Postblogging Technology, September 1954, I: A Theory of Capital Goods Might Be Just The Thing!

R_.C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada




Dear Father:

So let this be a lesson to everyone. If you're ever tempted to make friends with a nice admiral that nobody loves, you might just live to regret it if he gets promoted after all. Considering that Felix is Ray Spruance's man through and through, I guess it's no surprise that he doesn't get along with Radford. Unfortunately, Wild Bill is in Washington, and Felix is out here managing the Straits, as far as Chiang will let him. There are rumours of a split between Radford and the President, but he still has Dulles' ear, and what they're talking about is a preventive nuclear war against China. Churchill has been able to impress on Ike just how crazy this is, but there's no talking to the Dulles brothers. (I'm told there was a long lecture about Marlborough, Queen Anne, and the end of the War of the Spanish Succession in general, to the effect of not letting ideology get in the way of diplomacy --the sort of thing that Churchill would never dare say in public, which is unfortunate because Tony seems to have taken the public Churchill to heart, but now I'm just passing on the rumours I hear to make myself look important.) 

So the gist of it is that Chiang, and many of his subordinates, are ready to start a war in a hot minute if he gets the chance. That's the reason he sent those troops to Quemoy in the first place --that and to get their officers out of his nonexistent hair. If Felix doesn't stop them from crossing over to the mainland, he completely undermines the United States' argument for being in the Strait to start with. If he does, he has to shoot at Nationalists. The obvious way out of this is to let the Reds shoot the Nationalists --Oopsie doopsie, silly me, must have been looking in the wrong direction. The problem is that this has to be made clear not to Chiang, but all the rambunctious types underneath of him, especially the ones unhappy with the Koumintang, and it sure as heck can't go through State because the leak will be on Knowland's deck before it even clears the cable office.

So who can do that? How about a fluent American naval aviator with inside connections and his incredibly beautiful young wife? Which is why this letter is coming to you from Taipei and why I had to give my notice. Your country calls, and all of that. James hasn't been formally transferred because that would raise all sorts of red flags. So James is here on leave to do something because something, and unless someone backs down soon, he will continue to be on leave here in Taipei through the end of next summer, and hopefully not longer than that, because I will be off to take the bar in San Francisco. 

Unless we're fighting giant ants in the radioactive rubble of civilisation, I mean. 

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

PS: Lots of talk about "capital goods" in the press this time around. I honestly had no idea that economic theory could be so sophisticated and nuanced, and in spite of my education, this is the first time I've heard the field discussed in such a way that I feel like I need to understand WHY Karl Marx thought he had to write Das Kapital. I don't think I did the Fortune article on the subject justice, never mind the field, but it is definitely something that I will be turning over in my head as I burble on about "technology" here.

Genocide with weapons of mass destruction is the only answer to Comm ---Ants. Ants.

Joan Weldon when not cosplaying Shadowheart. (Pro tip: It doesn't matter how many fireballs your casters throw if they don't hit. Cast "Bless," at least until you get "Aid.") 3:56 for Joan.

The Economist, 4 September 1954

Leaders

"A Vote for Paralysis" The magazine is deeply disappointed that the French voted against the EDC, because it was playing into Red hands and now the Nazis will probably be back next week. 

"Unions Under Pressure" The magazine really, really hopes so, anyway. 

"An Unbalanced Economy?" Professor

Austin Robinson's address to the economics section of the British Association last week presented a "careful, tentative, but controversially gloomy assessment of Britain's long-term economic future." Britain has been moving labour from agriculture into industry a century or so because industry earns more, but this is true of every economy in the world, so they are all going to move into industry, which will make British industrial exports less competitive, which will make it impossible to import so much food, which will lead to a "drift back to the land" and a fall in imports to West German levels, and by extension a West German level of income, which is to say, 15--20% less than the British income, hence the "gloomy" part --the British people's income will be cut 15% or so to the German level. And if we are moving into a new scientific revolution and new and more capital-intensive industries allow Britain to maintain its lead over countries like Japan and India, will the advantage not shift further in favour of the United States and lead to the re-emergence or intensification of the dollar shortage? No doubt! 

"Room for Japan" Japan's economic crisis will continue and grow worse until the sterling area countries make room for Japan in international trade. Japan is already a heavy importer from sterling countries, but its current account deficit means that that cannot go on. The Japanese are inclined to blame this on American procurement falling by half, with further cuts to follow as more American troops leave Korea. Solving this problem will begin with letting Japan into the GATT. 

Notes of the Week

It turns out that the Labour Party has cleverly found a way not to burst into flames, crash into an iceberg, and catch the Black Death due to the EDC failing. The Economist does its best to cope with the crushing disappointment. Hugh Gaitskell is going to be the Treasurer of the Labour Party and that's good for Gaitskell and bad for Bevan. German terms for German rearmament involve German rearmament. I'd go into more details but I think they're as likely to be as significant as the explanation for why the Labour Party was going to explode if the EDC failed. The Eisenhower Administration sent someone to talk to the American Legion about how America actually needs allies. This is progress but at the same time we should try to understand the thinking of the corn-fed morons at the Legion. The new Act allowing landlords to raise rent to cover necessary repairs becomes law in Britain this week. The magazine explains why this isn't so bad, either. The Economist celebrates a magistrate's decision that someone who boards a bus at an intersection can't be charged with trespassing, even if he is from Nigeria. It's a blow for liberty! People are arguing about the Continuing Education Act, mainly who pays and how much, but also in the case of teachers, who gets paid. People say that the Philippines are a puppet of the United States, but they are only going along with Seato and supporting American anti-communist efforts because President Magsaysay wants to! The intricate and byzantine political scene in what will shortly be South Vietnam is laid out for the first of what is likely to be many times, add int the name of Nguyen Van Tran, to those of Bao Dai and Ngo Dinh Diem as ones to be remembered. The Labour delegation to China has done something terrible because Communism is awful. (That is,

someone said that even though Communism is awful, China is coming along.Which is the kind of thing that The Economist used to say about Falangists and Fascists, and Labour got shirty about it then, so turn about is fair play.)  The Swiss and Swedish observer missions in Korea are going home because their work is pointless, the crime rate is falling, indicating that the crime wave may be ending, the High Court has slapped the Land Tribunal's wrist, indicating that the powers that the Attlee government gave to various administrative tribunals may be on the wane, the population of Ireland rose between 1946 and 1951 for the first time since the Famine, President Vargas has been laid to rest in Brazil as the new government faces an a
cute balance of payments crisis requiring the sale of ten million bags of coffee in the next six months, leaving Brazil on the one hand desperate for American help, if not aid, and in no position to fight inflation given the need to compensate coffee farmers who would otherwise take a loss on sales. Germany  has extended a credit, and The Economist thinks that Britain should, too. The Petrov Inquiry in Australia has gone off the rails. Either two members of the Australian Labour Party leaked a very sensitive document in a difficult-to-believe way, and another member has gone way out on a limb by conducting their defence, or Petrov is a bit of a fabulist, and either way it's becoming a political sensation Down Under. 

From The Economist of 1854, "Harmful Wine Duties" explains that, after the 1825 reduction of duties on French wine, to a lesser extent other wines, and to the least extent, Cape wines (I write it this way because I don't want to get into shillings and pence and the actual numbers don't matter very much and really I'm only saying this to remind anyone reading of a time when Cape Province wines got special treatment in Britain), consumption rose by almost 50% to over 6 million gallons. This was because of the prosperity, and along with that, a rising population reaching 22.3 million, so that it corresponded to an increase in consumption to only 0.285 gallons per head per year from 0.221. Since then, however, imports of wine have actually fallen, uniquely among imports. The Economist explains that people aren't drinking too much any more, so reducing the duties would be good for trade and for health, since moderate drinking is good for you it says here. 

Letters

R. H. S. Crossman and Harold Wilson write to explain that they've withdrawn a story about how Dr. Adenauer said he wants to start WWIII soon to liberate East Germany, but that he said almost the same thing, so really they're right. Augustus Vincent of London reminds everyone that peace should be the aim of diplomacy, and Germans being so warlike, German disarmament would be good for that. Boleslaw Wierabianski explains why it is fine that Western powers broadcast propaganda behind the Iron Curtain while the East Bloc countries shouldn't be allowed to do the same. W. E. Baugh writes to remind the magazine that it is undemocratic for business interests to try to thwart a left wing government with an electoral mandate.
 

Books

Malmesbury also started the Falklands War.
True story!

Don K. Price, Governments and Science asks whether a country where more than half of scientific research is paid for by government and directed to defence can "remain, in the long run, free, recognisably capitalistic, and progressive?" American critics point out that under this arrangement, big business profits from government-funded research, while businessmen complain that they are not getting their tax dollar's worth from inefficient laboratories. Scientists complain about national security restrictions. All three groups worry that this will tend to hold back research in more "natural" fields. Price explains that the critics are all wet, as the American system of "mixed administrative control," at least, works. S. Chandrasekhar's Hungry People and Empty Lands calls for birth control at home and free emigration and an end to racial discrimination abroad, particularly bans on mixed marriages. It's not a very well written book, but it is an important one about very pressing issues. Alfred Cobban's Diplomats and Secret Agents is a minor effort by the master of the history of the French Revolution. Cobban uses a study of the ambassadorship of James Harris, the first Earl of Malmesbury. Malmesbury was posted to the Netherlands from 1784 to 1788 to show how diplomacy was actually done in the 1780s. Considering that the story ends with a Prussian invasion to throw out a left wing government, which is deemed to  have been orchestrated by Malmesbury, I'd say pretty much like today. (And Malmesbury is the hero of the piece, which tells you a lot about Cobban!) J. G. Crowther's The Sciences of Energy is a pretty good popularisation of astronomy, physics, and chemistry, which are apparently the "sciences of energy." "But, but, but. . ." says James. Jane and Barney Crile's Treasure Diving Holidays

is the first book in quite some time to be reviewed by The Economist and Newsweek, and what a choice for the honour! It's because it was a particularly rainy holiday season in Britain this year, the reviewer says. Yes, I certainly sympathise, here's a ticket for Toronto. Olive Cook and Edwin Smith's English Cottages and Farmhouses explains why you should have taken a cottage vacation instead of the seaside. It's no less wet, but you're kept steaming hot under all that tweet by the fact that all the walks keep a level by going up as much as they go down! Delbert Snider's Introduction to International Economics is the author's revenge on everyone who ever made fun of his first name.  Raymond Aron's Les Guerres en chaine is out in English as Century of Total War, but not reviewed. 

American Survey

"Trade Policy Marks Time" The Administration keeps promising a new era of liberalised trade policy tomorrow, and tomorrow never comes. McCarthy being the story of the day, we get the story again: The Mundt Committee was dominated by GOP members and its report is quite anodyne, and can afford to be considering how McCarthy carried on in front of it. The Wadkins Committee is expected to be harsher, depending on how the election comes out. (That last part is me, reading between the lines.) I get the sense that giving McCarthy enough rope to hang himself with is the safest way to not get out ahead of the voters. The magazine is very disappointed at the way Adlai Stevenson is attacking the Administration's farm policy, which isn't accomplishing very much this year, anyway. The Americans are proceeding slowly but surely to reduce trading embargoes with the Eastern Bloc. It is expected that European trading partners will do most of the business, seeking alternatives to American exports. It is pointed out that it is still not clear that the recession is over, and that the "easy money" of last spring was less easy than it seemed, as the Treasury mopped up a great deal of it with bond sales. 

"Classless Education," by Our Special Correspondent" OSC points out how recent the seemingly omnipresent American high school is. As late as  1890 only 7% of American children aged 14 and over were in school, and by 1930 it was still only 50%, and today it is still as low as 80%. Nine-tenths of these are in publicly owned and operated schools, something accomplished by the individual 48 states, and not the federal government. We then move on to point out how the ideal of "classless" education gets in the way of the progress of those extraordinarily smart and talented young people. Who will think of the future of our meritocracy!? Also, the Bureau of Mines is having trouble selling off the government helium monopoly, which goes to show how hard it has been in practice for the Administration to carry through with its promise to get the government out of business. 

"Motel de Luxe" Motor hotels are getting nice now, and the chain ones are consistent, and that's nice, too. Country and small town hotels are suffering severely from this. 

The World Overseas

"High Tide for Malan" The Nationalist Party has won a "smashing" victory in the provincial council elections in South Africa. This is due to high turnout by Nationalist voters, not any movement across party lines, and it is unclear whether the Nationalists fan finally call themselves a "majority" party. The United Party seems likely to collapse in recriminations. We then get a look at the "last days of the EDC," that is, the day-to-day of the French vote against it, at the World Federation of Trade Unions trying to make a comeback, and a bit from the front lines of trade unionism to do with the electricians' national strike under a Communist-dominated leadership. 

"Sheikhs' Boundaries and Frogmen" The British government has sent Sir Reader Bullard out to the Gulf to settle all the longstanding border disputes before someone goes to war over the oil under them, and particularly the Buraimi oasis, but also extending out to sea, which is where the frogmen come in.

"Soviet Heavy Bombers" "A Correspondent" reports that the Russians have taken a measured and progressive approach to heavy bombers. We get a tour of prewar developments, First there was the B29ski, and now there's the Valiantski, and soon there will be the B-52ski, provisionally identified as the TUG-75, with six turboprop engines such as were still going to go into the B-52 when the Tupolev/Ilyushin/Gureyvich plane was finalised. The Valiantski is deemed to be particularly formidable due to its 15,000lb engines, whereas the TUG-75 is likely to have a maximum speed of 425mph, which must be pretty disappointing to the Russians.  

The Business World

We start out with a look at schemes for popular investment in the stock market in the United States, which are great, and everyone should do it. 

"Moving British Meat" British Road Services has owned 574 meat trucks since 1947, and is now selling them as part of denationalisation. Meat trucks were specifically excluded from nationalisation, since there was a national pool already, and they seemed to be quite efficiently run by private business. Nevertheless, most of them ended up in the BRS fleet anyway through buyouts of their owners, especially the railway companies. Most of them were on charter to United Carriers, Ltd, which looks to buy most of them when they come up for sale. It's not exactly a monopoly, but it is probably closer to a monopoly than the statistics make it appear due to the amount of purely local hauling. Will sale of a nationalised industry to a monopoly private business be bad for the consumer? I guess we'll find out! 

Business Notes

Wool prices are up and supply is good, gold and dollar reserves are good, the industrial boom is not going to be held up by a shortage of coal, until the winter, when The Economist smacks its lips at the thought of a shortage. The Rank Organisation is doing fine, but Board of Trade statistics suggest that some of that is at the expense of smaller cinemas, which are certainly not doing well. Vickers is making so much money from the Viscount that it is issuing stocks to reacquire English Electric steel, and at a very nice return, too. Sir Ernest Murrant's annual report to the stockholders of Furness Withy reflects the views of a man who runs a fleet with a value of £21 million and an investment of another ten in ships still on the stocks. So we should listen when he praises the government's 20% investment allowance, and he now hopes that industry will do its share and that government will do more. More concretely, he wants fixed prices and fixed deliveries to compete with lower foreign prices. Anglo-Japanese trade continues to disappoint, mainly due to British and Commonwealth limits on Japanese imports, the Japanese say. 

"Harpoon at a Venture" For the first time since WWII, there is no British government contract to take a part of the Antarctic whaling catch. Nevertheless, 19 fleets are sailing this year compared with 17 last year, including three British. The British are out of the market because the government is out of margarine. Cargoes will be sold to private manufacturers like Unilever, instead. Last year, the price rose as high as £80/ton, compared with the government's £65 reserve price. It is unclear what this year's price will be, with palm oil recently falling from £80 to 75 to the ton, especially with the United States sitting on a vast surplus of cottonseed oil. Details of the financing of the Vickers deal with Capital are now public.

Leaders

"The Year's Climax" That would be Farnborough, for those who don't follow Flight. "Frankly, it has not been the best of years for British manufacturers." But there are the Viscount, P.1, Folland Midge on the credit side, and Flight hopes that the P.1 at least gets a flyover. 

By Mike Freer - Touchdown-aviation - Gallery page http://www.airliners.net/
photo/UK---Air/English-Electric-Lightning/2260192/
LPhoto http://cdn-www.airliners.net/aviation-photos/photos/2/9/1/2260192.jpg,
GFDL 1.2, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26949478

From All Quarters

The latest Bristol prototype, the BE25, is a private venture "supercharged turboprop" that maintains its rated power of 4000hp from sea level to "considerable heights." Sikorski has the world helicopter speed record again, at 156mph. Fairchild is interested in licensed production of the Fokker Friendship in America. India and Rolls-Royce are negotiating the building of a Rolls-Royce manufacturing plant there. Air Vice-Marshal Alfred C. Sharp, having retired at 48 last year, is joining Martin. After getting a mention in the 6 August Flight, Amalgamated Wireless (Australia) has written in with more details of their 200 mHz DME, which uses double pulse interrogation to reduce interference and allow it to  handle 50 aircraft at the same time. 

Civil Aviation

The founder of  AWL gets in the paper for the 
mustache, which I assume he wasn't wearing by the
time of his death at 75 in 1940. 

Trans-Canada has increased its Viscount order from 18 to 22, raising total Viscount orders to 153. Although the Viscount has slipper tanks and the DC-7 has nacelle-mounted saddle tanks, the Super Constellation will likely be the first with wing-tip tanks. Viscounts will replace DC-4s on most Air France European routes next winter. The first Convair 340s have been delivered, and the Britannia has resumed airworthiness flights. 

"Headlines and Sidelines" The leadup to the Farnborough issue doesn't have much to say, but it sure says it breathlessly

Here and There reports that Chuck Yeager is in America, Silver City Airways is flying its S-51 around and waiting for someone to pay them money to do something with it, the Lockheed C-130 has flown, Avro test pilot Jan Zurakowski has survived ejecting from a CF-100, but his observer was "fatally delayed" dealing with some secret equipment. An RAF Swift has been lost in an accident, but the plane is still in squadron service. 

The British Aircraft and British Power Units supplements are long and has many pictures of well-known planes, including the English Electric P. 1, and the Fairey VTO, or vertical takeoff demonstrator, which is handled very shortly considering that it has been circulating since 1949, and might just be there because the company can't talk about its FD2, to save the surprise when it hopefully breaks the world speed record next spring. The new Bristol turboprop is similarly too secret to be talked about.  

The Economist, 11 September 1954

Leaders

 "Patience for the Pound" The big IMF meeting in Washington at the end of this month will not be where the long-awaited plan to restore sterling convertibility will be released, because we are not done blackmailing Labour into supporting it yet. (If Labour takes an anti-convertibility position, the plan will be wrecked as holders rush to convert their blocked sterling holdings before Labour perhaps takes office in an election in six months and restores import and currency controls. Follows a page and a half summarising the Seato treaty, initialed in Manila this week, explaining why and how Formosa, the India-Pakistan conflict, and Malaya were excluded, and how "rump Indo China" was included despite meeting the undertaking made at Geneva not to allow Laos, Cambodia and South Vietnam to join the organisation. There is also talk of a new lotteries law in Britain, and a two page primer on how Germany might fit into Nato now that the EDC is dead. None of these seemed worth an article-length treatment. 

Notes of the Week

Buried in the middle of four Notes about how Labour has a difficult relationship with the trade unions and how pacifists and crypto-communists are ruining Labour's chances of going on the record firmly supporting Nato, and Germany in Nato is the observation that the latest Gallup shows a big enough swing towards Labour to make a Labour election win likely. 

"Tight Little Island" The artillery duel between Koumintang and Red forces over the island of Quemoy, just four miles off the coast of Fukien province, actually began last week while the Seato conference was still going on, but is an even bigger story this week, as there is talk of Chiang sending reinforcements there, which, if resisted by the Reds, will threaten to draw in the American Seventh Fleet. "It is certainly alarming that American officers have been present on Quemoy, and that Congressman and local American commanders have paid it official visits." Knock it off, America, the magazine all but says outright. The Chinese are withdrawing seven divisions from Korea. The Economist reminds everyone not to be optimistic since  seven Chinese divisions don't equal four American, though it does point out that President Rhee says that not only is the ROK army capable of defending the peninsula, it can take Peking. The magazine is disappointed that Mendes-France and Adenauer aren't fighting more. At home, it looks forward to more inquiries into decentralisation, because of that tribunal being overruled over Chrichel Down, you see. The Liberal Education Advisory Committee has advised something! (Class sizes should be smaller, says the party with 6 seats that exists to be a Labour spoiler.) The Committee of Public Accounts is looking into the University Grants Committee because the Comptroller and Auditor-General can't inspect university books, and the one committee thinks that the other committee isn't doing enough to fight tax evasion. How was that not the first Leader!? "France Still on the Eve" is the title of a Note that explains why just because the EDC is dead, that doesn't mean that France isn't going to go on arguing about German rearmament. The magazine also has opinions about public charity drives now that the Government is involved in welfare. 

"Tunny Trouble" "Our drab world owes a debt of gratitude to Mr. Onassis" because he is sending a fishing fleet (consisting of a factory ship and twenty catchers) to the Pacific to "challenge" Peru's claim to waters up to 200 miles from its coast. The Economist is happy because it objects to the 200 mile limit and because this is all just so much fun. 

"New York and Tel Aviv" The Israelis are getting tough with their Arab neighbours because this is an election year and the Jewish vote is crucial in New York. 

"Any Room for a Little 'UN?" Three London dailies have launched juvenile editions, which might be too many papers, or maybe not. It is even more fun that the Junior Mirror is serialising a Biggles story, the Junior Express has recruited C. S. Forester, the Junior Sketch is following the Crile underwater saga; and the Junior Express is also leading a campaign against the X certificate on the science fiction movie, Them. 

"Leipzig Overture" This year's Leipzig Fair was very fancy to show that the East Bloc has discovered the consumer and that Germans don't have to worry about their standard of living if they unify as part of the Bloc. The Governor of Aden hs been invited to visit the Iman of Yemen, which is a hopeful sign. 

"Scientists on Show" The annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science is mainly about publicising science these days, but that doesn't mean that it's not fun and useful. Several hundred atom bombs could end life on Earth due to radiation, but on the other hand atomic power could meet all our needs for hundreds of years; we don't have to worry about starvation due to advances in agriculture and, eventually, industrial photosynthesis; in fact, the immediate threat isn't starvation, but obesity.

Letters

Charles Janson defends Pierre Mendes-France against the charge of somehow being responsible for the failure of the EDC. O, A. Spencer, the Member for Economic Afairs of the Federation of Malaya defends Malaya's rice market as being as free and competitive as it can reasonably be allowed to be. Too many Malayans are too poor to sustain the price fluctuations seen or reasonably expected. Christian X. Palamas, the Greek ambassador to the UN, writes to clarify his recent comments about Cyprus and explaining that he supports self-determination there. Cyril Lord writes to explain why Japan and America are wrong and evil for building up the Japanese textiles industry at the expense of Lancashire. 

Books 

Allan Nevins' Ford: The Times, The Man, The Company is a competent scholarly biography but hasn't anywhere near enough hero worship for the reviewer's taste. Edmund Gilbert's Brighton: Old Ocean's Bauble is, I assume, some kind of extended joke. Actually, the part about how it somehow became a bedroom suburb of London, even before the railway, and so became "one of the largest urban areas in Britain" does actually sound quite interesting. E. Strauss's Sir William Petty  is far inferior to Fitzmaurice's nineteenth century biography. I. R. Palmer's The Latin Language is not the book the reviewer would have written. Unesco's Interrelations of Cultures sounds like a very, very troubling book to be published under the authorship of the United Nations Educational, Social, and Cultural Organisation by HMSO. 

American Survey

"Mourning for EDC" Americans are quite upset about it. 

"Election Calculations" The magazine explains for British and other foreign readers why the Senate race is coming down to just 17 of the races, with effectively just six or seven likely to decide whether the Senate remains Republican or switches to Democratic control. It doesn't explain why only 37 seats are up, because it only has so much time. 

"TVA's Rearguard Action" The Administration is forcing the TVA to accept private power generation to replace the power it is sending the AEC, which I guess means "replacing," and reminds everyone of just how much juice Oakridge uses to make atom bombs. That's all well and good, but the involvement of the AEC has given the TVA a new line for pushing back, and the Administration seems to be giving way, or at least agreeing to delay until after the election. 

"Segregation on the Defensive" The Supreme Court decision hasn't led to much change in the schools yet, which it wouldn't, considering that no changes have been agreed on yet. However, there are hopeful signs that the country is getting on with desegregation. 

"Building Scrapes the Sky" The American building boom continues, and The Economist ingeniously deduces that this is because the country needs so many more new homes and businesses what with population increase and pent up demand after the war and Korea. 

"Semi Farm Vote" Republicans are hoping that their new farm bill won't lose them as many farm votes as all that because some national farmers' organisations support lower price supports. Congress also tried to cut funding for the Library of Congress for some reason, but it turned out to be a very unpopular idea. 

World Overseas

"Fizzkrieg Over Goa" The Economist offers a guide for the perplexed. It turns out that the Indians think that Portuguese Goa is colonialist. Imagine that! Roughly the only thing that can be said in favour of Portuguese rule in Goa is, apparently, that rents are three times higher there than in Bombay, which doesn't seem like an argument that would persuade most Goans! The main thing is all the commotion, with the Indian Opposition organising a march on Goa and the Portuguese offending everyone by bringing in African troops to ward them off, precipitating a financial crisis, because they will want pay, and with all the Indian labour deported, there is no-one to work the iron and manganese mines, and no tourists, and no remittances. 

"The Politics of Cocoa" The price of cocoa is at an all-time postwar high at £442. Because cocoa is sold though a marketing board, the price for producers is £134, the balance going to the Gold Coast government, which is accordingly being criticised by foreign buyers as running a monopoly, with American critics supposing that the Board's £100 million reserve is being used to "underpin Britain's domestic economy." In reality, The Economist argues, the money is being kept in Africa, and the high prices are due to world demand exceeding supply, with the crop falling this year from 235,000 to 206,000 tons. (That's a lot of cocoa!) Critics argue that the Gold Coast government isn't investing enough in the crop; 70,000 tons were lost this year to capsid disease, 50,000t to black pod, 50,000 to swollen shoot. Besides, pay the cocoa farmer more, and they will increase their production. The magazine explains all the things the Gold Coast is doing to educate farmers, fight disease, and research cures. Besides, the internal price of cocoa has gone up two-and-a-half times, and the main result has been planting that either won't mature and bear beans until 1956--7 at the earliest, or on simply unsuitable land. Also, Romanian workers' opposition to Stakhanovitism seems to have derailed it in that country; the magazine detects dangerous trends in Schleswig-Holstein due to the ethnic conflict between Danes and Germans; Hongkong and Overseas Chinese are apparently very upset about the Labour visit to Red China, the Russians are competing with Krupp-Demag for the contract to build a steel mill in India, and the magazine helpfully suggesting that Russia build it in China, instead; and the President of Pakistan is going to a conference of Islamic heads of state to be held in Mecca during this year's haj, and might get involved with another conference to be held in Jerusalem, which seems provocative. 

The Business World

"In the Final Analysis" In the end, 67 teams of British managers and men were sent over to see American industry in action between 1949 and 1953. Some found they had nothing to report, while others produced provocative individual statements on American industrial society, some had sometimes rather cliched things to say about American industry. And the last, the team that went with the widest brief of all, "Industrial Engineering," has produced the capstone report, issued by the British Productivity Council this month. They have looked at the perceived greater competitiveness of American business, easier money, lower taxation, high wages, and "non-stratification" of society, with particular emphasis on the competitiveness. Its recommendations are therefore more political than most of the previous teams; it wants stronger anti-monopoly legislation, or at least better enforcement, including on unions; tax allowances for depreciation, and more of that time-and-motion management stuff with the hourly wages and more power for foremen and arrangements for investment-caused redundancy to fight the Luddites. 

The magazine points out that this study still uses labour productivity as the exclusive measure of industrial productivity and "which leaves a lot out. such a measure of output against only one factor of input, in countries where the relations between the cost of different factors such as equipment and labour may differ considerably, is an inadequate yardstick of total efficiency in the industries or economies compared." For example, it is quite possible that labour productivity is higher in American shipyards than European, since American shipyard workers earn three times as much, and American ships aren't quite three times as expensive as European, but that doesn't mean that American shipyards are getting any contracts! The aggressive drive for higher wages from American labour is driving mechanisation, replacing the shortage of labour that used to drive it. The report therefore recommends higher wages in Britain, which will drive mechanisation and productivity gains. The Economist is skeptical, noting that wages were held down as much to restrain inflation as to maintain British competitiveness in export markets. However, the British need to get on with increasing labour productivity to maintain growth and keep up with the Germans. 

Wool prices are down now? There has been a "break in wool prices" and everyone is worried in Australia and London.

Business Notes

"Spending and the Boom" Average earnings in industry are up to £10/week, employment is at its fullest ever, personal expenditure on consumer goods is at record levels. "Hire purchase" is still growing (a separate Note), personal savings are up, profits and dividends are up, there is a high demand for steel, Comet sales will resume now that it is clear what went wrong (they were built of flim-flam instead of Mosquito magical material), and this has been fixed by putting in enough stiffener to almost take up the additional power from the Avon engines, and the scapegoat will be any historian of technology who raises doubts about the "Whoever heard of 'fatigue' before last Thursday?" defence. Rhodesian copper is showing solid profits, a study shows a final advantage from Imperial preference for exports of British steel is now about 6% and those days are ending rapidly due to the ECSC and Gatt. The International Sugar Council is having trouble getting off the ground, the price of polythene is falling while the supply is rising, Denmark is having a balance of payments crisis, the Danes have some gripes about British exports being late and disappointingly low quality, and Congress has acted to ensure that goods (aid, mostly) shipped by the American government go in fifty-fifty American hulls. 

Leaders

Farnborough blah blah.

Fascinating lady, no mustache required. 

From All Quarters reports that leaks continue about how the Comet investigation report will put the whole story to bed, no need for negligence lawsuits against anyone! Duncan Sandys has officially revealed that there is a Rolls-Royce VTO demonstrator out there flying and entering free flight. Lord Hives calls it a "flying bedstead," and it consists of a Rolls-Royce Nene arranged to operate vertically, plus controls to allow the thing to tip so that it can fly horizontally to some extent. I haven't seen a peep about it, but it seems to me that anything that flies by pushing the ground with a Nene is going to be the loudest thing ever, even louder than a helicopter, though probably not a tip-jet 'copter. So everyone has heard of it by now! (At least within twenty miles of Derby.) Flight took in the Dayton Air Show and doesn't seem impressed, notwithstanding a special visit by B-52, which overflew from Seattle and then returned, which is impressive enough in itself. Lockheed has put turboprops on some Super Constellations for the Navy, H. P. Folland has died, another USN Neptune has been shot down by MiGs over the Sea of Japan, and even though the crew was recovered I AM NOT OKAY WITH THIS! A little more detail of the Bristol B.E.25 is now available. It is a twin-spool engine, giving it the fuel economy (since it has separate low and high power operating modes) of a diesel, and 4000hp from takeoff to 20,000ft. KLM has lost a Constellation at Shannon airport with 28 of 56 aboard losing their lives, two weeks after losing a DC-6B. Why does anyone even fly KKLM? Why isn't its accident record a scandal? I just do not understand. Lady MacRobert has died. 

Here and There reports that Bert Acosta has died, that the Soviet press is covering Russian scientific flights into the Arctic at great length, that 5th AF headquarters is being moved from Korea to Nagoya in Japan.

"Farnborough '54" The weather was awful, which put a crimp in flying, but there were lots of parked planes. Unfortunately, it is really hard to park a plane on the tarmac at Farnborough and keep it on the Secret List, not that the P.1 or the super-secret Fairey job are showing up at Farnborough, anyway! 

Aircraft Intelligence reports that BOAC is more interested in the Conway-powered V.1000 than the Comet 4, while a Dassault Mystere IV flying with a new tailpipe with a "variable area propelling nozzle void of mechanical actuation" is a prototype for the Atar 101-D.3s to be installed in Mysteres. Six Mystere IVs have been ordered by Israel, 25 by Egypt. The third prototype Vautour has left the factory for flight testing. It is equipped as a bomber and is powered by Armstrong Siddeley Sapphires. 

1957

W. T. Gunston, "Vertical Take-off: A review of Progress to Date: And a Consideration of Future Prospects" I don't think that Gunston's historical review is very informative, even if I didn't make fun of that stuff all the time, and neither his comments about the American "pogo stick" planes. British experiments have focussed on a jet pointing down, the question being whether it will pivot, the plane will pivot (which is what they are doing now, but isn't very practical in the long run), or whether the takeoff unit will just be deadweight in the air. Either way, they will probably require special takeoff surfaces because the blast of the jet will otherwise melt them, and provision for inflight refuelling, just because it is kind of dumb to make them takeoff with their full load if you can help it. An interesting compromise is a plane that starts a takeoff run and then directs its thrust downwards, getting lift from the wings and the engines. The Germans also experimented with rotating wings in the war. Gunston adds that it is "permissible" to talk about two American rocket/jet vertical takeoff demonstrators under development at Bell and Ryann (so no hope machines from hopeless companies), and Avro's "Project Y." "It should not be inferred that our designers are not fully alive to the possibilities of the subject." 

Richard Bradbury, "Agricultural Control By Air" In the airminded future, the farmer will fly overhead yelling instructions to the hired hands below? No, this is just a fancy way to talk about crop dusting. 

"Extruded Nimonic Blades" Extrusion is a fancy way of saying pushing hot, molten metal through a nozzle to get superior shapes with cooling channels and the like, and Nimonic is notoriously resistant to getting plastic even at high temperatures, so this is an important advertorial from Mond Metal to tell us that it has discovered a process, which is the one thing that the advertorial declines to explain. 

Correspondence

M. O. Imray is the Secretary of the Popular Flying Association and the latest person to argue for making trainee pilots do gliding. H. E. Kimpton points us to a programme in New Zealand in which young men who want to work for New Zealand National Airways will join the RNZAF for training and a tour before going on to work for the airline. It sounds like a scheme to meet New Zealand's special needs, the editor points out. Christopher Whyte reports that commercial flying in Russia isn't a lot of fun. Harry Harper remembers the old days, before the war, and particularly pioneering female aviators Mrs. Assheton-Harbord and Mrs. Hart O. Berg, which would be more interesting if the names weren't OBVIOUSLY made up. 

Solely to save you the effort of looking it up for yourself.

"Aircraft to Weapon System: The Work of the A. and A.E.E. Boscombe Down" The Ministry of Supply is willing to invite the press to a demonstration, so Flight is going to report on what is demonstrated, even though the only novelty is the first public demonstration of the ADEN gun. There's a neat diagram of the Boscombe Down procurement process, but it is schematic and has no examples, so  you can't look at it and say, "Oh, that's why the Hunter took so long," or, "Actually, the Spitfire came along quite quickly!" Which would be nice, just because that's the sort of thing that some people like to argue about until the cows come home. 

Civil Aviation reports that London Airport's new control tower will be the first in the country to use radar to supervise ground movements, so no more parked planes getting lost in the fog, hopefully. It is 8mm (Q) band, and will not control aircraft movements on the ground, which will be left to ground lights. It is mainly for ensuring that the runway is clear, and directing rescue vehicles in the event. Sabena is celebrating the first anniversary of playing with helicopters. The Industry reports that Aero Research has made a movie about Redux that is more interesting than watching glue dry, and that GKN has licensed the Mercast process in the UK and Canada.   

 

Fortune's Wheel reports that "this is one of the best issues Fortune has ever published." That's mainly to make a point about practice making perfect, but is also hyping up the story about Ford, now making a push to reclaim first place among auto manufacturers and so deserving of a company profile, "Fortune's literary invention." This issue also has William Whyte raking some muck again, this time showing that the "personality tests" currently fashionable in hiring are actually useless, and a profile of Norman Biltz, the "Duke of Nevada," showing that the "tycoon" is not dead. More relevant to anything we do around here is the article on the changing nature of capital goods. 

Business Roundup reports that the "feeble 'recession'" is over. And also that corporate profits are declining and auto output is still down. But it's over! And it will be even more over in the first quarter of 1954, so don't accidentally pull the voting lever for the party that brought you the recession. Because it's over! A boxed story reports that "The Baby Boom Continues," with four million births this year, for the first time in American history, although the rate of marriage continues to decline. It is explained that this is because girls are getting married earlier, and that early marriages "borrow from the future." But if the trend to multiple children continues, the birth rate may not fall off that much between now and the early Sixties, when the marriage rate is expected to begin to increase again. Businessmen in the News is the latest feature to take a victory lap over the new Iranian oil agreement, and a perhaps premature one over Mississippi Valley Generating Company's new steam plant in West Memphis, Arkansas, which will replace the power the TVA is sending to the AEC, whether the TVA thinks it needs replacing, or not. (You know what needs replacing? That Communistic TVA, no-one says aloud in polite society. But you can be sure that once you've made a cautiously positive comment about Senator McCarthy that you'll hear about it.)
 

Business Notes From Abroad reports that between the punishing tariffs on Swiss watches and Congress boosting the foreign aid bill above the Administration's request, foreigners are saying that the U.S. is stubbornly committed to "Aid, not trade." Everyone in Northern Rhodesia wants integration in the mines because White immigration is steadily declining and there is no labour. Except the White workforce, which obviously benefits from a labour shortage! American capital fighting white supremacy. Who would have thought? The sterling bloc countries want the IMF to backstop convertibility with its gold and dollar reserves, and Americans aren't having it. Everyone is watching to see if Mendes-France can mend France. That's funny! Herbert Solow's roundup of American investment in the Netherlands gets a separate story, but doesn't really warrant it. 

Iowa's eight page advertisement of investment opportunities in Iowa runs into the front advertising section. Just put third party advertiser spreads in the Iowa advertorial, I say!

Leaders

"A Time for Tax Avoidance" You know what wouldn't be boring? Another story about depreciation allowances! Fortune notes a light-hearted pro-labour movement play running on Broadway, showing how times have changed since back when there wouldn't have been  a play like that.  

Carl Hovgard is opening a boatyard to make yachts, which is clearly news. Lockheed is trying to persuade McDonnell employees in St. Louis to take jobs at their works in Atlanta by pointing out that it is warmer there. Maybe they should take account of how much nicer it is in San Diego than either St. Louis or Atlanta? Dr. W. M. Krogman, a physical anthropologist at the University of Pennsylvania who likes to go on the radio, says that in five million years we will live on food pills, have given up on walking, and will have evolved physically to suit the new lifestyle thanks to science taking over evolutionary mutation from Nature, and, for one thing, will be using telepathy in stead of speech, and businessmen should probably ignore what they just read because science will invent telepathy blockers and we will be back where we started, only with some column space filled by talking about Dr. Krogman.  And U.S. Steel must have read that article about business schools being maybe not all they're made out to be, because it is throwing a few crumbs to philosophy. Again a separate story from Frederick Allis, Jr., that isn't really warranted looks at a conference for school teachers thrown by the Industry Council that ended up just offending the school teachers with didactic lectures about corporate history and Free Enterprise.  No offence to Allis, who is understandably upset and reporting what upset him; the real story would be about how this came to be, and direct quotes and interviews to establish what "industry" had to say for itself, and who, exactly, called for digging up FDR and throwing the bones in an unmarked grave. 

"The Dynamic Market for Capital Goods" The art department at Fortune put a lot of work into summarising this article with a full page graphical spread. Here it is! (Or, alternatively, there it is, where it fell when the envelope exploded.)

Okay, I am being unfair, because this article is introduced by a fascinating discussion of how economists have differed --philosophically, I am tempted to say, as one could almost call for a theory of capital-- about the relationship between capital goods investment and economic growth. Can capital good production keep up with economic growth? That is the question. (I guess because investment declines when expectations of economic growth decline.) It better, because, barring the sudden disappearance of unions, productivity gains will automatically lead to higher wages, forcing continuing investment in labour-saving capital goods --without creating a labour surplus, since consumption will increase along with production. To regularise spending, "visionaries" are recommending "moneycyclic planning" over years, if not a decade or more. 

Edmund L. Van Duesen, "The 'Miraculous' New Gasolines" Even more than the story about capital goods, the art department seems to have done a better job of summarising this than I ever could. Average engine compression is up from 5:1 to 6:8 to 1 since the war,so something has to be done to your gas, it's just not clear what, and the ads that explain what's being done are often misleading, or at least, are based on premises that aren't very clearly explained. (One ad explaining that a gasoline adds "oxygen" is based on the assumption that one spark plug would, on average, be misfiring without the degumming product in the gasoline, which seems like a pretty indirect way of putting to me!) 

Richard Austin Smith, "TV: The Coming Showdown" CBS and NBC are going to put the best TV shows on that they can, in hopes of getting higher ratings than the other network, so that they will make more money from advertising. No, seriously, that's the article. Is there news? Dumont will probably go bust.