October 1990

The old family farm barn is one of rura.l America's most famous-and most neglected-landmarks. This and many other symbols of old-style American farming are now being restored for modern use under the "Barn Again" program of the U.S. National Trust for Historic Preservation. Dismayed at the sad state of the barns and their replacement with uninspiring metal structures, the trust and Successful Farming magazine launched the program with a competition for projects to renovate barns by adapting them to modern usage without destroying their traditional character. More than 300 farmers from 34 states sent in entries; the costs of their projects ranged from $300 to $100,000. The 85 winners were selected on the basis of innovation, practicality, cost-effectiveness and good preservation practices. Stewart Schlafer (left) of Stockton, Illinois, now uses his renovated 100year-old horse barn to house dairy cows. Lee Gatzke (below) has converted his 1916 beef ranch in South Dakota into a storage barn.

A LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHER You may have noticed the change in this month's masthead. As SPAN's eighth editor, Guy E. Olson, is in place and has taken charge. I want to take this opportunity to welcome him aboard and to introduce him to you. Guy graduated from my alma mater, Southern Illinois University, in 1965 with a science degree in communications and went right into the Peace Corps, teaching English in Iran. When he returned to the United States, he was invited to stay on with the Peace Corps, traveling around the country to talk with university students about joining the volunteer program. He then became a staff correspondent for United Press International for about four years, based in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he met his wife to be, Dian, a native of Iran.

In 1973, Guy began his career with the United States Information Agency, the parent organization in Washington, D.C., for USIS. After working on the wirelessfileand moving up to publications, he was posted for four years in Vienna, Austria, where he edited several magazines that were distributed in Eastern Europe. From 1980 to 1987, he worked on America magazine in Washington, rising from text editor to deputy editor inchief.For the past three years, Guy has been editor in chiefof Al Majal, a monthly in Arabic distributed from Tunis, Tunisia, where, by the way, outgoing SPAN editor Bill McCurdy is headed. Guy and Dian made a brieftour of northern India in November 1989and say they are "looking forward to exploring extensively the rich and diverse cultures of this marvelousland." Dian isa professional family and drug-abuse counselor.

They have two sons attending universities in the United States.

The Middle East has been in the headlines for almost two months now. What has not made big news, however, is the emergence, in this crisis, of a new working relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union. For the first time since World War II, the two superpowers are arrayed on the same side. The swiftness with which the U.N. Security Council passed five resolutions against Iraq in as many weeks showsthat the two are working together to bring peace to the region. The emergency Helsinki summit on the Middle-East crisis cemented the operational partnership that President George Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev had explored earlier in Malta and Washington, D.C. In Helsinki the two closed ranks ever more firmly. (The full text of the joint statement issued by the two leaders after the one-day Helsinki summit and excerpts from the joint press conference they held after the meeting appear elsewhere in this issue.)

After the Helsinki meeting President Bush noted that there had been an evolution of "mutual understanding" over the yearsandwithout that "there wouldn't have been this cooperative feeling" between Washington and Moscow. "I feelwe're moving on the right track," he said of the relationship. The President acknowledged that differences remain. But the very fact that they can talk to each other with candor is important to avoid misunderstandings. As a result ofthat candor, the President said, "common ground surges ahead of...differences. We will continue to cooperate. " President Gorbachev said that the summit sessions "enrich our relationship" and "increase our trust." And when "trust is engendered" between superpower leaders, cooperation becomes possible.

As President Bush told ajoint session of the U.S. Congress, "We stand at a unique and extraordinary moment. The crisis in the Persian Gulf, as grave as it is, also offers a rare opportunity to move toward an historic period of cooperation. Out of these troubled times...a new world order can emerge."

-L.J.B.

2 Reshaping Our. Lives

12 15

by Thomas Y. Canby

Road to Eternity Saying it With Statistics An interview With C.R. Rao by Gayatri Viswanath

18 Capitalism as aMoral Force

21

Susan Leopold-A

by Paul Johnson

Space of My Own

by Nora Prentice

26 28 32

35 36

42 45

46

Focus On ...

The Chemistry of Teamwork by Paul Chance Resolving a World Crisis On the Lighter Side How the West Was Really Won by JamesA. Cox From the Master's Archives by Paul Goldberger Sticking Your Neck Out by David Brand Minding the Store

Front cover: AtWete Roger Chart~r, who lost his legs in an accident, has now become the first American amputee to run, thanks to his high-tech legs made of space age alloys, , composites, polyethylene and plastic. Advanced materials such as these a'rereshaping our lives. See story on pages 2-11.

Back cover: One of the exhibits at a show held earlier this year of Frank Lloyd Wright's .drawin,gs-Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, N.Y.; 1943. Concept sketch.

Pencil and color pencil on tracing paper; 76 x 63.5 em. Copyright Š The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, 1962. See also pages 42-44.

Publisher, Leonard J. Baldyga; Editor, Guy E. Olson Managing Editor, Himadri Dhanda; Associate Managing Editor, Krishan Gabrani; Senior Editor, Arulla Dasgupta; Copy Editors, A. Venkata Narayana, Snigdha Goswami; Editorial Assistants, Rocque Fernandes, Rashmi Goel; Photo Editor, Avinash Pasricha; Art Director, Nand Katyal; Associate ArtDirectQr, Kanti Roy; Artist, Hemant Bhatnagar; Production Assistant, Sanjay Pokhriyal; Circulation Manager, Y.P. Pandhi; Photographic Services: USIS Photographic Services Unit; Research Services: USIS Documentation Services; American Center Library, New Delhi.

Photograpbs: Front cover-eharles O'Rear, West Light. Inside front cover-courtesy National Trust for Historic Preservation. l-Avinash Pasricha. 2-3-Charles O'Rear, West Light except¡ 3 bottom courtesy Anderson Clinic, Alexandria, Virginia. 4illustration by Nand Katya1.6-7-eharles O'Rear, West Light, except 6 right by Daniel C. Alpert, courtesy Sandia National Laboratories. 8, l(}--illustrations by Nand Katyal. 12Pat Maera, courtesy Mrs. James Jones. lS,..-courtesy C.R. Rao. 2I-Nora Prentice; inset & 22-23-eourtesy Susan Leopold. 24-2S-Lee Sampson, courtesy John Weber Gallery, New York, except 24 left courtesy Susan Leopold. 26-A vinash Pasricha. 2~Dan Ford . ConnollY/Picture Group. 36-37, 39-The Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka, Kansas; 38, 39 bottom-illustrations

by Hemant Bhatllagar. 4O-41-Santa Fe Industries Inc. and The Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka, Kansas. 42-43-copyright The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, courtesy Phoenix Art Museum. 44-Paul Almasy. 46inside back cover-Barry Fitzgerald. Back cover-copyright The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, 1962.' .

by the United States Information Service, American Center, 24 Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi 110001 (phone: 3316841), on bebalf of the American Embassy, New Delhi. Printed at Thomson Press (India) Limited, Faridabad, Haryana. The opinions expressed in this magazine do not necessarily rellectthe views or policies of the U.s.

Government. Use o/SPAN articles in other public~tions is encouraged',except when copyrighted. For permission write to the Editor. Prke of magazine, one year's subscription (12 issues) Rs. 30; single copy, Rs. 5.

Published

Reshaping Our Lives

Man's increasing ability to create new materials by manipulating the atoms or molecules of existing ones is revolutionizing our world. While this alchemy has already made possible a host of wonder products such as artificial limbs, that work almost as well as our natural limbs, scientists are now talking of sweaters that change color with the turn of a dial.

KEN WHITTEN (seen above left with his son Jeretniah) of Duncan, Oklahoma, has artificial limbs that replace forearms lost in an accident. The prostheses, of carbon composites, use computer chips to send impulses from upper-arm muscles' to his new fingers.

A THALLIUM-BASED SUPERCONDUCTOR ( above) with the rare ability to suspend magnets both above and below it is enveloped by wisps of vapor from frigid nitrogen. Possible applications include ball bearings that operate with no friction.

Text by THOMAS Y. CANBY Photographs by CHARLES o'REAR

SINEWS of a composite of Kevlar and glass fibers form the shell of a miniature racing car being woven with a braiding machine during a class project at Philadelphia's Drexel University (above). While being lowered to the ground from a laboratory window, the car got an unplanned test of its toughness when it accidentally fell two stories to the sidewalk-and was unharmed.

DETERMINED to continue her ballet career despite degenerative arthritis, Zina Bethune (left, top) stretches in her Los Angeles studio. To ensure maximum flexibility, Bethune helped design her hip replacements (shown in an X ray at left). A porous cobalt-chrome coating on the implants permits strong bonding with bone.

e had jogged about 30 meters, and already the man beside me was " straining. But his face showed triumph-triumph over the impossible.

Seventeen years ago in Fremont, Nebraska, a seed truck crushed Roger Charter's legs. Both were amputated above the knee. For more than a"decade the onetime star athlete fought for a normal life with traditional wooden legs. But the hopelessness of it ate away at his spirit.

Now, thanks to that resilient spirit and new limbs made possible by the miracles of advanced materials, Charter (seen on cover) is the first such amputee ever to run.

"MyoId wooden legs weighed about seven kilograms apiece and hurt my stumps-I'd clomp two blocks and have to sit and rest," said Charter, today a dispatcher for the Union Pacific Railroad in Omaha. "My new legs weigh half as much and flex like real."

Those high-tech legs comprise a tidy little inventory of advanced materials: Knees and ankles of light titanium alloys born of the space age, shins of a powerful composite of carbon fibers pressed into a matrix of resin, sockets of a flexible but strong new polyethylene to fit comfortably on the residual limbs.

And the feet? "The most difficult part," acknowledged John Sabolich, president of a prosthetics firm in Oklahoma City and a pioneering designer in advanced materials.

"The human arch is like a complex leaf spring, almost impossible to duplicate.

Fortunately a new plastic provided the springiness. " Like Charter, all of us will find our future shaped in part by profound changes taking place in the stuff things are made of.

Plastics, so versatile that the same substance that makes garbage bags also armors U.S. Army tanks, have surpassed metals in volume sold. For tomorrow manufacturers are talking about synthetic fibers--{;ousins of the plastics-bringing us sweaters that change color with the turn of a dial and suits that change their cut at fashion's whim.

Composites, kilogram for kilogram the strongest of all materials, have moved beyond pricey tennis rackets and golf clubs into the sinews of aircraft and missiles and now enter mass production. Ceramics, everyone's dream material but a nightmare to work with, soon will bring cleanerrunning auto engines in the fight against air pollution and global warming.

What about steel and other alloys, shoul-

W

dered aside by the flashy synthetics? They are countering with new blends to recapture old markets. Even staid concrete is blossoming. There's a materials scientist out there who is casting cement coil springs, and another who built a concrete hang glider.

The people concocting these materials will tell you they are working a revolution.

"For the first time in history," observed Merton Flemings of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), "we can design materials precisely to fit our needs, molecule by molecule, atom by atom."

They get help from incredibly sophisticated tools. New microscopes reveal atoms nestled in their lattices almost as clearly as we see eggs in a carton. Lasers lay down atoms on surfaces so artfully as to endow them with entirely new properties: Insulators become conductors, metals be-

come glasses. Magnetic cannons firing ion beams harden metals and ceramics against corrosives. Fulfilling an age-old dream, computer graphics enable materials scientists to study a complex molecule on a screen, rotate its shining galaxy of atoms, and select where to place an additional atom for a desired effect.

Yesterday materials makers were mainly metallurgists. Today they must also be chemists, ceramists, engineers and physicists. In their labs you often see them staring at the wall; follow their gaze and you see a copy of the periodic table, that cryptic tabulation of the elements they so cleverly manipulate.

"Materials are the building blocks of the future," observed Rudy Pariser, former research director for the Du Pont Company. "Today's advanced material is tomorrow's commodity."

"Tomorrow" can be a long time: On average, a decade elapses between test tube and marketplace for a new material, with exhaustive testing in between. Many deplore this slowness. But haste can be costly" I heard some of the horror stories: • How Britain's Rolls-Royce Ltd., switching from metal jet-engine blades to light composites, went bust because the blades had not received a rigorous "goose test" to determine the effect of bird impacts-and they shattered. • How U.S. Liberty ships, welded together by the hundreds during World War II, often sank with tragic loss of life because defective steel lost its toughness in the icy North Atlantic, permitting small cracks to explode into catastrophic rents.

The usual caution flew out the window, though, with the recent uproar over superconductors.

Even in the arcane world of physics, superconductivity stands as a marvel: A state of matter in which electricity flows forever without resistance. No current is lost, no heat generated in superconductivity. It does not come easily. Superconductors lose electrical resistance only when subjected to intense cold. Traditionally this has required immersion in liquid helium at 4 Kelvin ( - 269°C). This makes superconductivity cumbersome and vastly expensive, sharply limiting its uses. (We encounter it most frequently in the costly medical process known as magnetic resonance imaging.)

Since its discovery in 1911, scientists have searched for materials that would "go superconductive" at higher temperatures.

They made little progress until 1986, when physicists Georg Bednorz and Alex Muller in Zurich cooled a black ceramic pellet and saw it lose resistance at 30 Kelvin (K).

Many compare the significance of their Nobel Prize-winning achievement to the development three decades earlier of the famed transistor.

Scientists rushed to their labs, spurred by the new discovery. Their goal was a material that would superconduct at a temperature above 17K-still cold, but the point at which nitrogen liquefies. Nitrogen is easier to handle than liquid helium and could reduce costs to one-tenth.

The Bednorz-Muller ceramic contained the rare earth lanthanum-not your everyday conductor-along with barium, copper and oxygen. Experiments that followed successfully replaced lanthanum with yttrium, then bismuth, and then thallium,

and steadily increased the critical temperature. The historic leap-to 90Kcame with an yttrium compound.

It triggered off a scientific Mount St. Helens.

Around the world TV cameras focused on coin-size magnets magically floating above superconducting ceramic disks amid mists of liquid nitrogen. Scientists regaled the press with visions of miniaturized superconducting motors, massive underground magnets storing electricity to power entire cities, transmission lines carrying current without loss of an electron and, most exciting of all, magnetically levitated trains whispering across the land at about 500 kilometers an hour.

How far off are such dramatic applications? Impressive progress is being made, but the obstacles are daunting. The crumbly ceramics of high-temperature superconductors lack the flexibility of metallic wires. They balk at carrying heavy current loads: Exceed the critical current point, and they cease to superconduct. Solutions lag because scientists do not yet understand the basic physics involved-how high-temperature superconductors work. The fact that they do work, however, has stimulated prodigious efforts to harness them.

One of the most intriguing artifacts to date is a small superconducting generator made in England. Its fist-size coil carries ceramic wire fabricated by Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) in Runcorn. Though years from commercialization, it generates small amounts of power-and encouragement for the future.

Simpler superconducting devices are also being developed, mainly for use in passive electronics systems such as communications receivers and amplifiers.

"We were already in the ceramics business when the new superconductors came on the scene," said Richard Cass of HiTc Superconco in New Hope, Pennsylvania.

"Radar receivers with our superconducting components give a signal at least 50 times stronger than copper; half a dozen of them are already being tested by the U.S. Army."

In what guise will high-temperature superconductors first serve us consumers?

"Possibly in your TV antenna," said Casso "A component the size of a golf ball gives vastly better reception than conventional metal. Companies are developing liquid-nitrogen coolers the size of a cigarette pack. The two could fit inside your television set. Allow three years for

the superconducting element."

The advantages that superconductors offer in electronics are not lost on the U.S. military. The army, navy, air force and Strategic Defense Initiative Office have strong programs for applications research.

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency funds 37 separate projects at a total cost of $30 mil1ion a year. The appeal is strongest in space defense, where launch costs of $22,000 a kilogram inspire miniaturization.

"We're going to need tremendous computational power in space," said Harold Weinstock, who coordinates the U.S. Air Force program. "A Cray 2 computer is not large-no bigger than a few file cabinets.

But there's the monstrous cooling system, with its huge power requirements. Superconductors could slash its size and reduce the power need drastical1y."

Computer circuitry itself offers an ob-

Nature makes extremely tough objects-seashells, ivory, bone. Man has now learned the secret. In shells, polymers unite the calcium carbonate particles so they pack tightly, without voids. Scientists have similarly used a polymer lubricant to seal the air holes in cement.

vious market for superconductors.

Here the current would be carried by thin films, just as films of gold and other conductors form the nerve systems of today's chips.

Film experiments held high priority when I visited IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center in New York.

"We're working with all three of the ceramic superconductors," said IBM's Robert Laibowitz in his lab. "They can carry mil1ions of amperes per square centimeter--enough to operate many electronic devices.

"But it's hard to reproduce the films reliably. Further, the heat required to make superconducting films is too much for the silicon chips they attach to. It could take years to work things out, but we're making progress. " So important is this technology to American competitiveness that a presidential advisory committee has urged special

collaboration between American business, universities and government.

IBM has joined forces with two other research leviathans, AT&T Bell Laboratories and MIT. A similar consortium links Du Pont, Hewlett-Packard and Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

The effort to tame high-temperature superconductors ferments worldwide. I saw intensive programs in Britain, France and West Germany. All three are dwarfed by Japan's.

Japanese scientists have filed more patent applications for superconductors than the rest of the world combined.

What about the ultimate goal, a material that superconducts at room temperature?

No need then for awkward liquid nitrogen.

Many scientists believe that if such a substance exists, its discovery awaits understanding of how high temperature superconductivity works.

Oddly it was ceramics, today's headline material, that gave birth to materials science some 13,000 years ago. Villagers in Japan discovered that if you cooked a clay vessel, it hardened into an entirely new substance-eeramic pottery-and retained its hardness ever after. Unknowingly these early ceramists caused atoms in the clay to lock tightly together, in what chemists call covalent and ionic bonding.

Today ceramics are riding a resurgence of interest that some call the New Stone Age. Partisans point out that compared with steel, ceramics can be harder, lighter, stiffer and more resistant to heat and corrosion.

They can. But go back again to that ancient pottery: Drop it and it shatters.

Today's ceramics behave almost the same.

"The problem is brittleness," explained Victor Zackay, a materials specialist with Teledyne Corporation.

"Companies have spent thousands of millions of dollars to develop useful ceramic devices, and in most cases they have failed because of brittleness. Metals, because of their crystalline structure, can deform under stress instead of fracturing, and still do their job. Stress ceramics, and their atomic bonding prevents the crystalline planes from sliding over each other--deforming.

Instead a crack opens, and the object fails catastrophically.

"Before ceramics are accepted as reliable, they must be made so they can fail gracefully. This will not be easy. But ceramics offer far too many advantages to discourage trying."

More reflective than a bathroom mirror, a giant heliostat focuses sunlight for generating energy at the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico.

A silvered polymer film coats a thin metal membrane stretched over a steel hoop eight meters in diameter, producing a mirror far lighter than conventional glass for easy mounting and aiming.

Man-made polymers, known familiarly as plastics and synthetic fibers, have profoundly changed our material world. Most are built on carbon molecules found in petroleum and other hydrocarbons.

Their potential is limitless, with manufacturers enhancing them with one property after another-stiffness, toughness, flame retardation, lubrication, color"and we're only beginning," say chemists.

The track is never muddy at Remington Park in Oklahoma City, where the "dirt" is composed of polymercoated sand particles (above). Jockeys are pleased with the new surface since it is fast and soft.

Thanks to their amazing properties, plastics have a versatility that allows them to be adapted for a variety of uses. This has, however, exacerbated the waste problem at landfills and led to unsightly piles of refuse.

Attempts are now being made to make plastics that degrade either in sunlight, bacterially, or chemically.

A lightning bolt or a nuclear blast would never blind a pilot wearing these goggles (left) developed by Sandia National Laboratories. Made of polarized glass and a ceramic called PLZT, the lenses are clear when linked to an electric current. A flash breaks the circuit, instantaneously blocking all light.

Light in weight and resistant to heat and corrosion, ceramics hold promise for widespread use. Materials scientists are now focusing on overcoming one limiting weakness of ceramics-brittleness.

The driving dream is the ceramic engine.

"Ceramic engine parts offer enormous advantages over metals," said Richard Alliegro of the Norton Company, a Massachusetts research and development firm that already markets ceramic ball bearings. "Engines would run more efficiently if they could run hotter..But metal would melt; instead we install costly radiators to get rid of that valuable heat. With ceramics we can harness the heat-and get rid of the bulky radiator."

The U.S. government effort too has focused on the ceramic auto engine. To me it seemed quite skimpily funded; R&D for ceramic car parts received only $11.3 million for fiscal year 1989. A similar program develops ceramics for diesel truck engines.

Both are run by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

The auto engine that emerges from the DOE program will be different from the one in your car. Instead of being powered by pistons, it will use a ceramic gas turbine strikingly similar to a jet aircraft's propulsion system.

"Ceramic car engines will run at 1,370°C," said Saunders Kramer, manager of the DOE program. "So far the rotors and other ceramic parts test well to I,200°C and then fail rapidly. We need better ceramic powders to remove flaws and eliminate additives used in the baking process."

How long before ceramic engines hit U.S. highways? "We have millions of test kilometers to go before we prove them," said Arvid Pasto of GTE, the electronics giant. "We've reduced parts failures to one in a million. The goal is one in a thousand million. I see commercialization in the late 1990s." Asserts Kramer, "We'll have automotive gas turbines on the road by the year 200o-at worst."

Two advanced ceramics, both developed

by Corning Incorporated, already play roles in the daily lives of many Americans.

One is the catalytic converter in the car's exhaust system-a triumph of ceramic fabrication. The other is Corning Ware, a basic feature in 70 percent of U.S. kitchens.

Ceramics find increasing use as thin coatings on objects made of conventional materials. At American hardware stores, the drill bits with the high price tags are coated with titanium nitride, a ceramic that extends the cutting life fivefold over steel.

Many experts see in coatings a way to escape ceramics' vexing problems of brittleness and shaping.

The expertise of U.S. ceramic makers is

growing. The Carborundum Company, a U.S. subsidiary of British Petroleum, is building a plant in West Germany to manufacture silicon carbide seal rings for European autos. GTE turns out tens of thousands of small ceramic cutting tools daily. At Norton, Jack Lucek conducted me through the process that converts silicon nitride powder into gleaming black ball bearings.

Could these intriguing spheres defy the ceramics' age-old curse of brittleness? "Try and break them," suggested Lucek.

I took two the size of marbles to a blacksmith shop in Maryland. Smithies Peter Austin and Dana Dameron locked tongs around one, then bludgeoned it mercilessly with a sledgehammer. Not a nick marred the ball bearing. But the steel plate beneath wore deep dimples from the blows. The tingling wonder we felt-was it a touch of ceramic fever?

For a new material to succeed, it usually must be able to muscle aside a metal or glass; after all, they got there first. The masters of this have been the synthetic plastics, a family of materials that didn't exist a century ago.

In 1907 Belgian immigrant Leo Baekeland invented Bakelite, a hard synthetic substance for'making billiard balls and wire insulation. But Baekeland did not completely understand the complex chemistry he exploited.

That triumph fell to Du Pont chemist Wallace H. Carothers. In the 1930s he combined carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen-the basic ingredients of you and me-into long molecular chains. Neoprene and nylon were the results-the first wholly synthetic materials ever made by a knowing manipulation of molecular structure.

They launched the materials revolution that now reshapes our world.

"Our building units," explained Du

Pont's Pariser, "are simple carbon-based molecules known as monomers, derived from oil, natural gas and coal. With the help of catalysts we connect monomers into long molecular chains known as polymers. The shape of a chain helps determine a polymer's properties.

"With Kevlar, an aramid fiber, the molecules lie straight, giving strength and stiffness. In synthetic rubber they're a tangle; stretch them straight and they try to curl up again like rubber bands, giving springiness."

Competition is keen in materials development. But nowhere is it as fierce as in the group of polymers called plastics.

Today 60,000 different plastics vie for a place in the American market. Each week six or so new ones arrive at Underwriters Laboratories (UL) outside Chicago, where rigid testing for flammability and other properties qualifies plastics for components of UL-listed products.

Key targets, naturally, are Detroit's auto assembly lines, which feed so heavily on metals and glass. At GE's Application Development Center in suburban Southfield, a display of plastic car parts-fenders, bumpers, control panels-peered like safari trophies from a lobby wall.

"One of our best known successes is plastic headlamps," said Adgild Hop, the center's director. "Most Ford models use our integrated Lexan units." He referred to GE's renowned see-through plastic that also gives bulletproof protection to the Pontiff in his Popemobile. More recent breakthroughs for the auto industry are thermoplastic bumpers and fenders.

But the plastics people admit to problems. Plastics can cost $2 to $4 a kilogram, while metals cost pennies. And in the cutthroat auto business a difference of pennies makes decisions. Further, plastic parts don't always work as one-for-one replacements for metal.

Each year U.S. companies make 30 million tons of plastics-half the tQnnage of the nation's wheat crop. Thirty percent goes into packaging-the myriad bags, bottles and boxes that find niches in every environment from freezer to microwave.

Far too many of these find a final niche in landfills or on the roadside.

Are the manufacturers responding?

They are, along with a score of concerned state legislatures. The major debate is not whether to act, but how: Should plastics be required to be degradable, like paper? Or should they be recyclable, like

materials such as steel and aluminum?

Your average plastic container will linger on the roadside perhaps two centuries before those tight polymer molecules break down. How to hasten this? Research takes three approaches: Biodegradability, in which a natural additive such as cornstarch gives bacteria a toehold; chemical degradation, in which additives cause the plastic to crumble away; and photodegradability, in which the sun's ultraviolet light attacks the molecules.

But degradability can weaken plastics.

And environmentalists question the effects of decay residues. Degradability also could conflict with recycling, now gaining momentum in the United States.

To foster recycling, which now recaptures less than one percent of all plastics, nine American states have laws requiring a deposit on plastic bottles.

States are also weighing mandatory collection of plastics, now law in Rhode Island.

Recycling gets a boost with a joint venture by Du Pont and Waste Management, Inc. This year Du Pont opens the first two of five planned recycling plants, with trucks delivering an initial 14 million kilograms a year.

GE is pushing both reusability and recycling. Harking back to the days of milk bottles, the company produces Lexan resin for milk containers in America that some dairies will buy back from the customer.

GE's recycling effort is tied to the expectation that thermoplastics will score as major new materials in autos and housing. In October 1988 GE opened a prototype dwelling that is 30 percent plastic; the eventual goal is 75 percent. Still some years down the road are GE's recyclable plastic car bodies-sedan, convertible, pickup, van-that fit interchangeably on the owner's steel frame.

Polymers often are called the most versatile material. Part of the promise: Body implants. All too many of us will have a polymer part in us someday. Silicone elastomer, the soft springy polymer developed by Dow Corning, already replaces arthritic finger joints and forms a base for breast reconstruction. When little Jessica McClure was trapped for two-anda-half days in a Texas well and suffered severe head abrasions, silicone balloons stretched the adjoining skin until it was sufficient to cover her wounds.

Optoelectronics. When electronic circuitry yields to faster, light-activated devices, polymers could provide the switches.

"Light moves along the chain molecules," explained Ivan Goldfarb of Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. "Polarizing polymers could switch the light on and off 100,000 times as fast as a chip."

Magic membranes. The same polymer membrane used for concentrating frozen orange juice can remove salts from seawater. Du Pont has a joint venture with Saudi Arabia to build such a desalination facility. Allied-Signal Corporation uses membranes to separate out and" recover industrial acids that would otherwise escape into the environment.

Conductors. Plastic has long coated electric wiring as insulation. Can it also be conductive? "Its potential for carrying current approaches that of copper," said Alan Heeger at the University of California in Santa Barbara.

Added colleague Paul Smith: "Conductive polymers could give us the ultralight batteries we need for the electric auto."

Scientists are now creating composites with properties that nature has given to some of its most lasting and useful creations. A tree, for example, is a magnificent composite, with flexible fibers of cellulose in a matrix of rigid lignin.

Take a polymer resin, add some tough fibers and cook it a while, and you have an example of another breed of material, the composites.

Far stronger than steel by weight, composites are light. And their use is growing by leaps and bounds.

"In nature most useful things are made of fibrous composites," explained Frank Ko of Drexel University in Philadelphia.

"A tree is a magnificent composite, with flexible fibers of cellulose in a matrix of rigid lignin."

Composites enjoy another priceless advantage: The fibers deter cracking in otherwise brittle materials. Israelite builders knew this in Old Testament times.

Exodus 5 tells how they mixed straw with clay, doubtless to blunt the cracks that plague drying brick.

Many of us first met man-made composites in leisure equipment: The fiberglass boat, the fiber-reinforced tennis racket, golf club or fishing rod. They capitalize on

composites' extraordinary strength and lightness-and on sportsmen's willingness to pay: Composites can be costly.

Lightness and strength endear composites to those who make things fly. The master artist in this medium is designer Burt Rutan, whose all-composite Voyager circled the globe without refueling in 1986.

Rutan's composite kits for homebuilt planes have been assembled in thousands of U.S. garages. He also helped design Beech Aircraft's Starship, the first allcomposite corporate plane.

A vital aerospace composite is known as carbon-carbon--earbon fibers fused in a carbon matrix. It is unusual in that it thrives on heat. Where most other materials soften as temperatures rise, carboncarbon tenaciously grows stronger. But it has a mortal enemy-oxygen.

Heat it in air and it deteriorates. One cure is a protective coating, usually ceramic. Not surprisingly, coated carbon-carbon is a favorite of spacecraft and missile makers, whose products endure torments of heat.

"We're making 101 different hot parts for the new space shuttle Endeavor," said Garland Whisenhunt, a production manager for the LTV Corporation near Dallas.

"The leading edges of the wings reach I,425°C. During re-entry the astronauts see them glow."

Here at the LTV factory technicians were cutting plies of woven fiber and stacking them for the shuttle's laminated leading wing edges. Slowly a stack grew, until a final fabric sandwich stood 38 plies thick in places. Then the stack disappeared into an ovenlike autoclave for curing. Afterward it would be soaked four times in alcohol and recooked four times, densifying the carbon matrix. Next would come a ceramic coating to protect against oxygen.

This laborious process helps explain composites' costliness. Automation has proved difficult; only human hands can reliably lay up those floppy plies. This shortcoming reportedly has been partly solved at the Northrop Company in making the composite B-2 "Stealth" bomber.

The process still is classified.

What if you could braid your fibers in a three-dimensional pattern, like the strands of a rope? That would get rid of the tedious lamination process and the threat of delamination, which is always a worry.

The industry is moving fast in this direction. A guiding force is Drexel's Frank Ko, whose ingenuity with fibers has spread its web worldwide. I followed a thread to the

Atlantic Research Corporation (ARC) in Virginia.

"Frank Ko helped us set up in 3-D braiding," said ARC's Jerry L. Fields.

"Our initial output was small-primarily rocket nozzles for the Strategic Defense Initiative-but applications are doubling every year." Richard Brown showed me ARC"s newest cost cutter-a high-speed braider developed at North Carolina State University that handles 9,000 fiber ends simultaneously, doing in one hour what takes a manual braider a week.

Such advances are leading the new composites into punishing arenas that are becoming too hostile for most metals-jet engines and the National Aerospace Plane, or X-30. If the remarkable X-30 ever f1iesand that is not a certainty-it will launch America into the era of hypersonic travel.

Attaining orbital speed of 27,000 kilometers an hour, it will subject materials to stresses of unprecedented ferocity.

Jet engines, properly called gas turbines, have demanded miracle materials since they first flew in World War II. They are extraordinary machines. Pratt & Whitney's powerful F-IOO can propel an F-15 fighter straight up at 300 meters per second. Yet military and commercial jets must perform flawlessly. "If something goes wrong," engineers like to say, "you can't go off and park on a cloud."

Jet engineers turned to titanium for lightness, then to superalloys of nickel and cobalt to handle fierce temperatures. Even so, turbine blades in an engine's "hot section" must be air-cooled or they will melt; this waste of hea t and oxygen slashes combustion efficiency.

An ambitious U.S. government program aims to double engine performance by the year 2000. Composites dominate prospective materials, as they do for the X-30. In a handful of leading American labs I saw newborn composite materials that someday will reign in sky and space: • At United Technologies Corporation in Connecticut, a glass matrix grips silicon carbide fibers to form the composite Compglas. Strong and heat resistant, it holds promise both for engines and airframes.

• Textron of Massachusetts encases continuous silicon carbide fibers of its own manufacture in a powerful matrix of titanium-part of the family of materials known as metal-matrix composites.

A strong candidate for the skin or skeleton of the X-30 aircraft.

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• Martin Marietta Laboratories in Baltimore is perfecting the X-D process, in which microparticles of titanium diboride, formed chemically in a titanium-aluminum alloy, create a composite that withstands prolonged heat. Another X-30 possibility.

• Lanxide Corporation of Delaware holds patents on an ingenious process in which molten metal, penetrating a fiber preform, reacts with a gas to form a ceramic matrix, producing densified composites that need little or no shaping. For jetengine parts.

To retain the advantages of composites but reduce problems of shaping and densification, American companies often turn to short fibers that can be batch-mixed with the matrix.

A growing number of automobile flat parts-hoods, doors, roofs-are pressed from sheet-molding compound, a plastic reinforced with 2.5-centimeter-long glass fibers.

This technology began with Chevrolet's Corvettes and now is much improved.

Smaller fibers, grown as single crystals, are known as whiskers.

Advanced Composite Materials of South Carolina mixes whiskers derived from rice hulls in a ceramic matrix. Because of the compatibility of whiskers and matrix, they form a composite that is strong and tough-a historic defeat for ceramic brittleness.

These silicon carbide whiskers are minute-shorter than the thickness of a human hair. "They pin ceramic crystals together just like nails join two boards," said Paul Becher of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which developed the composite.

At Wright-Patterson I saw what may become the perfect composite-now merely an embryonic goo in a beaker. "The polymer molecules are tiny rods," explained Tobey Cordell.' "Dissolved in a solution, they could potentially be processed into self-reinforced finished shapes-the ultimate composite."

A bad time, one might say, to be in the metals business: Plastics invading, composites on the march, ceramics poised to strike.

But in the tradition of challenge breeding response, steel and aluminum are vigorously fighting back.

Steel has reversed its retreat from the auto assembly line with alloys whose stiffness allows them to be stamped out with remarkable thinness, slashing weight.

Military needs generate remarkable alloys. In Vietnam helicopters often crashed when lube lines were hit. Using a specialty steel made by the Carpenter Technology Corporation of Pennsylvania, the gears of the U.S. Marine Corps' new vertical takeoff plane, the Osprey, can work as long as 30 minutes without lubrication.

Aluminum alloys find a welcome new ally in the metal lithium .

"You realize why," said Donald Lovell of Boeing, "when you look at the periodic table. Lithium is the third lightest element, after hydrogen and helium. Each percent of lithium you add reduces aluminum's weigh t by three percen t. " Lithium is dangerous to handle, reacting explosively with water when molten. But several American aluminum companies, led by Alcoa and Alcan, have revamped . furnaces to make these alloys. "Lightness and stiffness make them ideal for satellites," said Jeffrey Wadsworth of Lockheed Missiles and Space Company, the biggest user.

Since the bronze age new metals have been made by alloying. Today they often are created by new methods of milling or processing. Some of the more promising new processes are: Superplastic forming. Metals having small crystalline grains often can be stretched outlandishly-I,OOO percentand grow stronger in the process. Long a laboratory curiosity, superplasticity emerges as a bonanza, particularly in forming complex shapes with minimal energy at low temperature. A superplastic ultrahighcarbon steel invented by Oleg Sherby of Stanford University, for example, shrinks five costly operations into one.

Rapid solidification. Spray mo!ten metal in a cold environment, and the tiny particles cool at a breathtaking rate-a million degrees a second. Known as rapid solidification (RS), the process freezes the atoms in place before they can align in a crystalline lattice. "RS creates a new state of matter," said Nicholas DeCristofaro of Allied-Signal, "metals with new structures and new properties of magnetism, strength, stiffness, and heat and corrosion resistance."

RS appears poised for explosive application. Allied-Signal has invested heavily in a

magnetic iron alloy now being installed in America's 40 million transformers; the annual energy savings may reach $3,000 million. Pratt & Whitney is introducing RS super alloys into jet engines and the power system for the X-30. The process could banish problems associated with using beryllium and magnesium-both much lighter than aluminum.

Mechanical alloying. In a conventional alIoy two or more molten metals combine to form a third, different metal. Mix metals cold and pulverize them, however, and they combine, yet retain their individual properties. This is mechanical alloying. The novel process, pioneered by Inco Alloys, already produces some of the hottest parts for jet engines.

An irascible family of metals, so brittle they can shatter if you drop a wrench on them, is gaining favor with engineers who value lightness and heat tolerance. These are the intermetallics, chemical combinations of two metals, such as titanium and aluminum, that form a compound unlike either individual constituent.

"They're moving up amazingly fast and could fly on the aerospace plane," said Donald Shockey of SRI International.

Can a substance as weak as uncooked spaghetti be the world's number one structural material? Cement is that weak, and when mixed with sand and gravel it is number one-the concrete of our buildings.

Each year the world uses 5,000 million tons.

"Concrete is 3,000 times more brittle than steel," said Derek Birchall ofImperial Chemical. "Yet nature, using calcium salts similar to those in cement, makes extremely tough objects-seashells, ivory, bone.

We've learned the secret.

"In shells nature uses a polymer to unite the calcium carbonate particles so they pack tightly, without voids. We discovered that our cement was fulI of microscopic air holes left by water during curing. By adding a polymer lubricant, we came up with a dough like cement you can mold in all kinds of shapes."

All kinds indeed. Birchall strummed a cement guitar, bounced cement coil springs on his desk, shone a light through a sheet of cement as thin as paper.

Supple canoes made of concrete already navigate lakes and streams. On gossamer wings of concrete reinforced with fiberglass mesh, a hang glider built by Robert Wheen of the University of Sydney in Australia has made its maiden manned flight.

The traditional concrete is a composite,

often strengthened by fibers of steel reinforcing bars. This is the stuff of buildings and bridges. When bridges collapse, the cause often lies in corrosion attacking the rebars because of an electrical reaction with the concrete-a process greatly accelerated by use of de-icing salts.

Collapses occur in the United States all too frequently-and often with loss of life.

Of America's 576,000 bridges, 135,000 are considered structurally deficient. "Bridge deterioration is one of the largest problems facing our transportation system," said Damian Kulash of the U.S. Strategic Highway Research Program.

Epoxy-coated rebars now help fight salt corrosion.

Low-porosity concretes and glass-fiber reinforcement are under development. The state of Missouri has taken the lead in a promising technology

Combining carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen-the basic ingredients of the human bodyinto long molecular chains known as polymers, a Du Pont chemist launched a materials revolution that has produced strong, versatile and flexible materials such as plastic and nylon. Although known to man for only half a century, polymerfiber technology has served the web-weaving spider for aeons.

known as cathodic protection, in which a weak electric current draws corroding ions away from the rebars.

What about making materials in space?

Would orbiting laboratories open new opportunities?

Unquestionably.

But I found less enthusiasm than I had expected. A problem is launch costs. Call it the Rumpelstiltskin syndrome.

"If the legendary Rumpelstiltskin were to take up straw in the space shuttle and fulfill his dream of turning it to gold," said Frank Lemkey of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, "he would lose money. Transportation is too costly. Only a few photonic devices and pharmaceutical materials could come close to acquii'ing the needed added value if made in space."

Lemkey continued, "Space offers definite advantages. A high-quality vacuum, cosmic radiation, microgravity. But gravity is a weak force that we're used to coping with.

On the positive side, we can accomplish valuable science in space, studying principles that offer pathways to new materials on Earth."

As materials grow more complex, they become more difficult to make uniformly.

An answer lies in intelligent processing, a program of automated quality control spearheaded by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which was formerly known as the Bureau of Standards.

Explained Lyle Schwartz ofNIST: "Sensors analyze a material as it is being processed, warning computers to correct errors. We're now doing this experimentally with aluminum products and metal powders, working with industry."

Today's materials serve us mutely, unable to warn of problems of overload or impending failure. How helpful if they could give warning: To an aircraft about ice forming on the wings, to an office building about the mounting stresses of a hurricane, to a window about sunlight overheating a room. And how helpful if those structures could respond with remedial action.

Such vocal materials (naturally they are calIed "smart") already are in the U.S. research labs. The secret is built-in sensors: In the wing to signal a microcomputer to change the configuration for more lift, in the building walls to activate braces against sway, in the window glass to suffuse it with reflective coloration. "The materials will respond like nature does," said Du Pont's Richard Hess, "like a tree leaf curling protectively in a drought."

Like nature. For materials scientists, the perfection of a tree, a bone, a spiderweb remains the distant goal. "We still can't begin to match them," acknowledged ICI's Birchall.

The quest wilI go on, for the soundest of reasons. "Ultimately," noted Mary Good of Allied-Signal, "materials development will determine our standard of living."

And then there is Frisch's Law, as expounded by Eldon Frisch, a longtime body-parts specialist with Dow Corning: "In the world of materials," he observes, "nothing is ever good enough."

0 About the Author: Thomas Y. Canby is a senior assistant editor with National Geographic.

ROAD TO

Born in 1921 in Robinson, a small town in rural Illinois, James Jones was a curiously American phenomenon-the great novelist who comes out of nowhere, equipped only with talent and a fierce determination to write. Jones's love of literature was untutored, innate. Without money for college-his father was an alcoholic dentist whose fate is described in these letters-and without prospects, Jones enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1939 and was shipped off to Hawaii. Transferred to the infantry, he was subjected to the ordeal of hand-to-hand combat at Guadalcanal. It was during these traumatic years that he acquired the material for two of his greatest novels, From Here to Eternity and The Thin Red Line.

As a correspondent, Jones was eloquent--evert if his grammar and spelling were impressionistic. In letters to his brother, Jeff, and his editor, the legendary Maxwell Perkins, written during the 1940s, Jones described both his faltering, tentative apprenticeship and the certainty that he was destined to become a novelist. What comes through in the excerpts printed here is a conviction that writing was-had to be-his vocation. It was a conviction that never left him. Jones died of congestive heart failure in 1977, dictating the final passages of his last war novel, Whistle, from a hospital bed in Southampton, Long Island.

To Reach Eternity: The Letters of James Jones, edited by George Hendrick, with permission of Gloria Jones, was published by Random House last year.

[HAWAII] MONDAY [APRIL] THE 7TH [1941] Dear Jeff, ... I'm sorry I haven't written you for so long. Now that I'm a clerk in the orderly room, I've been spending all my spare time in there, writing. I have full access to the place, and it's a good place to write: no one can come in and bother me, and I can stay there all night, if I choose.

I'm really serious about this writing thing. What time I haven't been writing, I've been reading: Thomas Wolfe, if you know who he is. His writing is mostly built about the central character of a writer, himself. Altho it's fiction, it deals with his life and experiences. In my opinion, little as it's worth, he is the greatest writer that has lived, Shakespeare included. He is a genius. That is the only way to describe him. And in reading of his childhood, his youth, and his struggles to get out of him, the things he wanted to say, I can find an almost exact parallel with myself. Of course details are different, but the general trend is practically the same.

Now don't misunderstand me. I'm not stating I'm a genius, altho I'd like to think I was for it would give me confidence I need; even if I did rank as a genius in the eighth grade, according to the Stanford Achievement Tests.

I, too, like Wolfe, have felt myself different from other kids, especially while I was in high school: I never seemed to mix with the other kids; I didn't think at all like they did; I never ran around with the gang of boys that were the elite of the campus, nor did I run around with the gang that envied them and disliked them, and ganged together in a sort of mutual protection, because they were excluded from the select group: I did feel hurt about it, and I wasn't able to understand it; but I don't think I was little about it. I fell into the habit of going with myself, and expressing my "radical" thoughts to no one. Even at home they didn't see things the way I did. Don't think I'm a victim of an inferiority complex or an aesthete, who is always complaining he is misunderstood, because I'm not. I don't feel sorry for myself. I've gotten so that I like my own company. I can understand me better thaI] anyone I know.

Anyway, it seems I've always felt a hunger and unrest that nothing could satisfy. I couldn't understand what it was. It was like an idea for a story you have in the back of your head that you can'tquite grasp. You know it's there, but it keeps receding before your grasp like a mist. Do you remember when I fell so hard for that girl in Findlay?! (If you don't remember her name, then I

Excerpted

from

with permission Copyright

Š

To Reach Eternity: The Letters of James Jones. edited by George of Gloria

1989 George

Jones,

published

Hendrick

by Random

and Gloria

Jones.

House.

Hendrick,

won't say it for the thing is forgotten and in the past now.) We had even talked about getting married. But something, some vague wisp of dissatisfaction kept sifting thru my mind. I didn't know what it was then. I think I do now: It's that desire to write, to be famous and adored, to be known and talked about by people I've never seen. Yet, that's not ail it is. It's more than that. I-well, I don't want to go melodramatic on you. I'm afraid you'll laugh at me. Here's the way I wrote in one of the things I wrote a while back: "But since he had been in the army, he had come tQ understand his ungraspable longing and his phantasmal and bellyshrinking dissatisfaction: there were such things he wanted to be, to do, to write: He wanted to be the voice that shrieked out the agony of frustration and lostness and despair and loneliness, that all men feel, yet cannot understand; the voice that rolled forth the booming, intoxicating laughter of men's joy; the voice that richly purred men's love of good hot food and spicy strong drink; men's love of thick, moist, pungent tobacco smoke on a full belly; men's love of woman: voluptuous, throaty voiced, silken-thighed, and sensual."

I suppose that sounds an awful lot like Wolfe, but ifit does, it's exactly the way I feel. You know, there's really nobody, that I can talk to with[out] being afraid of being laughed at, not even you.

Right now I'm afraid you'll laugh when you read this; or worse, feel sorry for me and pity me, because I'm a idealistic, romantic kid, who doesn't know what in hell he's talking about. In fact, this is the first time I've ever come anywhere near telling you what I thought....I'm working in the dark all the time. Whenever I do write something, that black, forbidding doubt is in me, making me wonder if I'm just some damned egotistical fool, or if I really have that spark of genius it takes to be a really great author like Wolfe.

If I only had some way of knowing. If only some authority that knew would tell [me] I was good and had promise, then I'd be all right, but as it is, I'm always full of that fear that maybe I'm not any good. Sometimes I get so damned low I feel like blowing my brains out.. ..

I'm sleepy as hell, and am going to quit. We go out in the field for a week in the morning. Get up at 4:30 ....

crab and my footprint. When it rolled back in its ceaseless motion, the sharp outlines of my footprint were gone, and the crab was completely covered. Then the sea rolled up again and back again.

In a little while there was no mark upon the sand at all and the crab was nowhere to be seen. The sea rolled on, timeless in its vastness, and did not seem to care that a crab had been killed here. I thot to myself, that life is like the sea, brutal and relentless. It can't go back. It can't stand still. Therefore it must go forward. It plays the percentage. It is governed by a law of Nature. What does it matter, if some little crab or human being is smashed upon the rocks? It can't be bothered. It can't go back. It can't stand still. Therefore it must go forward, and woe be unto those, who think they may defeat it. For life, just like. the sea, has never lost a battle yet.

Perhaps it has been thwarted for a time, but it always comes back in the last quarter to score again, for the game has no final whistle.

It ends only when you quit or cannot fight some more.

I have been expecting Dad to do that for quite a while. I don't know why, call it a premonition if you will, but it didn't surprise me to hear that he had killed himself. I was talking to him one time up at the office and he told me then, "Well, Jeeper, if the time ever comes, when I'm sucked clear under the muck up to' my ears, and I know that the net profit isn't worth the cost, I wouldn't hesitate to kill myself. When a man can't see anything to gain in putting up with living, which at best, is a pretty dismal affair, the thing for him to do is get out. And don't ever let anybody tell you it takes more guts to go on living than to kill yourself, because it doesn't; and those who say it does say so because they know in their hearts that they'd never have the guts." I'm rather proud he went out that way, instead of hanging on and hanging on, wanting to be out, but held back because of his fear of death.

Sure, he was weak. But that was no fault of his. He was not the kind of a man to be tied down in a place like Robinson, where the split-tongued sluts and carrion crows like to pick and tear and spit on everything above them to satisfy their egos ....

So long, Jeff. I will take keer a maself.

[GUADALCANAL] JANUARY

28, 1943

[HAWAII] MARCH

22, 1942

Brother Jeff, Your letter came this afternoon. When I opened it, the last sentence in the first paragraph seemed to leap out from the paper before my eyes in letters a foot high. I didn't say anything to anybody. I folded the letter up, stuck it in my pocket, turned on my heel, and walked away from the Orderly Room. I went down to my tent, sat down on my bunk, and lit a cigarette. Then I took the letter out of my pocket and opened it up and read it. Then I folded it, stuck it back in the envelope, and just sat there on my bed, smoking. Sometimes the air is awfully clear here. You can look off to sea and see the soft, warm, ragge'dy roof of clouds stretching on and on and on. It almost seems as if you can look right on into eternity. The wind was blowing and the sun shown thru the leaves and dappled all the ground with light and shadow. Last nite I was down on the beach over the hill, standing on the sand at the water's edge, watching the sunset. A crab ran up a couple of feet in front of me and stopped there, and I stepped on it and smashâ‚Źd it in thâ‚Ź sand for I do not like them. The sea rolled up and covered up the

Dear Jeff I'm writing this more or less to set your mind at ease concerning me. I've inquired around here as to what a guy is able to write, and-as per usual-I've found that there's not a helluva lot to say that won't be censored.

It's apparently OK for me to tell you that I've been wounded and have just been released from a Base Hospital in the South Pacific. I'll elaborate that statement before moving on to something else. I wasn't hit very badly-a piece of shrapnel went thru my helmet and cut a nice little hole in the back of my head. It didn't fracture the skull and is healed up nicely now. I don't know what happened to my helmet; the shell landed close to me and when I came to, the helmet was gone. The concussion together with the fragment that hit me must have broken the chinstrap and torn it off my head. It also blew my glasses offmy face. I never saw them again, either, but I imagine they are smashed to hell. If I hadn't been lying in a hole I'd dug with my hands and helmet, that shell would probably have finished me off. The hole was only six or eight inches deep, but that makes an awful lot of difference, and it looked like a canyon. I'm not much good without glasses; it

bothers you a lot to know you can't see well and that any minute some sniper you should have seen but couldn't is liable to cut you down ....

I found that reading books about other people fighting wars is adventurous, but when you are doing the fighting, it's a helluva lot different. When you read a book like All Quiet [on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque] you understand what the hero is going thru and sympathize with him. Even when he gets kil1ed at the end of the book you sympathize, and in sympathizing, you feel a sadness you enjoy. But all that time while you are putting yourself into the hero's place you still have the knowledge that after the hero dies you still will be around to feel sad about it.

When at any second you may die, there is no adventure; all you want is to get the fighting over with. You don't spend any time in consoling yourself that if you die, you will be dying for your country and Liberty and Democracy and Freedom, because after you are dead, there is no such thing as Liberty or Democracy or Freedom. It's impossible to look at things thru the viewpoint of the group rather than your individual eyes. The group means nothing to you if you cannot remain a part of it. But in spite of all this, you keep on fighting because you know that there is nothing else for you to do.

I also learned that in spite of all the training you get and precautions you take to keep yourself alive, it's largely a matter of luck that decided whether or not you get killed. It doesn't make any difference who you are, how tough you are, how nice a guy you might be, or how much you may know, if you happen to be at a certain spot at a certain time, you get it. I've seen guys [move] out of one hole to a better one and get it the next minute, whereas if they'd stayed still they wouldn't have been touched. I've seen guys decide to stay in a hole instead of moving and get it. I've seen guys move and watch the hole they were in get blown up a minute later.

And I've seen guys stay and watch the place to which they had intended to move get blown up. It's all luck ....

I'm going to ask you something. IfI do get killed, and I honestly don't see how I can help it, I want you to write that book we were thinking about when I enlisted.2 If I get it, it's a cinch I won't be able to do it, and it would make me feel a whole lot better to know that if not my name and hand, at least, the thot of me would be passed on and not forgotten entirely. You know, sort of put into the book the promise that I had and the things I might have written so at least the knowledge of talent wasted won't be 10st.. ..IfI get it, no one will ever know to what heights I might have gone as a writer. Maybe if you wrote about the promise that was there, all wouldn't be lost.. ..

MARA THON, NOVEMBER

FLORIDA 3

20, 1945

Dear Mr Perkins, I am writing you in reference to my mss, "They Shall Inherit the Laughter," which you did me the honor of reading in January of this year4. I have just completed a new, finished draft of the book, which has entailed my rewriting most individual chapters at least 2

Jeff also had literary ambitions, and the two brothers had talked about collaborating on a novel.

3100es worked 4An

briefly on a fishing boat while he was revising

early novel that was never published.

his novel in the fall of 1945.

several times and occasionally more often than that. I am now preparing to go over it again, copying it up in mss form and making what smoothing and finishing changes I will find necessary. I expect to have the completed mss done within a month or five weeks from date.

If you are interested in seeing it again, please write to me at the above address. Since having talked to you and having seen the letter you wrote Mr Aley in reference to the mss, 5 I am writing you first to see if your firm would like to see it before I attempt to contact anyone else ....

The book itself is greatly changed in structure, although it follows more or less the original timeplan and the original characters. But then this tell[s] you little or nothing, and to bluntly put down in a sentence just what those changes are, for me at least, detracts from their subtlety and meaning.

I am offering it to you now first, partially because I still have a soft spot for the character Tom Wolfe drew from you, but mainly because I feel I owe you a debt of gratitude for not publishing the book as it was when I submitted it.

I will wait to hear from you before I start trying [to] contact anyone else.

Sincerely, James Jones ROBINSON, OCTOBER

ILLINOIS

21, 1946

Dear Mr Perkins, I did not feel like working tonight and I figured you were about due for some kind of word. I did about 2500 words of very good stuff this afternoon and am still so enthused over it that I am reluctant to plunge in again. However, after I finish this letter I think I shall feel more like it.

(Incidentally, that bit of advice you gave me about quitting while I'm hot has proved invaluable. I hope someday to be able to thank Hemingway for it also. It strikes me that I must appear as rather set against Hemingway to you. I certainly am not. I think he is a fine writer, but to date I have discovered only two writers whom I can take all the way, or at least nearly so; and those are Scott Fitzgerald and Tom Wolfe. I think Hemingway is confused on lots of things, just as I think the Fountainhead [by Ayn Rand] was confused; but I also think both are magnificently right in many things.)

After your last letter I started in to rewrite that first 200 pp. To date I amjust emerging through the last scenes of it and a number of scattered scenes Id written before I got your letter. As I worked along, I saw things Id missed of course, and so much you have not seen has been added while I was cutting the other. I followed the original scene plot up until I got through the episode with Violet before adding anything new. And at that point I had cut 82 pp to 43 pp. After that it becomes too involved to explain in a letter, for I've added scenes and cut whole sequences. I've done some rigorous cutting, let me tell you ....

What amazes me still is that you could see through all the strained bungling boring exposition the ,underlying worth. I shall never get over that. Had I been the editor I'd have thrown it all out.

I wrote quite a number of scenes while waiting for your answer and opinion, and I discovered that they too suffered from the same fault as the other. Also, I could see gaps opening up in the plan I

had had, so that I figured it would [be] better to begin again and get the first satisfactory before going ahead. Now, I amjust emerging through that anguish and I feel like a man who comes out of a dark narrow alley into a well-lighted thoroughfare. Until the day before yesterday, it had been three months since I wrote a fresh scene in first draft and it was a wonderful experience to find I could still do it, and that it, as writing, had improved thru the rework of the other. I am beginning to spread my wings again, and I feel very satisfied with the job of rewriting what you've seen-which is the reason for <this ungodly letter.

I have evolved a plan ... by which I keep a running account of chapters, the scenes in and the number of pages in each scene. Thus I can refer to my account instead of having to thumb through scores of pages, if I want to know what happened to certain characters at such and such a place. In addition I have separate lists titled by characters in which I list each scene concerning that character consecutively and also the proposed scenes for that character along with notes of how I want to write it. So I take these and by them map out ahead the final draft, interlacing the scenes between various characters. Wonderful, isn't it? If! fail as a writer, I can always become a bookkeeper.

I have always been bothered because I couldn't remember details of time, place, etc. and I used to find myself either surrounded by reams Qfwritten pages, or else rewriting the same thing three or four times. This helps somewhat to alleviate that. To date I have finished 21 scenes totaling 129 pp which covers 4t chapters. The longest...is 15 pp, but there is only one, where before there were two chapters.

Of course, there are scenes within scenes and when I set myself a prospective number of pages for anyone scene I always overrun it, but at least I dont overrun it as much as I did.

I am ashamed to take up your time like this. I only wanted to let you know I was not dead and had not become so desperate as to reenlist.

I bought a Viking portable Tom Wolfe the other day and read a few scenes. I read through Story of a Novel. After that I got out your letters and read them through. Then I drank a couple of bottles of beer and sat around pinching myself on my left elbow. I was high as a kite, and not from beer. Also, I realized I have come one hell of a long way since 1940 and the days at Hickam Field6 when I read the Angel and decided I was so much like this guy Wolfe that I was going to be a writer myself. My semester at the University of Hawaii I copied Wolfe's style [so] much that even the teachers were curious. I find even now that if I read his fiction I tend to fall back into the Wolfeian flow of prose, which is why I don't read him. Someday, after I finish this book and revise "Laughter" and have both published, I shall sit down and gorge myself on him. I certainly wish I could have known him ....

Also by the way, I have found a title for this book. "From Here to Eternity." Taken from the "Whiffenpoof" song, of Yale drinking fame. It goes: "We are little black sheep who have gone astray, baa ... baa ... baa. Gentlemen songsters out [sic] on a spree, damned from here to eternity. God have mercy on such as we. Baa, etc." Maybe it's maudlin, but so am I. I get chills every time I sing it, even when sober.

I wont take up any more of your time. I'll keep you informed as to how I make out. ever sincerely yours, James Jones 0

Saving it With Statistics In an interview with GA YA TRI VISW ANATH, C.R. RAO talks about the statistics of his success: His stint at Cambridge University, his four decades with the Indian Staiisticallnstitute and his work in America.

In a rare birthday honor to C.R. Rao, who turned 70 last September, the University of Neuchatel in Switzerland organized an International Conference on "Recent Developments in Statistical Data, Analysis and Inference."

Felicitating the world-renowned statistician, university authorities commented, "A real tribute to a scientist is to offer him a flourishing picture of the state of the art of the ideas introduced and enriched by him. This conference aims at such a tribute to Professor C.R. Rao." C.R. Rao, whose career spans the history of modern statistics, is considered by many to be the greatest living statistician in the world today. Born on September 10, 1920, in Hadagali in Karnataka, Calyampudi Radhakrishna Rao received an M.A. in mathematics from Andhra University in 1940; an M.A. in statistics from Calcutta University in 1943 (with a gold medal); a PhD in 1948; and ScD from Cambridge University.

A living legend, Rao has divided the

most fruitful years of his life between India and America. He joined the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) as a statistician in 1944, became director in 1972and was Jawaharlal Nehru Professor from 1976-84. (lSI, which was founded by Professor Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis in 1932, soon became internationally famous because of the work of scholars such as Mahalanobis and Rao. In statistical circles in India, a common saying pays a light-hearted but sinceretribute to the two masters"Bengali is the mother tongue of statistics and Telugu is the father tongue.") Rao has been the president of the International Statistical Institute, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, the International Biometric Society and the Indian Econometric Society.

The author (or co-author) often books and more than 200 research papers, Rao has numerous statistical concepts and results associated with his name. He is the editor of two important journals, Multivariate Analyses and Sankhya. He is also the principal investigator of several projects sponsored by the U.S. Air Force and Navy and is a member of a panel on population statistics of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

Currently, Rao holds the positions of Eberly Professor of Statistics, Pennsylvania State University; Adjunct Professor, University of Pittsburgh; and National Professor, India. A frequent visitor to India, he was here last year to attend and give the inaugural lecture at the Raj Chandra Bose symposium on statistics at the University of Delhi.

GAYATRIVISWANATH:Howdiditallbegin Professor Rao? Tell us something about your childhoodin India. c.R. RAO: I come from a family of landed aristocracy. They were never really careerminded but at one stage they all went into the legalprofession. I think I was the first one to get interested in science.

How did your interest in statistics develop?

My ambition was to become a teacher. But my father, who was the driving force in my life,wanted me to do research in mathematics.

Unfortunately, he died before I got my master's.

I got my bachelor's degree in mathematics

from Waltair, Andhra Pradesh. There were no job openings for someone with a math background and I wasn't old enough to try for the Indian Civil Service, as the Indian Administrative Service was then called. So, I applied to ISI in Calcutta for ajob. They used to have a one-year training course in statistics. By the time I completed that, Calcutta University had started a master's in statistics, which I joined. I was awarded the gold medal. The then director of ISI, Professor P.C. Mahalanobis. gave me my first job---on Rs. 50 a month.

How did you manage on that?

Well, the cost of living in Calcutta was not so high in those days. My salary was increased to Rs. l50and later to Rs. 300, so it was not that bad.

What was your first job like?

I was associated with the director's work, which involved analyzing anthropometric data. My first experience in research was on data collected by the well-known anthropologist D.N. Mazumdar in Uttar Pradesh during the 1941 census, which was sent to ISI for analysis. The project was assigned to me; I had to analyze data on some 5,000 individuals. By then Mahalanobis had already invented a statistical tool, what came to be called the "Mahalanobis Distance," for studies in anthropology. I produced a report using this method. He was extremely pleased.

How did you get the opportunity to go to Cambridge University?

Around the time I finished the report, Mahalanobis got a telegram from the anthropological museum in Cambridge, saying that they wanted somebody to analyze some bones and skeletons brought for study from Africa by a British expedition. He wrote back, "I have a very good statistician, but he does not know anthropology. I'll send an anthropologist along with him." So, that's how I arrived at Cambridge. I worked at the museum for a few years during which I was also formally attached as a research scholar to King's College, where Mahalanobis used to be a student. I developed a theory to analyze the measurements on the skeletons, which I submitted as a thesis to Cambridge, and got my PhD. My supervisor was R.A. Fisher, a very fine man and a great statistician.

Later on, King's College honored me by electing me as Life Fellow, after which, I had the privilege of walking on the lawns there!

Who and what have been major influences on your life and career?

I owe a lot to Mahalanobis and Fisher.

They were guiding forces in my life, being responsible for initiating me into research and into the theory and applications of statistics.

Probably Mahalanobis's greatest contribution was to tell people that statistics is not abstract, but very much an applied subject.

While I was at Cambridge, in addition to my work at the museum, I was also doing some experiments on mice for Fisher. He asked me to study the linkage of four genes on a chromosome and to find the distance between them. He inspired me to take courses in mathematical genetics.

What were your years at ISI like? You have spent a major part of your life working there.

After my return from Cambridge, I stayed at ISI because I saw opportunities for developing statistics in India and for building good groups of research workers in various branches of statistics. When I took over as director of the institute in 1972, I was keen to promote the use of statistical methods in various scientific investigations and to bring scientists from different fields together to work on common projects. It was not an easy task at all. I also faced problems when I wanted to introduce computers in a big way-ISI was the first organization in India to acquire digital computers. But the workers were against introducing computers because they thought that would adversely affect employment opportunities. As a result, we lost a great chance to do research and advanced work based on complex computations.

I used to love walking in the gardens of ISI. Being an enthusiastic gardener, I would often even advise the gardeners and direct their work. We also performed statistical experiments and analyzed the data in the gardens.

I worked at ISI for some 40 years. When I retired, a special post called Jawaharlal Nehru Professor was created for me with the approval of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, which gave me the freedom to do whatever I wanted. I was not under the administrative control of the ISI director. I held this position for five years.

When did you move to the United States?

I had visited America often and had also worked briefly at various universities there. I was there just after my retirement and was offered the Mellon Professorship for three months. After I gave a public talk on statistics and its scientific applications, the dean asked if I would accept a position in the math d~partment of Pittsburgh University. I hesitated because I wanted to work in India and I had really no intention of taking up any longterm assignment in the United States. Meanwhile, it just so happened that my son got admission to the engineering school at Pitts-

ASampler I shall give you a number of examples drawn from the story of "the improvement of natural knowledge" and the success of "decision making" to show how statistical ideas played an important role in scientific and other investigations even before statistics was recognized as a separate discipline, and how statistics is now evolving as a versatile, powerful and indispensable instrument for investigation in all fields of human endeavor.

2.1 Shakespeare's new poem: An ode to statistics On 14 November, 1985, the Shakespearean scholar Gary Taylor found a ninestanza poem in a bound folio volume that had been in the collection of the Bodelian Library since 1775.The poem has only 429 words and there is no record as to who was the author of the poem. Could it be attributed to Shakespeare? Two statisticians, Thisted and Efron (1987)made a statistical study of the problem and concluded that the poem fits nicely with Shakespeare's style (cannon) in the usage of words. The investigation was based on a purely statistical study as follows.

The total number of words in all the known works of Shakespeare is 884,647 of which 31,534 are distinct and the frequencies with which these words were used are as follows: Table 2.1 Frequency distribution of distinct words

No. of times a word is used

of usage

An excerpt from Statisrics and Trnth by C.R. Rao The information contained in the above table can be used to answer questions of the following kind. If Shakespeare were asked to write a new piece of work consisting of a certain number of words, how many new words (not used in earlier works) would he use? How many words will there be, which he used only once, twice, thrice, ...in all his earlier works?

It is possible to predict these numbers using a remarkable method described by R.A. Fisher et al (1943), in an entirely different area, for estimating the total number of unseen species of butterflies! Using Fisher's theory, it was estimated that Shakespeare would have used about 35,000 new words if he were to write new dramas and poems containing the same number of words 884,647 as in his previous works. This would place the total vocabulary of Shakespeare at an estimated level of more than 66,000 words.

Now, coming back to the newly discovered poem, which has 429 words of

Table 2.2 Frequency distributions of distinct words in poems according to Shakespearean cannon in poems of similar length by different authors

Number of distinct words used in Number of times used in Shakespeare's Ben Jonson Christopher John New Marlowe (An Elegy) works Donne poem (four Poems) (The Ecstacy) 0

No. of distinct words 14,376 4,343 2,292 1,463 1,043 837 638

846 31,534

which 258 are distinct, the observed and predicted (according to Shakespearean cannon) distributions are as given in Table 2.2 (last two columns). It is seen that the agreement between the two distributions is quite close (within the limits of expected difference) suggesting that Shakespeare was possibly the author of the poem.

Table 2.2 also gives similar frequency distributions of words in poems of about the same size by other contemporary authors, Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe and John Donne. The frequencies in the case of these authors look somewhat different from observed frequencies in the new poem and also the predicted freq uencies under Shakespearean usage of words.

2.3 Kautilya and the Arthasiistra' The Kautilya Arthasiistra is regarded as a unique work, which throws more light on the cultural environment and the actual life in ancient India than any other work of Indian literature. This remark-

8 2

to

13

8 8 16 22 20 13 9 14 9 13

No. of distinct words

243

Total No. of words

411

I

2 3-4 5-9 10-19 20-29 30-39 40-59 60-79 80-99

burgh University, but the tUItIOn fee was $9,000.So, I thought, "If! accept this post, my sonwillnot have to pay the feeas children ofthe teaching faculty are exempt from paying the tution fee." I told the dean, "Maybe I'll accept for two years." He said, "I'll give you a permanent job, you can leave whenever you like." So, I joined them. Recently, I was offered the chair of Eberly Professor at the Pennsylvania State University which is where I am now.

We have been talking about C.R. Rao, the statistician. What are your interests and hobbies outside of statistics?

I'm very interested in art. Very few people

I

6 9 9 12 12 13

to

17 5 6 5 12 17 14 6 12 3

Expected according to Shakespearean cannon

9 7 5 8 11

to

to

21 16 18 8 5

272

252

258

495

487

429

know that I was the president of the Kuchipudi Dance Academy in Delhi. I also used to write a lot of humorous stories for popular magazines-now I don't get the time.

I love cooking and gardening. But my favorite hobby is photography. My photographs have been published in America and in India.

I wanted to retire from my major activities and get involved in art. I wanted to start painting and do research in dance. But I find that I'm getting more and more involved in my work.

You have received so many accolades throughout your career. Is there any occasion which is particularly memorable?

6.97 4.21 3.33 5.36 10.24 13.96 10.77 8.87 13.77 9.99 7.48

258

able treatise is considered to be written in the fourth century B.C. by Kautilya, the minister of the famous king Chandragupta Maurya. However, various scholars have raised doubts both about the authorship of the text of the Arthasastra as well as the period of its publication.

Some years ago, Trautmann (1971) made a statistical investigation of the authorship and date of publication of the Arthasastra. He found considerable variation in the styles of prose in different parts of the book and came to the conclusion that Kautilya could not have been the sole author of the Arthasiistra and that it must have been written by several authors, perhaps three or four, at different periods of time, centering around the middle of second century A.D. Since there are no other known works of Kautilya, it is difficult to say which part he wrote, if at all he made any contribution to it. .

2.4 Dating of publication When did Shakespeare write Comedy of Errors and Love's Labours Lost?

The dates of publication of most of Shakespeare's works are known through written records, but in some cases they are not. How can the information about the known dates of some publications be used to estimate the unknown dates of other publications? Yardi (1946) examined this problem by using a purely quantitative method and no external evidence. For each play, he obtained the frequencies of: (i) redundant final syllables, (ii) full split lines, (iii) unsplit lines with pauses and (iv) the total number of speech lines. With the literary style so quantified, Yardi studied the secular changes in style over the long period of Shakespeare's literary output using the date on plays with known dates of publication. He then inferred by interpolation the possible date of publication of Comedy of Errors as in the winter of 1591-92 and that the Love's Labours Lost as in the spring of 1591-92.

0

Yes. We were at war with China when I was given the Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar award by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. It was a cash award. Prime Minister Nehru was presenting it and in a fit of emotion I told him, "Scientists in India are poor and they certainly appreciate such cash awards.

But since we are at war with China, I would like to donate this money to the Prime 0 Minister's National Defence Fund."

About the Interviewer: Gayatri Viswanath, a graduate in statistics from Delhi University, is doing her master's in population studies from the International Institute for Population Sciences in Bombay.

socialism was immoral. One can be a The decade of the 1980s has proved to be an ideological watershed. It has been good Christian, and a capitalist, just as marked by a huge resurgence on the one can be a good Christian and practice power and efficacy of the capitalist marcollectivism. The trouble with capitalket system and a corresponding collapse ism is quite otherwise. It lies in its moral of confidence in the capacity of the neutrality, its indifference to the notion socialist "command economies." This of moral choices. Capitalism and the loss of confidence in collectivism is the Is it possible to use the power of market system that gives it its efficiency culmination of many decades of trial and its power is single-minded in its market capitalism for moral purposes, and misfortune. thrust-that is why it is so productive. It The truth is that during the 20th without destroying its dynamism? is blind to all other factors: Blind to century, large parts of the world have In this article, adapted from his speech class, race and color; to religion and sex; to nationality and creed; to good and given the collectivist alternative a long, to the American Enterprise Institute evil. It is materialist, impersonal and thorough and staggeringly costly trial, in Washington, D.C., the author tells nonhuman. It responds with great speed and it seems to have failed absolutely how the free-enterprise system can and accuracy to all the market factors. everywhere. It was during the 1980s that provide the most effective solutions to In a way it is like a marvelous natural this realization has dawned even in the the moral dilemmas of the modern age. computer. But it cannot make distincquarters most reluctant to admit it-the rulers of the socialist-style states. Many tions for which it is not programmed. It does not and cannot possess a soul and it of them are turning back, in despondency, almost in despair, to the despised market disciplines they therefore lacks a moral inclination one way or the other.

Indeed, it is precisely because capitalism is morally indifferenthad rejected.

Meanwhile, the capitalist world is racing ahead and is creating and so productive of great miseries as well as great blessings-that wealth on a scale "never before dreamed of. It is clear that many idealists, early in the 19th century, saw it as evil, rejected it capitalism, being a natural force rather than a contrived ideology entirely an~ sought to replace it. We have come to the end of that springing from instincts deep in our human natures, is modifying line of argument. We have discovered there is no effective subitself all the time, and we cannot foresee how it will evolve over the stitute. We have to accept capitalism as the primary means next century. But I am willing to predict, as a result of our whereby wealth is produced and begin the process of moralization experiences in this one, that never again will any considerable within its terms of reference.

I say "begin," but in a sense that process has actually been body of opinion seriously doubt its wealth-producing capacity or seek to replace it with something fundamentally different. taking place for 200 years-by factories acts, mines acts, by We are near the end ofa historical epoch in which capitalism has monopoly and fair-trading legislation and by all the countless laws survived the collectivist assault and is now firmly re-established as we devise to restrict ways in which the market system can be the world's primary way of conducting its economic business. distorted by man's cupidity.

But these are merely negative attempts to correct the excesses of So where does this leave us? It leaves us, I suggest, with a considerable moral dilemma. I can state the dilemma in one capitalism. They do not in themselves give capitalism a positive moral purpose. That is quite different and a much more difficult sentence: How do we give a moral dimension to this triumphant reassertion of capitalism? For one thing we know: Whereas wealth matter. The moment you start trying to give capitalism moral creation is essential for well-being, especially in a world where purpose, you risk interfering with the basic market mechanism population is expanding so rapidly, it cannot in itself make men that provides its wealth-creating power. If, for instance, you try to and women happy. We are creatures of the spirit as well as of the use capitalism to promote greater equality of wealth by imposing flesh, and we cannot be at ease with ourselves unless we feel we are on it a steeply progressive, redistributive system of taxation, you fulfilling, however vaguely or imperfectly, a moral purpose. It is in frustrate the way in which it rewards its chief dynamic force, the this respect that capitalism, as such, is inadequate. acquisitive impulse, and you are liable to end by making everyone It is not that capitalism is immoral. Clergymen who insist that it poorer. is, and preach against it, are themselves confused, as were their Or if, to take another example, you try to redistribute power predecessors, a hundred years ago, who insisted that any form of " within capitalism by balancing managerial authority with trade

union privileges, you either choke the entrepreneurial spirit or you eliminate profits-the system's lifeblood-or, as a rule, you do both, and so again you end by making everyone poorer.

That is the price of trying to make capitalism do something which it is not in its nature to do-promote equality. The price is paid in the shape of reduced national wealth and income-lower general living standards, inadequate health care, a rundown transport system, impoverished social services, underfunded schools. These results have been repeated, in varying degrees, throughout the world where attempts to invest capitalism with positive moral functions have been made.

We have to accept that the market system, while exceedingly robust when left to itself, rapidly becomes sick and comatose once you try to force it to do things contrary to its nature. The more you interfere with its mechanism by imposing moral objectives, the less efficiently it works.

However, I think it is possible to run capitalism in tandem with public policies that make use of its energy while steering it in a moral direction.

Let me indicate six primary ways I believe this can happen: The first, and in some ways the most important, is to provide the capitalist economy with an overall legal framework that has a moral basis. This can only be done if we accept that a fundamental object of the just society is to establish, so far as is humanly possible, absolute equality before the law. Equality of wealth is a utopian fantasy whose hopeless pursuit usually leads to tyranny.

But equality before the law is a reasonable objective, whose attainment-albeit in an imperfect form-is well within the reach of civilized modern societies.

Moreover, this form of equality responds to a strong human need: Whereas few of us really want equality of possessions, or believe it possible, all of us want fairness. The notion of a fair society is an attractive concept, and one toward which progress can undoubtedly be made.

Again, equality before the law is a necessary adjunct to the competitive nature of capitalism: The end result cannot be equality, but from start to finish the rules must apply equally to all.

What do we mean by equality before the law? We mean that the lawmust make no distinction of birth or caste, race or color, sex or tribe, wealth or poverty. It must hold the scales of justice blindfolded. In a curiously paradoxical way, the capitalist system similarly makes no distinction about the nature of men and women. Hence for the law to do so would be a gross interference with the market mechanism and make it less efficient.

Equality before the law reinforces the natural power of capitalism, so that in this case moral purpose and wealth creation go hand in hand. Inequality before the law takes many forms, some subtle and some grotesque. Even in societies where the principle is well understood and established, the ability to buy more law than your neighbor is a ubiquitous source of inequality. Probably in no society is full equality before the law established in practice, and it is doubtful if it can be realized perfectly and overnight anywhere.

But it is one form of equality that can be broadly attained without destructive side effects, and systematic progress toward it is an essential object of any society that wishes to place capitalism in a context of justice.

The second way is for society to endorse the related but broader

concept of equality of opportunity. It is one of the miracles of the human condition that all of us, however humble, possess talents of one kind or another, waiting to be of service. The range of talents is as infinite as human variety itself, and the society that is swiftest to identify them in each individual, and put them to use, will certainly be the most efficient (as well as just). Here again, capitalism and justice pursue the same ends, for capitalism thrives on meritocracy-one of the prime functions of the market is to identify and reward objective merit-and it creates wealth most rapidly when all obstacles to equality of opportunity, social and historic as well as purely legal, are removed. This aspect of equality is a vital element in the moral legitimization of capitalism, for an economic structure in which every man and woman, in theory at least, can progress from the lowest to the highest place cannot be held to be intrinsically unjust.

I say "in theory." What about in practice? It is unrealistic to talk of equality of opportunity without taking drastic measures to make high-quality education generally available to those who can profit from it. I know that in practice we are not going to get a society where all will be able to benefit from the standards of the best schools and colleges.

To begin with, throughout human history the most gifted teachers have always been in limited supply-there are never enough to go around. In any case, the culture, and habits of industry, which parents transmit to their children, make absolute equality of opportunity, as an abstract ideal, unattainable. But it is one thing to concede the difficulties; quite another to accept the present system of educational inequality that exists to some degree in every country in the world. In my view, there is no one single way more likely to make capitalism morally acceptable, to anchor its function in justice, than by giving the deserving poor access to high-quality education of every kind and at every stage. And it is implicit in this objective that we identify merit of every variety at the earliest possible age-another respect in which we tend to be woefully inept.

Of course, to equcate the poor, according to aptitude, to the highest standards, is enormously expensive. But it is the great merit of capitalism that it does produce wealth in immense quantities for such necessary purposes; and the more people we educate efficiently the more wealth the system will produce. The matter is increasingly urgent for as capitalism advances itself, it demands ever more refined skills at each level. If training is not available for all who can benefit, inequalities-both within societies and between them-will increase instead of diminish, and the moral credentials of the system will inevitably be subjected to growing challenge. In short, we have to educate ourselves into justice, and do so with all deliberate speed.

But we must not stop at access to education. We must see to it that there is ready access to the capitalist system itself. I believe that the notion of "democratic capitalism" is a genuine one, and that its realization, to some degree at least, is within our grasp. There are many ways in which it can be brought about.

Some are old; some we have only recently discovered; and some are yet to be devised.

In the past half-century, we have found that to take an industry into public ownership in no way democratizes it-quite the contrary. Nationalization, whether in the form of a monolithic public corporation, or through so-called "workers' control,"

"In the past half century, we have found that to take an industry into public ownership in no way democratizes it.

Nationalization merely puts the business into the hands of bureaucratic elites."

merely puts the business firmly into the hands of bureaucratic or union elites, or indeed both. But it is now possible to float public corporations so that they become the property of millions of small stockholders.

Let us not deceive ourselves that this conveys control of these corporations to the masses. But it does spread ownership widely and it does introduce an element of mass financial participation in the system, which is new and healthy. It gives millions of humble, ordinary people a sense that they are no longer entirely victims of the system; that they can act, as well as be acted upon; and that to some small degree they have a stake in society. It is a source of pride, or reassurance, even of security and is thus morally significant.

Democratic capitalism also lends itself to the old but unrealized idea of co-ownership by giving the work force easy entry into the purchase of stock. In any capitalist enterprise, the community of interest between those who own, run and work for it is, or ought to be, far greater than any conflict of interest.

Access of workers to stock is the surest way of demonstrating this fundamental truth, which is often obscured by political sloganizing. This is particularly important in industries where the work is hard and dangerous and the profit high, such as mining and offshore oil extraction. Democratic capitalism, and especially the worker-stock-ownership aspect of it, serves to refute one of the gravest charges against capitalist practice-that it is, by its very nature, exploitative.

Stock ownership is not, however, the only or even the best way in which the notion of democratic capitalism can be pursued.

One of the most important but least understood disadvantages of the so-called "mixed economy" is that, in its inevitable drift to corporatism, it involves tripartite deals among government, labor unions and large-scale capital.

Such deals invariably leave out small business. In many areas of the world starting one's own business is replacing that fundamental human urge to farm one's own land-it is an expression of the natural creativity in man, and as such a profoundly moral impulse.

Sensible, practical assistance in helping people to set up their own businesses, and to ensure a climate of fairness in which they operate, is the best way to promote equality of opportunity, democratic capitalism and the efficiency and acceptability of the system as a whole. There is almost invariably a strong correlation between the number of small business starts and soundly based economic expansion. So here again the interests of justice and the process of wealth creation coincide.

Popular access to capitalism at a national level has its international counterpart in access to markets.

My fifth point is that the vigorous promotion of free trade

is an important way in which capitalism is legitimized morally.

Protectionism in any form tends to undermine capitalist efficiency by creating privileged industries, and it is unacceptable morally because it deprives the consumer of the full fruits of the market. It always appears to have advantages for new, small and weak economies-or for old, established ones meeting new and ruthless competition. But in the long term-and often in the short term too-these advantages are greatly outweighed by the drawbacks.

Equally objectionable are barter deals between states, or deals between states and big international corporations. These attempts to escape the rigors of competition invariably produce corruption and fraud, and bring out the worst aspects of both big government and capitalism itself. One might put it this way: International free trade is the global version of equality of opportunity.

Now to my sixth point. Just as equal opportunities within a society are unlikely to become reality without general access to high-quality education, so free trade will not in practice be generally accepted, especially among the poorer countries, until the huge discrepancies between nations in technical and commercial skills are diminished. The normal workings of the international market will not be recognized asjust and reasonable until we narrow this gap; that is so much more important in the long run than any more obvious gap in living standards or financial resources. Yet, perhaps, this is the best way for richer nations effectively to help the poorer ones.

Old-style aid is now discredited, and rightly so. For a rich nation to salve its conscience by transferring cash to the government of a poor one in many cases just keeps an inefficient and unpopular tyranny in power. But it is another matter to train the masses in the skills of market capitalism. Widening the availability of such skills accomplishes many things simultaneously: Poorer countries are enabled to compete; wealthier countries benefit as new markets are opened to them; the system is strengthened by giving it universality as well as fairness; and consumers everywhere find goods cheaper as competition increases. Here again, the process of placing capitalism in a moral context has the additional advantage of adding to its wealth-creating power.

To sum up: Doing the right thing morally usually proves to be, commercially, the right thing to do.

The solutions tried up to now have invariably been collectivist ones. So they have all failed. I believe we must now turn to entrepreneurial solutions and seek to use the problem-solving mechanism of market capitalism, which has never failed us yet to provide the answers.

0 About the Author: Paul Johnson, a British historian, is the author of

Modern Times-A History From 1920to the 1980s.

rooklyn artist Susan Leopold, 30, has just returned home after spending ten months in India immersed in the study of Indian miniatures. The tiny realms depicted in Rajasthan's miniature paintings have fascinated Leopold ever since she was introduced to them during her first visit to this country in 1985. But she was struck by something else that she saw in them-an affinity with her own work, her little boxes.

Describing Leopold's intriguing creations, ARTnews wrote in December 1988: "[Her] wall hangings are intimate and hermetic.

They consist of boxes into which a lens is set, beckoning the viewer to behold the threedimensional scenescontained within. Depicting familiar sights--eity streets, an indoor pool and a living room-Leopold creates a miniature realm mimicking our own."

Unconsciously and unknowingly, Leopold was also "mimicking" the style of an art tradition that India had known for centuries. That is why she was "blown away," as she puts it, when she first laid her eyes on some Rajasthani miniature paintings. "They fit all the ideas and issues I was thinking about... their composition and distortion of space, the layers. The miniatures," she explains, "depict a strange flattened space but you get layers going on and on and small details of a much larger space." Just like her boxes.

In 1987 Leopold returned to India, drawn by the miniatures. "I was as fascinated and influenced by them this time too," she recalls. But it was only on her third trip-this year-that she was able to study the miniatures closely and attempt to incorporate her observations of them into her work. Leopold was here on an IndoAmerican fellowship, which she obtained on the basis of her success at establishing the links between her work and the miniatures. "Along with my application," she says, "I enclosed a packet that had a laser print of an Indian miniature, below it a print of Rajasthani architecture and then a print of my own work. Anyone could see how they all related."

The theme of her three-part proposal for the fellowship was to "research Indian miniature paintings in relationship to the architecture of Rajasthan and how the artist translated it into small scale; to ex-

B

About the Author: Nora Prentice, who was recently in India on her sixth visit, lives and works in New York City. She installs museum exhibitions and is involved in local recycling programs.

Susan Leopold made this collage with enlarged xeroxes of her photographs of a Rajasthanifort.

plore how it relates to my work; and to interact with Indian artists working in the miniature tradition."

Leopold has seen miniature collections in Ahmedabad, Ajmer, Bhuj, Bikaner, Delhi, Jaipur and Jodhpur. In Jaipur she met Bannu, a leading miniature restorer.

"He is. from a tradition of miniature painters," says Leopold. "His blind grandfather taught him verbally how to mix the paints and make his own paper and brushes. He is also working on his own style in a contemporary method."

In Ahmedabad, Anand Sarabhai offered her the Sarabhai family's studio that had earlier been used by such leading American artists as Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Stella and Eric Fischl. She spent a month there. By now the research she had done on miniatures in Rajasthan had begun to act as a catalyst for change in her own work. "What I started in Ahmedabad is a new form that is not my sculpture but is an exploration of space," Leopold explains. "These are big

pieces on three or four adjoining sheets of Gandhi Ashram paper. I am using enlarged xeroxes of my photographs and re-creating spaces using collage and painting."

She continues, "I am using specific qualities of the miniatures in constructing these spaces and paintings. The perspectives of the miniatures are interesting because they are not realistic. They use certain devices of Western perspective but not in one-point perspective with a vanishing point. It is not done for realism, but as a device to move the eye through a narrative. Miniatures are slightly cubist in that they will show the important parts of a room not in a correct perspective but in one that gives an idea of the architecture."

During her stay in Ahmedabad, Leopold was also accepted by the Kanoria Centre for the Arts as a participating student. (Kanoria has an open studio system where accepted artists either rent studio space or are granted scholarships.) While at Kanoria-and also at the Delhi College

of Art and the American Studies Research Centre in Hyderabad-Leopold gave lectures with slide shows. "Basically I discussed American art from the 1970s onward which covers minimalism, abstract expressionism, walk-in environments and earthworks," she says. "The first lecture would give an idea of the American artist's vocabulary. We Americans really do wild stuff compared to Indian artists whose work is mainly traditional and figurative.

Even our use of colors and materials is very different." After discussions on American art, Leopold would introduce the audience to her own work. "I showed slides that illustrate the development of my work from large-scale installations to the smallscale construction of the boxes and the issues of space and psychology."

Leopold, who hails from Chicago, graduated from New York's School of Visual Arts in 1982. Explaining why her work gradually shrank from large walk-in pieces utilizing slide projectors to small enclosed

boxes, she says, "I first started doing boxes because installations were too expensive and cumbersome.

I wanted something more portable and accessible so I tried building boxes around the projection sculptures. Then it dawned on me I could use a wide-angle lens and actually construct the project architecture inside the boxes, which are meant to be viewed by one person. The lens distorts the space so it makes you question what you are looking at. I am interested in what you, the viewer, bring to the space. It's about illusion, about emotions. Not just making a memory but evoking the memory-that is the idea. That is what the successful ones do."

In 1985 Leopold's work was spotted by New York art dealer and gallery owner John Weber, who has since been representing her. Leopold has had one-person shows in New York, Pittsburg, San Francisco and will soon have another in New York.

Just before she left for India, I visited her at the airy Brooklyn waterfront loft where she

lives and works. Surrounded by mysteriously enclosed boxes lying on tables, Leopold was adjusting the contents of a miniature aquarium. She explained that she had been working intensely for an exhibit a year in the future. She had just contributed to a group show at the Whitney Museum's midtown branch. In his review New York Times critic John Russell wrote, "Susan Leopold lets us into some of the secrets of the New York cityscape but does not tell us what we are to feel about them. In this company even Joseph Cornell looks effete."

From New York to Rajasthan-or Ahmedabad-is a long way off, but each city gives a new shape to Susan Leopold's art. Her ten-month stay in India resulted in a newly inspired body of work. "For me," she says, "these works are an attempt to evoke the emotions that have been triggered by the experience of living in this country." And, as I viewed them, I realized that Leopold's art has enhanced my own experience of the spaces in India.

0

III "India has the talent to produce swimmers of international class. Even in Delhi, which is not exactly the swimming capital of the cou ntry, I have seen a lot of kids who have the potential. In fact, some of them are almost as good as American kids of their age group," says Ed Bartsch, swimming coach at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

Bartsch was in India last August on the invitation of the Indian Department of Sports. During his four-week visit, which was sponsored by the Indo-U.S. Subcommission on Education and Culture, he conducted swimming clinics in Delhi and Bombay in coordination with the Sports Authority of India.

Conditioning the young talent is the only way to produce toplevel swimmers, Bartsch emphasizes. Young swimmers must be provided with adequate facilities, the right environment and proper planning in grooming them. "When we find a promising kid in the United States," he says, "we go to great lengths to see that he blossoms. The process is long and arduous. We drill into kids that there's no short way to success. It is training and more training and more training. We make them swim 10,000 or more meters. Long-distance swimming helps develop rhythm and cardiaovascular endurance."

Bartsch's theme song is that "quality emerges from quantity."

He says, "You must encourage more and more youngsters to take to swimming, for that matter any sport. In the United States, we have more than 500,000 swimmers. Naturally in these huge numbers are some kids who are highly promising and whose

talents can be harnessed to produce world-class swimmers."

When asked to comment on the failure of India to produce Olympic-class swimmers, Bartsch, who has over the years coached young swimmers allover the United States, said, "I am not the right person to make a judgment on that, but one of the reasons for India's failure to produce world-class swimmers could be that kids here are not adequately motivated. They may be achieving a certain level and then stopping short of that little extra effort, that little extra determination, which is the most crucial and spells the difference between success and failure."

One of Bartsch's suggestions to raise the standard of Indian swimming is to expose promising young talent to international swim meets. "This kind of exposure greatly helps them know their shortcomings, observe other swimmers' strengths and techniques."

Bartsch, 46, has over the years compiled an impressive competitive record in the pool. As a student-athlete at the University of Michigan, he was the NCAA 200-yard backstroke champion in 1963. The same year, he added a gold medal in th: 200-yard backstroke at the Pan American Games, and in 1964 he won the U.S. National AAU 200-yard backstroke title. In 1965, he captained the University of Michigan swimming team.

In October 1988, Bartsch competed in the World Master's Swim Championships, and swam to victories in the 100- and 200-yard backstroke events. He is the current world record holder for the 45-49 age group in those events.

-K.R. Wadhwaney

"It has been a short, hectic but a productive trip, and I am determined to come back for a longer stay; India is such a fascinating place." That's how Lorie Loeb described her visit to this country in August.

Loeb, an independent filmmaker and assistant professor at the Institute of Film and TV, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, was in India as part of her world tour sponsored by the U.S. Information Service; she had been to the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia, and her next stop was Pakistan.

While in India Loeb showed filmssome her own work, some made by her students-and conducted workshops on live-action, documentary and animation films in Calcutta and Delhi. She also held informal discussions with the participants and saw films made by them. "I was impressed by their work; some of them are indeed doing bold and innovative work," she said, adding, "but what struck me most at almost every workshop I held h_erein Inqia

was the participants' keenness to know more about animationfilm techniques. In fact, they kept asking me to come back for longer periods to hold workshops specifically on animation filmmaking. This, I figure, is because the art of motion pictures and documentaries is quite well advanced in India."

With her fascination for letters-"I love writing and receiving mail"-Loeb wants to use the material shot on her trips by her participants as a "video letter." "When I am back home, Iyvill edit the footage, show the final result to my students for their response and then send the video letter to the participants and institutions where I have held workshops. Hopefully they will respond with more material and similar letters. It is one way of opening up a channel of communication."

Although she had a busy work schedule in India, Loeb says, "I have feasted on the wondrous sights and sounds of this ancient land."

Not surprisingly, she wants to come back for more.

Saving the Planet Doordarshan is scheduled to soon telecast a new serial, A Race to Save the Planet, described as one of the finest educational TV films ever made on the environment.

The ten-part, ten-hour series, whose host is the Oscar Awardwinning and environmentally sensitive actress Meryl Streep, has been produced by WGB~ Science Unit, Boston, pioneers in educational films, in association with Chedd-Angier Production Company in Australia and the Indian University Grants Commission.

The series,which cost $7 million and has been shot all over the world, presents and analyzesthe most important dilemma facing humankind-how to reconcile the urge for growth and development and improve the environment and enhance the quality of life everywhere.

From the Himalayan foothills to the rain forests of the Amazon, from the smog-filled streets of Los Angeles to the polluted harbors of the Mediterranean, A Race to Save the Planet takes a comprehensive look at the problems of living in different parts of the world at different levels of industrialization on a planet beginning to look small and fragile in the face of growing numbers and the utterly profligate manner in which natural resources are being increasingly used and squandered. Interviews with world leaders from various fields reveal the complexity of decision-making needed to balance contradictory interests of the world.

A Race to Save the Planet will go on the air in the United States early this mOr:lth.It will also be shown in some 60 countries around the world.

Scratch. Scratch. Scratch. Full Sweep.

The leaves and dust and yesterday's litter Are carefully collected.

Clang Creak Clong-the gate opens and feet shuffle In and out A motorcycle revs and pops-the lawn mower churns and chews With a sharp Twirl and cut, twirl and cut.

Indian Remembrances

Crowwah Crowwah-my throaty black friend and conjurer Perched on a limb Yells to the white-breasted perky couple pecking in the lawn.

Phaal-whallaay phaal-whallaay-the call swells From the street Another snorts a neighing, nazal whine The songs of sale-point and counterpoint.

Stacatto drums echo mysteriously Beyond their beat a flute hangs in the air Beckoning to unknown gifts and wonders.

Breathy wind, the second hand breeze is still pleasant.

Feathery leaves all sizes and shapes Sway and flutter Flapping the dust out like filtering fingers Winnowing unseen particles.

The cat observes Sweep, tap tap.

Susan Holloran and her husband, Richard N. Blue, spent three years in New Delhi working for the U.S. Agency for International Development. They left India in 1988 to take up an assignment with the Asia Foundation in Bangkok, Thailand.

Although Holloran is an international development consultant, her three-year sojourn in India inspired her to write the following poem, in which she describes the sounds and smells around her temporary home at dawn, and how the scene changes as the morning matures.

Scratch ....Scratch ....Sweep.

Light and heat palpably growing, closing in Embracing, possessing the day.

Voices rise, children's skipping shrieks and babies' wails Chirping cacaphony of toots and whistles Horns blare, the ambient noise rises To meet the surrounding air And moves time to its own signature.

Quiet surrenders A breeze gives its last breathy push The tuning up, without a pause Gives full measure to the score.

The drone of India commands another day.

In corporate America a new breed of business consultants is increasingly emphasizing the advantages of autonomous teams instead of the traditional, hierarchical structure to improve productivity.

lhe¡ Chemistry olleamwork

T

eam Xerox, Team Pontiac, Team Nabisco, Citicorp's Trust Team.

Corporations reverberate with the language of teamwork. It's not just trendiness or cheerleading. American companies have long tried to develop a feeling of teamwork among employees, but the new movement goes beyond morale building. The traditional, hierarchical structure of corporate America is cracking. Increasingly, the work of business is being done by semiautonomous teams.

New United Motors Manufacturing Inc. (NUMMI), the joint venture of General Motors and Toyota in Fremont, California, is organized around teams. Teams establish their own work standards, sequence of work, production process, tools that will be used and their own schedules.

Honeywell's commercialflight division in Minneapolis, devoted largely to manufacturing air navigational systems, switched to team organization six years ago. Virtually all plant functions, including production, conflict resolution, even the allocation of funds, is done by teams.

The team trend is not limited to megacorporations.

Square D Company, a manufacturer of circuit breakers, has converted its punch-press operation in Columbia, Missouri, from the traditional assembly line to the team approach.

The team makes practically all decisions concerning its work, including determining quality and cost, without a supervisor.

Teams are said to avoid duplication of effort, increase cooperation, spur new ideas, help people solve problems, maintain motivation, improve product quality and, not incidentally, increase profits.

General Motors, for example, had been plagued by problems before it closed its Fremont plant, but the NUMMI venture is running smoothly, and absenteeism has fallen from 20 percent to two percent. Honeywell's MinneWorkers at a Westinghouse plant JJuddle with their team adviser.

apolis plant has 80 percent of the flightnavigational-systems market, and 1988 profits were 200 percent above estimates.

Square D saw overtime in its punch-press division decline by 70 percent after adopting the team approach.

Sometimes the rewards of team organization are truly impressive. Keithley Instruments' plant in Solon, Ohio, saw output increase by 90 percent and absenteeism fall by 75 percent when its production teams went to work.

If work is going to be done by teams, then it follows that how well the work gets done depends upon the quality of the team.

So it is not surprising that a good deal of the literature on teams has to do with team functioning. Good teams, say the experts, have clear goals, listen to one another, share responsibility for decisions, freely criticize suggestions and accept criticism.

Sounds wonderful, but how is it achieved? Part of the answer lies in selecting the right people for the team. Some employers use psychological tests in an effort to find people with a "team personality." And some recruiters now make it clear that lone rangers need not apply.

But it is hard enough filling some positionswithout adding team spiritedness to the list of job requirements. So, for the most part, companies must learn to make teams out of the people they have. Besides, a willingness to work with others does not in itself guarantee a good team. People must acquire skill at working with one another toward common goals. They must learn, in other words, to work as a team.

This is easier said than done. Alfie Kohn, a Boston-based journalist, notes in his book No Contest that people in America and other Western nations are taught from the cradle to be competitive, to do their best to come out ahead of other people.

They are not taught to share ideas, or credit, with others; they are not taught to work with others for a common goal; they have not learned how to feel good about the success of a team effort. The shift to cooperation will take some getting used to.

Even more important, say experts, are the psychological differences among team members. People perceive, organize and think about the world in fundamentally different ways. "People," says Otto Kroeger, a consultant in Fairfax, Virginia, "are psychologically left handed or right handed." Everybody, he explains, can use both of their hands, but most people prefer to use one rather than the other. In the

same way, most people have a tendency to think and act in one way rather than another. The task, he says, is for people who are psychologically very different "to learn how to work together without irritating the hell out of one another."

To help team members reach that point, many U.S. companies are turning to consultants like Kroeger who specialize in team building. Such consultants are brought in to set up new teams, to help teams in trouble resolve their problems, and to fine-tune a smoothly working team to ensure that it continues its success.

Team builders go about their task in many ways, but since the characteristics of individual team members are considered very important, most consultants begin by gathering information about the team. Often this is done by interviewing each member of the team. The consultant gets to know each person, how he feels about the group, the group's goals, the other members and the way they work together.

Most consultants also ask team members to take a variety of psychological tests-not to identify misfits, but rather to provide the team members with information that may help them understand themselves and their teammates better.

One of the most popular tests is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). It has been used in team-building efforts by IBM, Westinghouse, Du Pont, Marine Midland Bank and hundreds of other companies, large and small. The MBTI is a straightforward paper-and-pencil test that summarizes a person's personality in four letters, such as ESTJ or INFP. Each letter indicates where a person stands on one bipolar scale. For instance, the first letter, E or I, stands for extrovert or introvert and indicates a person's tendency to be outgoing and involved with people or reserved and solitary. The second letter, S or N, indicates an inclination to focus on specifics (facts derived from the senses, hence S) or to be more interested in the overall scheme of things (N is for intuitive, an unfortunate choice of terms, since what is meant is holistic). The third letter indicates whether a person tends to make decisions on the basis of logic (T is for thinking) or feelings (F, indicating a concern for people). The final letter means that a person either reaches decisions quickly and is eager to implement them (J for judgment) or prefers to study matters in depth before making a commitment (P is for perception). The various combinations of these

tendencies yield 16 personality types. No one type is considered ideal for teamwork, but, as we shall see later, differences in type can be important to team functioning. (It is interesting to note that neither Katharine Cooks Briggs nor Isabel Briggs Myers, coauthors of the MBTI, is a Thinking type, as you might expect a test constructor to be.)

The MBTI is the first choice of team builders for providing team insights, but it is not the only choice. The FIRO-B (Fundamental Interpersonal-Relations Orientation-Behavior) yields scores indicating how much employees want to be involved with others, the extent to which they like to be in control and how close they like to get to people.

William Dyer, author of Team Building: Issues and Alternatives, likes to give the Team Development Scale, which asks team members to indicate, for example, the extent to which they feel a part of the team and how well they think the team works.

Robert Blake, co-author of Spectacular Teamwork, uses the Teamwork Grid for much the same purpose.

There are, of course, any number of other instruments that are used to get some idea of how to improve a team's functioning. The value of the tests, say many consultants, is that they provide a way of talking about differences and similarities among team members. "The real value of the MBTI," says Sandra Hirsh, co-author of Life Types, a book about the MBTI, and a Minneapolis consultant who specializes in team building, "is that it gives you a common language for talking about your differences." Thomas Hubler, another Minneapolis consultant, agrees. He uses the MBTI in counseling family businesses but doesn't try to convince people that the test says everything there is to say about personality. "People are very complex," he says. "My training in psychology makes me a bit uncomfortable talking to people about types, but the MBTI is a way of bringing problems out into the open."

It may also reveal opportunities. Experts suggest that people who differ in personality may balance each others' weaknesses.

Thinking types, for example, are often good at analyzing and organizing information, and they can see the flaws in an argument or a product and act accordingly-all things that Feeling types find difficult to do. Yet Thinking types are not usually adept at arousing enthusiasm, and they may lack the instincts for knowing when a product will appeal to the public or

how to market it. These skills are the forte of Feeling types. One benefit of personality tests such as the MBTI, then, is to show team members that they need one another.

Assessment complete, the next step is for the team to meet for feedback and teambuilding exercises. Usually this is done offsite in a two- or three-day retreat. The consultant or team leader may begin with a general discussion of the test data. Team members may be. asked to consider their MBTI Wpe. Does it "capture" them? Does it tell them things they hadn't seen in themselves before? Then the consultant might ask team members to consider the profile of their MBTI opposite (for example, ENTP is the opposite of ISFJ). What problems would you anticipate, the consultant might ask, in working with people of that type? What benefits might you derive from working with such a person?

Team-building retreats are not merely open-ended talk sessions, however. Consultants usually engage team members in exercises intended to overcome, or at least highlight, problems within the group.

For example, Kroeger, who is co-author of Type Talk, a book about the MBTI, divides people into two or more groups based on their MBTI scores. He asks the groups to study a poster presented on a screen for 20 seconds and then come up with a composite picture of what they saw. The differences, he says, are often startling. "A group made up ofN types," he says, "will focus on the overall pattern of the poster, the aesthetics of it, and spend a lot of time talking about what it means. An S-type group will concentrate on reconstructing every detail of the poster, including any words they might have seen, and might never consider what the poster is about."

Kroeger compares the two sketches, and asks for comments. The focus is not on which group is right, but on the differences in perspective. "I try to get them to see that if their groups had included some S people and some N people their sketch would have been better." Kroeger believes that if a team sees both trees and forest it will be better off than its individuals who see only one or the other.

In another exercise, Kroeger asks team members to compile a list of "descriptors" of time. Groups made up of S types typically come up with words like hour, minute, day, week; N-type groups come up with more abstract words and phrases, such as time is money, precious moments, fleeting time, wings of time, time is what you make it,

and the like. "I did this recently with a team of government workers," Kroeger reports, "and it helped them see how differently people see things. But what really knocked them out was when I asked them whether combining the two lists wouldn't be better, more complete. Light bulbs went on all over the place."

Some exercises are intended to help team members see how they and others view their group. Many consultants, for example, ask the team members to draw a picture of their team. One person might draw something that looks like a family tree, with the team leader at the top. Another person might draw a wheel, with the spokes representing lines of communication to and from the hub. Another popular exercise is to ask people to say what sort of animal or machine the group resembles.

One person suggested a sump pump: N othing happens until there's a crisis. ther exercises aim at letting team members know what they are doing right and what they need to work on.

William Dyer sometimes puts large sheets of paper on a wall, one sheet for each team member. Then he asks each person to write three things on each sheet: Something that that team member should start doing, something he should continue doing and something he should stop doing. .

In some exercises, the team members work on a problem together to develop teamworking skills. In the Desert Survival Problem, the team is given a list of 15 items and asked to rank them in importance according to their value when trying to survive in the desert. The team has to achieve consensus. Success is measured by comparing the team's ranking with that of experts on desert survival. Kroeger uses the exercise to promote an appreciation for the value of differences among team members.

Then he divides people into two groups. In one group, everyone has the same or similar MBTI profile; the other group includes a variety. "Usually," says Kroeger, "the group that has a mix of personality types scores higher than the group where everybody is the same. Different perspectives really do produce better results."

Team-building exercises usually focus on issues unrelated to work. The assumption is that working on such problems allows the team to develop teamwork skills that might be difficult to develop while discussing company matters. But it is also possible to do exercises directly related to

I

work. For example, a Minneapolis firm formed a team with the task of getting a new product on the market. The group included a manager, the scientist who came up with the idea for the product two other scientists involved in the product, and a marketing person. There was a lot of conflict between the product developer and the marketing person, and their conflicts were making everyone uncomfortable. The manager was trying to act as peacemaker between the two warring parties, but he didn't really understand the nature of the rift. Morale was poor, progress had just about stopped and the company was on the verge of scrapping the entire project.

Sandra Hirsh asked the team members to take the MBTI. "The problem," she explains, "was that the creator of the product, let's call him Peter, was an INTP, and the marketer, let's call him George, was an ESTJ. They're both very competent, conscientious people, but as an N type, Peter likes to focus on the big picture, on abstractions, while George, an S, wants to talk about concrete facts. But the main problem was that as a type P, Peter was never satisfied with the product, while George, a J, wanted to make decisions and act on them. So George was always pushing to move the product toward the market, and Peter was always saying, 'We need one more test.'" Exploring the differences revealed by the MBTI, says Hirsh, helped the team understand why they were at loggerheads and move the project along.

Janet Thueson, Kroeger's partner, offers another example. A group of physicians at a military hospital were at odds because of differences in time spent on initial patient interviews. Some doctors saw two or three patients in the time it took other doctors to see one, and the faster doctors were annoyed at their slower colleagues. In a teambuilding session, Thueson divided the doctors into three groups according to their MBTI scores and asked them to list the most important goals of an initial patient interview. It turned out, reports Thueson, that Intuitive-Feeling (NF) types said the most important goal was to establish rapport with the patient-to put them at ease and establish a trusting relationship. Sensing-Judging (SJ) types said the only thing that mattered was to establish the medical facts-find out what is wrong with the patient. Intuitive-Thinking (NT) types believed the most important thing was to develop a comprehensive plan for patient care. Because of these differences in

goals, NF types were taking a long time to process patients, while SJ and NT types were whizzing through them. "Once they understood that the differences in work patterns were related to different personal goals," says Thueson, "they could come to grips with the real issue." The conflict was resolved when the speedier SJ and NT doctors realized their approach might not be meeting the needs of some patients.

There are, of course, lots of other activities used in team-building sessions. No doubt there are team-building programs in which people are led blindfolded or fall backward into the arms of their fellow team members. But the touchy-feely approach does not seem to be the rule in team-building sessions. The experts still believe that trust and friendship are desirable, but the emphasis now is on communication. The purpose of team building, writes Dyer, is not to get people to like one another but to teach them how to work with others.

Whether team building has this effect is an open question. Experts claim that team building increases the cohesiveness of the group, identifies sources of misunderstanding, resolves interpersonal problems and boosts morale. Ask consultants for evidence that team building has these effects or, more importantly, that it actually improves team productivity, and you are apt to get anecdotes. Lots of anecdotes.

Consultants will admit that some team members are unenthusiastic about team building, especially in the early stages.

"Thinking types," says Thueson, "are especially apt to be cynical if they think

they're in for some touchy-feely encountergroup stuff. And Feeling types dislike the idea of classifying people into 16 personality types." Ray Sauers, a team builder in the human-resources division at Ford, says he usually encounters a few people who have had bad team-building experiences and don't want anything to do with another one. "That's understandable," he says, "but you can't give up on them. You have to win them over."

In support of the benefits of team building, consultants point out that much of their income is from repeat customers. "We train company employees in the use of the MBTI," says Kroeger, "so that they can do team building on their own. But inevitably they call us back for more training or to help with a special case."

Still, one would like to see some carefully designed studies aimed at comparing the functioning of teams that have received team-building experiences with those that have not. Such studies seem to be in short supply. This is not surprising, however, because businesses seldom require the same hard evidence for human-resources development that they require for technical projects. Yet American businesses are spending millions of dollars on team building, and they have a right to know whether that money is well spent. Since there is little incentive for consultants (who may charge $1,000 to $2,500 a day) to demonstrate the effectiveness of their team-building efforts, businesses may find it worthwhile to sponsor research by independent firms.

Some experts believe, however, that even the best team-building sessions will be of

little value if the company does not create an environment conducive to teamwork.

At NUMMI, for instance, they discarded time clocks and eliminated special parking spots for management. Gencorp's automotive plant in Shelbyville, Indiana, has gone even further. There, all employees, including managers, are called "associates," wear blue shirts and blue slacks or skirts, and receive the same company benefits. They have all but erased the inequality that can erode team solidarity.

A number of experts point to traditional compensation plans in particular as an area in need of change. Individual incentives, such as piece work, merit pay and bonuses, are not designed to foster group cooperation. Most experts recommend incentives based upon the performance of the team as a whole. This, they reason, will encourage people to work together, share information, help one another out. Robert Keidel, author of Corporate Players: Designs for Working and Winning Together, notes that the Boston Celtics are not paid on the basis of individual statistics. This may be why they have never had the league's highestscoring player, but it may also be why they have won 16 championships.

Whether a business that adopts team organization and provides team-building experiences and the proper work environment will do as well as the Celtics is uncertain. But team organization is certainly one of the grand business experiments of our time.

0 About the Author: Paul Chance, a psychologist, is a contributing editor to Psychology Today.

The Americans Are Coming Two leading American dance troupes are scheduled to perform in India in the next two months-Merce Cunningham's in November, and the Alwin Nikolais and Murray Louis company in December.

Wit From the White House An American professor of political science takes a surprisingly scholarly look at presidential humor from Abraham Lincoln to Ronald Reagan.

American Architecture SPAN's photo essay on architectural styles and trends in the United States (above, a house by Frank O. Gehry) coincides with an exhibition on Amerkan architecture in Calcutta as part of the city's tricentennial celebrations.

Stones From the Sky The Earth is pelted at the rate of 20 tons a day with extraterrestrial particles that range in size from grains of sand to mountains. Some scientists believe that every 26 million years a giant "rock falls from the sky" wiping out all life so that the cycle of evolution can restart.

Resolving a

World Crisis In the face of the continuing MiddleEast crisis, President George Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, displaying a new solidarity, met at an emergency summit in Helsinki on September 9.

In a joint communique, issued after their one-day summit at which no aides or advisers were present, the two Presidents said they "are united" and called upon Iraq to "withdraw unconditionally from Kuwait, to allow the restoration of Kuwait's legitimate government, and to free all hostages now held in Iraq and [occupied] Kuwait." Following is the full text of the joint communique:

PROGRAM

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SCHEDULE SUNDAY THROUGH SATURDAY Time: 1ST;Frequencies in kHz; Asterisk (') indicates medium wave.

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ORDER FORM

We are united in the belief that Iraq's aggression must not be tolerated. No peaceful international order is possible if larger states can devour their smaller neighbors.

We reaffirm the joint statement of our Foreign Ministers of August 3, 1990, and our support for United Nations Security Council Resolutions 660, 661, 662, 664 and 665.

Today, we once again call upon the government of Iraq to withdraw unconditionally from Kuwait, to allow the restoration of Kuwait's legitimate government, and to free all hostages now held in Iraq and Kuwait.

Nothing short of the complete implementation of the United Nations Security Council resolutions is acceptable.

Nothing short of a return to the pre-August 2 status of Kuwait can end Iraq's isolation.

We call upon the entire world community to adhere to the sanctions mandated by the United Nations, and we pledge to work, individually and in concert, to ensure full compliance with the sanctions. At the same time, the United States and the Soviet Union recognize that U.N. Security Council Resolution 661 permits, in humanitarian circumstances, the importation into Iraq and Kuwait of food. The Sanctions

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Committee will make recommendations to the Security Council on what would constitute humanitarian circumstances. The United States and the Soviet Union further agree that any such imports must be strictly monitored by the appropriate international agencies to ensure that food reaches only those for whom it is intended, with special priority being given to meeting the needs of children.

Our preference is to resolve the crisis peacefully, and we will be united against Iraq's aggression as long as the crisis exists. However, we are determined to see this aggression end, and if the current steps fail to end it, we are prepared to consider additional ones consistent with the U.N. Charter.

We must demonstrate beyond any doubt that aggression cannot and will not pay.

As soon as the objectives mandated by the U.N. Security Council resolutions mentioned above have been achieved, and we have demonstrated that aggression does not pay, the Presidents direct their Foreign Ministers to work with countries in the region and outside it to develop regional security structures and measures to promote peace and stability. It is essential to work actively to resolve all remaining conflicts in the Middle East and Persian Gulf. Both sides will continue to consult each other and initiate measures to pursue these broader objectives at the proper time.

0

After the one-day summit the two superpower leaders held a joint press conference. Following are excerpts from the news conference given' by President George Bush and President Mikhail Gorbachev on September 9.

Is there likely to be war in the Middle East?

Bush: I hope that we can achieve a peaceful solution, and the way to do that is to have Iraq comply with the United Nations resolutions. And I think that part of our joint statement, two short lines, said it most clearly: "Nothing short of the complete implementation of the United Nations Security Council resolutions is acceptable."

As soon as Saddam Hussein realizes that, then there certainly will be a peaceful resolution to this question.

Gorbachev: The whole of our seven hours of meeting today were devoted to the quest for a political resolution of that conflict. And I believe that we're on the right road.

And if the crisis cannot be resolved peacefully?

Bush: The United States is determined to see these resolutions enforced, and I like to feel that they will be enforced and that will result in a peaceful resolution.

Resolving a World Crisis Is now an opportunity to solve the Palestinian problem through an international peace conference?

Bush: I see the implementation of the United Nations resolutions separate and apart from the need to solve the other question ....Under certain circumstances the consideration of a conference of that nature would be acceptableindeed, it's been a part of our policy from time to time. But the thing that I feel strongly about is that these issues are not linked. And any effort to link them is an effort to dilute the resolutions of the United Nations.

How long will U.S. troops remain in the Gulf?

Bush: They will be present in the area until we're satisfied that the security needs of the area have been met, and that these resolutions have been complied with. And the sooner they are out of there, as far as I am concerned, the better. I made very clear to President Gorbachev, as I think he will confirm, that we have no intention keeping them a day longer than is required.

Gorbachev: That's a very important statement.

Will the United States boost economic aid to the Soviet Union?

Bush: This remarkable cooperation that has been demonstrated by the Soviet Union at the United Nations gets me inclined to recommend as close cooperation in the economic field as possible, and I will be saying this to the Congress when I get back.

Gorbachev: I wouldn't want President Bush's reply to give rise to the opinion that the Soviet Union is going to align with a certain behavior ....It would be very oversimplified and very superficial to judge that the Soviet Union could be bought for dollars.

Will the Soviet Union remove its advisers from Iraq?

Gorbachev: They are not so much advisers as specialists or experts who are working under contract, and their number is being reduced. Whereas at the beginning of the conflict, I think there were still 196 of them; there are now some 150.

Bush: It would facilitate things if they were out of there in terms of total understanding. But I heard his answer, listened to it very, very carefully, and I must say that I would let it stand at that.

Was there discussion of military options for curbing Iraqi aggression?

Bush: No. We did not discuss military options.

Gorbachev: The whole of our time together was spent on talking about this conflict in a mutual search for a political solution.

But if Iraq does not withdraw, will not military action be necessary?

Gorbachev: I did not say that if Iraq does not withdraw peacefully, we're going to have recourse to military methods.

I did not state that. I do not state that.

Has the Soviet Union put pressure on its old aUy, Saddam Hussein?

Gorbachev: We discussed various options fpr ending the situation with him and we are also attempting ...to make it quite clear to Saddam Hussein that if Iraq were to provoke military action, then the result would be a tragedy first and foremost for the Iraqi people themselves, for the whole of the region and for the whole of the world.

Why are the leaders not equally as aggressive in pursuing U.N. Resolution 242 calling for Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories?

Bush: We've been zealously trying to do that as have many other powers for many years. But the fact that that resolution hasn't been fulfilled when it calls for withdrawal to secure and recognized boundaries, and it should be, and hopefully we can be catalytic in seeing that happen, does not mean that you sit idly by in the face of a naked aggression against Kuwait.

Gorbachev: Everything that is taking place in the Middle East is a matter of concern to us, of equal concern.

What specific steps were discussed to ensure compliance with the U.N. resolutions on Iraq?

Bush: We didn't agree to specific and concrete steps ....We did not sit at this meeting and try to assign each other or ask each other to undertake specific measures in keeping with that particular paragraph.

Gorbachev: The meeting and the document that we've just adopted is more important than our enumerating various steps that might have been taken here.

Given that the Presidents are determined to see aggression end, what comes next?

Bush: It's too hypothetical. We want to see the message get through to Saddam Hussein. We want to see him do what the United Nations calls on him to do. And that statement can be interpreted any way you want to interpret it.

Gorbachev: I have the impression that both the press and public opinion in some countries is in some ways saying that there's a lack of decision on somebody's part, that we're withdrawing in the face of those who are trampling on international law. I cannot agree with that view.

Was the Soviet Union asked to supply troops?

Bush: I did not ask him to send troops in. If the Soviets decided to do that at the invitation of the Saudis, that would 0 be fine with us.

ON THE LIGHTER SIDE

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s an ambitious young Englishman seeking his fortune in the United States in the mid-1800s, Frederick Henry Harvey followed the prevailing wisdom of the times and headed West. His experiences there led to several trenchant observations about the deficiencies of the countryside the deeper one traveled off into the sunset: "There wasn't a square meal or decent lodging west of St. Louis.

"There are no ladies west of Dodge City.

"And no women west of Albuquerque."

Fred Harvey wasn't the first man in America to have to sleep five across a bed with four booted strangers in a pungent hotel room; nor was he the first man to lose his appetite over a bowl of gray stew filled with unidentifiable objects. But he was the first to do something about these societal shortcomings-the food and lodgings initially, then the ladies. As a result, Harvey won the undying gratitude of several generations of hungry travelers and lonely railroad men, sod busters and cowhands, and is still remembered in the United States as the man who "made the desert bloom with beefsteaks and pretty girls."

American travelers today make jokes about airline food and pale at the sight of still another pair of golden arches ~n a long Interstate journey. But that fare is epicurean compared with the provender that was slapped down in front of the famished voyager in the greasy railroad stops of the Old West-rancid bacon, eggs preserved in lime, bitter coffee made with the local strongly alkaline water, ancient beans, leaden biscuits accurately called "sinkers" and "antelope steak" so tough you couldn't get your fork in the gravy-all prepared by a chef who was trained in a mining or logging camp, then fired. Of particularly evil repute was "railroad pie," generously described as upper and lower crusts of cardboard held together by thick glue.

Reprinted

from the Smithsonian

Copyright Š James A. Cox.

byJAMESA.COX

magazine.

Meal stops sometimes lasted only ten to 20 minutes in that madhouse, the depot quick lunch, and since the trains were not known to dally once the station bell rang and the conductor made his announcement, passengers were in a frantic, sorry state by the time meals arrivedand in worse shape after gulping them down.

Particularly deplorable was the scam played on several Western lines by dishonest restaurant owners and train crews.

Passengers paid 50 cents in advance for a meal. As soon as it was brought out, the allaboard bell sounded and the travelers scrambled back to the coaches, food virtually untouched.

But it wasn't wasted.

Those same dishes were brought out for the next group of victims, and the cooperative train crew was paid off to the tune of a dime for each crew member.

Wary of these pitfalls, experienced travelers brought picnic lunches from home.

This was hardly an ideal solution while crossing the prairie on a seething summer day. "When everybody in the car got out their lunch baskets," wrote a correspondent for the Kansas City Star, "the bouquet...hung around the car all day, and the flies wired ahead for their friends to meet them at each station."

In 1867, George M. Pullman built a small kitchen, with folding tables, in one of his new sleeping cars; the following year, his first real dining car. But these newfangled meals on wheels saw very limited service, while at the railroad stations-the new social centers---eonsistent good service was unavailable. The times were right for Harvey to step forward.

Born in London in 1835 of Scots-English parentage, Harvey arrived in New York from Liverpool in 1850 at age IS and landed a job as a pot scrubber at the Smith and McNeill Cafe on Washington Street.

He earned $2 a week and meals, yet he somehow managed to put by the money for passage on a coastal packet to New Or-

A little more than a century ago, Frederick Harvey brought culture and refinement to the West with his chain of Harvey Houses, which offered elegance with excellent cuisine served by pretty girls.

leans, where he landed jobs in fine restaurants. Surviving yellow fever, he had saved enough by 1855 to ride a sternwheeler up the Mississippi to St. Louis.

There he found a partner, opened a modest restaurant that flourished modestly and won the heart of a 17-year-old Bohemian girl, Barbara Sarah Mattas. The Civil War brought difficult days, and when Harvey returned to work from a bout with typhoid he found his business gutted financially and his erstwhile partner gone.

Harvey then turned to railroading, eventually becoming general Western freight agent for the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy (CB&Q)-a traveling job that made him a captive patron of every fleabag and railroad poison palace on the Northern plains from Iowa to Montana.

Reasoning that the West had suffered long enough from chronic dyspepsia, in 1875 Harvey took another flier with a partner and opened a couple of eating establishments on the Kansas Pacific line.

This came a cropper when it turned out that Harvey's stringent standards were not his partner's.

But Harvey remained convinced that depot restaurants, properly run, could offer good food at reasonable prices along with civilized service and pleasant surroundings-and still turn a profit. Looking ahead, he envisioned fine dining rooms in first-class hotels, where railroad passengers could stop over and visit the Wild West in comfort and luxury.

He tried out these ideas on his own boss at the Burlington, who was not ready for such a daffy scheme. But Charles F. Morse, general superintendent of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe, was. With only a handshake to seal the deal, because "both were gentlemen," Harvey bought out a dingy, ten-seat lunch counter at the Topeka depot in 1876 and went to work. He scrubbed it from wall to wall, arranged for fresh supplies of quality foods and opened with a larger, more moderately priced menu along with efficient, courteous service; something unheard of.

Within a few weeks the little counter was so jammed with customers, not only railroad passengers and train crews but also Topeka townsfolk, that it had to be expanded. Harvey was ecstatic. So was the Santa Fe. Morse and Harvey next turned their attention to the tiny hamlet of Florence (population: 100), Kansas. They signed a contract and shook hands again. Harvey bought the local hotel and, like a gambler on a roll, went all out. He brought in expensive walnut furniture, Sheffield silver and crystal from England, china from France, linens from Ireland-and Konrad Allgaier, head chef from the posh Palmer House in Chicago, at the then unbelievable salary of $5,000 a year.

Florence was agog. Especially when the chef also went all out. He offered $1.50 a dozen for prairie chickens, 75 cents for a dozen quail, ten cents a pound [22 cents a kilogram] for butter, and the highest prices that anybody had heard of for fresh fruits and vegetables. The novelty of an excellent chef producing magnificent European cuisine in a backwater burg in Kansas proved irresistible. Meals at the Florence Harvey House became famous far and wide, and travelers began to arrange their schedules to stop there.

Resigning from the CB&Q in 1882, Harvey set up a small office in Leavenworth.

As the Santa Fe gandy dancers worked their way westward, Harvey Houses sprang up at such stops as Hutchinson, Dodge City, Las Vegas, Albuquerque, Gallup, Needles and Barstow-by 1884 there were 17 along the route of the Santa Fe. These first establishments weren't as grand as some of the later models, but inside their rough exteriors hid many pleasant surprises. When the Santa Fe construction gangs reached Holbrook, Arizona, for example, passengers alighting from their trains shuddered at the sight of the tem-

porary restaurant Harvey had thrown up--five sun-bleached old boxcars removed from their rusty carriages and jammed together. But the interiors glistened in freshly painted colors and the tables were set with customary eleganceas well as sweating pitchers of ice water and bouquets of fresh flowers from California. Not to mention the excellent Harvey food, including coffee brewed with fresh water brought in by tank car and real fruit pies cut in five portions instead of the usual six.

Since the Santa Fe was the only line in the West on which travelers could get anything decent to eat, passenger traffic boomed and, in 1889, II years after signing his first, five-year contract with the Santa Fe-Harvey really preferred informal agreements-he signed a new one. The deal he asked for and got would have made his canny Scottish forebears proud. He was to have the exclusive right to operate all eating houses along the Santa Fe, with the railroad furnishing fuel, ice and fresh water as well as free transportation for supplies and Harvey employees-all profits to the Fred Harvey Company.

Harvey was constantly on the go, making his way up and down the line and into the surrounding area, searching out sources of supplies. During his travels he would often drop in on a restaurant or lunchroom unannounced and conduct a surprise inspection. Woe to the manager who condoned carelessly set tables, tarnished silverware, chipped china or less than sparkling glassware! Harvey would yank the tablecloth free, sending everything-----dishes, cutlery and all-smashing to the floor. And then, if the sins were numerous and grievous enough, would sack the manager.

It was one such traumatic visit to Raton, New Mexico, that was responsible for what was probably Harvey's greatest stroke of Harvey Girls. At commercial genius-the the time, New Mexico bore the .dubious distinction of being just about the wildest territory in the Wild, Wild West.

When Harvey arrived one morning, he found a surly, seedy crop of waiters, bruised and puffy-eyed from the previous evening's debauches, treating customers as if they had wandered into the sleaziest hash joint in town instead of a Harvey House. He fired the lot on the spot and some inexperienced but respectable young women were hired. The experiment was an immediate success and one of the West's

fairest institutions was born.

Soon, major newspapers in the East and Midwest began carrying help-wanted advertisements appealing to "Young women of good character, attractive and intelligent, 18 to 30, to work in Harvey Eating Houses in the West." Harvey set up interviewing offices in Kansas City and Chicago, while Western newspapers wrote glowingly of pretty girls flocking to the prairies, "bringing culture, refinement and romance."

Successful applicants had to sign a contract vouching for their good character and promising not to marry for a year. In return, they received a salary of $17.50 a month, plus tips, room and boardenough in that era for a thrifty young lady to build a respectable nest egg. Rules were strict. The girls lived in Harvey dormitories under the stern eyes of formidable matrons, who saw to it that their charges were in by 10 p.m., except on special occasions such as the weekly Friday-night dance. Gentlemen callers had to be received in a chaperoned courting parlor, and if a girl missed curfew three times she could be fired.

The earliest standard uniform consisted of black shoes and stockings, a plain, black, ankle-length, long-sleeved dress with starched white apron, a white collar

and black bow, and a neatly tied ribbon in the hair. Rather than turning the eyes of amorous young swains elsewhere, this sober garb only enhanced the wholesomeness of the Harvey Girls in contrast with other "working women" of the West-the painted ladies who labored in saloonsand many a true romance bloomed. More than one of the matrons complained of running a matrimonial agency. In the latter years of the century an estimated 5,000 Harvey Girls walked up the aisle with railroad engineers, conductors, station agents, local merchants, ranchers and, of course, an occasional sweet-tongued drummer.

Harvey even staged parties for the newlyweds. Aware of the value of good public relations, he undoubtedly enjoyed the popular witticism that more marriages were made in Harvey Houses than in any other institution under H except Heaven.

And he may well have felt a little puff of pride when editor Elbert Hubbard waggishly started the rumor-to-become-legend that the first boy child-there were more than 4,000-from these unions was named Fred or Harvey or both.

Appreciation for Fred Harvey's contributions to the collective hearts and stomachs of the West can still be seen occasionally in America on late-night television airings of MGM's 1946 film The Harvey Girls, starring Judy Garland. But there are other tips of the cap from earlier years. "He kept the West in food and wives," wrote Will Rogers, the homespun American humorist. "Those Western railroad brakemen and Harvey lunchroom waitresses were the future aristocracy of the West," novelist Edna Ferber remembered her father saying. The Sage of Emporia, Kansas, William Allen White, wrote that Fred Harvey "had more friends west of the Mississippi than [President] William McKinley and [world boxing champion] Bob Fitzsimmons together."

Why? Because, wrote Kentucky humorist Irvin S. Cobb, "Two thousand miles [3,200 kilometers] from salt water the oysters that are served in his dining cars do not seem to be suffering from car sickness [and there] are spring chickens with the most magnificent bust development I ever saw outside of a burlesque show."

The not very famous were also heard from, in not very good rhyme: "Harvey Houses, don't you savvy,/Clean across the old Mojave,/On the Santa Fe they've strung 'em/Like a string of [American]

Indian beads./We all couldn't eat without 'em,/But the slickest things about 'em/Is the Harvey skirts that hustle up the feeds."

In a similar down-to-earth vein, the memories of a few of the latter-day Harvey "skirts" have been recorded. "People kind of looked down on a girl for being a waitress in 1924," recalled Opal Sells Hill.

"But they didn't when you worked for Fred Harvey; I loved being a Harvey Girl. You had pride. You didn't wear earscrews or nail polish." Neva Davis, a Harvey Girl in Albuquerque in 1923, said, "You earned your money in tips. Nobody got any overtime. In the early days, everybody tipped a dime. Once Bob Hope came in alone and ordered a sirloin steak. Tipped me 50 cents.

That was generous."

Harvey Girls were considerably more than mere hashslingers. Training was rigorous. Keith L. Bryant Jr., in his history of the Santa Fe, noted: "On her first assignment at Ash Fork, Arizona, Laura White learned to serve full meals to 16 people in 25 minutes, to keep the cutlery and china polished, and coffee cups always full. There would be no frayed napkins, nicked cups, bent silver, broken toothpicks or conversation with customers while a train waited."

Meals at an early Harvey House cost a mere four bits [50 cents] in the dining room and less at the counter. Wrote James Marshall in his Sanla Fe-The Railroad Thai Buill an Empire: "For 50 cents you got all you wanted of the finest ea ta bles money could buy, including thick steaks for breakfast, with eggs atop ifdesired. These, with a platter of hashed brown potatoes, formed a firm foundation for the ensuing six-high stack of pan-sized wheat cakes with maple syrup, topped off with apple pie and coffee. " After that, you want to look at the fourto-five-course dinner menu? Here's a sampling from 1888, but be warned-the price

had risen to a staggering 75 cents: Bluepoints on the half shell, fillet of whitefish with Madeira sauce, young capon, roast sirloin of beef au jus, pork with applesauce, stuffed turkey, salmi of duck, English-style baked veal pie, prairie chicken with currant jelly, sugar-cured ham and pickled lamb's tongue, all accompanied by seven vegetables, four salads-including lobster salad au mayonnaise-and a wide variety of pies, cakes and custards, finished off finally with various cheeses and Harvey's famous coffee. After meals like that, paeans of praise rose like savory smoke from Harvey House kitchen chimneys.

In addition to lavishing on the inner man the best victuals money could buy, Fred Harvey brought system and order where before there had been chaos. At the last telegraph stop before a Harvey restaurant, the conductor wired ahead the number of passengers and their dining preferenceslunch counter or dining room. A mile or so from the depot the engineer tooted his whistle to alert the chef and the girls; by the time the passengers had detrained and followed the white-coated porter as he banged on a big brass gong, the first course was on the table.

As the passengers, usually eight to a table, dug in, a waitress took their entree and drink orders. Then the "drink girl" arrived and poured each diner's libationcoffee, hot tea, iced tea or milk. The guests looked at one another in surprise: How does she know? No one remembered the waitress fiddling with their cups when she took their orders, but in fact she had been using Harvey's cup code: Right side up in the saucer meant coffee; upside down, hot tea; upside down but tilted against the saucer, iced tea; upside down and removed from the saucer, milk. It worked-unless some fidgety diner began playing with the crockery.

Besides offering quality and service, Harvey operated on the premise that the customer was always right-up to a point.

Customers at his restaurants did have to abide by several rules, all having to do with gentlemanly behavior.

One evening in 1883, a band of whooping cowpokes on a drunken tear rode their ponies into the barroom of the Castaneda Hotel in Las Vegas, shot up some bottles arrayed behind the bar, then loudly and profanely demanded eats and booze. Harvey happened to be in the dining room. A wiry, compact man with a nervous manner, he was nonetheless not to be trifled with. Appearing in

the doorway, he raised a white-gloved hand and said in cool, autocratic tones, "Gentlemen, ladies are here. No swearing or foul language is permitted. You must put up your guns and leave quietly at once."

Sheepishly, the cowhands holstered their six-shooters and quietly walked their horses outside. To show that he held no grudge, Harvey treated them to a meal, with lots of black coffee, but insisted that they don coats before entering the dining room. (It was his other inviolable rule that no man would be served in a Harvey House

unless wearing a coat. If he did I)ot have one, the house would be more than happy to lend him an alpaca jacket.)

In 1892, with the inauguration of the California Limited from Chicago to Los Angeles, a new and unsympathetic management began running railroad-owned dining cars. Harvey went to court to protect his depot-based restaurants. The railroad backed down and in 1893 signed a contract that turned over dining-car service to him.

It wasn't a bad move. True to Harvey tradition, the dining cars made little if any

profit. But they pulled if'. passengers in record numbers.

By the turn of the century, Harvey, his two sons and a son-in-law had begun to reach out toward one of his early dreamsluxury hotels in resort areas such as El Tovar on the rim of the Grand Canyon.

They also broke new ground by establishing gift shops in many of his depot restaurants.

In places like Chicago and Kansas City, high-priced items and expensive jewelry were sold. In the the Southwest, the emphasis on handmade American

Indian blankets, rugs, jewelry and pottery brought prosperity to American Indian artisans and was so' successful that the Santa Fe incorporated American Indian motifs into its advertising and merchandising. The Harveys also developed an American Indian department, headquartered in Albuquerque, that helped revive and preserve the ancient tribal arts of the Hopi, Navajo and Zuni. Out of this effort came the Fred Harvey Fine Arts Collection, thousands of pieces of American Indian and Spanish Colonial ethnographic ma-

terial, most of which was given to the Heard Museum of Phoenix, Arizona.

In the midst of this ambitious program, on February 9, 1901, Fred Harvey passed away. Ailing seriously, he had turned over management of the family business to his sons and son-in-law, who carried on the old tradition. At the time of Harvey's death, the chain included 15 hotels, 47 restaurants, 30 railroad dining cars and the food service on the San Francisco Bay ferry system. Expansion reached a zenith in 1917, when 100 Harvey eating houses ranged from Chicago south to Galveston and west to the Coast.

From that high point the chain gradually declined, largely because many other fine restaurants opened as the cities grew, competing for Harvey's patrons. World War II brought many of the old Harvey Houses back to life-along with a lot of retired Harvey Girls-to feed hungry American soldiers, sailors and airmen traveling long hours on troop trains. But after setting some remarkable records-more than 30 million meals served in 1943, for example-the greatest chain of eating houses America had ever known went into a second, and ultimate, decline with the return of peace, done in by the same simple truth that killed the passenger trainsalmost nobody in America was using them anymore.

The Fred Harvey Company still survives as part of a San Francisco-based conglomerate, Amfac Inc., operating a number of resort facilities, notably in Arizona, California and Hawaii. But the superlative necklace of restaurants that Fred Harvey strung along the tracks of the Santa Fe railroad is gone. And its passing deserves an epitaph.

William Allen White put it straight from the shoulder when he wrote, in the editorial columns of his Emporia Gazette, that Harvey food "is the best in America."

One early historian summed up Harvey's contributions in this way: "Harvey eating houses served as schools to all the Southwest [so that] rivals could no longer persevere in their barbarian ways." The best tribute may have come from Carla Kelly, a modern writer, who obviously drew on that last comment when she added, "Barbarism has never been able to compete with a well-cooked steak and a pretty girl to serve it."

0 About the Author: James A. Cox is a New Jerseybased free-lance writer.

Fromthe Master's Archives Two things are remarkable about "Frank Lloyd Wright Drawings: Masterworks From the Frank Lloyd Wright Archives," the sweeping exhibition of the works of the master architect (seen above) that was held February through April this year at the Phoenix Art Museum in Arizona.

The first is that the exhibition happened at all. Wright's drawings are usually guarded so tightly by the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, the legal owner, that almost nobody gets to see them. The foundation rarely lets original drawings offits premises (though it did sell several dozen a few years ago to raise money), and a show of more than 300 Wright drawings in a public museum has always seemed about as likely as an exhibition of the Elgin marbles in Central Park in New York City.

This show, which will surely rank as one of the major retrospectives of Frank Lloyd Wright ever mounted, grew out of a carefully nurtured relationship between the Phoenix Art Museum and the Wright foundation, which is at Taliesin West, Wright's home and studio in nearby Scottsdale.

Arizona's cultural organizations have been honoring Wright, who settled in the state in 1937, with a series of events this year, and the museum's director, James

1. Rose Pauson Residence, Phoenix, Arizona; 1939.

Perspective; pencil and color pencil on tracing paper; 74 x 38 em.

2. "Fallingwater," Edgar J. Kaufmann Residence, Mill Run, Pennsylvania; 1935. Perspective; pencil and color pencil on tracing paper; 84 x 43 em.

3. Taliesin Fellowship Complex, Spring Green, Wisconsin; 1932. Aerial perspective; pencil and color pencil on tracing paper; 53 x 46 em.

4. "The Illinois," Mile High Skyscraper (project), Chicago, Illinois; 1956.

Aerial perspective; pencil and color pencil, silver and gold ink on tracing paper; 61 x 244 em.

5. Lake Tahoe Summer Colony, Lake Tahoe, California; 1922.

Perspective; pencil and color . pencil on tracing paper; 56 x 43 em.

6. "Donahoe Triptych, Helen Donahoe Residence (project), Paradise Valley, Arizona; 1959. Perspective; pencil and color pencil on tracing paper; 147 x 91 cm.

Ballinger, convinced Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, Taliesin's archivist, that if the foundation was ever going to let the drawings go on public view, this was the time and Phoenix was the place.

The second remarkable thing here is, of course, the drawings themselves. Though these 303 pieces were a tiny fraction of the 21,000 drawings the Wright archive possesses, they were probably the most thorough assemblage of Wright drawings one will see in this lifetime. And they managed to have an impact that was richer and deeper in its way than a more conventional architecture show with models and photographs.

Taken together, these drawings, which ranged from casual pencil sketches to elaborate presentation renderings, constituted a complete retrospective of the protean career of the man who was the greatest architect America has seen in this century.

The only elements besides the drawings were a few photographs of Wright grouped at the beginning of the exhibition, just to start visitors off with some images of the man himself, and a few wellchosen quotations from the architect printed on large panels set on drafting tables in each gallery.

But then it was up to the drawings themselves to tell the story.

I am not sure the story they told gave dramatic new insights into Wright. But it confirmed, with strength and with eloquence, all that has been known about this architect who, nearly 31 years after his death, seems to loom ever larger on the American landscape.

Wright claimed to have created a new style and a new attitude toward the making of architecture, and in many ways he did, but his real contribution was not in making a style that others could follow, but in creating one of the most remarkable oeuvres of any individual in the history of art.

Wright's career began in the 1880s, before he was 20; before World War I he had designed

Frank Lloyd Wright in his Paradise Valley, Arizona, house. The living room illustrates the simplicity of design and open spaciousness characteristic of all the houses designed by the American architect.

dozens of buildings that are now considered icons of modern architecture. His career continued to change and evolve with each decade, and he was still building actively when he died at 90 in 1959. Probably the only artistic figure of modern times to compare with him is Picasso.

And like Picasso, Wright had a tumultuous private life that often obscured his work. Wright cultivated a public pose; he loved to play the iconoclastic architect.

A valuable contribution of the exhibition was its ability to make one focus once again on Wright the designer as opposed to Wright the public figure-to think of Wright not as a selfconscious oracle, but as a man with a pencil in his hand, struggling toward an aesthetic truth.

Not every drawing here was entirely Wright's own. Numerous pieces, particularly the more elaborate ones, were collaborations of the architect and his associates, and a few of the presentation drawings made to impress clients were done entirely by draftsmen. But if the execution was not always Wright's, the ideas were, and far and away the finest pieces in this exhibition were the smaller, casual sketches, the ones where Wright's own hand is visible, the pieces of paper on which

one sees his ideas being born.

Many of the early drawings of houses, when Wright did not have a vast cadre of apprentices to carry out his orders, show him at his best as an architect who could draw with a style that was at once delicate and self-assured, his sketches possessed of a soft, almost haunting quality.

Among the most beautiful was an altogether remarkable sketch of the Thomas P. Hardy House of 1905, in Racine, Wisconsin, which is done like a Japanese print, tall and narrow, with the house at the top ofa mountain of white space.

Wright could evoke a sense of landscape with the subtlest hints, as in the magnificent drawing of the Francis W. Little House (1912), known as Northome, in Wayzata, Minnesota, where the softly colored structure sprawls across the top of a large page, and one feels the presence of a hill that is barely drawn below it.

It is these deft and delicate drawings that almost without exception were the finest.

But the better pieces were a royal road to Wright's essence: From the huge drawing of Taliesin West (1937), which exudes the sense of a desert camp that motivated Wright's original design, to the laser-sharp ink draw-

ing of the Winslow House (1893) in River Forest, Illinois, which projects a brilliant self-assurance, to the glorious, mad, dazzling drawings for the Mile High Skyscraper, his 528-story fantasy project designed for Chicago in 1956.

Some other highlights: The series of drawings for a house for Wright's son, David, in Phoenix, a swirling structure raised on columns that looks like a merger of Le Corbusier's Villa Savoie with the Guggenheim Museum; an exquisite interior perspective of Unity Temple in Oak Park, Illinois, that tells more than any photograph ever has about the true nature of that great space, and an incredible roomful of drawings for the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, including a side view of the north wing that is one of the most beautiful architectural drawings I have ever seen.

The room was punctuated by a quotation about the values of bending to existing architectural tradition in which Wright proves himself as agile verbally as archi tecturally.

"There was a tradition there worthy of respect, and I felt it my duty as well as my privilege to make the building belong to them so far as I might," the architect said, at once flattering the Japanese and making clear he would design what he pleased.

The exhibition would have been improved by labeling to tell which drawings came from Wright's own hand, even if Wright's own drawings possess an extraordinary blend of romance and intensity, of grace and daring, that even the best done by his associates do not.

The Wright drawings are tough and gentle at the same time, as Wright's greatest work has always been, and if to walk through this exhibition was not the same as entering one of his buildings, it was truly to enter his mind.

0 Paul Goldberger is the architecture critic for The New

About the Author:

York Times.

S

omehow it seemed wrong to Ralph Flowers to kill all those black bears.

Sure, part of his job at the Washington Forest Protection Association was to stop the animals from stripping bark from trees and feeding on the sapwood.

Then it occurred to him that the way to a bear's heart was not through the barrel of a gun but through its stomach. So he concocted a recipe of sugar-beet pulp and set out feed troughs in the forests. Immedi-~ ately the bears began to spare the trees and fill their bellies with Flowers' feast.

Today his work is enthusiastically supported by the American timber companies and, says Flowers, 61, "I can retire with an easy conscience." His experiment, though, cost him $12,000. That personal sacrifice caught the attention of Ann Medlock and John Graham, a married couple who run a small foundation in Langley (population: 700), on picturesque Whidbey Island, 30 kilometers north of Seattle in Washington State. And in 1988 Flowers, savior of the bears, became a Giraffe.

That needs .some explaining.

The foundation is called the Giraffe Project, and its aim is to recognize people who "stick their necks out for the common good." Risk must alSo be involved: the chance of losing a job or being ostracized by a community. "Each of these individual acts," says Medlock, "teaches the rest of us important lessons about learning to copein an unsafe world."

Since the project was founded seven years ago, more than 250 Giraffes have been named, and each has been sent a certificate commending the "courageous . actions." Apart from whatever publicity the couple can drum up, that's it. No foundation bequest. No fancy banquet. Its charm lies in its simplicity.

Consider New Yorker Michael Greenberg, who every winter gathers, repairs and hands out gloves to the homeless. Consider Ray Buchanan and Ken Horne of Big Island, Virginia, who collect farmers' discarded potatoes and deliver them to the hungry. And consider lanky Graham, 48, and petite, vivacious Medlock, 57, who flirt with financial disaster to keep their project

<D

Reprinted

by permission

1988 Time Inc. All rights reserved. from Time.

opened her home, without charge, to pregnant, unmarried women, meeting her $113,000 annual budget with church and private donations. "We've saved about 300 babies," says DiFiore, 42, proudly.

People like DiFiore are making the sort of impact that a disillusioned Graham was seeking when he left the U.S. Foreign Service in 1980, after serving in Vietnam, with the U.S. delegation to the United Nations and on NATO's Nuclear Planning Group.

About this time, he met Medlock, a journalist who in 1980 was working for Quest magazine when it formed a Giraffe society to reward the intrepid. When the magazine folded in 1981, Medlock nurtured the neck-stretching idea with a little money from supporters and began persuading American radio stations to air a short account of Giraffes' achievements, recor~ed by personalities such as Candice Bergen and John Denver. Today the exploits are regularly broadcast by more than 500 stations in the United States.

In 1985 Graham and Medlock, by then married, moved their project from a New York City apartment to Langley. The project's survival is due mostly to the generosity of 18 foundations and private donors. "It's a profound idea that won't save the world, but might make a lot of folks feel better," says William L. Bondurant, executive director of the North Carolina-based Babcock Foundation, which so far has donated $85,000.

The Giraffe Project's accounts, which have been in the red for sometime, are in better shape now because Graham holds $1,OOO-a-day seminars for employees of companies like Seattle's Rainier Bank on how to succeed in business by using the Giraffe qualities of caring, sharing and risk taking. Maybe it's a bit much to expect a bank employee to be as fearless as Giraffe L.c. Coonse, a high school chemistry teacher in Granite Falls, North Carolina, who discovered that an incinerator was producing toxic fumes and, over community opposition, shut it down. How many of us could live up to the example of Carrie Barefoot Dickerson of Claremore,. Oklahoma, who financed the opposition to a planned nuclear power plant by mortgaging her farm and raffling

' C IJlrl 87] YOURNECK OUT

About the Author: David Brand is a senior writer on the staff of Time magazine.

Copyright

going in order to spread the word about good deeds in an unkind world. The object, says Medlock, is to inspire everyone "to stop being an ostrich."

Callers send in their suggestions for new Giraffes to the project's tiny office off Langley's main street, next door to a beauty parlor and across from the volunteer fire department.

Many nominations come from 2,000 widely scattered members, most of whom pay $25 a year to support the project's work.

Every month potential Giraffes are scrutinized by ten to 15 of the couple's friends and neighbors. Many candidates spark disagreement, not so much over their causes but over such things as risk and motivation. "What was going on inside the person?" asks Graham. "Did the whistleblower really have an ax to grind? Was the volunteer organizer simply having a good time?" And these heroes must be pure of heart: "We want people who can achieve without resortto meanness."

At a recent meeting, Graham opposed the nomination of a New Jersey battered wife who founded a group to help other victims. Said Graham, "The pain of her experience was so far in the past that I don't see what risk she is'taking now." He was loudly and raucously outvoted, and an indignant Medlock threw a cushion at her husband, "One man's Gir~ffe is another's turkey," grinned Medlock.

If all this sounds very arbitrary, it is.

"We're playing God, but then, we can because we invented the game," says Medlock. The result is ambiguities. The project's philosophies of "It's up to us" and self-reliance might sound conservative, but it is the workers' for liberal causes who inevitably get recognition-antinuclear proponents, feminists and peace activists.

One supporter of a conservative cause who did become a Giraffe is Kathy DiFiore of Ramsey, New Jersey, an opponent of abortion.

For the past eight years, she has )

handmade quilts? None of us, though, should be intimidated, says Medlock.

"There's something each of us can do to make the world a better place." 0

Minding the Store PHOTOGRAPHS BY BARRY FITZGERALD

The United States is a shopper's paradiseThen t~ere are any number of stores that specialize thanks mainly to a large number of chain stores in a particular line of goods. For example, ,Tandy such as Lord & Taylor, Altman, Sears Roebuck, , Corporation's more than 5,000 stores all over Bloomingdale's, Woolworth and K Mart, which America, which go by the name of Radio Shack, sell offer a bewildering variety of wares ranging from and service the entire range of electronic goodsclothing to c'ameras to computers, from toiletries to from calculators to computers-for home use. televisions, from refrigerators to washing machines.

The picture story on these pages looks at the life

Above: Larry Candellera, manager of Radio Shack in Gallup, New Mexico, attends to a customer, Right: Candellera patiently explains the working of a remote-controlled toy car to a young customer,

Radio Shack is conveniently located in a shopping mall.

Candellera assigns duties to his staff.

Gives his expert advice to a family wanting to buy a personal computer.

Selects a¡casselle at a video rental store in the shopping mall for viewing at home.

of a typical manager of such retail stores, as exem-

the customer is king, each one of the store's clients

plified by Larry Candellera,

receives the staff's personal attention. "In fact," says

manager

of a Radio

city of Gallup in

Candellera, "we take a lot of pains to make it fun for

New Mexico.

As Gallup caters to the needs not only of its

our customers to shop at Radio Shack, offering them tips, expert advice and actual demonstrations.

20,000 residents but also of the large outlying rural

we tell our prospective customers, when they are not

community and Navajo and Pueblo American

sure about any particular product they want to buy,

Shack store iri the southwestern

In-

Often

dian tribes, Radio Shack is open from 10 a.m. to

to try our demonstration

9 p.m., six days a week. Even on Sundays, the store,

two without any charge or obligation in order to help

located conveniently

them make up their minds."

in a shopping

mall, is open

Although

between 12 noon and 5 p.m.

"Hours are long and the work demanding,"

says

Candellera, who is helped by two full-time and two

Candellera

sets at home for a day or

has a busy workday

at the

store, he does find time to attend to his family, often taking them to church, shopping

or on an outing.

part-time employees. "On an average day we attend

"Although

to more than 100 customers, who range in ages from

store,"

eight to 80."

whereby we rotate our duties so each one of us gets a

However, in keeping with the company motto that

there are just the five of us manning the

he says, "we 'have worked

weekly holiday."

out a system 0

1. A child works at a computer at Radio Shack; the store encourages potential buyers to tryout the equipment for themselves.

2. Candellera, wife Sophia and daughter Lori at a church service.

3. On a weekend, the family drives to Window Rock, Arizona, an . important and popular landmark in the areaJor an outing.

4. Returningfrom the outing; the Candelieras stop at i1 wayside restaurant for a cold drink.

5. Thefamily visits a nearby lake for a quiet day offishing.

6. Relaxing at the lakeside.

7. At home, Candellera helps prepare a meal for the children.