in O( expand their research. In the case of tuberculosis that research may take 10 years or more.

Today less than 1per cent of the world's research and development expenditure is devoted directly to the problems that affect the 1,000 million in deepest poverty, and ISTC should be a step toward correcting that imbalance.

0

)4u~ A #=~I.}

AL. - "2.-)

q. ~

Two labor specialists-Professor Morris Weisz of the University of Wisconsin and Bombay's S.R. Mohan Dasdiscuss a variety of issues concerning American labor: its attitude to international trade, its relations with government and with management, the strength and stability of labor unions, the system of collective bargaining, the causes of industrial peace. Weisz observes: "The experience of the United States is by no means to be considered a ,model for another coiJntry. It is for you people to see what can be adapted to your situation."

WHERE IS THE LABOR MOVEMENT GOING?

MOHAN DAS: Morris, many people in India believe that unions are strong and industrial relations stable in the United Sjates because the system of collective bargaining there is old and well established.

They also believe that this experience can't be automaticallJ grafted here, and we would have to wait a long while. What's Y0u.rview?

MORRIS WEISZ: Without commenting on the Indian experience, let. me t~ll you about the American one. If someone had come to the United States in 1935, just as the Wagner Act was passed, he could, depending upon his own outlook, have come to two different conclusions about labor ¡conditions. He might have MOHAN DAS: As I understand it, gov- concluded that things were terrible beernment-labor relations in the United cause of the Great Depression. Or he States today derive from policies pursued could have come to the conclusion that during the New Deal era of President in some industries labor conditions were Franklin D. Roosevelt, when the Wagner quite happy. So two people coming to Act was passed. President Roosevelt be- the United States at that period could lieved that a pluralistic democratic system see two opposite phenomena. had to be managed by the various interest What labor experts have to do is to groups themselves, with government being study the' success stories in labor's relaa catalytic agent. In other words, let govern- tions with the management. In the United ment fix the rules of the game and be an States in the early 1940s somebody got umpire but encourage the parties to play the bright idea of studying the causes of the game. Would you say this sums up the industrial peace. How did a particular New'Deal perspective of government-labor company manage to establish labor harmony? Well, we found out that in 1890relations?

MORRIS WEISZ: It certainly does, 45 years before the Wagner Act - the moldMohan, but it arose out of a long ex- ing industry had concluded an agreement perience, it did not grow suddenly. As that lasted until 1935,without any Wagner early as 1841, a court decision laid down Act. We decided to study that. What made that unions have the right to existthe molders get along so well without a till then they were considered conspiracies. strike? Similarly, I would suggest that For almost a century after 1841, the researchers in India come up with case government was neutral as between the histories of companies with a happy right of workers to join unions, and labor record, and investigate the factors that of management to discharge workers. responsible.

Well, such neutrality is really always Another observation: While governmeaningless. This realization dawned after ment stays out of the bargaining once a whole range of experiences following it brings the parties together, there is one World War I. The government realized thing government has to do, especially that neutrality wasn't enough. Workers in a society where living standards are needed governmental protection for the very low. The government has to establish right to organize. This is what the Wagner the rules of the game, and lay down the Act did. It reasserted the right of workers minimum regulations: nobody should to join a union. It said that government work more than a certain number of would protect that right, that collective hours a week, nobody should get paid bargaining is a good thing, and a better less than a certain basic wage- things way of settling any disputes between labor like that. Agreements above and beyond and management than the age-old system these minimums depend on what happens of strikes. It did not make strikes or at the bargaining table, the relative strengths of the parties, the prosperity lockout"s illegal, but it forced the parties together, almost like a marriage broker, of the industry or the enterprise. That's to arrive at an agreement, then departed for labor and management to decide. from the bargaining table.

But the government shouldn't stay so

MOHAN DAS: Morris, I would like your views on two things: the nature and the dynamics of the labor movement in the United States; and its relationship with the government. We in India are trying to redesign the type of relationship the labor movement here should have with the government. Your views would interest us.

MORRIS WEISZ: Before we begin, let me point out that the experience of the United States is by no means to be considered a model for another country.

It is for your people to examine this experience, learn from our mistakes, avoid them, and then see what can be adapted to yoUI'own situation.

completely out of the picture that exploitation is possible. MOHAN DAS: Another misconception is that in the United States many things are possible on the labor front because it's a totally free economy, dominated by the private sector. But the United States does have asignificant public sector, a strong Federal Government. Also, the United States has an adjudication system that's different from the compulsory adjudication system that prevails in India, Australia, and some other countries. Could you describe some of the features of t~is system?

MORRIS WEISZ: Well, it is true that we pride ourselves on the American private enterprise system. But any system in which the government sets the rules of the game isn't a 100 per cent private enterprise system. The limitations on trade unions prevent certain types of unfair strikes, the limitations on managements prevent some unfair practices.

These are proper limitations within a democratic society. But where private enterprise is successful is in working out agreements in areas not subject to standard-setting by the goyernment.

The system of arbitration in the United States is very different from that in some of the other countries you referred to.

Arbitration in the United States is totally voluntary in the private sector. The parties to a dispute arrive at an agreement on their own, and then they may designate an arbitrator. He will decide not what is right, but what the parties meant when they reached the agreement. Say the agreement stipulates a 40-hour workweek, and that "time and a half' (150 per cent of the usual wage) will be paid for work done after 8 p.m. at night, and "double time" for Sundays. Well, suppose a person works after 8 p.m. on Sundaydoes he get paid time and one-half or does he get paid double time? Of course this is a rather simple .case, but it could be the cause ofa dispute.

Our agreements provide normally that any difference of opinion as to what the agreement meant will be resolved by a third party agreed upon by the two main parties. He will interpret the agreement. And the disputing parties will have to abide by it. So this type of arbitration is different from one where an outside party is empowered to decide issues.

When an outsider decides an issue, neither party may be happy with the decision. But when the arbitrator's function is restricted

to deciding what the two parties meant, they will try to make themselves more clear the next time there's an agreement so as to avoid having to go into arbitration.

MOHAN DAS: You have told us about one kind of arbitration in the United Statesone which interprets contracts. Then there is grievance arbitration, that follows from a worker's complaints about dismissal or some other punishment. But I would like you to tell us about the latest form of arbitration in the United States, which many people in India do not know about, the" last offer arbitration."

MORRIS WEISZ: I'll first discuss two more kinds of arbitration, while we're on the subject, then move on to "last offer arbitration," which is indeed a fascinating development.

On rare occasions the government may believe that a strike threat in a particular industry or service poses a clear danger to the health, the welfare or the security of the United States. The government may then postpone a strike for 80 days.

During this period hectic efforts are made to prevent a strike and settle the dispute.

About a dozen such emergencies have come up in the last 30 years. What's the procedure to settle the crisis? An arbitrator is selected; he studies the problem and makes a proposal. There's great pressure on the parties to compromise, and they usually do. Even at the end of this 80-day period, the parties can go out on strike; there have been a few cases, I'd say less than half a dozen, when strikes materialized. But usually, the arbitrator has succeeded.

The steel industry is trying out something new: The arbitrator will not merely interpret the last agreement, but also decide on the merits of the issues between labor and management. That's an experiment we're working on in America.

But the "last offer arbitration" that you are referring to is a very different thing and it's a fascinating new development. Its scope is generally restricted to the public sector, where the employer cannot easily raise wages. In the past if there was a dispute in a vital public service where we didn't want to strike, the government would submit to third party arbitration. The government and the workers would say: Mr. A is a fair person, he will decide this dispute, bearing in mind the criterion of comparabilitythe wages and working conditions of

employees outside government. There was a drawback with this system. Suppose, say, a group of teachers wanted X salary, and the government said it could only give Y; the arbitrator would plump for a wage halfway between X and Y. This of course would satisfy nobody. The taxpayer and the government would be dissatisfied because they would have to pay more than Y; the workers would be dissatisfied because they got less than X. What we're now trying, in a limited area, is the use of an arbitrator who decides not between demands X and Y, but in favor of either "offer" X or "offer" Y. Why is this more successful? In "last offer arbitration" we force the parties to make their concessions right away. We tell the union: Don't tell us what your demand is, tell us what your best offer is in the light of fairness. And then the management is asked: What is your best offer to the union?

The arbitrator has to decide between one of the two best offers-rather not between them but in favor of one of them; he makes a choice between the two. Now that forces the parties to try to read the mind of the arbitrator, what he will think of as being most fair. It drives them together; and when the arbitrator decides that X is better than Y, or Y is better than X, they have nobody to blame but themselves-because they couldn't convince the arbitrator that their own offer was fairer than the rival offer.

So far this has been reasonably successful in a few cases, and we are following it very closely. Perhaps the next time I come to India, I'll be able to report a little bit more on the success or the failure of this experiment.

MOHAN DAS: Now Morris, we have had a fairly comprehensive discussion on arbitration. Shall we shift to another subject, American labor vis-a-vis international trade? The American labor movement has a very enlightened international outlook. At the same time, it faces certain dilemmas: the need to keep its movement strong, and job opportunities high. So its interests may clash with the concept of free trade. The U.S. labor movement has also been involved with the working of the multinationals. It is worried about the loss of jobs in such industries as shipping, where American trade is being carried by non-U.S. ships. Could you tell us about some of these trends?

MORRIS WEISZ: I'm glad, Mohan, that you referred to the enlightened position of the American labor movement. It is actually a position of enlightened self-interest. Generally speaking, the principle of free trade, of free access by world products to American markets has been in the interest of the American worker, because the more foreign goods we let into America, the more American goods we can export.

Since the beginning of the New Deal we have pressed for free trade because we have gained from it. But some areas of the economy have suffered. In the sixties, U.S. shoes and textiles were hit by foreign competition, mainly because of low labor costs abroad. Labor in these industries asked the government to curb the unfair competition.

In recent years, the foreign competition has been strong not only in textiles and leather but even in areas like electronics, steel and shipping-both because of efficient production methods abroad and lower wages. Foreign automobiles have been competing unfairly with American automobiles-their export prices have been artificially fixed lower.

So American workers see foreign automobiles, television sets and electronic goods as unfairly threatening their jobs, and try to pressure the government to change its trade policy.

When I travel abroad, I hear talk about how our multinational enterprises exploit other countries-how they exploit the raw materials and workers there and produce things at lower cost.

The American worker looks at multinational corporations (MNCs) differently.

He says they take money out of America, invest it abroad to make goods cheaper, then send the goods back to the United States; thus the MNCs not only export American jobs but also hurt America's trade balance.

From the standpoint of the host country, the worker in an MNC may be paid less than his counterpart in another country; but frankly, he needs the job. What is the solution? The ideal solution is a world where everyone has a job. This achievement is not on the cards tomorrow. In the interim, what American workers want is fair trade, a policy that doesn't unfairly discriminate against him.

So the U.S. Government takes the

position that, on the one hand, it shouldn't Cola would not accept this condition and stop the inflow of goods-that will lead quit India. I understand that you are to protectionism, and perhaps to a terrible engaged in a comparable exercise vis-a-vis depression. On the other hand, the U.S. Japanese and German manufacturers in Government cannot permit a constant the United States. In other words, the erosion of workers' standards in the United States doesn't mind foreign comUnited States. So the United States takes petition with local goods provided the care of the worker temporarily while he technology and the operations are set up shifts to more efficient types of enterprise, in the United States itself. How do you through a system of "trade adjustment envisage the future in terms of this type assistance." It's not designed to perma, _:}(o[ experimentation? nently protect inefficient industries, but MORRIS¡ WEi.SZ¡:¡~th.is is the value of is designed to facilitate the mobility of our efforts at maintaining fair and free labor, to train workers for other jobs trade. If we decided to keep out foreign when they lose jobs in an inefficient products, we obviously would lose the industry. Of course, this is unsatisfactory opportunity of new jobs in the United as a long-run trade policy. Currently the States. As the balance of trade changes Congress of the United States is consid- in favor of other countries and the dollar ering legislation to improve it. gets weaker, it becomes more profitable for foreign companies to set up plants in MOHAN DAS: One last question. India the United States. As for India, it is for isn't keen to involve itself deeply with you people to decide, on the basis of multinationals, but likes to buy their tech- your own enlightened self-interest, what nology in certain areas. You must have kind of foreign investment you want, heard of the Foreign Exchange Regulation and on what terms. If your terms are too Act (FERA) under which the equity holding strict, multinationals may go to other of foreign companies with manufacturing countries to invest. While it is entirely plants in India is restricted to 26 per cent; appropriate for your country to determine but aplant that exports its entire production the terms, I would merely suggest that is permitted 100 per cent foreign equity they should have an economically rational holding. Its product shouldn't be sold in rather than an ideological basis. If foreign India at all. The foreign companies were investment doesn't serve Indian interests, allowed a transitional period when 40 per by all means you should do away with it. cent equity was permitted, but later they We in America want to see India develop 0 had to dilute their equity. IBM and Coca- as rapidly and profitably as it can.

11- D)l-(O Morris Weisz is aformer Labor Counselor at the American Embassy, New Delhi. He was recently in India again on a research grantfrom the American Institute of Indian Studies, Poona.

S.R. Mohan Das is director of the Industrial Relations Institute of India, Bombay, and visiting professor at numerous professional institutes.

He is the author of Indian Labor Scene.

LIABIIIIII TOLIYI raDIALLY Growing from small beginnings in the fifties, America's frugality movement now embraces at least five million Americans. They pursue lives of voluntary simplicity, rejecting high-consumption lifestyles for ~ more homespun but richer quality of life.

/+1.:>5

A-

#= '3> \

W

hat would happen if consumers decided to simplify their lives and spend less on material goods and services?

This question is taking on a certain urgency as rates of economic growth continue to decelerate throughout the industrialized world, and as millions of consumers appear to be opting for more frugal lifestyles.

California's Stanford Research Institute, an independent nonprofit organization, which has done some of the most extensive work on the frugality phenomenon, estimates that nearly five million American adults are pursuing lives of "voluntary simplicity," and double that number "adhere to and act on some but not all" of its basic tenets.

The frugality phenomenon first achieved prominence as a middle-class rejection of high-consumption lifestyles in the industrialized world during the 1950s and 1960s. In The Silent Revolution, Ronald Inglehart of the University of Michigan's Institute of Social Research examined this experience in the United States and 10 Western European nations. He concluded that a change has taken place "from an overwhelming emphasis on material well-being and physical security toward greater emphasis on the quality of life," that is, "a shift from materialism to postmaterialism."

Inglehart calls the 1960s the "fat years." Among their more visible trappings were the ragged and flamboyantly patched blue jeans favored by the affluent young. Much of the retreat from materialism, however, was less visible. Comfortably fixed Americans were going without, making things last longer, sharing things with others, learning to do things for themselves.

But while economically significant, it was hardly discernible in a U.S. Gross National Product climbing v"igorouslytoward the $ 2 million million mark.

Yet as the frugality phenomenon matured-growing out of the soaring 1960s and into the somber 1970s-it seemed to undergo a fundamental transformation. American consumers continued to lose faith in materialism and were being joined by new converts who were embracing frugality because of the darkening economic skies they saw ahead. Resource scarcities, soaring energy prices, persistent inflation, high-level unemployment, balance-of-trade deficits, the declining value of the U.S. dollar on foreign exchange markets-all these forced consumers to look to their own resources. The one device which seemed most promising, the one over which they had the most control, was frugalitylearning to live with less in a world where a penny saved was still a penny earned.

The Western democracies are now "in the midst of a revolution that we have only begun to perceive," former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told a 1977 meeting of business, political and education leaders in Washington, D.C. The next decade, he added, will decide whether the industrial democracies will be able to manage their economic policies and maintain social peace "in the face of a probably lower long-term growth rate in the 1980s."

According to the Stanford Research Institute, the nearly five million Americans living lives of voluntary simplicity appear to be predominantly young (between the ages of 18 and 39), evenly divided between the sexes, almost exclusively white, from middleor upper-class backgrounds, exceptionally well-educated, politically independent, largely urban, and from households where both wife and husband earn incomes. The reasons these men and women have chosen simple lifestyles include the desire to live in a way that is "outwardly simple and inwardly rich," a "preference for smallness" as opposed to "complexity, anonymity, artificiality, dehumanization, manipulation and wastefulness."

Theirs is an "insistence upon living as naturally as possible" and a desire "to free the inner self for exploration" and to better cope

with the "new scarcity."

The Stanford Institute authors projected that Americans pursuing lives of full voluntary simplicity would grow from 5 million to 25 million in 1937, and to 60 million in the year 2000; while those opting for partial voluntary simplicity lifestyles would grow from 10 million to 35 million in 1987 and 60 million by the turn of the century.

Paradoxically, the authors suggest that this growth in voluntary simplicity stands a good chance of being "perhaps the fastest growing consumer market of the coming decades."

The reason for this paradox is that "the person living the simple life tends to prefer products that are functional, healthy, nonpolluting, durable, repairable, recyclable or made from renewable raw materials, energy-cheap, authentic, aesthetically,pleasing, and made through simple technology."

The growth projected for both the number of Americans pursuing lives of voluntary simplicity and the size of the new consumer markets this would generate, presupposes (l) a continuation of the pressures currently pushing people toward more frugal lifestyles such as the prospect of chronic resource shortages, (2) that those choosing these lifestyles will find them satisfying, and (3) that America's mass production/consumption economy will remain strong enough to avoid a severe depression and to maintain decent living standards.

Many of the Stanford Research Institute's basic contentions about the trend toward more frugal lifestyles are supported by a public opinion poll recently conducted by Louis Harris and Associates on America's unlimited economic growth.

"The American people," said Harris, "have begun to show a deep skepticism about the nation's capacity for unlimited economic growth, and they are wary of the benefits that growth is supposed to bring. A significant majority places a higher priority on improving human and social relationships and the quality of American life than on simply raising the standard of living." Among the Harris survey's more significant findings were that a large majority of the American public now prefers: â&#x20AC;˘ "Teaching people how to live more with basic essentials" over "reaching higher standards of living" (79 per cent vs 17 per cent); â&#x20AC;˘ "Learning to get our pleasure out of nonmaterial expe-

In examining frugality, and its potential as a resource for national economic survival, it is useful to look at the difference between those Americans currently turning to more frugal lifestyles and those who have been living in what ,is generally described as the "counterculture."

While the two groups differ in many ways, the most significant difference would appear to be that frugal Americans largely accept the values of the industrial culture, while the counterculture Americans do not. The essence of the counterculture lifestyle is its commitment to unhook from the consumptiondriven mainstream economy.

Fixing up an old house, tending to a backyard garden, chopping firewood-more and more young Americans are learning to do things for themselves and turning to a lifestyle that makes use of renewable, energy-cheap products.

riences," rather than on "satisfying our needs for more goods and services" (76 per cent vs 17 per cent); â&#x20AC;˘ "Spending more time getting to know each other better as human beings on a person-to-person basis," instead of "improving and speeding up our ability to communicate with each other through better technology" (77 per cent vs 15 per cent); and â&#x20AC;˘ "Improving those modes of travel we already have" rather than "developing ways to get more places faster" (82 per cent vs 11 per cent).

Harris sums up: "Taken together, the majority views expressed ... suggest that a quiet revolution may be taking place in U.S. values and aspirations. Some of these attitudes reflect the energy crunch and the realization that the supply of raw materials is not boundless; others are a legacy of all those ideas young people pressed for in the 1960s that have now begun to take root in the 1970s."

In America frugality and hard work have been ingrained in the national character since the Pilgrims bequeathed to America the Puritan ethic. Since then, Americans have been continually reminded of the joys of simple living and the discomforts of its antithesis by a succession of such social commentators as Henry David Thoreau (Walden), Thorstein Veblen (The Theory of the Leisure Class), David M. Potter (People of Plenty) and Staffan Linder (The Harried Leisure Class). Only very recently, however, have Americans begun to believe that the transition from baroque to basic consumption patterns may be essential to national economic survival.

The fact that more Americans are choosing to live lower consumption lifestyles is attracting attention throughout the country. A lively family of publications such as Mother Earth News, Whole Earth Catalog, Rain, Prevention and Organic Gardening are showing hundreds of thousands of readers how to create more self-reliant, simple lifestyles. Should these readers wish to pursue any particular aspect of frugal living they can do so by consulting hundreds of "New Age" books.

Groups pursuing New Age lifestyles are springing up all over the United States. A recent issue of the counterculture magazine Green Revolution, for example, examined more than 200 communities, most of which got their start in the late 1960s or early 1970s. Begun in private homes, these communities are overwhelmingly populated by young people in their 20s and early 30s.

The emphasis on sharing and self-reliance in the growing New Age movement arises in part from its adherents' belief in the philosophy of "right livelihood," which may be broadly defined as engaging in work which does not threaten our human species, the planetary environment which sustains us, or future generations whose lives will be largely shaped by what we do today.

What seems to be happening in America and the other marketoriented democracies is that a "countereconomy," more interested in psychic than material income, is taking firm root within our mainstream economy, whose vitality is dependent on endlessly growing production and consumption.

Those moving into the countereconomy seem to be convinced that the mainstream economy is now encountering limits to its previous exponential growth, and that those whose lifestyles are attuned to enough rather than more will be far better equipped to get through the wrenching transition many see ahead.

Finally, and perhaps most important, is the suspicion now shared by so many people in the industrialized world that fulfillment on this planet cannot be found in the endlessly increasing consumption of material goods (even if this were possible in the future), but only through the life of the mind and spirit as taught by all the world's great religions.

Whether this frugality represents a fundamental shift in Western economic attitudes, or something more transitory, remains to be seen. What does seem clear, however, is that the appearance of millions of Americans and others willing to live more frugal lives 0 could not have come at a more opportune time.

About the Author: Carter Henderson is the codirector of the Princeton Center for Alternative Futures in Princeton, New Jersey.

The Spirit of

ALBERT EINSTEIN In this tribute to Albert Einstein, whose birth centennial is being celebrated this year around the world, Lincoln Barnett tries to capture the scientist's unique combination of intellect and humility.

"As a man without roots anywhere ... I myself have wandered continually hither and yon -a stranger everywhere." Albert Einstein addressed these words to his friend, physicist Max Born, in 1920. Einstein, then 41 years old, had indeed been a man without roots. He had wandered widely from Ulm, Germany, where he was born on March 14, 1879; to Munich, where he went to school; to Zurich, where he attended the famous Swiss Federal Institute of Technology; to Bern, where as a clerk in the patent office he wrote his first great paper on relativity in 1905; and to Berlin, where he became first director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics. He had taught for a year at Prague and lectured throughout Europe.

Then, in the autumn of 1933, observing with disbelief and horror the Nazis' insensate assault on intellect and realizing he could no longer live in Germany, Einstein accepted an appointment to the newly established Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Here at last he found something like a homeland, here he put down roots and remained for the rest of his life.

The institute is marking the 100th anniversary of Einstein's birth with -a year-long commemoration. The Smithsonian's "Einstein: A Centenary Exhibition" opened March 3 at the Museum of History and Technology. Other observances have taken place or are planned in Zurich, Calcutta, Germany, Israel and many other places, for Einstein belonged to the whole world.

His decision to settle in Princeton came only after several years of growing incredulity that the German people could surrender power to such a man as Hitler. In 1922 Einstein received the Nobel Prize for physics, but despite the honors cascading upon him from all corners of the world, he found himself still regarded with ambivalence in his fatherland. Having been raised as a young man in an essentially secular home, he was perplexed to find that some people perceived him not as the individual, rational, sentient Robert Berks works on an Einstein statue, commissioned by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

being he knew himself to be, but as "a Jew." But powerful forces were at work in Germany, raising a tide of anti-Semitism in which many reputable physicists were trapped and induced to join a chorus of denunciation of Einstein's achievement.

When Hitler became chancellor of Germany in January 1933, Einstein was in the United States spending a term as visiting professor at Caltech. Within weeks he announced his intention to live in America, resigned from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute and his other posts, and renounced his German citizenship. His actions drove the Nazis into a frenzy of retaliation. They refused to accept his renunciation of citizenship and declared it would forthwith be revoked, an act that Einstein later compared with the public hanging of Mussolini some days after he had been shot. They confiscated his bank account and the contents of his wife's safe-deposit box and his summer house, and they hurled his books and papers into bonfires. In the universities, newly Nazified professors opened an assault on relativity and its author, depicting him as the arch villain of a Jewish plot to pollute science and thereby wipe out civilization.

Meanwhile, Einstein ~as bombarded with offers and entreaties from the greatest universities in the Free World. But he was most attracted to the town of Princeton, where Dr. Abraham Flexner had conceived the dream of an intellectual sanctuary, a community of dedicated scholars who would be able to contemplate in quiet and security, free from financial and teaching obligations (the institute is independent of Princeton University).

When Flexner first raised the question of salary, he asked Einstein to name his own figure. Einstein suggested what he considered a reasonable sum: $3,000 a year. "Could I live on less?" he asked. Flexner was aghast. He kQew that he could not possibly recruit important American scholars for such a minuscule wage, nor could he picture a facuIty where other men received higher pay than the world's greatest scientist. "Let Mrs. Einstein and me arrange it," Flexner said, aware that 'Einstein's

wife handled budgetary matters; in the end they settled on $16,000 as a more appropriate stipend.

On October 7, 1933, Einstein sailed from Southampton, accompanied by his second wife Elsa and his secretary Helen Dukas, who had come to work for him as a young girl in 1928 and was destined to serve him for the rest of his life. Upon their arrival in New York harbor, they evaded reporters and photographers by disembarking on a tugboat before their ship docked. (Einstein had been photographed, painted and sketched so many times in the heyday of his fame that he once replied to a stranger who asked his calling: "I am a model.")

During his first months in Princeton, Einstein clung to the notion that he was a "bird of passage" ; he thought of the institute as a home base from which he would periodically fare forth to attend symposiums and meet with colleagues in the European community of science. But as the shadow of Hitler spread more darkly over the Continent, increasing numbers of eminent scientists fled their homelands. Many of them came to America and on their arrival they called on Einstein. It was not long, therefore, before he lost his sense of isolation and exile and came to cherish the quiet, tree-canopied streets of Princeton. In the spring of 1935, Einstein, Elsa, Helen Dukas and Elsa's daughter Margot (who had now joined them) applied for naturalization as citizens of the United States. That summer he bought the modest, white frame house at 112 Mercer Street where he spent the remaining 20 years of his life. He never saw Europe again.

The house was perfectly situated for the little family, lying as it did about halfway between the sprawling university campus to the north and the green parklike grounds of the institute a half mile to the south, where, after its completion in 1940, Einstein enjoyed a large, sunny office. In 1939 the household was augmented by the arrival of Einstein's younger sister Maja, of whom he was very fond and who bore a striking resemblance to him. Elsa died in 1936 and Maja in 1951.

With their passing, Miss Dukas' role as secretary was enlarged by additional duties as

housekeeper, cook and general factotum.

Today the house at 112 Mercer Street has only two occupants: Margot Einstein, now 79, still lively, alert and articulate; and Miss Dukas, who has an office of her own at the institute and works daily organizing Einstein's papers and his immense, eloquent correspondence.

Einstein was insistent that his house should not be preserved as a museum. Yet very little has been changed and the 140-year-old building lives on today as its last owner saw it.

The decor of the front parlor is very German, dark and heavy; featuring ornate, inlaid cabinets, armoires, chests and high-backed chairs-all of them old and valuable.

The most cheerful room in the house is the upstairs study where Einstein spent most of his time at home. At one end a large window overlooks a pleasant strip of lawn shaded in summer by elms, maples and weeping hemlocks, dotted with flowering shrubs, a garden ablaze with zinni'ls and day lilies, and a small

grape arbor. Einstein's large work table stands in the center of the room, but when engaged in his computations he preferred to sit in his favorite easy chair, writing on a pad on his knees. "All he needed," says Miss Dukas, "was a pencil and paper-and his head."

Through the years Einstein adhered to a simple routine. He usually arose between 8.30 and 9 a.m. and read The New York Times with his breakfast of two boiled eggs, toast and coffee. Afterward, in fair weather, he would walk to work; in winter or on rainy days he would take the institute bus. Arriving at his office, surrounded by blackboards inscribed with tensor equations and other arcane mathematical calculations, he would devote himself, often with a mathematical assistant, to the problem that had haunted him to the exclusion of virtually all others for the latter half of his life: the resolution of a Unified Field Theory, bringing together in one mutually consistent series of equations

the physical laws of the great forces that govern the universe-electromagnetism, gravitation and nuclear force, the tiny, terrible force inside the atom.

Einstein usually worked with his assistants at the institute until about 1 p.m. Then, in good weather, they would walk back to 112 Mercer Street. Directly across the street stands the home of Dr. Allen Shenstone, for many years chairman of the physics department at Princeton, and now professor emeritus. Dr. Shenstone recently described a scene he had often observed. "Einstein kept very regular hours, and if I looked out the window I could see him returning from the institute at lunchtime. He would stroll up the street with an assistant and when they came to his house they would stand outside on the sidewalk talking. Very often they'd become so deeply involved in the discussion that Einstein would simply turn around and start walking back to the institute. Except, of course, if Helen Dukas happened to see him, she'd

BOSE- EINSTEIN QUANTUM STATISTICS ~

In 1923, Indian physicist Satyendra Nath Bose, then 29, working at the Manindra Laboratory of Dacca University, wrote a paper called "Planck's Law and the Hypothesis of Quanta."

He sent it to the Philosophical Magazine, a British journal of physics, which turned it down. Bose, who had done the first translation of Einstein's papers on relativity from German into English, then sent his paper to Einstein, requesting him to evaluate it and, if he found it worthwhile, to translate and publish it in the German journal Zeitschrift fur Physik. Einstein did so, endorsing Bose's findings, which then came to be known as the "Bose-Einstein Statistics."

The foundation for the understanding of light had been laid by Max Planck who, in an attempt to explain the distribution of wavelengths emitted by a perfectly light-absorbing body (called "blackbody"), had concluded that the exchange of energy between the surface of a blackbody and radiation takes place in the form of packets of energy which he called "quanta," and is a discrete process. This concept of discreteness is the basis of quantum physics, as distinct from classical physics, which assumed that energy transfer between atoms and radiation took place in a continuous fashion.

Einstein used Planck's concept of light behaving like particles to explain the photoelectric effecta work for which he later won the Nobel Prize.

The word "photon" was still later coined to describe light particles.

At the same time, experiments in optics showed that light also behaved as waves, creating some confusion. Physicists would joke: "On Mondays,

Wednesdays, Fridays, light behaves like particles; on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, it behaves like waves; on Sundays, it behaves like both."

Bose's formula, derived from Planck's Law, was based on the assumption that light consists of indistinguishable identical particles. Einstein's note on Bose's paper said: "Bose's method of derivation of Planck's Law, in my opinion, signifies a forward step. The method applied here yields the Quantum Theory of ideal gases, as I will show elsewhere."

Bose's explanation of the behavior of light particles and their energy in a radiation field inspired Nobel laureate British physicist Paul Dirac to invent the word "boson" to represent all

}"2.'1-~

elementary particles which behaved identically to photons.

Einstein further extended Bose's work to include other particles in nature, now called bosons.

The theory of liquid helium and its behavior at extremely low temperatures was worked out on this basis. It was predicted that at temperatures close to absolute zero, atoms of liquid helium would acquire an identical energy value. This phenomenon came to be known as the "BoseEinstein Condensation."

Bose always considered Einstein his guru whose photograph, duly garlanded, adorned his study.

Like Einstein, he also wore sloppy clothes and loved music, playing the esraj, a stringed bowing

run outside and drag him in for lunch."

Lunch was the principal meal of the day, and its main course often featured spaghetti or macaroni, for Einstein had a special liking for Italian food, perhaps as a consequence of a happy year he had spent with his parents in Milan as a boy. After lunch he would ascend to his study, sometimes to nap, but often as not to continue his calculations. In the e.vening, after a light supper, if there were no guests he would return to his study and work far into the night on his lonely quest.

In his earlier years in Princeton he often took his beloved violin to chamber music sessions at the homes of friends and neighbors. He played better than many an amateur and evoked pure and accurate tones with little vibrato before his fingers began to age.

Einstein's great love musically was the 18th century-Bach, Vivaldi and, most particularly, Mozart. The romantic composers he found too "sugary." Beethoven he found

instrument. But unlike Einstein, who was considered a dull student, Bose was a child prodigy.

He would often make 110 marks out of 100 in mathematics because he would work out more than one correct solution to the problems.

Among his distinguished teachers at Presidency College, Calcutta, was Sir P.c. Ray, later known as the founder of the chemical and pharmaceutical industry in India. It is said the redoubtable Ray was always wary of the difficult questions Bose used to raise in class. After getting his master's degree in mathematics, Bose became a lecturer at the Science College, Calcutta University. Among his colleagues there were C.V. Raman (later to become Nobel laureate) and Professor Meghnad " Saha, the renowned physicist. Bose taught the newly developed subjects of relativity and quantum physics-an interest which soon led to the paper brought to light by Einstein.

In 1924, he wrote a second paper, which he again sent to Einstein for his translation and comments. Einstein again obliged and had it published, but this time the guru did not agree with his pupil (some other physicists did), and said so. Soon after this, Bose went to Berlin and worked with Einstein for a year before going back to Dacca University, where he applied for a professorship. Since he did not have a Ph.D., it was suggested that he should get a certificate from Einstein, who was shocked at the idea. He said: "Aren't the works you have done in science more than sufficient for a certificate?"

About the Author: S.D. Saxena was for many years lecturer in physics and often writes on science.

"too abrupt."

Einstein was well past 60 when he qecided that chamber music had become too demanding on his time-and on his slowing digital reflexes. Margot Einstein recalls that when he first began to make occasional mistakes in following a score, he would joke about it, exclaiming in mock indignation, "What nonsense did Mozart put down here!" Although he finally gave up participating in chamber ensembles, he continued to play alone, and sometimes on a spontaneous impulse. Thus on one Christmas Eve when choristers appeared in front of his house, he reached at once for his violin, stepped out on the porch in the frosty air, and provided an accompaniment to their carols.

His swift, warm response was characteristic of Einstein's behavior in all his Princeton years. Through the decades, after he had become a world figure, a living legend, he gave unstintingly of his time and modest equity to countless supplicants, to talented students, scholars without jobs, writers who wanted forewords, and especially refugees who could not obtain visas without his pledge of support. Many anecdotes emerged from Princeton alleging that he helped local kids with their arithmetic: the stories were apocryphal, yet based perhaps on an actual incident. As Miss Dukas relates it, a little girl, the daughter of a neighbor, called one afternoon with a piece of fudge in her hand and asked to see Professor Einstein. She was shown upstairs to his study, where she proffered the fudge and asked, "Will you please help me with my homework?" Einstein accepted the fudge graciously but denied the child's request, explaining, "That would not be fair to your teacher."

Einstein's famous informality in manner and dress was no elderly affectation. As a youth he offended many of his stiff-necked teachers by his offhand, nonconforming behavior and refusal to click heels, brace and bow; in his middle years he outraged some of his starchy European colleagues by his careless, often sloppy attire-baggy trousers, old sweaters, open shirts, wool' caps.

Years before long hair became modish Einstein had decided that barbers were a waste of time. Occasionally he wore a hat, and Princeton neighbors noticed that if it happened to rain when he was walking between the institute and home, Einstein would take off his hat and tuck it under his coat. Why? "If my hair gets wet, it dries. If my hat gets wet, it's spoiled."

As the years passed and Einstein continued to labor on series after series of equations in pursuit of his lifelong quest, the Unified

Field Theory, his energies and inspiration flagged, but he continued to drive himself with relentless tenacity. Margot Einstein remembers moments of near despair. "Some days when he came home for lunch alone, and if no one else was there, We would not speak a single word. He looked so tired and pale. I knew he wanted only to be quiet. He would say, 'Would you like to take a walk?' and we'd walk together, and he loved to explain the little things of nature in a simple way, a beautiful way. And I can still hear his full, free laughter, like a child's."

Why did Einstein drive himself so in those sunset years at Princeton? To him the importance, the imperative, of a Unified Field Theory lay in the fact that the two great theoretical systems of modern science by which man attempts to understand the world beyond his senses rest on different concepts and speak in different mathematical idioms (Relativity sets forth the physical laws governing the macrocosm, the outer universe of stars and galaxies; and the Quantum Theory deals with the microcosm, the inner, invisible universe of atoms and their nuclear components). It was Einstein's ambition to bridge the gulf between these two theoretical structures, between the great and the small, and to produce a single edifice of cosmic law within which all the pageantry of nature could be discerned. To him the idea that there should be two windows to the universe, independent of each other, was "intolerable to the human spirit."

Meanwhile the mainstream of physics swept around and past him. The new generation of physicists pursued the path of quantum mechanics and looked with pity or condescension at what they felt was an old man's pursuit of a chimera. Wolfgang Pauli, Nobel Prize winner in 1945, and close contemporary of Einstein, summed up his feelings regarding the chances of attaining a Unified Field Theory by saying, "What God hath put asunder no man shall ever join."

Einstein knew that he had swum into a scientific backwater, yet the indeterminacy, the statistical and probabilistic approach of modern quantum mechanics remained abhorrent to him. He believed with all his heart and soul in causality. That was what he meant when he uttered his famous remark, "God does not play dice with the world."

Quantum Theory was not necessarily wrong, he said, it was just incomplete. Someday he would fill in the gaps.

But time was running out. When one physicist asked him, 'Why do you keep working on this?" Einstein answered, "Someone has to work on it. I can afford to do it. I'm

not a young man like you." And so he persisted, trying to resist the intrusions of the outside world. Because of his great fame and renown for generosity, he was besieged constantly by requests for lectures and personal appearances. "The only way to escape the personal corruption of praise is to go on working," he said. "One is tempted to stop and listen to it. The only thing to do is to turn away and go on working. Work.

There is nothing else."

Yet he could not turn away entirely, and time and again circumstances forced him into the arena of world events. The most dramatic of these episodes occurred in the summer of 1939when, at the urgent request of physicists Leo Szilard and Eugene Wigner, he addressed a historic letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt warning him that German scientists might have discovered a way of setting up nuclear chain reactions in uranium. Einstein's letter was a prologue to the Manhattan Project, Alamogordo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and so its author, who was also author of the portentous equation E = mc2, became the reluctant father of the atomic age. It was a role he did not relish, and he later told Linus Pauling: "I may have made one great mistake in my life-when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made, but there was some justification-the danger that the Germans would make them." When the bomb exploded over Hiroshima, Helen Dukas heard the news and told Einstein when he came down for tea. With infinite sadness

photoelectric effect-also published in 1905 -which profoundly influenced later work in Quantum Theory and pointed the way to 'The most beautiful and most technological applications in spectroscopy, profound emotion we can television, the laser and other by-products of experience is the sensation the photoelectric cell. Einstein would be recognized, as Max Born once observed, as of the mystical. It is one of the greatest theoretical physicists of all the sower of all true science.' time "even if he had not written a single line on relativity."

Some speakers may ask what effect new phenomena in the realms of astrophysics and he murmured, "Oh wehf" which can be nuclear physics might have exerted on translated only palely as "Alas!"

Einstein's thought.

How, for example, In 1952 Einstein appeared again on the international stage. Chaim Weizmann, first would he have reacted had he known president of Israel, died, and within days about quarks and quasars, bosons Einstein was asked to succeed him in office. [see page 18] and fermions, pulsars and Slightly incredulous, he refused, despite black holes? Might they possibly have special entreaties by Prime Minister David abetted his drive to understand the universe Ben-Gurion, Ambassador Abba Eban and or his quest for a Unified Field Theory?

Zionists throughout the world. In a gentle Quite possibly. For there appears to be letter to Ben-Gurion he wrote: "All my life I a renascence of interest in field theory, have dealt with objective matters, hence I a spark of belief that some unborn genius lack both the natural aptitude and the may discover causal relationshi,ps in the experience to deal properly with people and events of the atomic world.

Over and above Einstein the scientist, to exercise official functions. For these reasons alone, I should be unsuited to fulfill many of the centennial papers on him honor Einstein the man-telling of his easy grace, the duties of that high office, even if advancing age was not making increasing inroads on my compassion without condescension, lack of vanity, sense of humor, and love of beauty. strength. " Einstein was not well at the time-he had His famous utterances will be repeated: "I suffered from cardiac disease for some years have no special gift-I am only passionately -and in the remaining 29 months of his life curious .... " "The most beautiful and most his strength diminished, though the clarity of profound emotion we can experience is the his mind and dedication to his scientific goals sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science.... " "My religion consists of a never waned. He died in Princeton Hospital shortly after midnight on humble admiration of the illimitable superior April 18, 1955. spirit who reveals himself in the slight details When internationally we are able to perceive with our frail and renowned scientists read feeble minds .... " "God is subtle, but he is their papers on Einstein not malicious." at the many centennial Spinoza was Einstein's favorite philosoconvocations, his work pher, and some of Einstein's friendswill be illuminated in especially Helen Dukas- hope that someone varying hues. Buton basic at the centennial will quote from a poetic judgments there can be tribute to Spinoza that was written by a Protestant theologian named Friedrich nothing but unanimity.

It will be agreed that the Schleiermacher some 150 years ago. The lines Special Theory of Relati- have been applied to Einstein by others, vity, put forth in 1905, and indeed he knew them well: "The infinity and the General Theory was his beginning and his end, the universe of Relativity, following his only and everlasting love. In holy innoin 1915, still tower today cence and deep humility he beheld himself mirrored in the eternal world, and perceived as monumental triumphs of the human intellect how himself was its most amiable mirror .... and remain embedded in Wherefore he stands there, alone and unthe very heart and core equalled, a master of his art, but sublime of our scientific heritage. above the profane rabble, a peerless beacon 0 They stand today basical- forever." ly unshaken by new findings. It will be recalled, About the Author: Lincoln Barnett is author of too, that Einstein won The Universe and Dr. Einstein, in which he his Nobel Prize not for explained the scientist's theories, The book has Relativity, but for his been translated into some 20 languages. He has classic analysis of the also authored The Ancient Adirondacks.

VCOJ)fACGrIEillยง

SECOND MAN ON THE MOON Edwin Aldrin (left), who along with Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins formed the crew of Apollo 11, became the second human to set his foot on the lunar surface. Of the trio, Collins circled the moon in his command module, waiting for his teammates to return after completing their lunar mission.

Although the United States entered the space age on January 31, 1958, when it successfully launched Explorer 1, the major thrust to the nation's space program was provided by President John F. Kennedy. In an address to the U.S. Congress on May 25, 1961, he said: "Now is the time ... for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement .... I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the

EARTH FROM SPACE The high point of America's space drama of the early seventies was the safe splashdown of Apollo 13 in April 1970 after technical flaws had developed in the command ship's electric power generating system as the craft neared the moon.

This photo of the earth (above, far left) was taken by Apollo 13.

goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth." Since then, not only has President Kennedy's dream to reac" the moon been realized, but unmanned spacecraft have also explored other planets like Mars. Manmade satellites placed in orbit now aid him on earth in communications, in weather forecasting and in mapping the earth's resourceS'.

SUNSET AT MARS America's most important space success of the mid-seventies was when Viking I and II softlanded on the Martian surface on July 20 and September 3, 1976, respectively, after traveling some 460 million miles through space. This view of sunset on the Red Planet's Chryse Planitia (above) was taken by Viking I.

MARTIAN FROST In this photograph of the Red Planet (opposite page, top, second from left) light areas indicate patches of frost that surround the rocks near the Viking II lander on the Martian surface. The late-winter frost was first observed in black-and-white pictures, and was later confirmed in color photographs taken by the spacecraft.

79-

11...o~L

Imagine an orbital solar power station 15 kilometers long, harnessing the sun's energy and transmitting itto the earth to power a whole city -or lowcost electronic, mail, with coast-tocoast transmission in minutes made possible by a huge space-based antenna. The first step toward this is only a few months away, when a space shuttle becomes operational in 1980.

The reusable shuttle, which will eliminate the need for expendable launch vehicles, will be able to deliver payloads in orbit; to service ~atellites in space, or bring them back for repairs; to pave way for manufacture in space of certain items better fabricated in the weightless environment; and to place scientists in orbit to conduct experiments without the earth's atmospheric interference.

SOLAR-POWER STATION One important mission of America's space shuttle program, scheduled to be operational next year, is the construction of massive solar-power stations in earth orbit (drawing at left). They would beam a continuous stream of microwave energy to .ground receivers, which would convert it to electricity to light a whole city.

GIANT SPACE ANTENNA Another exciting promise of the shuttle is the building of massive antennas in space (drawing at left, above), which would provide low-cost, instant personal communication services for millions of people around the world.

These include direct home broadcasts of radio and TV programs, telephone relays and electronic mail delivery.

INTERNATIONAL PROJECT Spacelab (cutaway drawing above), a key payload of the shuttle program, will enable scientists to conduct experiments in a gravity-free environment above the earth's atmosphere. Jointly designed by the European Space Agency and the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the lab will be used by many nations, including India, to carry out their own experiments.

A low-energy, .high-technology phenomenon with myriad applications in everyday life, the electronics revolution is likely to grow in scope and impact in the years to come.

THE ELECTRONICS REVOLUTION

by PHILIP H. ABELSON and ALLEN L. HAMMOND

Superimposed on.a portion of an American oneceril coin is the electronic marvel known as "the chip." It is etched with 1,000 to 5,000 complete electronic circuits, each made up of hundreds of components. Chips are used to operate radios and TV sets, drive submarines and regulate the flow of power to cities. Their compactness has made possible the development of pocket calculat?ÂŁ!.

'-96") ~l--

~ÂŤ'

E

arlier in the century the United States experienced a long era of sustained growth in many aspects.

There was a steady increase in the level of education, life expectancy, and standard of living. Growth of all kinds was welcomed, including industrial expansion and population increase. A feeling of progress, of achievement, of well-being was everywhere. As a corollary, a striving for excellence and the search for understanding were widely admired.

Today the mood is one ofless certainty.

There are those who are pessimistic because of the sudden curtailment of growth in the use of energy in the form of oil. They believe that the part of the standard of living which is based on largescale consumption 'of energy is not likely to improve during this century. They conclude that the kind of economic growth

experienced in the 1950s and 1960s will not occur again.

However, those who prefer optimism have reason for hope. Human ingenuity in solving problems is great. And native intelligence has been amplified enormously by the use of knowledge accumulated through research. An important product of research and a basis for hoping for a bright new future is the vitality of the electronics revolution. This revolution has been in progress for about 60 years.

Lately its tempo has increased greatly.

Until recently its importance was overshadowed by changes due to the largescale expansion in the use of energy. But it promises to be more important, of more enduring consequence, than the earlier industrial revolution.

Some of the great changes brought about by the electronics revolution have gone comparatively unnoticed; at the start they were evolutionary rather than sudden and drastic. The telephone, which we take for granted, was invented 100 years ago. Nearly every decade since then the quality and scope of service have' steadily improved, and the cost (measured in constant dollars) is now a tiny fraction of what it was 50 years ago.

Numerous applications of electronics gradually affected individuals and almost every component and activity of society.

Radio was a marvelous toy and a source of wonderment when it was introduced 50 years ago. Now Americans listen to commercial radio an average of nearly four hours daily, and radio is accepted as practically a natural phenomenon.

Television, which created a stir 25 years ago, is likewise commonplace.

Examples of the accelerating impact of electronics on society during the last few years include the rapid growth in popularity of citizens band radio, which allows people to talk with one another

from their homes and cars, the worldwide use of the telephone, and the current astonishingly low prices at which handheld calculators and electronic watches are being sold. Less evident to the individual but in total more important to society are other applications of electronics that affect nearly every sector of the American economy.

This revolution, which is destined to have great long-term consequences, is quite different in nature from the industrial revolution. The industrial revolution was based on a profligate use of energy (mainly fossil fuels). Much of its technology was crude, with only a modest scientific or theoretical base. In large measure what the industrial revolution did was to make available and to employ large amounts of mechanical energy.

In contrast, the electronics revolution represents one of the greatest intellectual achievements of mankind. Its development has been the product of the most advanced science, technology, and management. In many applications electronics requires little energy. Indeed, one of the factors that guarantees enduring impact for the electronics revolution is that it is sparing of energy and materials.

With electronics one can control the disposition of large amounts of energy and force, but much in the way the brain is used in directing the action of muscles.

In some aspects, electronics can be more subtle, more nimble, more dependable even than the brain. In other applications, electronics serves as a great extender of human capabilities by rapidly carrying .out routine but complex calculations, thus freeing the mind to make intuitive judgments and find shortcuts to new .insights.

The industrial revolution, dependent on energy and materials, will be slowed and limited by the paucity of these necessary ingredients. The electronics revolution, fueled by intellectual achievements, is destined for long-continued growth as its knowledge base inevitably increases.

Obviously, the current rapid rate of evolution of electronics cannot persist indefinitely, but significant change is likely to continue for a long time.

One of the factors contributing to this dynamism is that in laboratories devoted to extending the electronics revolution the use of powerful investigative tools based on electronics is speeding new developments. Moreover, the body of knowledge that is being accumulated in the natural sciences continues to grow,

and its growth has been fostered by the new tools that electronics has provided.

There are few laboratories devoted to studies on the frontiers of the natural sciences that are not dependent on one or many items of electronic-based equipment.

Two examples indicate the extent of the impact. A human's speed of reaction is about one-fifth of a second. Measurements can now be made in times as short as 10_12 (one millionth of a millionth) second. More important is the overall effect of electronic devices on quantitative determinations of many kinds. In some instances sensitivities have been increased by orders of magnitude while the times required for measurement have been diminished to a hundredth or less of those needed in earlier methods.

One of the factors favoring the development of electronics has been a comparatively high degree of social acceptance.

There have been sporadic attacks on various electronic devices such as computers and there is continuing concern about privacy, but the intensity of criticism has diminished. In comparison to the number of objections raised to chemical products, to the environmental concern associated with nuclear and fossil fuel energy, or to fears of recombinant DNA (deoxirybonucleic acid), objections to electronics have been few.

The average citizen is fearful of air pollution, for example, and is frustrated by a feeling that there is little an individual can do about it. In contrast, if a television program is offensive it can be summarily dispensed with. Items that have recently become broadly available, such as the hand-held computer, electronic watch, and citizens band radio, enhance the public's feeling of participating in the benefits of electronics which do not bring with them discernible side effects. In the future, electronics will provide many new tools useful to the general public.

Until 1940 developments in electronics took place at a comparatively moderate pace. As was true with many scientific and technological matters, the pace quickened during World War II and was further maintained during the so-called "Cold War." Two major developments occurred independently during the late 1940s and later fused to give enormous impetus to electronics. One was the construction of programmable electronic computers. The second was the invention of the transistor. Subsequent developments in solid-state physics led to the

present-day silicon chip with its largescale integrated circuits: One such circuit today can contain more active elements than the most complex electronic equipment of 25 years ago.

After about 1960, when solid-state devices were incorporated in computers, there was a rapid development in the capabilities of computers and a steady reduction in the costs of calculations.

An important effect of integrated circuits has been a reduction in the size and power requirements of electronic equipment that has made possible, for example, a spacecraft lander on the moon. Other advantages include reproducibility, maintainability, and reliability. Especially helpful is a sharp decrease in the need for making interconnections.

T

he tempo of change has been impressive. In 1959 a chip that was commercially available contained one component of a circuit. By 1964 the number of components per chip had risen to 10, by 1970 to about 1,000, and by 1976 to about 32,000. The cost per chip advanced only modestly. Thus, the cost per function has dropped drastically. It is this great change in the cost-effectiveness ratio that has made possible inexpensive hand calculators and related microprocessors and minicomputers. One of the key individuals who has been pushing the development of large-scale integrated circuits is Robert Noyce, chairman of the Intel Corporation.

He believes that further advances can be expected. Theoretical considerations show that physical limits have not been approached. He is so bold as to state that "if the present rate of increase of complexity were to continue, integrated circuits with a thousand million elements would be available in 20 years."

All of us have seen examples of the sudden termination of exponential growth, so perhaps Noyce's figure will never be attained. But substantial advances toward his goal are already in progress. He seems justified in the view that "the potential for developing inexpensive processing power is truly awesome." He projects that with low-cost processing many new tasks will be undertaken that are uneconomical today.

Another way of glimpsing the tempo and magnitude of the electronics revolution is to focus on what has been happening in computers. In the early 1950s almost all computers were owned by or devoted to tasks of the Federal Government. Computers were procured

for use in such applications as defense and nuclear reactor design. By the mid1950s there were about 1,000 large-scale computers, and the tendency was toward increasing computational power. By the mid-1960s there were 30,000 computers, and the generally accepted view was that costs of computation decreased with size: that is, the larger the better. At the end of 1976 there were about 220,000 computers in the United States. Of these, 40 per cent were medium or large computers; the remainder were minicomputers which are small and by definition cost less than $50,000. At the same time, there were 750,000 of the microprocessors that form the heart of microcomputers.

It is estimated that by 1980 the number of minicomputers will reach 750,000, while the number of microprocessors will increase to more than 10 million.

As the number of computers in service grew, the uses and the organizations involved broadened. The percentages in the major categories are: manufacturing industry, 31; miscellaneous business, 13.3; financial institutions, 13.4; wholesale and retail trade, 13.1; educational institutions, 5.7; state and local government, 5.7; and Federal Government, 3.4. There is further scattering of ownership throughout virtually every kind of organized activity. Thus it may seem that an enormous shift in the nature of the market for large computers has occurred.

Coincident with the expansion in the number of computers has been an increase in the number of computer professionals.

During the past 20 years the total number of analysts, designers, programmers, and operators has increased from 100,000 to 2.5 million. The number of students having some degree of familiarity with computers is much greater. This reservoir of people familiar with applications of computers is certain to facilitate additional applications of electronics. The emergence of computer hobby shops is bringing additional enthusiasts and imagination into the field. One group that is likely to make substantial contributions consists of the working scientists in the natural sciences. Often their progress and ability to tackle problems are limited by their equipment. Having experienced the advantage of incorporation of microprocessors in measuring devices, they will be looking for novel kinds of electronic sensors that can be coupled with the current data processors.

Because many of the new major applications involve various kinds of computers, one might have the impression that the electronics revolution and com-

With electronics one can control the disposition of large amounts of energy and force, much the same way as the brain directs the action of muscles. In some respects, electronics can be more subtle, nimble and dependable than the brain itself.

puters are synonymous. It is easy to lose sight of the importance of the noncomputer aspects of electronics. Key to many applications are the transducers or sensors.

For example, computers would have a limited role in process control if electronic devices for sensing temperature, pressure, and concentrations of components were not available.

T

he potential applications of electronic technologies are so numerous and so provocative as to give free rein to futurologists and science fiction writers. The domestic robot, the wired city, the global electronic village-none of these can be dismissed as being beyond the bounds of technical feasibility. But it is not necessary to look so far afield to see how pervasive the impact of electronics is, how many areas of human endeavor and how large a portion of U.S. economic activity may be substantially altered.

Indeed, it is probable that reality will outstrip fiction in the rate of introduction of new and often unexpected applications of electronics in coming years. Witness, for example, the incredible growth in popularity of citizens band radio. It is clear that the capability of some electronic devices, particularly microprocessor circuits and memory units on single silicon chips, is developing more rapidly than applications can be conceived of and introduced.

The markets for kitchen appliances, office equipment, and leisure games, to mention just a few, are ready to be revolutionized or at least substantially modified by the addition of logic and memory to yield "smart stoves" and similar products, the first of which are now available.

The driving force behind many of the commercial applications is found in the extremely low prices for sophisticated electronic circuits, which in turn derives from mass production. The key innovation

allowing such large markets is the microprocessor, a general-purpose logical unit that can be programed to perform an unlimited number of tasks, thus eliminating the necessity of designing new circuitry for each new application. Among other applications, microprocessors are making it possible to extend computer control to mechanical and electrical equipment of every description, from consumer appliances and automobile engines to milling machines and industrial boilers.

In the past, automation of manufacturing and process control has moved slowly because of fear of dependence on a central computer and the cost of the controlling units. The first process-control computers introduced in the late 1950s, for example, cost about $300,000; minicomputers reduced this to less than $100,000 by the late 1960s; now microprocessor controllers are available for $3,000, cheap enough to automate control and data collection for even small process steps. What seems to be evolving is a linked, hierarchical arrangement in which microprocessors are used to control individual pieces of equipment; minicomputers collect and process management information from the microprocessors for an entire factory; and large central computers use the resulting data in compiling corporate financial reports.

But the impact will not be confined merely to consumer products or isolated devices. The application of electronics is already having a pervasive effect on the entire U.S. economy and way of life, one that promises to intensify in coming years. Consider only a few of the areas affected-medicine, education, national defense, banking and retail sales, postal and other communications, and the research process itself.

The practice of medicine, for example, has already begun to change in such areas as the handling of patient records, billing and other administrative choreS", and computer-controlled examinations in response to conventional data-processing equipment. Even more fundamental extensions of the physician's skill are resulting from the application of compact integrated circuitry to diagnostic and monitoring equipment. The potential of medical electronics is indicated by the X-ray scanning equipment, which by computer processing and synthesis is able to distinguish different tissues with a sensitivity 50 times that of ordinary X-ray techniques; hundreds of these new diagnostic tools have been ordered. Another new diagnostic approach, the use of acoustic waves in such devices as ultrasound cameras, is also

SOME OF THE WAYS ELECTRONIC TECHNOLOGY TOUCHES TODAY'S WORLD

LASER Optical Communications

HI-FI AND STEREO Audio Technology

SUBMARINE CABLE Transoceanic Communications

~~. .. ,, ,, ,, ,, ,,

....

•

~J~~

COAXIAL CABLE Long Distance Communications

••• •••

SOLAR BATTERY Electrical Energy

GUIDANCE SYSTEM Space Technology

IIII~I' 1

•

COMPUTER SYSTEMS Software Computer Technology

RADIO ALTIMETER Air Safety Communications

COMPUTER GRAPHICS Computer Technology

TELEPHONE Direct Distance Dialing

• QUARTZ CRYSTAL Filters for Communications

I •

~""~ VIIII~

.I'.llj"~'"

'I •••~~'

,•

OPTICAL FIBERS Communications by Light

MICROWAVE TECHNOLOGY Radar, TV, Telephony

TRANSISTOR Radio, TV, Computer Technology

INFORMATION THEOR Y Computer Technology

•

CLOSE SPACED TRIODE Transcontinental TV

DIGITAL COMPUTER Computer Technology

beginning to be widely applied; here the key role of electronics is to translate the acoustic information into visual and analytical data. Perhaps the most striking illustration of the unique power of electronic circuits in medicine is their potential use as prostheses to supplement or replace damaged neural tissue, a circumstance that is only possible because modern circuits now approach the size, power consumption, and logical capability of the natural tissue. The cardiac pacemaker is an early example of such a prosthesis, and the development of far more complicated devices such as an implantable electronic ear for the deaf is well under way.

Potentially, electronics and electronic media could have an important impact on U.S. education, as almost anyone who has observed children watching the TV program "Sesame Street" could confirm.

Despite a few such successes, however, there seems to be general agreement that television and computer-assisted instruction have not yet lived up to that potential.

But educational innovators have not given up developing new approaches.

There is another sense, {~ .. however, in which elec~ tronics is .. .. "\~ '" l certain to /] - 55'"0'<- L- affect education for better cJf10i worse, and this concerns the prospective flood of inexpensive electronic devices of which the hand-held calculator is only the first. Calculators have substantially altered the character of the traditional "problem sets" in science and engineering courses at the university level; they are becoming common in high school courses; and they are already creeping into use in primary schools. Some parents and educators are trying to stem this growing tide on the grounds that it will only add to the reasons "why Johnny can't add." Others see the trend as inevitable and point out that how computation is performed is irrelevant-what really counts is whether the students learn the underlying concepts, and in this respect the impact of the calculator is still uncertain. In any case, the ubiquity of the calculator seems to guarantee that electronic arithmetic will become the language of the real "new math," and these developments suggest the pote.ntial of the more elabor~te_ cal-

"ft,. â&#x20AC;˘

culator-based games and educational devices that are beginning to appear either alone or as attachments to the home television set.

H is difficult to imagine a modern military force without heavy dependence on electronics. Aircraft instrumentation, missile guidance systems, radar and other surveillance sensors, tactical computersall depend on electronic components.

And electronics plays more than a passive role. One example is the NA VSTAR satellite system, for which prototypes are now being tested. These navigational satellites are designed to allow any military vehicle carrying an inexpensive receiver and computer to instantaneously determine its position anywhere in the world with an accuracy of better than 10 meters in horizontal and vertical coordinates.

In 20 years the role of computers in research has been transformed from a minor annex of mathematics research to a major and often dominant role characterized by the proliferation of minicomputers and time-shared terminals in most research institutions. Computers have transformed the research process from conceptualization to experimentation to publication. Bell Laboratories has been in the forefront of actually putting computers to work in research.

They now have an average of one dedicated minicomputer and five interactive terminals for every 15 professional staff members. Electronics has also transformed other instruments of scientific research, from the electron microscope to vidicon astronomical cameras, and the process is accelerating as more and more "smart instruments" are designed around microprocessors.

Furthermore, the potential impact of electronics is nowhere greater than in the banking industry and the Postal Service, both of which face the prospect of converting from moving pieces of paper around to using electronic transfers for at least part of their business. These changes will certainly not come overnight and will raise a host of social problems: How does one protect against theft when most retail transactions are done electronically rather than by check, or guarantee privacy if much first-class mail travels by wire? But electronic transfers of money, of messages, and of documents are already established features of U.S. society. The Federal Government, for example, makes some five million Social Security payments each month by sending banks magnetic tapes that the bank computers will use to credit depositors' accounts directly. Preauthorized, nonpaper pay-

ments are estimated to account for 10 per cent of bank transactions in some areas of the country. Point-of-sale electronic terminals are now becoming common in retail stores, although their role is presently restricted to credit verification and inventory control, not direct transfer of funds from the customer's account to the store's. But with 26 thousand million checks a year passing through the banking system and the likelihood that the volume will double by 1985, there is ample incentive for banks to move toward electronic transfer and checkless banking.

Checkless banking, if and when it does occur, will intensify the economic pressures on the Postal Service, since nearly 40 per cent of the mail consists of checks and other financial transactions.

Diversion of this mail will reduce revenue but will not noticeably lower costs. But that is not the only threat. As complaints about lost or delayed mail increase, many large businesses are looking toward electronic mail systems. New optical scanning and electronic printing techniques are being developed by many companies that would allow users to transmit documents or whole pages of text. The Postal Service may be forced to embrace electronic mail or face the future as an obsolete, increasingly expensive system serving fewer and fewer people.

I;?

0stal communications are not the only form of communications facing new challenges. Not long ago radio and marine cable telephone circuits were the principal means for rapid intercontinental communications. Now an international satellite communications system is well established and carrying a growing volume of traffic. Domestic satellite systems are just getting under way in the United States, but they seem certain to expand the options for voice, television, and digital data communications. The transmission of digital information is the most rapidly growing area of electronic communications and reflects the increasing need for computers and other intelligent machines to "talk" with each other. Indeed, computer and communications technologies have become so similar and intertwined that they are difficult to distinguish. More and more communications are transmitted in digital form, even within the telephone system. And more and more information in the communications systems is processed both before and after transmission; voice signals are compacted and compressed to put more calls on a channel, for ex-

ample, or the output of the intelligent terminal on one end of the phone line becomes the input for a computer or a display device on the other end. Distributed processing~essentially networks of small and medium-sized computers connected by communications links~is clearly going to be one of the major forms in which computers are used.

These developments pose a major problem for those such as government regulators who must decide where communications~a regulated activity~ends and where the unregulated computer market begins. Among the principal contenders are some of the giants of U.S. industry, such as American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) and International Business Machines (IBM). The fight promises to cost thousands of millions of dollars and be one of the thorniest technological policy problems the government must face in the coming decade.

The evolution of computers to the point where communications is a major part of their activity is also reflected in other changes. The traditional use of computers as calculating engines for numerical work is rapidly being replaced by a new principal role, that of managing, storing, retrieving, and distributing information. A search for new computer architectures that better reflect this new role is under way and includes experiments with such things as augmented sets of instructions for the computer's own control program, specialized subcomputers or processors to manage data bases, and multiprocessor machines. The generation of computer programs~all too often a bottleneck to effective use~is increasingly being put on a firm mathematical basis. The way information is stored in computer systems is also changing as researchers look for more efficient search routines, new methods of combining memory devices, and new computer languages adapted for information processing.

What is emerging is the goal of an information utility that can serve many users for many purposes. Prototype experiments with information utilities are actually under way in Britain, where the British Broadcasting Corporation is testing a small decoder attached to television sets that can, on demand, deliver current information ona variety of subjects.

The British Post Office, which runs the telephone network, is also experimenting with a telephone-based information utility that would combine the functions of a daily newspaper with the resources of a library.

We are increasingly an information-

the incorporation of magnetic, acoustical, and optical phenomena into electronic devices, giving rise to a host of new Two inventions of the 1940s effects that can be put to use. Examples -the computer and the include magnetic bubbles¡ in memory transistor-gave an enormous devices, surface acoustic-wave filters in signal processing equipment, and optical impetus to electronics. fibers in communications.

The concept oftransmitting information on a light wave dates back at least to based society. Economically, information Alexander Graham Bell, who in the 1870s industries ranging from broadcast tele- demonstrated a wireless telephone based vision to book publishing to computer on light that could transmit sound for services contribute a large part of the U.S. more than a kilometer. A hundred years gross national product and employ later, optical communications is on the nearly half of the work force. Information verge of becoming a reality. The principal is also among the more rapidly growing advantage of communicating with light sectors of the economy. Moreover, in- waves is their high frequency compared formation is a resource that greatly en- with radio waves, which gives them a hances individual capabilities and oppor- superior capacity to transmit information. tunities and is not depleted by use. A single optical fiber, for example, can H.A. Simon of the Carnegie-Mellon Uni- carry hundreds of times as many bits of inversity in Pittsburgh describes the develop- formation per second as a copper wire. The ment of the ability to process and manipu- Bell Telephone System is already experilate information on a large scale as having menting with an optical link for intera significance in human evolution equiva- station connections in areas with a high lent to the development of written lan- volume of calls, and others are looking at guage or the invention of the printed book. applications ranging from computers to In any case it is clear that the information military vehicles. As large-scale producrevolution will accelerate as more persons tion of fibers and other components gets acquire their own computers and as these under way, dramatic cost reductions are computers are able to make use of larger expected.

The range of phenomena and the and larger information resources.

The conventional economic wisdom is indications of still-to-be-exploited pothat the expanding opportunities in infor- tential to be found in electronics research mation-related activities will more than are convincing evidence that we have not offset jobs lost in the production of elec- yet seen the limits of what is possible. tronic equipment. Recent experience in Still less are most of us and most of our the electronic manufacturing industries institutions prepared to decide what we would seem to bear this out, although should do with our new capabilities or substantial layoffs in some companies even how to cope with the speed at which have been avoided only by a commitment electronics technology is changing the to large retraining programs. In the ground rules under which we operate. In coming decade automated electronic business the price of being unprepared is equipment is likely to make inroads into often high, as many U.S. appliance manuthe service sectors of the economy as well. facturers found out when one of their comThe nature of secretarial and other office- petitors introduced an electronically consupport jobs may change, for example, trolled microwave oven that has rapidly as may that of mail clerks and bank tellers. become the bestselling product in its Whether any of these changes will result field. For governments and individuals in displacing large numbers of people alike the stakes are arguably lower at from these traditionally labor-intensive present, but the continuing electronic occupations is not clear, but the process revolution promises to be so pervasive as to compel the attention of even the most of change is certain to be uncomfortable 0 for the individual whose job is involved unobservant. and maybe for society as a whole.

Despite such problems the electronics About the Authors: Philip H. Abelson is a pioneer biophysicist who received his doctorate in 1939 revolution is not likely to slow down anyfrom the University of California for one of the time soon, if only because the research first studies of uranium fission products. He is base is broad and vigorous and is already president of the Carnegie Institution of Washingproducing a host of new ideas and new ton, D. c., and editor of Science. Allen L. Hamconcepts that are certain to be translated mond, editor of the research section of Science, into new products and services in coming is the coauthor of Energy and the Future, which years. One trend that can be identified is has been translated into five languages.

ONBECO GAN RICAN WRITER Not race but culture dominates the character of Americans-so argues a writer who is young, black, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Elbow Room.

I

n1974, during the last months of the Nixon Administration, I lived in San Francisco, California. My public reason for leaving the east and going there was that my wife had been admitted to the San Francisco Medical Center School of Nursing, but my private reason for going was that San Francisco would be a very good place for working and for walking. Actually, during that time San Francisco was not that pleasant a place. We lived in a section of the city called the Sunset District, but it rained almost every day. During the late spring Patricia Hearst helped to rob a bank a few blocks from our apartment, a psychopath called "the Zebra Killer" was terrorizing the city, and the mayor seemed about to declare martial law. Periodically the FBI would come to my apartment with pictures of the suspected bank robbers. Agents came several times, until it began to dawn on me that they had become slightly interested in why, of all the people in a working-class neighborhood, I alone sat at home every day. They never asked any questions on this point, and I never volunteered that I was trying to keep my sanity by working very hard on a book dealing with the relationship between folklore and technology in 19th-century America.

In the late fall of the same year a friend came out from the east to give a talk in Sacramento. I drove there to meet him, and then drove him back to San Francisco. This was an

older black man, one whom I respect a great deal, but during our drive an argument developed between us. His major worry was the recession, but eventually his focus shifted to people in my age group and our failures. There were a great many of these, and he listed them point by point. He said, while we drove through a gloomy evening rain, "When the smoke clears and you start counting, I'll bet you won't find that many more black doctors, lawyers, accountants, engineers, dentists .... " The list went on. He remonstrated a bit more, and said, "White people are very generous. When they start a thing they usually finish it. But after all this chaos, imagine how mad and tired they must be.

Back in the fifties, when this thing started, they must have known anything could happen. They must have said, 'Well, we'd better settle in and hold on tight. Here come the niggers.' " During the 18 months I spent in San Francisco, this was the only personal encounter that really made me mad.

In recent years I have realized that my friend, whom I now respect even more, was speaking from the perspective of a tactician. He viewed the situation in strict bread-andbutter terms: a commitment had been made to redefine the meaning of democracy in this country, certain opportunities had been provided, and people like him were watching to see what would be made of those opportunities and the freedom they provided. From his point of view, it was simply a matter of fulfilling a contractual obligation: taking

full advantage of the educational opportunities that had been offered to achieve middle-class status in one of the professions. But from my point of view, one that I never shared with him, it was not that simple. Perhaps it was because of the differences in our generations and experiences. Or perhaps it was because each new generation, of black people at least, has to redefine itself even while it attempts to grasp the new opportunities, explore the new freedom. I can speak for no one but myself, yet maybe in trying to preserve the uniqueness of my experience; as I tried to do in my book Elbow Room, I can begin to set the record straight for my friend, for myself, and for the sake of the record itself.

In 1954, when Brown v. Board of Education was decided [in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled segregation in education to be unconstitutional], I was 11 years old.

I lived in a lower class black community in Savannah, Georgia, attended segregated public schools, and knew no white people socially. I can't remember thinking of this last fact as a disadvantage, but I do know that early on I was being conditioned to believe that I was not supposed. to know any white people on social terms. In our town the children of the black middle class were expected to aspire to certain traditional occupations; the children of the poor were expected not to cause too much trouble.

T

here was in those days a very subtle, but real, social distinction based on gradations of color, and I can remember the additional strain under which darker skinned poor people lived. But there was also a great deal of optimism, shared by all levels of the black community. Besides a certain reverence for the benign intentions of the Federal Government, there was a belief in the idea of progress, nourished, I think now, by the determination of older people not to pass on to the next generation too many stories about racial conflict, their own frustrations and failures. They censored a great deal. It was as if they had made basic and binding agreements with themselves, or with their ancestors, that for the consideration represented by their silence on certain points they expected to receive, from either Providence or a munificent Federal Government, some future service or remuneration, the form of which would be left to the beneficiaries of their silence.

Lawyers would call this a contract with a condition precedent. And maybe because they did tell us less than they knew, many of us were less informed than we might have been. On the other hand, because of this same silence many of us remained free enough of the influence of negative stories to take chances, be ridiculous, perhaps even try to form our own positive stories out of whatever our own experiences provided. Though ours was a limited world, it was one rich in possibilities for the future.

In had to account for my life from segregated Savannah to this place and point in time, I would probably have to say that the contract would be no bad metaphor. I am reminded of Sir Henry Maine's observation that the progress of society is from status to contract. Although he was writing about the development of English common law, the reverse of his generalization is most applicable to my situation: I am the beneficiary of a number of contracts,

If one can experience America's diversity, laugh at its craziness, distill wisdom from its tragedies, and attempt to synthesize all this inside oneself without going crazy, one will have earned the right to call oneself "citizen of the United States."

most of them between the Federal Government and the institutions of society, intended to provide people like me with a certain status.

I recall that in 1960, for example, something called the U.S. National Defense Student Loan Program went into effect, and I found out that by my agreeing to repay a loan plus some little interest, the Federal Government would back my enrollment in a small Negro college in Georgia.

When I was a freshman at that college, disagreement over a seniority clause between the Hotel & Restaurant Employees and Bartenders Union and the Great Northern Railway Company, in St. Paul, Minnesota, caused management to begin recruiting temporary summer help. Before I was 19 I was encouraged to move from a segregated Negro college in the South and through that very beautiful part of the 'country that lies between Chicago and the Pacific Northwest. That year-1962-the World's Fair was in Seattle, and it was a magnificently diverse panorama for a young man to see. Almost every nation on earth was represented in some way, and at the center of the fair was the Space Needle. The theme of the United States exhibit, as I recall, was drawn from Whitman's Leaves of Grass : "Conquering, holding, daring, venturing as we go the unknown ways."

When I returned to the South, in the midst of all the civil rights activity, I saw a poster advertising a creativewriting contest sponsored by Reader's Digest and the United Negro College Fund. To enter the contest I had to learn to write and type. The first story I wrote was lost (and very badly typed); but the second, written in 1965, although also badly typed, was awarded first prize by Edward Weeks and his staff at The Atlantic Monthly. That same year I was offered the opportunity to enter Harvard Law School. During my second year at law school, a third-year man named Dave Marston offered me, through a very conservative white fellow student from Texas, the opportunity to take over his old job as a janitor in one of the apartment buildings in Cambridge. There I had the solitude, and the encouragement, to begin writing seriously. Offering my services in that building was probably the best contract I ever made.

I have not recalled all the above to sing my own praises or to evoke the black American version of the Horatio Alger myth. I have recited these facts as a way of indicating the haphazard nature of events during that lO-year period.

I am the product of a contractual process. To put it simply, the 1960s were a crazy time. Opportunities seemed to materialize out of thin air; and if you were lucky, if you were in the right place at the right time, certain contractual benefits just naturally accrued. You were assured of a certain status; you could become a doctor, a lawyer, a

dentist, an accountant, an engineer. Achieving these things was easy, if you applied yourself.

But a very hard price was extracted. It seems to me now, from the perspective provided by age and distance, that certain institutional forces, acting impersonally, threw together black peasants and white aristocrats, people who operated on the plane of the intellect and people who valued the perspective of the folk. There were people who were frightened, threatened, and felt inferior; there were lightskinned people who called themselves "black" and darker skinned people who could remember when this term had been used negatively; there were idealists and opportunists, people who seemed to want to be exploited and people who delighted in exploiting them. Old identities were thrown off, of necessity, but there .werenot many new ones of a positive nature to be assumed. People from backgrounds like my own, those from the South, while content with the new opportunities, found themselves trying to make sense of the growing diversity of friendships, of their increasing familiarity with the various political areas of the country, of the obvious differences between their values and those of their parents. We were becoming doctors, lawyers, dentists, engineers; but at the same time our experiences forced us to begin thinking of ourselves in new and different ways.

We never wanted to be "white," but we never wanted to be "black" either. And back during that period there was the feeling that we could be whatever we wanted. But, we discovered, unless we joined a group, subscribed to some ideology, accepted some provisional identity, there was no contractual process for defining and stabilizing what it was we wanted to be. We also found that this was an individual problem, and in order to confront it one had to go inside one's self.

N

OwI want to return to my personal experience, to one of the contracts that took me from segregated Savannah to the Seattle World's Fair. There were many things about my earliest experiences that I liked and wanted to preserve, despite the fact that these things took place in a context of segregation; and there were a great many things I liked about the vision of all those nations interacting at the World's Fair. But the two seemed to belong to separate realities, to represent two different world views. Similarly, there were some things I liked about many of the dining-car waiters with whom I worked, and some things 1 liked about people like Dave Marston whom I met in law school. Some of these people and their values were called "black" and some were called "white," and I learned very quickly that all of us tend to wall ourselves off from experiences different from our own by assigning to these terms greater significance than they should have. Moreover, I found that trying to maintain friendships with, say, a politically conservative white Texan, a liberal-to-radical classmate of Scottish-Italian background, my oldest black friends, and even members of my own family introduced psychological contradictions that became tense and painful as the political climate shifted. There were no contracts covering such friendships and such feelings, and in order to keep the friends and maintain the feelings I had to force myself to find a basis other than race on which such contradic-

tory urgings could be synthesized. I discovered that I had to find, first of all, an identity as a writer, and then I had to express what I knew or felt in such a way that I could make something whole out of a necessarily fragmented experience.

While in San Francisco, I saw in the image of the 19th century American locomotive a possible cultural symbol that could represent my folk origins and their values, as well as the values of all the people I had seen at the World's Fair. During that same time, unconsciously, 1 was also beginning to see that the American language, in its flexibility and variety of idioms, could at least approximate some of the contradictory feelings that had resulted from my experience. Once again, I could not find any contractual guarantee that this would be the most appropriate and rewarding way to hold myself, and my experience, together.

I think now there are no such contracts.

I quoted earlier a generalization by Sir Henry Maine to the effect that human society is a matter of movement from status to contract. Actually, I have never read Sir Henry Maine. I lifted his statement from a book by a man named Henry Allen Moe-a great book called The Power of Freedom. In that book, in an essay entitled "The Future of Liberal Arts Education," Moe goes on to say that a next step, one that goes beyond contract, is now necessary, but that no one seems to know what that next step should be.

Certain trends suggest that it may well be a reversion to status. But if this happens it will be a tragedy of major proportions, because most of the people in the world are waiting for some nation, some people, to provide the model for the next step. And somehow I felt, while writing the last stories in Elbow Room, that the condition precedent the old folks in my hometown wanted in exchange for their censoring was not just status of a conventional kind. I want to think that after having waited so long, after having seen so much, they must have at least expected some new stories that would no longer have to be censored to come out of our experience.

I felt that if anything, the long experience of segregation could be looked on as a period of preparation for a next step.

Those of us who are black and who have had to defend our humanity should be obliged to continue defending it, on higher and higher levels-not of power, which is a kind of tragic trap, but on higher levels of consciousness.

All of this is being said in retrospect, and I am quite aware that I am rationalizing many complex and contradictory feelings. Nevertheless, I do know that early on, during my second year of law school, I became conscious of a model of identity that might help me transcend, at least in my thinking, a provisional or racial identity. In a class in American constitutional law taught by Paul Freund, I began to play with the idea that the Fourteenth Amendment was not just a legislative instrument devised to give former slaves legal equality with other Americans. Looking at the slow but steady way in which the basic guarantees of the Bill of Rights had, through judicial interpretation, been incorporated into the clauses of that amendment, I began to see the outlines of a new identity.

You will recall that the first line of Section I of the Fourteenth Amendment makes an all-inclusive definition of citizenship: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of

the United States .... " The rights guaranteed to such a citizen had themselves traveled from the provinces to the World's Fair: from the trial and error of early AngloSaxon folk rituals to the rights of freemen established by the Magna Carta, to their slow incorporation into early American colonial charters, and from these charters (especially George Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights) into the U.S. Constitution as its first 10 amendments.

Indeed, these same rights had served as the basis for the Charter of the United Nations. I saw that through the protean uses made of the Fourteenth Amendment, in the gradual elaboration of basic rights to be protected by Federal authority, an outline of something much more complex than "black" and "white" had been begun.

It was many years before I was to go to the U.S. Library of Congress and read the brief of the lawyer-novelist Albion W. Tourgee in the famous case Plessy v. Ferguson.

Argued in 1896 before the United States Supreme Court, Tourgee's brief was the first meaningful attempt to breathe life into the amendment. I will quote here part of his brief, which is a very beautiful piece of literature: This provision of Section I of the Fourteenth Amendment creates a new citizenship of the United States embracing new rights, privileges and immunities, derivable in a new manner, controlled by new authority, having a new scope and extent, depending on national authority for its existence and looking to national power for its preservation.

Although Tourgee lost the argument before the Supreme Court, his model of citizenship-and it is not a racial oneis still the most radical idea to come out of American constitutional law. He provided the outline, the clothing, if you will, for a new level of status. What he was proposing in 1896, I think, was that each United States citizen would attempt to approximate the ideals of the nation, be on at least conversant terms with all its diversity, carry the mainstream of the culture inside himself. As an American, by trying to wear these clothes he would be a synthesis of high and.low, black and white, city and country, provincial and universal. If he could live with these contradictions, he would be simply a representative American. his was the model I was aiming for in my book of stories. It can be achieved with or without intermarriage, but it will cost a great many mistakes and a lot of pain. It is, finally, a product of culture and not of race. And achieving it will require that one be conscious of America's culture and the complexity of all its people. As I tried to point out, such a perspective would provide a minefield of delicious ironies. Why, for example, should black Americans raised in Southern culture not find that some of their responses are geared to country music? How else, except in terms of cultural diversity, am I to account for the white friend in Boston who taught me much of what I know about black American music? Or the white friend in Virginia who, besides developing a homegrown aesthetic he calls "crackertude," knows more about black American folklore than most black people? Or the possibility that many black people in Los Angeles have been just as much influenced

by Hollywood's "star system" of the forties and fifties as they have been by society's response to the color of their skins? I wrote about people like these in Elbow Room

T

because they interested me, and because they help support my belief that most of us are products of much more complex cultural influences than we suppose.

What I have said above will make little sense until certain contradictions in the nation's background are faced up to, until personal identities are allowed to partake of the complexity of the country's history as well as of its culture. In 1978, a very imaginative black comedian named Richard Pryor appeared briefly on national television in his own show. He offended a great many people, and his show was canceled after only a few weeks. But I remember one episode that may emphasize my own group's confusion about its historical experience. This was a satiric takeoff on the popular television movie Roots, and Pryor played an African tribal historian who was selling trinkets and impromptu history to black American tourists. One tourist, a middle-class man, approached the tribal historian and saiti, "I want you to tell me who my great-great-granddaddy was." The African handed him a picture. The black American looked at it and said, "But that's a white man!" The tribal historian said, 'That's right." Then the tourist said, "Well, I want you to tell me where I'm from." The historian looked hard at him and said, "You're from Cleveland, nigger." I think I was trying very hard in my book to say the same thing, but not just to black people.

Today I am not the lawyer my friend in San Francisco thought I should be, but this is the record I wanted to present to him that rainy evening back in 1974. It may illustrate why the terms of my acceptance of society's offer had to be modified. I am now a writer, a person who has to learn to live with contradictions, frustrations, and doubts. Still, I have another quote that sustains me, this one from a book called The Tragic Sense of Life, by a Spanish philosopher named Miguel de Unamuno. In a chapter called "Don Quixote Today," Unamuno asks, "How is it that among the words the English have borrowed from our language there is to be found this word desperado?" And he answers himself: "It is despair, and despair alone, that begets heroic hope, absurd hope, mad hope."

I believe that the United States is complex enough to induce that sort of despair that begets heroic hope. I believe that if one can experience its diversity, touch a variety of its people, laugh at its craziness, distill wisdom from its tragedies, and attempt to synthesize all this inside oneself without going crazy, one will have earned the right to call oneself "citizen of the United States," even though one is not quite a lawyer, doctor, engineer, or accountant. If nothing else, one will have learned a few new stories and, most important, one will have begun on that necessary movement from contract to the next step, from province to the World's Fair, from a hopeless person to a desperado. I wrote about my first uncertain steps in this direction in Elbow Room because I have benefited from all the contracts, I have exhausted all the contracts, and at present it is the only new direction I know.

D About the Author: James Alan McPherson is a contributing editor of The Atlantic. Besides Elbow Room, he has published Hue and Cry: Short Stories. The article on these pages has been adapted from his speech, "An American Writer and His World."

THE

POLICE

ANOTHE

SUSPECT:

13 Years Since A the Miranda

Case

The controversial Miranda case, in which the U.S. Supreme Court laid down a set of rules on how the police should treat suspects, is now over a decade old. A noted Indian lawyer reviews how this judgment has held up over time.

noble principle often transcends its origins," it has been said. This is true of the ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court in a great constitutional case, Miranda v. Arizona, decided on June 13, 1966. Intended to resolve a controversy, it renewed it with greater passion and wider ramifications.

The seemingly narrow issues in the case were the admissibility of statements obtained from an individual through custodial police interrogation and the nature of safeguards necessary to ensure protection of his right, under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, not to be "compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself." To appreciate the significance of what followed, and, indeed, the ruling in the case itself, it is necessary to recall its background.

In the early 1960s the Warren Court was getting disenchanted with the conventional wisdom that in determining whether a statement to the police by a suspect in custody had been made of his free will the Court should have regard to the "sum total of circumstances" and, not to any single factor alone, such as denial of the services of a lawyer. Chief Justice Earl Warren demurred to this and so did three other Judges-Hugo Black, William Douglas and William Brennan.

But they were a minority. In 1963 Arthur Goldberg joined them in a ruling which regarded denial of permission to

the suspect to telephone his wife or a lawyer and the failure to warn him about his rights relevant in applying the old test of totality of circumstances. Justices Tom Clark, John Marshall Harlan, Potter Stewart and Byron White dissented. They did so with greater vigor, in 1964, in Danny Escobedo v. Illinois which paved the way for the Miranda ruling in 1966.

Escobedo's request to consult a lawyer was refused. The majority for whom Goldberg spoke ruled that when "the process shifts from investigatory to accusatory-when its focus is on the accused and its purpose is to elicit a confessionour adversary system begins to operate, and, under the circumstances here, the accused must be permitted to consult with his lawyer." ,Additionally, the police had not warned Escobedo of his "absolute constitutional right to remain silent."

Goldberg anticipated the storm of protests that would break out and remarked: "If the exercise of constitutional rights will thwart the effectiveness of a system of law enforcement, then there is something very wrong with that system." But the critics were not appeased. Miranda's case was heard fully along with three others, Chief Justice Warren said, in order "to explore some facets of the problems" and also "to give concrete constitutional guidelines for law enforcement agencies and courts to follow."

Ernesto Miranda, a 23-year-old indigent

In his landmark judgment on the Miranda case, Chief Justice Earl Warren of the U.S. Supreme Court referred to a 1957 ruling of the Supreme Court of India.

Mexican and a seriously disturbed individual, was arrested on the charges of kidnapping and rape, taken to a police station and identified by the prosecutrix.

He was questioned by two police officers.

Admittedly, they did not advise him that he had a right to consult a lawyer.

Two hours later the officers emerged with a written confession, signed by Miranda, with a typed paragraph at the top stating that the confession was made voluntarily and with full knowledge of his legal rights and of the fact that it might be used against him. His conviction by the trial court was affirmed on appeal. The Supreme Court reversed the verdict by the narrowest majority-5 to 4.

In the majority were Chief Justice Warren and Justices Black, Douglas, Bren-. nan and Abe Fortas. Dissenting bitterly were Justices Clark, Harlan, Stewart and White. The New York Times' correspondent, Fred P. Graham, reported that Harlan's face was flushed and his voice occasionally faltered with emotion as he denounced the majority ruling as "dangerous experimentation."

Omit the adjective and Harlan was not wrong. The majority threw overboard the test of "totality of circumstances" and propounded new and specific guide"lines whose violation would vitiate a conviction even if there existed evidence other than the confession to support it.

The ruling is best set out in the words of Chief Justice Warren who spoke for the majority: "We hold that when an individual is taken into custody or otherwise deprived of his freedom by the authorities in any significant way and is subjected to questioning, the privilege against self-incrimination is jeopardized. Procedural safeguards must be employed to protect the privilege, and unless other fully effective means are adopted to notify the person of his right of silence and to assure that the exercise of the right will be scrupulously honored, the following measures are required. He must be warned prior to any questioning that he has the right to remain silent, that anything he says can be used against

him in a court of law, that he has the assuring a continuous opportunity to right to the presence of an attorney, and exercise it, the following safeguards must that if he cannot afford an attorney one be observed" - the three warnings, namewill be appointed for him prior to any ly, the right to be silent; possible use of statements against the suspect; and the questioning if he so desires. Opportunity to exercise these rights must be afforded right to consult a lawyer, with, the added to him throughout the interrogation. proviso that the state would obtain one After such warnings have been given, if the suspect could not afford it.

The ruling would neither "hamper" and such opportunity afforded him, the individual may knowingly and in!elligently the police nor bar statements made vohinwaive these rights and agree to answer tarily to them. What it sought to reform questions Of make a statement. But was "the current practice of incommuniunless and until such warnings and waiver cado interrogation." There were proare demonstrated by the prosecution at cedures which the majority approved; trial, no evidence obtained as a result for example, the standard warnings given of interrogation can be used against him." by special agents of the Federal Bureau of In his classic book Freedom and the Investigation (FBI). They were set out in a letter from the Solicitor General in Court, Professor Henry J. Abraham characterizes this as "the most bitterly response to a query from the Bench.

Warren referred to the Judges' Rules criticized, most contentious, and most diversely analyzed criminal procedure in England, to the provisions of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872-which bar decision by the Warren Court." . confessions to the police altogether-and Not surprisingly. For, as Harlan, to a ruling of the Supreme Court of India Stewart and White recalled, "No state in 1957 which laid down that the police in the country has urged this Court to must give the accused "at least 24 hours impose the newly announced rules, nor to decide whether or not he should make has any state chosen to go nearly so far a confession" to a magistrate. on its own."

None of this convinced the four dissenters. The Court was going "too far he majority, however, denied that too fast," Clark lamented. The others reits ruling was an innovation. It was called their dissent in Escobedo's case an application of principles rooted and said that was when "the Court jumped in long experience. In 1637 John the rails." Harlan summed up their phiLilburn, an anti-Stuart Leveller, refused losophy neatly: "Society has always paid to take the Star Chamber Oath saying that a stiff price for law and order, and peaceful ' "no man's conscience ought to be racked interrogation is not one of the dark by oaths imposed, to answer to questions moments of the law." concerning himself in matters criminal, Dissents in the U.S. Supreme Court or pretended to be so." are always strongly worded. The acerbity What weighed with the majority was of the dissent in Miranda's case has few the atmosphere of the police station. parallels. "In some unknown number of An "interrogation environment" is created cases the Court's rule will return a killer, to subordinate the suspect to the will a rapist or other criminal to the stn;ets of his examiner. There are the "inherently and to the environment which produced compelling pressures" which can be him, to repeat his crime whenever" it checked best only by the presence of a pleases him." Public criticism seems relawyer. strained by comparison.

Warren did not shut the door to legisThree processes followed independently lative innovation by judicial dogmatism. of one another in the wake of the Miranda "Our decision in no way creates a consti- case-protest, compliance and erosion. tutional straitjacket which will handicap The first was predictable; the second, sound efforts at reform, nor is it intended inevitable now that the majority ruling to have this effect. We encourage Congress was law. In many a jurisdiction guidance and the states to continue their laudable cards were issued by the police departsearch for increasingly effective ways of ment (see example on the opposite page). protecting the rights of the¡ individual It is the process of erosion which caused while promoting efficient enforcement of dismay. A week after the ruling, the Court our criminal laws. However, unless we decided a batch of three cases in which are shown other procedures which are it ruled, over the protests of Black and at least as effective in apprising accused Douglas, that the Miranda ruling was persons of their right of silence and in not retroactive. It applied only to trials

TRAINING DIVISIONBUREAU OF POLICE PORTLAND, OREGON It is my duty to warn you before you make any statement that: 1. You have the right to remain silent.

2. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.

3. You have a right to talk to a lawyer and have him present while you are being questioned.

4. If you cannot afford to hire a lawyer, the court will appoint you one at no expense to you.

DO YOU UNDERSTAND YOUR RIGHTS? UNDERSTANDING YOUR RIGHTS, ARE YOU STILL WILLING TO TALK TO ME?

begun after the ruling was announced.

More controversial was its judgment in a compulsory blood test case. The accused had been arrested while driving under the influence of intoxicating liquor.

While receiving treatment in a hospital for injuries, a blood sample was withdrawn by a physician at the direction of a police officer, without a search warrant and despite the patient's protests. The chemical analysis report was admitted in evidence in his trial.

Brennan joined the Miranda dissenters, a week after Miranda,· to hold that this did not amount to testimonial compulsion. Warren kept silent on this issue and limited his dissent to a violation of the "due process" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Black, Douglas and Fortas opined that the Fifth Amendment

forbade compulsory blood tests.

The next three years were to see, if anything, an extension of the Miranda ruling. The Court ruled in 1968 that it applied to interrogation during imptisonment for a separate offense and, in 1969, to interrogation in the suspect's home after he had been arrested and was no longer free to go where he pleased. Warren retired in 1969. His successor, Warren Burger, had made no secret of his disapproval of the Miranda guidelines. "Guilt or innocence becomes irrelevant in the criminal trial as we flounder in a morass of artificial rules-poorly conceived and often impossible of application."

The first case in the Supreme Court of failure to give the Miranda warnings was decided in 1971 in Harris v. New York.

Burger and another Nixon' appointee, Harry Blackmun,joined with the Miranda . dissenters-Harlan, Stewart and Whiteto permit an unwarned suspect's statement to be used, not as evidence, but to impeach his credibility by 'confronting him with it if he entered the witness box. Brennan, Black, Douglas and Thurgood Marshall protested at the erosion of Miranda.

T

oward the end of 1975, the Court held that after a suspect exercises his right to remain silent about one crime, the police may still validly question him about another. Alarmed, Brennan and Marshall predicted "ultimate overruling of Miranda's enforcement of the privilege against self-incrimination."

By now printed Miranda warning cards had come into vogue. In one case agents of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) used a card in an interview in a private home of a taxpayer suspected of evading tax liability which informed him that he was not bound to answer a question if it tended to incriminate him; that his statements might be used against him and that he was entitled to counseL Chief Justice Burger and five others held that the IRS was not bound to give Miranda warnings to a taxpayer not in custody even if he was the "focus" of investigation.

Marshall concurred on the ground that the warnings complied with the Fifth Amendment. Brennan maintained his dissent on the ground that the interview was·held under conditions requiring compulsory disclosure. Psychological pressure, not custody, was the test, he said.

The process of erosion reached disturbing proportions in a case, Oregon v.

Mathiason, decided on January 25, 1977.

A police officer left a card at the suspect's place asking him to call. He did so and was told that he was not under arrest. But, the officer shut the door and expressed his belief that the suspect was involved in burglary, adding, falsely, that his fingerprints had been found. Within five minutes came the oral confession. Miranda warnings were then delivered, followed by a taped confession, Burger and five other Justices held that the Miranda ruling was limited to persons in custody. The suspect, on the other hand, had come voluntarily.

Marshall dissented and pointed out that the coercive elements were pervasive enough for Miranda to apply. Brennan would have agreed with the majority but felt that the case warranted oral arguments, John Paul Stevens also voiced his objection to a summary disposal of the case but, unlike Brennan, made plain his dissatisfaction with the majority's reasoning on the merits.

For all the erosion a lot survived-and it did not impede crime investigation, As Professor Henry J. Abraham remarks, "The initial fears, -and subsequent charges, that the Miranda decision would seriously interfere with the normal tendency to confess has not been borne out by resulting statistical evidence," which he cites copiously, A similar view was expressed b)' Portland's police chief Bruce Baker last November in a discussion with a group of Asian and Latin American lawyers.

On April 7, 1978, the Supreme Court of India returned the compliment in a ruling which relied heavily on Miranda's case which it called "the lodestar on the subject." Mr. Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer quoted the Warren opinion extensively and said, "We seek light from Miranda for interpretation, not innovation, for principles in their settings, not borrowings for our conditions." The Court fully agreed with the majority view in Miran·da's case while interpreting Art. 20 (3) of the Indian Constitution which embodies the guarantee against self-incrimination.

Perhaps the only one who did not profit by the case was Miranda himself.

He fell foul of the law repeatedly. Released on parole, he was slain, early in 1976, in a Phoenix skid row bar in a quarrel over a card game, The police promptly arrested the main suspect. And read a Miranda card to him.

D About the Author: A.G. Noorani, a well-known lawyer, specializes in legal and political affairs, and often writes for Indian journals.

ONTHE LIGHTER SIDE

"How would you like your eggs this morning?"

Reprinted with permission from The Saturday

Erenillg

PO ..•I.

©

\

"1 approve o/the President's new,force/ul style. But not yours."

Drawing

by Ed Fishe.r; © 1978 the

ew Yorker Magazine

"Li ale boy! Your change !"

Inc.

©

1979 by permission

of Sllfurday Review and Bil1 Levine.

1979.

PROTECTING THE PRIVACY OF INDIVIDUALS In a broad review of the rights of Americans to confidentiality, President Jimmy Carter has issued what he calls "sweeping proposals to protect the privacy of individuals." In so doing, he has warned that recent rapid developments in technology have created "threats to privacy undreamed of200 years ago."

His proposals include new legislation requested from the U.S. Congress, as well as appeals to private business for voluntary restraints on release of personal information. "It is time to establish a broad, national privacy policy to protect individual rights in' the information age," President Carter said.

Most of President Carter's recommendations came from the presidentially appointed Privacy Protection Study Commission, established by the Privacy Act of 1974. Following receipt of the Commission's report, which was issued in 1977, President Carter appointed an interagency task force "to evaluate the in pnvate employment and limit the Commission's proposals and make further number of officials authorized to order recommendations." The task force was wiretaps.

The proposed Privacy of Medical Inforcochaired by Stuart Eizenstat, Assistant mation Bill would limit the disclosure to the President for Domestic Affairs of medical information to third parties, and Policy, and Henry Geller, Assistant to give each person the right to see his Secretary of Commerce for National own records.

It would make it a crime Telecommunications and Information. to collect medical information under The President's concern is a reflection false pretenses. of the widespread use of modern technolThe proposed Fair Financial Informaogy-computers in particular-which has tion Practices Bill would give each person made it relatively easy in the United the right to see credit reports on himself States to find out things about people's and to correct those reports when private lives that most would like to have necessary.

It would similarly protect the remain private. It is a basic human privacy of records kept by insurance right, supporters of the Carter initiative companies, and it would safeguard the say, that the vast amount of personal data on individual citizens that is now relatively new Electronic Funds Transfer accessible to computer users should be (EFT) systems against misuse for personal protected from improper use by the surveillance.

The Privacy of Research Records Bill government or by private parties.

The legislation requested by President would ensure that information obtained Carter seeks to restrict the flow of informa- for research purposes would not be used tion in four major categories: medical against an individual, and would levy records, financial information, informa- criminal fines for any such unauthorized disclosure. Researchers studying behavior, tion provided for Federally supported research, and media "work product," . for example, often promise confidentialsuch as the notes, interview files and ity to participants, but there is at present film of press, television and radio no legal requirement for such privacy, the Administration pointed out. reporters. In addition, the AdministraPresident Carter also urged the tion would curtail the use of lie detectors

Congress to pass a bill already before it that would place limits on the use of lie detectors in private employment. And the President announced that through executive orders he was taking "measures to strengthen safeguards on Federal investigations and record keeping."

Another Carter proposal-the Privacy Protection Bill-stems from a police search in 1971 of the office of a student newspaper in Stanford University in California. The search, under a warrant, aimed to obtain photographs of a student demonstration that were believed to be in the newspaper's files.

The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled in 1977, by a fiveto-three majority, against the newspaper's claim of freedom of the press and in favor of the police's stated need to obtain evidence.

The President's bill, however, would ban such random searches under warrant and would require a subpoena for specific documents. Exceptions would be made only in two instances: when the holder of the information, the reporter, for example, is himself a suspect of a crime; or in matters of life and death, as when hostages are being held.

The President said his bill would safeguard the interests of the news media and others engaged in research "while preserving legitimate law-enforcement interests. " In addition to the domestic recommendations, President Carter called for expanded coordination and cooperation with other countries in protecting personal privacy.

"The enormous increase in personal data records in the United States has been matched in other advanced countries," the President told the Congress. "Throughout Western Europe, as well as in Canada, Australia and Japan, records of personal data have grown at explosive rates."

"We are, therefore," Carter went on, "working with other governments in several international organizations to develop principles to protect personal data crossing international borders and to harmonize each country's rules."

0

HELP FOR HOMELESS REFUGEES America is opening its doors to victims of war and persecution.

But the crisis is too big for one country to handle alone.

International attention has in recent months focused on the plight of refugees in Southeast Asia. But that wrenching human drama underscores a more enduring crisis.

At least 10 million people are uprooted worldwide, and their number is growing at a rate that has humanitarian efforts struggling to keep pace. Not since the tumultuous aftermath of World War II, when upwards of 33 million displaced persons were on the move, have there been so many refugees in so many places.

The global emergency is so severe that the United States is reviewing topto-bottom changes in its restrictive refugee-admission policies for the first time since this country opened its doors to 700,000 people displaced by the war in Europe. The result: At least 50,000 refugees, and perhaps as many as 120,000, soon may be admitted annually to the United States beyond the 400,000 immigrants admitted each year.

France, Canada, Australia and other nations are bending immigration restrictions to accommodate the flood of refugees.

Even Vietnam, a source of thousands of refugees, is taking steps to legalize emigration of its citizens to join relatives already settled abroad.

Refugees pack camps on almost every continent, and thousands more are arriving each week to seek sanctuary from famine, disaster, oppression and war. An estimated 3.7 million refugees burden more than 25 impoverished countries in Africa. More than 1.7 million Palestinians still live as refugees in the Middle East.

Lebanon, host to thousands of Palestinians, also has 700,000 of its own people displaced by civil war. Bangladesh is refuge for 120,000 Burmese. Persecution of dissidents and Jews drives at least 5,000 refugees each month from Russia

officials report, is money-and nations and Eastern Europe.

"I t doesn't take much to be a refugee," willing to accept refugees. notes the office of the United Nations For its part, the Carter Administrahigh commissioner for refugees, the chief tion in early March launched an offeninternational agency providing assistance sive to help alleviate the suffering.

The moves contrast with U.S. actions for the displaced. "Your race or beliefs before and during World War II, when can be enough:" For many, refugee status is tempo- Washington refused to relax immigration rary-until a crisis subsides back home. quotas to admit Jews fleeing Germany.

Now the U.S. is raising its contribution Others, like the Palestinians, remain refugees for decades, serving as pawns to refugee programs to $570 million this in a political struggle for a homeland. year-up from $343 million last year.

And President Jimmy Carter has Hundreds of thousands of others are packed into camps around the world to named former Senator Dick Clark await resettlement-a process that some- ambassador-at-large for refugees to direct the expanded U.S. effort. times takes a lifetime.

Finally, the President is seeking a Assisting refugees is far more complex and costly than in the past. No longer is dramatic turnabout in traditional U.S. the problem centered in Europe, as in the policy toward refugees to end geographic late 1940s, or in Africa, as in the early and political restrictions that have been 1960s when European emgires began in effect since 1952.

If Congress approves the Carter plan, to break up. Conflicts and harsh conditions now generate refugees in the United States would admit a minimum dozens of countries, creating logistical of 50,000 refugees each year-with proviand diplomatic headaches for any agency sions for a higher quota on a temporary basis. State Department officials estimate that tries to help.

Dozens of agencies provide aid, but that 10,000 refugees a month are entering there is no unified campaign. What's the country now. The estimated cost over more, international contributions for a five-year period-at least $1 billion.

At present, only 17,400 refugees are refugees are strictly voluntary, and accepted annually from communist budgets are meager.

Amid such problems, refugees' plights nations and the Middle East. All others worsen. For instance, Nguyen Thi compete to enter under existing immiimpossible-or Huong's child was born, lived and died gration quotas-almost during the 29-day journey aboard a on an emergency basis with the permission 50-foot boat carrying 73 Vietnamese. of the U.S. Attorney General.

Nineteen others died.

Almost one million refugees have enter"Everyone was being shot," recalled a ed under that authority-32,000 from the six-year-old Rhodesian girl who fled a ill-fated 1956 revolt in Hungary, 730,000 massacre with her younger sister and Cubans and 183,000 Indo-Chinese. The hiked two days and nights before finding admission of 41,000 more Indo-Chinese has been authorized, and 31,000 refugees refuge in Zambia.

What is needed for resettling such are expected from Soviet bloc countries 0 orphans and thousands of others, U.N. this year.

AFRICA Angola: 530,000 Burundi: 148,300 Equatorial Guinea: 90,000 Ethiopia: 795,000 Namibia: 45,000 Rhodesia: 644,000

Rwanda: 151,200 Zaire: 244,000 ASIA

Bunna: 190,000 Cambodia: 320,000 Laos: 569,000 Philippines: 90,000

Vietnam: 1,025,000 MIDDLE EAST Cyprus: 200,000 Iraq: 335,000 Israel (Palestinians): 1,757,000 Lebanon: 700,000

IN ADDITION, thousands leave the Soviet Union, Cuba and other countries annually for asylum elsewhere.

WESTERN HEMISPHERE U.S.: 734,000 Canada: 42,000 Argentina: 35,000 Brazil: 35,000 EUROPE France: 140,000 Switzerland: 30,000 United Kingdom: 150,000 West Germany: 120,000 AFRICA Algeria: 52,000 Angola: 180,000

Burundi: 50,000 Cameroon: 30,000 Gabon: 60,000 Mozambique: 100,000 Somalia: 550,000 Sudan: 250,000 Tanzania: 167,000 Uganda: 112,000 Zaire: 530,000 Zambia: 70,000 AUSTRALIA: 304,000 ASIA Bangladesh: 370,000 Burma: 50,000

China: 170,000 Laos: 450,000 Malaysia: 146,000 Thailand: 143,000 Vietnam: 320,000 MIDDLE EAST Cyprus: 200,000 Gaza: 350,000 Jordan: 683,000 Iran: 35,000 Lebanon: 912,000 Syria: 198,000 Turkey: 60,000 West Bank: 314,000

Note: Countries that have 30,000 or more refugees. Figures include persons displaced within their own nations.

A victim of the recent war in Laos, this crying child is typical of the refugees fleeing their homes to seek shelter elsewhere.

ALTOGETHER, the United States since 1945 has admitted 1.7 million refugees, most of whom have been assimilated as Americans: 700,000 after World War II, 32,000 Hungarians after the 1956 revolt, 730,000 Cubans since 1959 and 183,000 Indo-Chinese since 1975,

SPAN

As I speak of the developed nations, let me briefly discuss the topic of lowlevel radiation and announce a major new policy of President Carter and the United States. The risks to the people of the world from low-level radiation and the health risks attendant to the use of nuclear power are subjects much on the front pages of the world's newspapers, and much on the minds of the world's health leaders.

As a result of the accident at the nuclear plant at Three-Mile Island in the State of Pennsylvania, the people not only of my own nation but of the entire world have become acutely aware of the risks of nuclear power. President Carter considers nuclear power an energy resource of last resort. To the extent that we pursue this source of power, the safety and protection of individual human beings must be uppermost in our minds and must be at the foundation of the national and international policies we develop.

To help inform world debate on this subject, the President has directed that the information we obtain through our research and our experience about the health risks and health aspects of lowlevel radiation, and the health considerations in the development and use of nuclear power, be made available to all the peoples of the world.

This open sharing of knowledge is another concrete action by the United

Primary health care systems must make the best use of scarce resources, facilities and skilled people, and involve each community in its own health care.

States of America to demonstrate that issues of health for each member of the human family transcend issues of politics and nationalism.

We intend to disseminate through this organization, as well as directly, what we learn about the health risks of lowlevel radiation as soon as we learn it, so that every nation in the world will have as much knowledge as possible to protect the health and safety of its citizens as it decides issues related to the development and use of nuclear power.

Finally, let me underline our desire to maintain the integrity of the World Health Organization as a health organization.

Begun 31 years ago, this organization has flourished and has helped enhance the health of millions upon millions of human beings on every continent because, by and large, the organization has been free of extraneous political battles-political battles irrelevant to the mission of the World Health Organization.

We have had the judgment and genius,

the goodwill and good sense to set our concern about the health of humanity and our commitment to improve health everywhere on earth above narrow political considerations. In no organization of the United Nations has this principle been more important, and no organization of the United Nations has been better served by adherence to it.

It is imperative that we not violate this principle at this session of the World Health Assembly. Whatever the disputes among the Arab states and the Israelis and the Egyptians, there is ample room in the world political arena for their debate.

If these disputes concern health matters, we can discuss them here. But I urge that we at the assembly all remain faithful to our larger commitment to world health, and that we avoid rash actions that can do irreparable harm to the World Health Organization.

The path to "health for all by the year 2000" will be extraordinarily steep and difficult. There is no guarantee, given the enormity of the obstacles, that we will surmount them. But let us try together.

Certainly the risks of failure are far outweighed by the opportunities that the effort promises: opportunities to bring to people everywhere greater freedom from the persistent and debilitating scourges, disease and poverty, priceless opportunities to improve the health of every citizen of the 0 world.

CHANGE OF ADDRESS FORM

SPAN

To SPAN Magazine Subscription Service Post Box 213 New Delhi 110001

When notifying SPAN about a change in your address. please attach the address label from a recent SPAN envelope in addition to filling out the form below.

Since four to six weeks are needed to process a change of address. please let us know about any change promptly.

NEW ADDRESS Name Address

Bank Draft 0

LETTERS)

_

I enclose payment of Rs. 21 in favor of SPAN Magazine by

o

(USE BLOCK

_

Postal Order 0

"Ale

Payee"

Money Ord~r (receipt enclosed)

MAIL TO:

Circulation Manager. SPAN Magazine 24 Kasturba Gandhi Marg New Delhi 110001

.•.

..

~

,~.'\

)

-

I • ,

\ ~~,. ,

:

••

TB

-ftiLTIN .• 811ALL

Te.N

July 4,1776, America's Independence Day, is remembered with celebrations all over the country, but nowhere with such obvious nostalgia as in White Springs, a small town in Florida. Many of its 1,000 residents donate their time, talent and goods (two farmers donated 750 watermelons!) to help stage an old-fashioned celebration.

After the national anthem-sung by a local teen-ager (above)-there is a parade, games like the ever-popular three-legged race (left, top), fireworks, country music, and homespun entertainment like the medicine show (left, center), which traveled through the old West 'in the 19th century offering entertainment in the hope of selling patent medicines. Last year's celebrations were held at the Stephen Foster Memorial Center-an apt setting not only because of its vast grounds, amphitheater and the Suwanee River flowing by (popular for boat rides-left), but also because it is a memorial to the composer whose songs are part of the American folkloreSewanee River, Jeannie With the Light Brown Hair, Old Black Joe .... Besides, Stephen Foster, like the United States, was born on July 4!