Postblogging Technology, June 1955, I: Crash Not Crash

R_. C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada

Dear Father: 

As we continue to pack up and decide what we can't possibly live without in San Francisco (or Hawaii), some things just get overlooked, which is my excuse for not booking and confirming travel plans. We will be at the docks at Galena Bay at 5PM Pacific on the 5th. We have decided not to try to rent a car on Revelstoke, so make sure there is someone to pick us up if you don't want us to have to hitch a ride with a farmer! 

Your Loving Daughter, 

Ronnie

The Economist, 4 June 1955

Leaders

"Fratricide on the Railways" An explanation of why the current railway strike is a fratricidal battle between two unions, and why it is a very bad idea for the two unions to fight it out this way and at this time. The Economist is happy with the election results and lays out the "three tasks abroad" and the "four tasks at  home" (disarmament talks with the Russians, a Formosa Straits settlement, and European unity; inflation, rising wages, increasing investment, tax cuts, and convertibility at home. Which is more than four, but never mind. 

"Brazil in the Red" Brazil's economy is in a difficult position for various reasons that go well beyond the unsatisfactory coffee market. The Economist says, anyway. Follows the post mortem on the election explaining why the Conservatives won. A low electoral turnout, mainly, with voter abstention accounting for the small swing to the Tories. 

Notes 

The new Parliament is, eh, what are you going to do? Khrushchev's remarks on Jugoslavia and Eastern Europe at the conclusion of his visit to Belgrade were a bumbling mess, but let's read the tea leaves anyway. Russia may intend changes in the satellites, either forwards, backwards, downwards, or upwards. He is also facing a harvest well short of the hoped for 180 million tons, and consequentially not enough food to head off inflationary pressures. Everyone is trying to mediate the rail strike and we get an explanation of what the State of Emergency means in practice, which is more trucks on the road, maybe, standing on busses, maybe, the Army doing more than delivering the mail, maybe, and some rationing, maybe. Lots of maybe later! The Economist predicts that once the Nationalists have succeeded in packing the South African Senate in the current election to get the Coloured voting bill through, it will move on to use the Senate to press Afrikaner control of the country forward in other ways. The riot in Berlin between Communists from the East and supporters of the Wehrmacht reunion they were protesting just goes to show that when the Premier of East Germany says he is going to do something about the West, it really could be anything. The Russians don't really mean that they are going to withdraw from their foreign bases when they withdraw from Port Arthur and talk about withdrawing from foreign bases. It's all propaganda.  Television coverage of the election was pretty good. The Royal Commission on the lunacy and mental deficiency laws is doing its best but it is a pretty hard problem to solve. The "Forecast for North Africa" calls for heavy weather with some sunny breaks (Tunisian home rule will pass the Assembly, and probably the Council of the Republic), but on the other hand the French now acknowledge that their puppet sultan has no authority and they have to bring the old sultan back even though they won't admit it. And in Algeria the "so-called outlaws" are raiding more widely and the arrival of an entire division of the French Army is annoying for Nato and not a solution no matter how welcome to the colons. The Economist has opinions about the state elections in Victoria. which is that they are good for the moderate conservative premier of Australia and for the left wing leader of the opposition, so good is good and good is bad. The ongoing Law of the Sea negotiations in Geneva are all for the good unless Chile and Peru get their way and are allowed to interfere with the fisheries outside the three mile limit. Indonesia is scolded for not letting British lawyers into the country to represent those alleged Dutch terrorists they have arrested.

It just flabbergasts me that this guy got a job
writing his opinions down.

From The Economist of 1855, "Prohibition for Britain?" Alcohol is just like nice dresses. Nice dresses lure[. . .] young females from the path of virtue," but that doesn't mean they should be banned. Therefore, neither should alcohol! You would think that leading with something ridiculous means that you're done the argument, but, no, the magazine goes on to compare banning alcohol to banning tobacco and the theatre and concludes that people (by which the magazine means "gentlemen") drink less in 1855 than in 1755, so everything is fine. Never mind The Economist, Wilson is Newsweek material! 

Books

Two lives of Sir Anthony Eden are out that look like they will be absolutely first class uneven-table-leg-levellers after Tony has his stroke and/or heart attack next year. N. N. Sukhanov's The Russian Revolution is an abridged translation of the author's memoirs. R. W. Kretton-Cremer (which is a real name) has Thomas Gray: A Biography, which the reviewer doubts is a necessary book, although quite a good one. Rebecca West's A Train of Powder is a collection of West's journalism and the reviewer hates it as much as he hates West except for the one about the Greenville lynching, which is fine because it is hard on the South but "recognises" that "it is on its way to better things."Worthy books of the week are beyond even The Economist's patience, so books on monetary and banking policy, accident and sickness insurance, and town and country planning are simply catalogued under "Text: Reference." 

American Survey

Better to copy a good design than commit
 aerodynamic thought crime because it is the best Boeing can do.
By Mike1979 Russia - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15509813

"Military Cross Currents" The House has rejected the Administration's reserves plan; the Air Force has discovered that the Russians have stealthily build a whole fleet of Valiantskis, and the Big Four peace/disarmament talks are coming up. How do we put all of this together? The reserve plan was scuttled because it would have sent reservists to segregated National Guard units in the South. The discovery of all those Red bombers justifies the 25% cut in Army spending to shove more money into the Air Force to buy more B-52s, and the country doesn't want to spend more on guns when peace is at hand. 

Speaking of desegregation, the Supreme Court has given its first hint on how it expects it to be done; with all deliberate speed. The Ford package offered in response to the demand for a guaranteed annual wage, is described as imaginative. Union and company have converged on the company's financial obligation (12 cents an hour per worker), and now only disagree on principle. The President and Senate are fighting over the highways bill, while Congress is divided over whether the stock market boom is a good thing. Still. The industry is divided over whether heavy demand for aluminum calls for more capacity given expansion at Kitimat and possibly as many as five new plants in the United States, or demand stabilisation by further releases from the strategic stockpile above and beyond the 25,000t current. The President has asked Congress for some changes to the Refugee Relief Act that will make it possible to actually bring in the planned 209,000 special immigrants, but the head of the House committee is expected to tie it up procedurally and kill the bill.

The World Overseas

"What Kind of Wehrmacht?" General Gruenther and the West German government want a twelve division, highly mechanised army, but pessimists think it might be eight years before that it emerges, and until then the Reds can steamroller over Nato any time they want if they want to end the world as a side effect. Colonel v. Bonin thinks that his militia plan is better and can be implemented more quickly. Twenty army bills are pending, the first tranche of 150,000 recruits are ready for training with the Americans, and the Federal Assembly is almost ready to make a decision on whether it is to be a volunteer or conscript army. No hurry, gentlemen! The Socialists don't want an army, but do want conscription. It's so confusing! And, of course, the return of the Nazis is just around the corner one way or another. Speaking of which, the magazine's correspondent in Tokyo deems Japan to be "on the brink" of something bad. Considering that Tsuji Masanobu is very much back in the limelight, Our Correspondent may even be right. Habi Bourguiba is back in Tunisia to take over home rule. Norway's new steel plant in north Norway seems like a good idea since they need jobs up there and have plenty of hydroelectric power and iron ore. The new Communist Chinese simplified writing doesn't go nearly far enough, in The Economist's mind, but are a step in the right direction. 

The Business World

We get a review of how monetary policy is working in London right now, then "The Devaluation of Skill," which is an argument about how the old 50% pay differential between craftsmen and unskilled labour is eroding to the point where in the building trades the difference is only 14%, and that is bad. The issue is salient because it is at the heart of the railway strike. The Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen are down to 132% of the pay of a porter (lowest paid compared to average paid; the maximum differential at top rate is 43%.) Craft unions in general are not doing as good a job at protecting the margin as trade unions that include skilled workers, and there does not seem to be evidence that the declining margin is reducing the level of skill in industry. 

Business Notes

Finance finance finance oil finance industrial output up 7%, a good sign for the budget it the railway strike and money squeeze doesn't slow expansion down. The fall in commodity prices is moderating, with the price of wheat up from where the worst was originally feared. De Havilland had a loss of £663,000 on the year due to the Comet, but is optimistic about the future of the DH110, Comet 4, jet, and rocket engines. Newspapers are doing  pretty well right now but Cecil King of the Daily Mirror and Sunday Pictorial is worried about television, although he still promises papers fit to be read. Plastics are dong pretty well. The thirteen ore-carrying ships ordered by the British steel industry have brought the fleet of specialised carriers on order or delivered up to 425,00 dwt. None of the 22,000t class have been delivered yet. It is hoped that the specialised fleet will allow the industry to keep up at its new and higher rate of production when demand for coal and such spikes. The East Pakistan government is fiddling with jute export licenses and the British industry is alarmed. British softwood importers are worried that they are being pressed to import too much. 

Flight, 3 June 1955

Leaders

"Pall Over the Pentagon" All the modern bombers and fighters on show in the Red Air Force during the May Day flypast has cast a pall over the Pentagon because there's nothing worse than knowing that your rival is coming along and that you need to have an arms race. 

From All Quarters reports the planes that will be showing up at the Paris Aerial Salon (which is what we're still calling it.) It is reported that Major Egbert v. Frankenberg, speaking on East German radio, reports that due to "the indiscretion of the danish Air Force," it has been revealed that the operational life of British and American fighters was down to 80 hours due to fatigue, and that the air forces of the "peace bloc" are doing better due to more and better titanium, something that still eludes America, where pure titanium costs $139/lb. The Air India Constellation inquiry has concluded that Constellation VT-DEP was destroyed by sabotage in the form of a bomb in the wheel well. The British observer agrees, and the Hong Kong police investigation has been "intensified." The United States is giving Pakistan $2.5 million in foreign aid to help the state airline. Ooh, I wonder which country they'll buy airliners from? Major General Capper, the commandent of the Army Balloon School from 1903--10, has died at 93. The Ministry of Supply is doing a major programme of  upper atmosphere sounding rockets for the Geophysical Year. 

"Bristol Orpheus: A Medium-thrust Turbojet with Exceptional Potentialities" It's a cheap, medium power engine that you can definitely use for something, mainly the G-91 so far. 

Here and There reports nothing much this week. "Blackburn-Turbomeca: An Outstanding Range of Small Gas Turbines" is about Blackburn making the Turbomeca turbines under license, which it has been doing for years now, but here's a story about it. General details of the engines are discussed for several pages, and then we move on to the different engines. 

Correspondence

"Archangel"  recalls the old days, before the war, while A. Simons boost his social club of jet pioneers, The Reactionaries. 

Aircraft Intelligence reports that the 707 uses alloy honeycomb sandwich material in its leading edges, that the F-102 will soon receive a power boost from the J-57. Lockheed will produce 15 B-47s with the MA-2 radar bombing aid developed for the B-52, as a SAC crew trainer. Aviolanda, which is helping to make Hunters for the Dutch Air Force, is going in for a target drone, largely of plastic. SNECMA is trotting out its experimental Vampire with thrust reversal, because it is germane right now. The Czechs have a helicopter now. If you are wondering why we seem to be galloping through your average issue of Flight, it has to hold space for the National Air Races, the Fokker Friendship, and a retrospective farewell to Habaniya Air Base in Iraq. 

"Lockheed v. Douglas: A Brief Comparative Example of America's New Long-range Liners" Lockheed thinks that their new Super-Constellation is the better plane, but on close examination there are some funny numbers here, so it is not so clear. Louis Breguet gets a full page obituary. A new MOS-approved method for soldering aluminum gets a story. Civil Aviation praises De Havilland's small airliners, and various small airlines doing things in Uganda and Cyprus and places like that. 

The Economist, 11 July 1955

Leaders

"For This Relief" The report of the Royal Commission on Profits and Income is discussed. It looks like Britain will keep a single-tier corporation profits tax at a higher rate rather than taxing capital gains as income. The majority is also against fiddling with depreciation as it is done now under a "historical" basis. More attempts to discern what is going with Eastern Europe and Jugoslavia and Khrushchev, and a major feature on "Siam, 'Land of the Free'" which has decided to join Seato. However, The Economist detects signs of the growth of Communism in the guise of "crypto-nationalism." And with threats on all borde4rs, "it is clear that the Siamese will have to fight hard" to sustain their freedom, and they deserve every help from the West as the lynchpin of freedom in Southeast Asia. 

From The Economist of 1855, "Formidable Opponents" takes issue with the critics of Gladstone's speech calling for peace with Russia. The Economist disagrees, but finds the critics appalling. 

 

Notes of the Week

The TUC's mediation hasn't solved the railway strike. The Queen's Speech was boring. The Soviets laid out the red carpet for Chancellor Adenauer in his visit. Isn't that what you're supposed to do? Oh, right, the threat of a neutral Germany. Peace and disarmament summit some more. Labour is having trouble sorting out its Shadow Cabinet because the party hasn't made up its mind as to who will replace Attlee, and if it's Gaitskell, Bevan will be upset, and it's a big issue. Contemplating the railway strike, The Economist concludes that strikes are fine until they happen and now that it has happened, something should be done about it, but not too extreme or anything. The United States of Europe sure is taking its time. It might seem like the Formosa Straits crisis is over, but it's not, which might be good in practice because the best way of dealing with things that can't be resolved is to just not talk or do anything about them. South Africa is offering a defence treaty in return for closing the Simonstown naval base. The newspaper strike might resume, but the TUC may be able to coerce peace on the docks, where there are intermittent strikes going on. We're worried about the current accounts balance deficit again. The Dutch cabinet crisis is over, the election will go ahead next spring, and the same coalition will be re-elected. The Social Democrats swept the local elections in Sicily, which The Economist supposes is due to good Social Democratic governance. I am looking for signs of tongue in cheek, but do not find it. Speaking if which, the elections in Cambodia and Laos will go ahead and produce a neutralist government in Cambodia and probably send Communists to the Laotian parliament, which is bad. One result of the rail strike is that the fee of a driver's license test will go up to cover costs. There are signs of an increasing xenophobia in Uganda and East Africa in general. The British Medical Association is upset about the proposal to ban the manufacture and export of heroin from Britain, because only foreigners get addicted to heroin. 

Letters

K. Zilliacus explains that the reason he nearly lost his bid for election because of Tory tampering with the electoral boundaries, while Maurice Edelman makes the same argument to claim that divisions within the Labour party were not a factor after all. M. Chapman-Walker writes to explain why the Tories have no problem with more television coverage of the next election, which is that they have more money to pay for advertising. Cecil Kisch writes to argue for deflation. I'm sure he doesn't understand why no increase in the cost of living in a growing economy is effectively deflation, because he is just an economist, and if there's one thing economists don't understand, it's economics. (As someone who was raised up in one of the other departments that share digs at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, I don't understand why economics aren't made to read each other. Or maybe I do, and that's the problem!) P. J. D. Wiles points out that buying shares in foreign companies is the most painless way to invest in another country, and thinks that all that is needed is removing some barriers to listings on foreign stock exchanges. 

Books

L. F. Crisp's The Australian Labour Party, 1901--1955  explains why the Australian Labour Party has come to be in a state of civil war. It's because of federalism and religion, which renders the party incapable of doing good things as well as bad, which frustrates its left. John Craig's History of Red Tape is a history of the British civil service by a man who loves civil servants and hates red tape, which sounds like a very confusing book. Gerhard Colm's Essays in Public Finance and Fiscal Policy is a collection of worthy essays. He doesn't like the national income/GNP method of calculating the size of an economy! Fancy that! Gordon Lett's Rossano is an account of a British officer's role in the Italian partisan movement in 1944/45 that reassures the reviewer that the Italian partisans weren't actually Communists. Norman Buchanan and Howard Ellis explain American Approaches to Economic Development, which are much more nuanced than foreign observers seem to think. Mainly, though, they are opposed to industrial development in underdeveloped countries because "rapid advance on all fronts" is a myth and instead there should be "a slow advance in depth." Farm, and leave the iron and steel to us! 

Pierre Daninos' Major Thompson Lives in France is the English translation of a Frenchman's book about an Englishman in France that is actually about the French. It's the kind of book that some people who are getting a bit lazy about reading long form French literature since they graduated quite liked, and might even diffidently apologise for liking by waving at young motherhood. Apparently the English translation is funny, too. Hawthorne Daniel and Francis Minot explain The Inexhaustible Sea, which, contrary to the impression that northwest European waters are overfished, it apparently is. Yes, they probably are overfished, but it is because of waste and there are overseas fisheries to exploit, such as the Humboldt Current off Peru and Chile, which is too rich to be in any like danger, so ignore those silly Peruvians! Although we do need to start eating delicious plankton and not the fish and whales that eat the plankton for full efficiency. The authors calculate that while a square mile of Kansan wheat land might produce 600 to 700t of wheat a year, a square mile of English Channel produces 4000t of plankton, "and the Channel is by not means the richest," at which point one instantly begins to wonder if Kansas is more fertile than Kent. The book provides "much useful ammunition for those who refuse to accept the mood of cosmic gloom which sometimes emanates from the authorities on population and food supply . . . The era of domestication of the sea is yet to come, but who knows what the population the world might then support?" Torgnus Sommelius' The Iron Gate of Illyria is one of those travel books, about Yugoslavia, which the reviewer thinks is a strange thing to write, because the reviewer just arrived on the Mars-London shuttle. 

(There's plankton in the story, too, and this isn't nearly as deep a cut as T. J. Bass.)

American Survey 

"A Guaranteed Wage" Ford has accepted the principle of a guaranteed annual wage. The Economist throws up its hands and consoles itself with the thought that at least the Communists will be upset. "Liberalism in Practice" is a short bit about Senator Cain's campaign against the Administration's security programme. In the latest victory on that front, Otto Nathan has finally received a passport after the Court of Appeals ordered the State Department to either issue it or confront Nathan with the security charges against him. Dr. Lattimore has also been allowed to leave the country on a lecture tour, although his passport has not yet been restored. The Supreme Court has also found for John Peters, although on narrow grounds that do not resolve the question of whether the government is allowed to fire civil servants on the basis of sealed complaints by anonymous informants. Foreign aid seems to be getting through Congress after all. June will see 325,000 graduates from American colleges, and the talent scouts are all over campus because jobs are long and graduates are short. I would be happier if the article wasn't so dirty old man-ish, though. The young women who are there to "press cap and gown" on their guys aren't actually happy at the thought that a degree and typing skills will get them a job at $4200/year. "Who Buys Houses" tries to sort out why the rate of house purchases isn't falling with the declining rate of family formation and home sharing by multiple couples, down to a historic low of 1.5 million families sharing accommodations. The reason is that the birth rate hasn't fallen with the family formation rate, and the two-room bungalow of 1947 is starting to be a bit snug, while pensions and savings allow more retired couples to stay in their old homes, and more homes are needed in the suburbs and the warm coastal states. Housing demand may remain stable, and high, until the baby boom of the nineteen-forties becomes the marriage boom of the nineteen-sixties, providing national prosperity is maintained.

"Harnessing the Sun" The Rockefeller Foundation has announced a grant of a quarter million dollars to study solar energy, a reminder that, despite the curent interest in nuclear power, solar energy might have a bright future, too, either for heating or perhaps the conversion of solar into chemical energy. Bell's solar battery, a sandwich of silicon that can convert sunlight directly into electricity at a rate of 100W per square meter of surface is good enough to justify some experimental use powering telephone amplifiers in rural areas. 

"Perennial Drought" The Economist explains why the western great plains receive only 10--14" of rain a year, and why sometimes there are decade-long periods of more than 20", which was enough to lure people in to start dry farming, but then the droughts ruined them all and it was a tragedy, and, oh, have you heard about this whole Great Depression and Dust Bowl? That was then! Secretary Benson is upset that we then let it all get out of hand in the war years again and thinks that the current generation of dust bowl refugees can bloody well drive their Model Ts to California and get jobs picking fruit, and stop bothering Washington for help and various forms of agricultural socialism. Fortunately for the Administration, the rain has come first. Shorter Notes describes next week's experiment in decentralising government, where the government will have to drive 300 miles from Washington and, I suppose, set up shop in the Cozy Rest Motel in Butler, Pennsylvania, and see if they can run the government that way when the Reds are on the atomic rampage, and the Senate is fiddling with tariff schedules to the benefit of the domestic plywood industry. 

The World Overseas

Somewhat incredibly, Tommy Burns is
the one reasonable man in all of this. 

"The Danger at Gaza" Egypt has requested more truce supervisors from the UN, but Secretary General Hammerskjold is finding that there is not much that he can do when Israel is in the middle of an election campaign and all the parties "prefer to fight in an atmosphere of crisis and when someone objects to every conceivable proposal." Mr. Sharret says that Egypt has forfeited any right to Gaza, while Nasser is threatening to fight if Egypt is attacked, which is obviously just two sides of the same coin. (Ronnie is wearing her SARCASTIC FACE right now!) Nothing is likely to happen before the American election, because the Jewish vote went to Eisenhower in '52 and he will want it again in '56 and so might be persuaded to send as many guns to Israel as he is sending to the Arabs. 

France, you will be alarmed to hear, is having a crisis, and European unity might be at stake! India is far too socialist, just like it was last week, but it is necessary to explain it again and again until the Indians just stop. The international union meeting in Vienna still always will would have had too many Communists, and also must be made to stop. Speaking of things that won't stop but should, India (or Nehru, mainly) continues to be upset about South African racism towards Indians in South Africa, whom the South Africans call "Asians." India (or mainly Nehru, that giant pain in the rear) just can't bring themselves to admit that the Afrikaners are just going to be racist, and get on with doing business while pretending that the Afrikaners aren't trying to expel all the "Asians," because it is not going well and they will probably give up on being fascists their own one day.  Though in the end you do have to admit that, actually, the problem is mostly the South Africans. 

The Business World explains how bill tender works and also tea shares. 

Business Notes

Markets up, steel shares up, coal is getting to industry in spite of the strike although clearing out the coal that is piling up around the mines will be a big job in the autumn. Output is holding up in spite of the strike, too, coal prices are starting to creep up because it is being moved by truck, Canadian Pacific will buy Comet 4s, but only on conditions so stringent that de Havilland probably can't meet them (they will have to be delivered by 1959 and have thrust reversal, which Rolls Royce might not be able to deliver by the deadline.) Atomic energy is quite exciting, with some proposed nuclear power plant designs looking very good. Wool is getting to be a pretty tough market, with wool consumption falling last year for the first time ever. The new MG is pretty good. Russia is buying more rubber, but we should relax because it is not a sign that they are building up their strategic stockpile before starting WWIII, which someone seems to be going around saying. The annual meeting of the International Association of Seed Crushers points out that the world needs an annual increase by 300,000t of oils and fats to feed a growing world population, which is not a problem when last year's increase was 1.2 million tons, to 25 million. Stocks are up times two this week, money circulation isn't showing alarming trends due to the strike, which is nice. Rio Tinto has sold its Spanish assets and is paying out in dividends. The "free" sugar market is doing well this year, because Russia has emerged as a major importer, buying 120,000t from Cuba. 

Flight, 10 June 1955

Leaders

"Masterpieces in Metal" Flight is going to visit the "Aluminum 1955" Exhibition in London, and the Royal Tournament, which sounds like it will be fun. 

From All Quarters reports, again, about the Canadian Pacific polar service, which is almost ready to start, at which point we will hopefully stop getting the same story again and again. In the same vein, a bit more about the business jet version of the Viscount. The Nato air exercises in Germany in the third week of June will be the biggest air exercises ever. Blackburn is building a specialised Beverley as a tanker for serving remote Canadian communities. We get an update about the Antarctic air survey. The new Gipsy is nice. F. G. Miles is now the British agent for Hurel-Dubois. Hawker Siddeley's Air Service Training subsidiary is opening a helicopter school, and Ireland is having an air show. 

By Robert Togni from Ilkeston, United Kingdom - Lockheed Constellation
L1649 Starliner # N974RUploaded by JuergenKlueser,
C BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8894219

Here and There reports that the Paris show is going to be quite the thing, The S.O. 9000 is flying, helicopters are delivering parts to break rail strike bottlenecks. A Valiant is going to Woomera for bombing trials, and will have a part-RAAF crew, which is training in Britain. Civil Aviation reports that a new British-Lebanese airline will promote British interests in the Middle East, that the "Seven Seas" and DC-7Bs are being built, that Air France has ordered 7 of the new Lockheed L-1649A "Super-Super Constellation," the thin-winged development of the Turbo-Constellation that is promised to fly 6500 miles at 350mph and make the New York-Paris flight two hours faster than the DC-7. The Comet 4 is coming along, the IATA foresees great improvements in civil airliner inertial navigational systems with "near-perfect" gyroscopes.

"Britain's Contribution to a Great Paris Salon" A four page spread describes all the British industry exhibits in Paris in brief detail. The second part of "Introduction to Air Freight" looks at British air cargo services on the Atlantic.

"France's Aircraft Industry" Thanks to its robust postwar revival, France has a strong aircraft industry making many fine planes and engines, which is easily covered in four pages.

C. Wilson, "Aluminum Alloy Components: Modern Tendencies in Forging and Casting Techniques" A three page summary, and it is hard to say that any picturesque details catch my eye. 

"The British Light-alloy Industry" Eleven company displays are described in a bit more detail than the Paris coverage, of which British Aluminum, with its brand new rolling plant for high-strength aluminum sheet and Heavy Duty Alloys with its pioneering work in X-ray crystallography are the most interesting. (Birmetal was a pioneer in high quality aluminum casting, but everyone is doing that now.) 

There seems to be a shortage of show-related material, because the editor digs up advertorials (from Jack and Heintz in St. Louis) on Oil-cooled Generators and an "Air-Driven Fuel Booster Pump, while The Industry has an advertorial for  Rover gas turbine for compact power generation before getting on with industry personnel movements, advanced notice of a conference on sintering, and an advertorial for a smooth-running caster wheels for wagons and such. 

Correspondence

B. R. A. Burns has some interesting things to say about minimising high and low pressure areas in supersonic planes, and contests the idea that the Grumman Tiger and F-102 were redesigned when this was better understood, since the "coke bottle fuselage" was known as early as 1949, and supposes, in a very polite way, that the fact that they were initially designed without it reflects a "different approach" to aerodynamic problems. Henry Ellul is the latest to propose slanting runways. Edward Hoctor defends the RAF's Uxbridge Depot against accusations made in the recent biography of T. E. Lawrence, who, as we know, for some reason decided that, instead of being Lawrence of Arabia, he would be an RAF Other Ranks. N. Young finds conceptual errors in Quidnunc's article on jet lift, and goes on to point out that there's no particular reason to reduce the flight time from New York to London below eight hours, because what is the point of intercontinental flights that are shorter than overnight. 

 

Fortune's Wheel reviews this issue by leading with the article about Chicago ahead of a note that John v. Neumann's wife suggested the title of his article before explaining that Gilbert Burck, the author of the article about farming, has his own hobby farm up the Hudson Valley, and wants to talk about some things he couldn't fit into his article, like the "Pork Confabulator," a calculator that "apparently makes it impossible to lose money on pigs," and his disastrous experience with trying to raise "French hybrid grapes" on that farm. New York wine. Who would have thought it? Nobody, that's who! 

Letters

George Taylor writes that he appreciated Dan Bell's article about the guaranteed wage, and points out how the GAW reminds him of the push for a higher minimum wage. Given booming production and rising capacity, what is this concern with unemployment? (Besides the fact that unemployment isn't falling anywhere near as quickly as production is rising, that is.) Taylor explains that it is because of concerns about technological unemployment. John Stepens, a Vice President at U.S. Steel, also liked the Bell article, but doesn't have anything as insightful to say. Three correspondents bring very different perspectives to appreciating Eric Hodgins' article about how we need more fundamental research. Most of the people who read John Davenport's article about the ideological strength of Communism seem pretty upset about it. F. M. Young, the President of YOung Radiator Company, is upset at the quote from Lincoln cited by George Meany that seems to make him out to be some kind of socialist, and provides the rest of the passage, which seems to contextualise it and make him some kind of capitalist, instead. 

Business Roundup looks at how companies are richer than ever and are investing more, but otherwise in spite of growing production people are watching for stumbles, on housing, in steel, on dividends. My take is that no-one really trusts the GOP not to engineer a deflation that boosts all that idle wealth. Or maybe that's just me! 

Business Notes from Abroad reports growing signs of famine in Russia and tut-tuts about how Communism turned Russia's agricultural export surplus into famine, and surely that is what is happening in China now. All the money being invested in gas pipelines for the U.S. bases in Spain and U.S. airfields  in France and Germany may be dwarfed if Bechtel gets its way and builds a 2500 mile natural gas pipeline from Iraq to Paris. Dusseldorf sure has recovered from the war! Israel may declare economic independence, but reality is another mater, as imports of $280 million and imports of $80 million are balanced by private contributions from Jews around the world and $60 million a year from Germany in reparations, with a total of $285 million to be paid. Unfortunately, the inflow isn't being sufficiently sterilised and there are inflationary tendencies. There are so many American tourists abroad that there are American hotels, too. 

Leaders

The next target for the Administration's free enterprise policies is rail rates. The fact that TWA and American have duelling ads over the speed of their respective New York-Los Angeles services just shows that competition has come to commercial air in the same way that it has to beer. No-one can agree on which beer has fewer calories, either! The only thing left to do now is to start competing on service, and good luck with that! Walter Reuther is bad not because he is a unionist (you can't say that!) but because he supports farm price supports. The antitrust boys seem to be stirring. Maybe we should whack them again?  Latin American countries are getting together to stabilise coffee prices, which is obviously anti-capitalist. Maybe we should whack them again? America will run a negative current account balance in "visible" trade this year, and so much for the dollar gap. Although it will be balanced by "invisible" terms, maybe it is time to think about a future when high income, high price America finds it harder to export than to import, and actually has to worry about its cheques clearing. 

Charles J. V. Murphy looks at "The Crisis of the Cold War." Remember when Fortune retrenched from all its high-minded pretensions and became a strict business magazine? Anyway, maybe there won't be WWIII in the next four years thanks to massive retaliation, but that's not to say that there isn't a crisis so we have to talk to Charles Bohlan, James Conant, and Walter Robertson about it to see what they have to say, because no-one would ever hear from them if it weren't for Fortune!

Gilbert Bruck's "The Magnificent Decline of U.S. Farming" explains that it is great that the number of farms and farmer in the U.S. is shrinking because farming is getting more efficient and contributing more to national wealth. Why, Professor Earl Heady, down at Iowa State College, even uses one of them IBM computers to study crop rotations!

Perrin Stryker (which is a real name) has an article helpfully explaining how to write a commencement address. The promised article from John v. Neumann is "Can We Survive Technology," and explains that technology will change our lives drastically, especially nuclear power, since it goes to availability of energy, but also communications. He then goes on with a fantastic riff on the possibilities of "controlled climate," which swings wildly from the world's very long term cycles of ice ages and interglacials to the effects of changing --which is to say, increasing-- the Earth's reflectivity by volcanoes or possibly people, which will make it colder, or of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide, whichis definitely something humans are doing, and which will raise global temperatures. He presumes we're all in favour of a warmer world, but that is because he thinks we're on the verge of another ice age, which may very well be true, but hotter summers aren't necessarily good. However, he also speculates that someone might deliberately increase global reflection, presumably not by starting up volcanoes, just to offend people. Is this a secret plan to beat Communism by making Siberia colder? Or we could just control the climate to improve the economy. Anyway, the point is that what with all those things we might be able to do, it makes sense to have some kind of world government (but not like that, that would be Communism!) to make sure that we don't wipe ourselves out with all that progress. 

It appears that Grand Union was doing a  bad job of picking locations at the time.

With that we're brought back to Earth by Robert Sheridan's look at Grand Union's "Super-Supermarkets," which is the next big thing, as the chain has expanded by 400% in the last eight years. Oddly enough for a typical company profile, as near as I can tell, Fortune wasn't given permission to use photographs of Grand Union stores, although it does have publicity photos of board members.
 

Michael Heilperin submits "France's Precarious Prosperity" Sure, it is fine now, but France will probably collapse in the next six months or so. Speaking of which, "The Battle for Chicago" is a fight to fix America's second city and turn it into America's second city, only more so. They're building some expressways and modern buildings, you see. Kopper's and Serwel company profiles follow. 

Edmund L. Van Duesen, "Electronics Goes Modern" Are you tired of hearing about Project Tinkertoy? Well, have I got whatever the opposite of a treat is for you! Brussel sprouts, you ask? No, more about "modular" electronics. They are the key to automating electronic manufacture, and eventually, when transistors replace vacuum tubes, electronics factories will operate as smoothly as chemical flow production plants, and it will be a new age for workers --no more girls with soldering guns!-- and consumers alike. An article about some shifty home-mortgage banker in Los Angeles finishes out editorial content in this issue.