R_.C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada.
Dear Father:
a month left to my undergraduate career, but not even really that! My undergraduate thesis --the one that I am turning in for grades-- is already in hand. I will receive it back for final revision next week, and, since I have no final exams scheduled for April, it is all over but the relaxing. Perhaps on the thought that my mighty mind will go to rot and ruin before I reach law school, I have even been invited to some graduate seminars! Ordinarily, I would be honoured but . . . But, firstly, wine and cheese gratis. Second, the Philosophy Department is hosting some Big Names from back east preparatory to the appearance on our shores of the one and only Wittgenstein, of which --Well, if you're not a philosopher, don't ask, because I cannot speak. Ha! Joke!
Sorry. Perhaps one glass too many. So the thought was that the Big Name might, science being close to technology (I know, I was as surprised as you to hear it!), like to comment on the notes an enterprising Junior College lad took at a Heidegger seminar in Berlin last month (he was being there! Ahem. Definitely one glass too many) where the Great Man, who is definitely not a Nazi, launched a new "research programme" in technology. German philosophers have "research," you see. When they're not being not-Nazis.
The upshot is that the Big Name has hardly any idea of who this Heidegger fellow is, disapproves of what he did know, and hardly stayed awake through our enthusiastic graduate student's report. The young man was visibly crushed (though he didn't help his case by showing off in the question and answer session), and it was all anticlimactic leading into Wittgenstein, for whom the vogue would seem to have passed, anyway.
Excuse me. In that rush of words, I may have managed to avoid mentioning why I actually have a serious interest in what philosophy has to say about technology, since I am not very happy with what patent law says about it. Yes, disappointment ensued, but progress. Maybe.
So, as to what my thesis doesn't say. I'm tolerably sure that Horace Stevens was killed on the train that took the Stanford hockey team up to Oregon in February 1912. Mr. V., of all people, who knows murderers, maybe, and murder mystery writers for sure, said I should ignore the athletes and coaches, who would have been isolated in an excursion car. Boosters and journalists were your guys. And who should be among them but Russell Pegler, apparently distantly related to same, and the journalist who covered the unidentified corpse-in-a-trunk story for the Examiner --and who provided the tips that led the investigation to focus on the demi-monde. Why would he do sports?
Wong Lee didn't even hesitate. "Blackmail, of course. Stupid blackmail. So there will be cheques." And current cheques, too, since Pegler is still alive at 90, and someone still cares enough to try to kill me. (Twice, says Wong Lee, who found a bomb under the Lincoln the other day. Unfortunately, it's the only thing holding on the exhaust manifold, so we have to leave it there and we start the car by hot-wiring now. Kidding! Slightly.) That's where being able to ask Pete Giannini for a favour comes in handy. Story made too-late short, Pegler receives a quarterly stipend from Union Oil, or, previous to 1945, Consolidated Engineering, or, previous to 1937, the Union Aircraft Corporation. It won't stand up in court, especially because I think it might be slightly illegal to ask the chairman of the bank to look at confidential bank records for you, but Pegler's services in the ain't-saying-anything department are being retained by Junior, presumably for his Dad.
Heaven knows I don't want to cross the man again, and I'm not exactly boiling over with zeal unrequited for justice for the murder of Horace Stevens, who does not seem to have been very nice. I'm just at a loss to think of a way of persuading the Boy Genius of it before some Tong assassin gets lucky.
Yours Sincerely,
Ronnie.
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| "The world owes South Africa a debt for refusing to go along with the mania of majority rule and 'one man one vote once." John Davenport's papers are in the Hoover Institution Archives. |
Flight, 3 March 1949
Leaders
"Cost of Air Defence" The net Air Estimates are £207, 450,000; the gross estimates £236,691,600; there is a supplementary estimate for £16.4 million for overspending last year; the Civil Air Estimates add another £215,059,740. The total spent on air is £468,151,340. This is a lot of money, and Flight is torn between objecting to socialist overspending and being giddy about all the money, so it compromises and points out that it only amounts to £50 million for new equipment, which is only 11% of the total.
"A Major Miracle" Everyone is upset that the USAF is giving up on the flying wing and going all in for the giant B-36. General Vandenberg is so hurt by all the criticism that he told the Wings Club of New York that the B-36 recently made a mock bombing raid at 40,000ft and couldn't be intercepted by jet fighters. Flight says the numbers don't add up unless the B-36 has been seriously up-powered. Flight reads The Beehive, the in-house magazine of the United Aircraft Corporation, which says that the Wasp Major VDT is working. That wouldn't do it, but maybe there is a new Wasp Major VDT in which the VDT is hooked back to the turbosupercharger and there is cooling from a fan. (Reggie says that the Air Force just tied a rocket to its tail.)
"Air Safety" The Royal Aeronautical Society is having a symposium on air safety on Saturday, which will be very interesting.
"Bombers at the Crossroads: Twin-jet British 'Medium' to Fly Soon: American Emphasis on Strategic Air Power" Flight is very upset that it took so long for the new British twin-jet medium bomber to fly, compared with the B-45 and the XB-47, and that it will probably be less advanced than the B-47. Also, where are the new heavy bombers that might be flying wings or deltas or have cranked wings, Flight has heard. It's taking too long! Also, "heavy" means the B-36 now, so the new British heavy bombers will actually be medium bombers like the 213,000lb YB-49, or the tiny little 125,000lb XB-47. America will probably buy more piston or turboprop long range aircraft because the jets aren't ready yet, and that and the B-36 show that it is moving towards "strategic" air power. Also, it is some consolation that all these giant new American airframes aren't matched by similar power units. The XB-47 has six turbojets of low power, while the rumour is that the new British heavies will only have four. But that's actually a good thing, because it shows that the Americans will "brook no delays" in their bombers; and maybe they will buy the Rolls Royce Avon.
Meanwhile, Bomber Command will continue to use the Lancaster and Lincoln, says the Secretary of State for Air says, even though rumours are rife that Britain will buy the Superfortress or maybe give Bomber Command some Shackletons. Flight thinks that some B-29s would be great, if the alternative is Bomber Command not having the range to drop large bombs of unspecified type on places that are as far away from Britain as Moscow.
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| The big story here is the Avon, used in the Camberra, Valiant, Hunter and Swift. Copyrighted free use, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1618778 |
"Gas Turbine Names and New Types" The Air Ministry has a new and very confusing way to reefer to experimental and production jet engines that it is hereby unconfusing by explaining. For example, the Armstrong Siddelely Python will be the ASP.1 and ASP.2 and so on, while the Bristol Theseus will be the BTh.1 and so on. Now that we know what to call them, we can announce that Armstrong Siddeley has two a new mark of Mamba that are, obviously, the ASM.4, and a Double Mamba, the ASMD.1. There is also a Viper ASV.1 and an Adder ASA.1, because it gives you a headache, a Napier Coupled Naiad, which is obviously a NNaC.1. There are also two new Proteus types (it's a pity that this is a translation so that you can't see how I avoided figuring out the plural of "Proteus"). Rolls Royce has two new Avons, and engines called the Clyde and the Tay; and de Havilland has new makes of the Goblin and Ghost.
Here and There
Flight reports that the Republic XF-91 made its first public appearance last week, and that it has inverse tapered wings. The new Piasecki has side-by-side tandem intermeshing rotors. The Nene Tudor recently achieved a speed of 400mph, 50mph greater than the maximum, "by accident." Avro Canada's new Orenda turbojet has made its first test run. It will eventually be used in the Avro twin-engined jet fighter. The American WAC Corporal rocket recently achieved a vertical height of 250 miles.
"The Air Estimates: Personnel Down to 255,000: Cost up to £207,450,000" Since the war, there have been 94,000 voluntary entrants to the RAF, building up its strength to 110,000, with the WRAF reaching 14,500. The Minister thinks that efficiency is increasing, and points out that pilot and navigator prospects are "improving." Everyone who passes the selection board is guaranteed a short service commission of eight years regular and four years reserve service, with a "good proportion" being selected for permanent commissions. Jet bomber development continues at jig time, Coastal Command will receive Shackletons, while Transport Command is getting Hastings and Valettas.
The Navy Estimates have also been released. They do not go into any great details about new naval aircraft, but the Navy will spend £11 million on them. Flight notes that the Admiralty has an "Advisor on Aircraft Accidents," who holds the rank of Captain and draws £2,068 per year.
"Rotor Drives: An Examination of Helicopter Transmission Systems: Precis of a Paper Presented to the Helicopter Association on Saturday, February 26th by by Mr. K. Watson, the Chief Engineer of the Cierva Autogiro Company"
This is mainly about the transmission system used in the Air Horse, which has a single engine powering three separate rotors arranged in a triangle around the aircraft. Reggie has pointed out h ow dangerous this is, although the same consideration (that a failure of one or the other rotors will cause the aircraft to crash out of control) applies to all multi-rotor aircraft, whether they have separate engines or transmissions. The details are all quite complicated (free wheels and clutches and spindles and drives abound), but I notice that he says that the power unit weighs 14% of the aircraft's gross weight, and the transmission 10%, which is a lot, so they are doing their best to make sure that there is no mechanical failure in there. A great deal of effort has been put into making sure that the transmissions won't be damaged if they suddenly receive too much of the engine's power or if power supply is interrupted, which is good, and which can also be applied to single rotor designs.
"Introspection: Radiographic Inspection of Gas Turbine Castings: Armstrong Siddeley Technique Described" Armstrong Siddeley calls our attention to Air Commodore Banks' estimate that a 3500hp liquid-cooled engine would weigh about 3700lbs, and that development would cost about £15/lb, or £55,000, against a turboprop of similar performance, which would weigh less but require more development, coming out at 2900lbs, or £20/lb, or £58,000. Much of that will go to blades; how much will be spent on turbine blades is "not common knowledge," but it might be 50% of the cost of new types in current practice. British practice is to use forged blades for rotor stages and cast blades for stator stages. For axial compressors, both rotor and stator stages are machined from extruded bar stock. Blade material is standardised, with compressor blades made from light alloys, and turbine rotor and stator stages from specialised high temperature alloys such as the Nimonic range. Armstrong Siddeley has developed its own variant of the lost-wax casting method, which permits casting to accuracy limits of 0.002 inches on thickness. It is also experimenting with strong nickel-chrome alloys for the initial compressor blading, as they can be badly damaged by dirt and such as it is sucked in. In short, castings of nickel-chrome steel and light alloys both have to be inspected before installation. Armstrong Siddeley has been using a 15kV Philips X-Ray machine for about tenyears. It can penetrate almost 2"of mild steel, which is not good enough, and so the company has now installed a "somewhat larger" Siemens Schukert machine of 220kV and 15mA. People should not "ignorantly misuse" the equipment, but, if they do, the laboratory has 19" walls with a 3/4" internal space filled with barium plaster, in addition to the 3/4" of barium plaster on the walls. There is a control space and a dark room.
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| The coverage is pretty dramatic due to his son the future Air Chief Marshal, flying out to Pakistan to bully the airport authorities into saying that his Dad didn't commit suicide. |
Goodyear wants everyone to know that its new Pliofilm is in production. Neville Stack has died.
Civil Aviation News
Lord Douglas will be the new Chairman of BEA. KLM will try to run a regular service to Batavia via Mauritius, where the colonials can't express their opinion of Dutch policy in Indonesia by closing their airports. The British airlines have agreed on standard fares around the world, and the FIDO installation at Los Angeles City Airport will enter regular service quite soon. The system will turn a 75ft fog ceiling into a 300ft one, increase 600yd forward visibility to 1300, and bring in a 50-passenger aircraft at a cost of $3/passenger. The Civil Airlift, administered by BEA, has lifted 45,000 tons into Berlin in seven months, using 600 men and 23 administrators (who are not men, but creatures from beyond the farthest paperwork). They have nineteen various Lancaster derivatives and 20 Haltons, are fling in the Airlift's entire fuel needs, and employ 10 nonscheduleds. Aerradio is establishing a European subsidiary, Societe Internationale Telecommunication Aerionautique, Margaret Truman will christen the first Pan American Stratocruiser next week. The night mail helicopter service experiments continue. United Airlines completed 90% of scheduled flights during the recent blizzard period. Qantas is converting the Catalinas that fly services to Lord Howe Island, Noumea and Suva to carry fourteen passengers. Schiphol's new terminal can handle 225 passengers an hour and has a restaurant and cafe. Various services are faster, more extensive, and carry more cargo. Canadian airlines lost money in October, 1948.
Maurice Smith, "Y.A.1. In the Air: Experience in a Blackburn Strike Aircraft with Power-operated Ailerons" The Y.A.1 might have gone to war, had there been a war, but there wasn't and now there are just three prototypes which are being flown extensively because they are only the third British aircraft design with powered control surfaces, and the first two, the DH 108 and a converted Lancaster, don't count. Compared to the Firebrand, the Y.A.1 has a better view and is lighter. It originally had a smaller fin and rudder, because it was to use a Centaurus with a contra-prop, but this wasn't proceeded with, and the Y.A.1 got a bigger tail.
Controls consist of a trim tab and aileron bias control. There is no "feel," and the aileron servodyne has no feedback. The trimmer becomes ineffective when the power comes on, so controli is solely via the bias switch. In the event of a power failure, the whole load reverts to the pilot, and the plane presumably blows up if the ailerons are trimmed non-aerodynamically. There is a standard blind flying panel, which soon came in handy navigating through the smoke from the Scunsthorpe blast furnaces, and a harrowing array of gadgets related to all the exciting and dangerous things that the plane can do, such as power-fold its wings and inject water and methanol into the engine. Handling is easy: the only exertion on the ailerons is against the spring force centering the control column, so that effort is constant at all speeds. Power control is no doubt splendid for high speed, high roll operations, but Smith had trouble making the plane do what it was supposed to do at normal speeds, just stooging around. It will, no doubt, be an excellent plane once Blackburn has found a way to get some feedback into the servo loop.
H. F. King, "A Call on Canadair, Part II: At Cartierville: Home of a TCA North Star" Canadair flew Harold and some friends over to Montreal to have a look at their works, as you may recall. Canadair has two factories at the Cartierville airport, their own and the old Noorduyn works, which is converting C-47s into DC-3s, having already delivered 317 civilianised planes. The main plant is "beautifully laid out, warm, and, of course, completely jigged." I guess that means that the Noorduyn works are cold? They would be, in Montreal in February! Canadair was disappointed to hear that the Australians had ordered the DC-6, and "Mr. West," of Canadair, made sure that Harold knew that Canadair was getting ready to deliver its own version of the DC-6 with a slightly extended fuselage, powered by Griffons or R-2800s or Hercules 763s, one or the other. Or all three!
Maurice Smith, "Y.A.1. In the Air: Experience in a Blackburn Strike Aircraft with Power-operated Ailerons" The Y.A.1 might have gone to war, had there been a war, but there wasn't and now there are just three prototypes which are being flown extensively because they are only the third British aircraft design with powered control surfaces, and the first two, the DH 108 and a converted Lancaster, don't count. Compared to the Firebrand, the Y.A.1 has a better view and is lighter. It originally had a smaller fin and rudder, because it was to use a Centaurus with a contra-prop, but this wasn't proceeded with, and the Y.A.1 got a bigger tail.
Controls consist of a trim tab and aileron bias control. There is no "feel," and the aileron servodyne has no feedback. The trimmer becomes ineffective when the power comes on, so controli is solely via the bias switch. In the event of a power failure, the whole load reverts to the pilot, and the plane presumably blows up if the ailerons are trimmed non-aerodynamically. There is a standard blind flying panel, which soon came in handy navigating through the smoke from the Scunsthorpe blast furnaces, and a harrowing array of gadgets related to all the exciting and dangerous things that the plane can do, such as power-fold its wings and inject water and methanol into the engine. Handling is easy: the only exertion on the ailerons is against the spring force centering the control column, so that effort is constant at all speeds. Power control is no doubt splendid for high speed, high roll operations, but Smith had trouble making the plane do what it was supposed to do at normal speeds, just stooging around. It will, no doubt, be an excellent plane once Blackburn has found a way to get some feedback into the servo loop.
H. F. King, "A Call on Canadair, Part II: At Cartierville: Home of a TCA North Star" Canadair flew Harold and some friends over to Montreal to have a look at their works, as you may recall. Canadair has two factories at the Cartierville airport, their own and the old Noorduyn works, which is converting C-47s into DC-3s, having already delivered 317 civilianised planes. The main plant is "beautifully laid out, warm, and, of course, completely jigged." I guess that means that the Noorduyn works are cold? They would be, in Montreal in February! Canadair was disappointed to hear that the Australians had ordered the DC-6, and "Mr. West," of Canadair, made sure that Harold knew that Canadair was getting ready to deliver its own version of the DC-6 with a slightly extended fuselage, powered by Griffons or R-2800s or Hercules 763s, one or the other. Or all three!
"Favonius," "Scribes and Pharisees: First Effects of the 'Tru Deal' on U.S. Air Policy, with Some Comments on High and Low-Level Aeronautics" "Favonius" begins with "Dewdrop," the USAF's special Constellation, prepared to whisk Governor Dewey to Washington upon his victory. Symington says that this rumour hurt the Air Force, and you will be glad to know that now, a mere five months after the election, there is a story, which is that it was all down to the President wanting an alternative to the DC-6, making it Truman's fault. Hurrah!
Passing from the political to the, well, political, the year started with the USAF cancelling loads of fighters and light and medium bombers to spare some money to buy 39 more B-36s and upgrade the existing ones with a higher powered version of the R-4360. Some of the As will also be converted to be tankers for mid-air refuelling. The cancellations involved the F-87 Blackhawk, which was beginning to look like a "shockingly bad guess, an additional 100 F-84s, which were too many with regards to the 404 already in service, the F-93 upgrade to the F-86, of which there are still 584 on order, and a third of the 190 B-45s on order. Boeing is still sitting on enormous B-50D upgrades for the B-29 and orders for 43 of the VDT-powered B-54, as well as the XB-47 and C-97 contracts. The B-54 has been announced as being more than twice as expensive as the B-50D. "Favonius" thinks that the likely Russian response is gloating over the way that the Americans are ruining themselves with a $14.3 billion defence budget, 34% of federal expenditure. See, Truman was elected, so it's okay to complain about the budget again. "Favonius" is still in shock over the YB-49 cancellation, and the Air Force's cancellation of its 30 C-125 Raider "assault-transports" was, he (unless "Favonius" is in the WRAF!) notes, a further blow to Northrop, which has been consoled with a 48 plane F-89 order.
By talking about that for a bit, "Favonius" must be hoping to cool himself down enough that he can talk about the YB-49 cancellation without setting fire to his typewriter. No such luck! Convair released a letter comparing the two that says that the B-36 has a higher ceiling and is only somewhat slower than the YB-49. "Favonius" has never! Never! Convair says that the B-36 will be cheaper in dollars per tons dropped; "Favonius" says that the YB-49 will be cheap as houses. Finally, he points out that the YB-49 can be loaded up to the same kind of overload as the B-36, at which it will shine in all sorts of ways. I know that I am being very mean to "Favonius," but Reggie is very strongly of the opinion that, whoever he is, he is "in the tank" for Northrop in a big way. (He might also be involved in the flying wing project at de Havilland, or the one at Avro that one hears about through the grapevine.)
"Service Servicing: Operational Planning for Flying and Maintenance in the RAF: The Effects of Aircraft Design: Precis of a Paper Given to the Royal Aeronautical Society by S/L E. A. Harrop" At the beginning of the war, squadrons were rated on serviceability by the number of aircraft serviceable, which seems reasonable until you realise that "one could not have maximum serviceability simultaneously with maximum flying effort." Flying Training Command decided that a better index was needed, and, in 1949, Squadron Leader Harrop is ready to tell us about it. In the end, the servicing cycle is opportunistic --you do what you can when you have the plane-- and so is linked to operational planning.
Since that is quite obvious and boring to say, although as far as I know it involves giant microfilm-reading and accounting machines in practice, Harrop spends the rest of the talk complaining about dumb things designers do that make servicing harder. Your have-to-take-the-engine-out-to-fix-a-flat sort of thing. Much of this could have been edited out, but then the summary wouldn't have takenup an inch of column space on the next page, allowing Flight to put in a review of Eric Williams' the Wooden Horse,which doesn't really belong here, but which Flight enjoyed tremendously.
Correspondence
From the regulars, Simon Warrender is very upset at the Admiralty, Geoffrey Dorman wants an air museum. "Short Range" thinks that putting all air communications on VHF overloads the frequency range. H. C. Barson corrects errors in Flight's obituary of Robin Lindsey Neale. R. J. Ashley, of Skyways, writes to correct the misapprehension that there is no night landing capability at RAF Tengah. Several people have opinions about the RAF, although J. Atkins takes the cake by arguing that the RAF could fix recruiting by reverting from "stripes" to "stars." I don't think that means uniform badges, but I have no idea what it does mean, except that one person of J. Atkins' acquaintance was disappointed by his appointment when he re-upped with the RAF after the war. Virginia Russell of Winchester, Virginia, was very pleased with BEA's customer service.
By talking about that for a bit, "Favonius" must be hoping to cool himself down enough that he can talk about the YB-49 cancellation without setting fire to his typewriter. No such luck! Convair released a letter comparing the two that says that the B-36 has a higher ceiling and is only somewhat slower than the YB-49. "Favonius" has never! Never! Convair says that the B-36 will be cheaper in dollars per tons dropped; "Favonius" says that the YB-49 will be cheap as houses. Finally, he points out that the YB-49 can be loaded up to the same kind of overload as the B-36, at which it will shine in all sorts of ways. I know that I am being very mean to "Favonius," but Reggie is very strongly of the opinion that, whoever he is, he is "in the tank" for Northrop in a big way. (He might also be involved in the flying wing project at de Havilland, or the one at Avro that one hears about through the grapevine.)
"Service Servicing: Operational Planning for Flying and Maintenance in the RAF: The Effects of Aircraft Design: Precis of a Paper Given to the Royal Aeronautical Society by S/L E. A. Harrop" At the beginning of the war, squadrons were rated on serviceability by the number of aircraft serviceable, which seems reasonable until you realise that "one could not have maximum serviceability simultaneously with maximum flying effort." Flying Training Command decided that a better index was needed, and, in 1949, Squadron Leader Harrop is ready to tell us about it. In the end, the servicing cycle is opportunistic --you do what you can when you have the plane-- and so is linked to operational planning.
Since that is quite obvious and boring to say, although as far as I know it involves giant microfilm-reading and accounting machines in practice, Harrop spends the rest of the talk complaining about dumb things designers do that make servicing harder. Your have-to-take-the-engine-out-to-fix-a-flat sort of thing. Much of this could have been edited out, but then the summary wouldn't have takenup an inch of column space on the next page, allowing Flight to put in a review of Eric Williams' the Wooden Horse,which doesn't really belong here, but which Flight enjoyed tremendously.
Correspondence
From the regulars, Simon Warrender is very upset at the Admiralty, Geoffrey Dorman wants an air museum. "Short Range" thinks that putting all air communications on VHF overloads the frequency range. H. C. Barson corrects errors in Flight's obituary of Robin Lindsey Neale. R. J. Ashley, of Skyways, writes to correct the misapprehension that there is no night landing capability at RAF Tengah. Several people have opinions about the RAF, although J. Atkins takes the cake by arguing that the RAF could fix recruiting by reverting from "stripes" to "stars." I don't think that means uniform badges, but I have no idea what it does mean, except that one person of J. Atkins' acquaintance was disappointed by his appointment when he re-upped with the RAF after the war. Virginia Russell of Winchester, Virginia, was very pleased with BEA's customer service.
The Economist, 5 March 1949
Leaders
"Moderation" The fact that Labour held the marginal seat of South Hammersworth in the recent byelection doesn't show that Labour doesn't need to moderate its policies to win re-election because Labour's vote share is down, and because the Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot by being too "anti-Socialist," (see Fortune!!!) and will learn their lesson, especially once they move away from "moderation" where it really matters. (In other words, they should be pro-welfare state, but only in the abstract, since they need to adopt an "extreme" economic programme that isn't just lukewarm anti-nationalisation, and the "extreme" part is basically an attack on the welfare state as it actually exists. In other words, it is to survive as platitudes. In other, other words, we want our tax cuts.)
"Anglo-French Trade Talks" Britain needs to find a way to accept more French exports so that the French can pay for British imports so that we can move towards the sunny uplands of a larger, more efficient, "federal" "integrated" market in Europe.
"Experiment by Groundnuts" The Groundnuts Scheme has gradually turned into a bit of a joke, and there is going to be a long article about it below, but here The Economist gives us the gist. The edible fat shortage looks like it could persist for up to 10 years, which makes it a good idea in principle, but the Ministry didn't do enough planning. In particular, if the land is ploughed to remove roots out before the rains, it is likely that the humus will evaporate and that the rains will wash out the fields. The Economist is also critical of the expense and effort put into building model towns for the Europeans brought over to run the Scheme. It's not that the effort wasn't necessary, it is that it is hard to see how it could have been accomplished without being massively over-accomplished, if you see what I mean. It has problems with trying to run things from London, pointing to a parallel project in Queensland that put 30,000 acres into sorghum with no fuss or muss (30,000 is a lot less than a million plus, though! [pdf]).
It also observes that the Scheme is unlikely to attract Africans as long as they are to be laborers rather than small farmers. Perhaps if the natives had been given their own small blocks of land, it would have been easier to "demonstrate to the Africans how their own land should be worked." I'm not sure if The Economist means that to be read in a facetious tone, or not. Probably not. Lastly, if it is true that the world is going to need ten or twelve projects on the scale of the Groundnuts Scheme, the capitalisation has to be brought back to Earth, as it cannot afford to spend £25 million on each.
. . . When you're ready to spend £750 million on the services n a single year, and the point of the scheme is as much to develop a colony as to provide edible fats, I'm not sure why £25 million is too much, but The Economist says so, so it must be true.
"Scientists and Politicians" This is what we're doing here, right? Science, technology, investment opportunities? So I have to read what The Economist is saying, and summarise it? Sweet Angel of Mercy! Okay, here goes. It seems that the Dean of Canterbury said, "in his testimonial to the Soviet Union for the defence of the Kravchenko libel" that the Soviets "welcome" science and scientists. But should politicians welcome scientists? That is an interesting question that we will leave hanging for a moment! Moving on, do the Soviets value science? They say they do. They say they plan science and direct it into useful paths. But maybe they don't! We don't know for sure, because when Galileo was persecuted, everyone knew it.
But when something happened to the botanist Vavilov, says Sir Henry Dale, no-one knows anything! This shows that totalitarian dictatorships do, indeed, persecute science, but they do so under the veil of censorship and secrecy. Nowadays, in the rest of the world (I think), science is valued, and we no longer persecute scientists for undermining the foundations of relgions, but this is not enough for scientists like "Professor Bernal," who has founded the Association of Scientific Workers to guide scientists into the path of truth and science. For Marxism is scientific! Therefore, while it is good that scientists are not censored, and can have political opinions (not like in Russia), they should not have wrong opinions, like being Marxists, because this will just lead to planning and an end to scientific inquiry.
It remains only to find a remedy. Perhaps Professor Bernal would enjoy a spell of peanut farming?
Notes of the Week
"Mr. Mayhew's Bombshell" The upshot of the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs' statement to the General Assembly isn't that Congress will throw a fit over anything, but, rather, that Socialist ministers are "not merely boastful in public, but crazy in private," if they think that the recovery is complete.
"The Cost of Social Services" Social Services were fine back when they were in the future and didn't cost anything, but now that the Health Service has turned out to cost a third as much as defence (or as much as ten Groundnut Schemes), that is much too much. ,
"The Tudor Stalls Again" The Economist is upset about the waste, you see. Also, because the Tudor will have to be replaced on BSAA passenger services, there will be a new cost, and the airlines will have a larger deficit. Also, the removal of Gerard d'Erlanger from the chair of the board of BEA is because he objected to cost cutting, and now that cost cutting is necessary to replace the Tudor at a reasonable budget, so everything is okay, and the rest of the Press should take a lesson from Canada and Holland, where the press is keen to see national airlines run like a business instead of a service.
"Togliatti Rallies the Fifth Column" Itailian Communists are the worst except for French Communists. See also "Fruitless Talks on Austria." Except there it is Jugoslav and Russian communists.
"Cloak and Dagger" Eastern Europeans seem obsessed by British and American intelligence operations "straight out of a secret service novel." The Economist points out that "there is no doubt that some American and British officials had such cloak and dagger tastes in the years immediately after the war," but they should not go too far; and if even five percent of the allegations made against American agents in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria are true, that is too much. Eastern Europeans must not be left to think that the Western Powers are engaged in an aggressive crusade. "Only Communists gain if Eastern Europe goes on believing war to be imminent." "Containment" should be the watchword.
"Curtain Raiser on Defence" The Economist's account of the Lords debate emphasises that two former Secretary of State for the Air and two Marshals of the Royal Air Force spoke for the opposition, but only Lord Henderson for the Government, and he seems to have been nominated because he is the brother of the Secretary of State for Air, and didn't have a strong grasp of the facts. The opposition thinks that Britain should have 180, or perhaps 220 squadrons, including 50 long range bomber squadrons. The Economist suggests or implies or pussyfoots around the notion of suggesting the implication that perhaps just maybe Britain should think about "medium range" bombers, instead. Lord Portal suggests that maybe there is too much secrecy.
I guess I don't have to point out that the B-36 is the only existing "long range bomber," unless you count the renumbered B-29, and that Parliament is in a tizzy over buying ten Brabazons. At twelve planes per squadron, I run out of fingers before tallying up how many fifty squadrons worth of Brabazon bombers is, but it's a lot! Uncle George says that all the talk of "secrecy" means that everyone is dying to tell everyone about the British jet bombers, and that they are probably going to look more "medium range" than "long range." The B-47 is a "medium bomber," and weighs 80,000lbs empty, with 6 engines giving 36,000lbs thrust, so I guess that they're telling us that that is what the British bombers will look like, whenever they arrive.
"Wooing Wales" and "Public Assistance to Landlords" are The Economist in a nutshell. The Conservatives have put forward their election platform for Wales, which, since it involves public spending on this and that, is bribing Welsh voters and wrong. The new Housing Bill, meanwhile, offers public assistance to landlords for renovations that they can't afford under rent control, which is good policy and good politics, because landlords take The Economist.
"Israel's Economics" Israel is absorbing 800 new immigrants a day, about evenly divided between people from south-eastern Europe and "less advanced immigrants" from North Africa and the Yemen. They are said to be costing the government $45 a day to support. The new Israeli economic plan calls for $2500 million over ten years, with $135 million already allocated by the Export-Import Bank, but even with all that money, you will be astonished to learn that Israel can only accommodate all of this influx by reducing the standard of living. Helpful advice from The Economist! I put that sentence in because I need you to lose your chain of thought before I go on. Perhaps you could take a pause to powder your nose?
That's better. To continue, the most urgent need is demobilisation, because the country is desperately short of . . . labour. Are you sure you finished your business in the little busineman's room? Perhaps you should go back, and distract yourself for a few minutes before I end with the conclusion that, unless austerity is immediately imposed, immigration must be curbed.
A roundup of foreign events praises Nehru for taking over the difficult business of scolding Burma for not being nicer to the Karens, Ukrainian and Belorussian Communist Congresses for not being Communist enough (although that's not actually criticism), and ex-Emperor Bao Dai for not being eager enough to return to Indo-China to begin his new career as French puppet. Bao Dai has even gone so far as to suggest that when you are losing a war with someone (even communists!), you should do something about it. Besides appointing a new figurehead, and hoping that the people of the Hundred Yueh are that easy to fool.
"Food or Towns?" Everyone says that Britain should preserve good farmland, and everyone says that that means that development must be . . . At this point one realises that one is about to say something nice about the Socialists' New Towns, and one is reduced to The Economist's equivalent of sputtering, which is a long burble around how some New Towns are in the wrong place somehow, and that perhaps the amount of land designated for homes and gardens must increase from 3% to 6%.
Also, something about technical changes in the Housing Bill and abolishing special juries, which is something that Radicals do. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has had to raise pay for university teachers in medical and dental schools, after it was gently pointed out to him that they are doctors, and Malan has decided to campaign in the upcoming South African provincial elections on apartheid, which is a national issue, which The Economist disapproves of. It hopes that the opposition will run on the "muddle" the Nationalists have made of the economy, and leave that distasteful apartheid stuff off to the side.
Books
Folk Bernadotte wrote a book before he was murdered. It is called Instead of Arms, and it is a very nice book, although perhaps short of concrete recommendations about what to do about Russia, if not some arms, if not 30 Groundnut Schemes per year's worth. John Spedan Lewis' Partnership for All is one of the most exciting books on business experience this reviewer has read." Hjalmar Schacht's memoirs are out. It turns out that, he was against Hitler. But secretly. Like all the other Germans.
Thomas Wilson's Fluctuations in Income and Employment, and Income, Employment and Public Policy, the collection of essays in honour of Alvin Hansen, are out in reprints. The Economist thinks that they are worthy books. America through British Eyes is a compilation of same, selected and edited by Allan Nevins, also good.
Letters
H. A. Abbati questions whether more of the Marshall Plan money ought not have been spent reducing the National Debt, and criticises the government for comparing its success in reducing same to Churchill's failure at the same task, without noticing that reducing the Debt during deflations is bad and hard, while it is easy and good during inflations. D. L. Savory, an MP, I think from Northern Ireland, has strong opinions about the border with the Republic. J. M. Campbell, of the West Indies Committee, points out that The Economist's case for reducing the sugar subsidy is harshly exploitative of the West Indies for reasons I do not take the time to parse, as I'm sure he's right! M. G. Ionides points out that Arab refugees from Palestine need to be accommodated on newly irrigated land, which is a good reason for undertaking projects in the lower Jordan Valley, the Ghab Valley in the middle Orontes, on the Upper Euphrates in Syria, and on the Tigris and Euphrates in Iraq.
From The Economist of 1849
The Economist of 1849 scolds its contemporaries for believing in strong government. Why, strong governments raise the public expenditure! Russia has a strong government, but it is backwards; America has a weak government, and it is prosperous! Strong government "crushes the soul." And raises taxes, I'll bet.
American Survey
"Lobbies for Democracy" There are only 435 Congressmen for 150 million Americans, so as much as one may object to all of the lobbies that dominate American public life, they are the only way that Americans can make their voices heard. That is, those lobbies that represent actual Americans, and not, say, the chambers of commerce of America.
American Notes
Senator Taft supports the North Atlantic Pact, which makes it a sure thing. President Truman supports expanding Social Security, but it is not a sure thing, since Congress is reluctant to fund the full increase with more payroll taxes. There is also a long note on Federal versus state support for the poor, elderly and disabled. Some of it is eye-watering, and is in the news elsewhere, so I won't go into sliding scales and eligibility for Social Security. I will notice talk of the Federal government taking over medical care for the poor, which would relieve the states of a heavy burden and, for a change, direct the help where it is needed.
"Majors and Minors in Oil" The Economist is lumping a bunch of stories under one heading to save time and space. That's my job! To cover them off: American domestic oil producers are finally cutting back production in response to over-supply, and this has triggered a resumption of the "war" between major and minor producers. The minors blame the majors for over-producing, and have been going at it in the hearings on the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act. They are also upset about the provision in the Marshall Plan that oil bought for Europe under the Plan be bought outside the United States. That was supposed to be to protect the American consumer during a shortage, but is now seen as the cause of falling prices, as it subsidises production outside the United States. The independents are also poised to be upset over the resumption of steel pipe exports and the exploitation of the new Canadian discoveries. The minors want the price of oil to remain high, to encourage exploration and development, while the majors want to import and keep it low, for the health of the economy.
"Divorces and Disorder" I'm sure you've heard about the New York court that was effectively offering divorces to all. That has led to a scandal in New York, with the archdiocese calling for a ban on divorces entirely, while women lawyers want the allowable grounds for divorce increased. This brings The Economist to the fact that not a single Assembly(MAN!!) being willing to sponsor a new divorce bill, and to the more general and deplorable state of divorce law in America, and the equally deplorable steady rise in the divorce rate.
The World Overseas
"Neighbours to the Northwest" (From our Karachi Correspondent) I think I remember being told that independence and British withdrawal would lead to the prompt overrunning of India, or at least Pakistan, by frontier tribesmen. Or, if I don't remember it, I am going to pretend to remember it, because I HATE The Economist. Our Correspondent's theme is that just because it hasn't happened, doesn't mean that it won't happen, just you wait. Or maybe it will be the Afghans, who have declared, no doubt with a sinister mustache twirl, that they have "renounced all territorial claims" on Pakistan. No doubt this is why it is opposed to the Warsak Hydroelectric Scheme, which is beyond all criticism, and Afghanistan should shut up and accept that Pakistan is now in charge of the house of Islam, and do what it is told.
The International Council of the European Movement has assembled in Brussels to bring closer the glorious day of the United States of Europe, while delegates of the Arab nations have assembled on Rhodes and near Beirut to hash out a settlement, and, incidentally, come up with an alibi. Their story, to which they are sticking, is that they decided to intervene, only if necessary, only if, after the British withdrew in August of 1948, the war went poorly for indigenous forces and the "Liberation Army." Instead, the fighting got out of hand in the months before the withdrawal, not that that means anything or deserves comment (Ooh! Ooh! Double alibi!) and the armies of the Arab League were assembled on the frontiers of Palestine to enforce the democratic rights of indigenous Palestinians, but without much preparation or planning.
When they were rushed across on a few weeks notice, the fighting was scrappy, but the official position is that they would have won without the first ceasefire of 11 June. However, they also acknowledge that at the time of the invasion, the Jews had 120,000 under arms compared with 60,000 Arabs, which doesn't sound like a recipe for victory to me. Anyway, by the time the truce expired, the Arab armies had wilted away for lack of pay to go with lack of ammunition before. Also, The Economist can't resist calling the Palestinian Arabs names.
To the extent that it might be all Egypt's fault, it is thought that Egypt might leave the Arab League or be kicked out, so some progress, I guess.
"Life with Groundnuts" Here is the letter that The Economist summarised. First, the planned town at Kongwa isn't very nice; the wife doesn't like it, and there aren't enough electrical plug-ins in the bungalow. Second, the stores aren't very full. Third, the domestic help only speaks Swahili. Fourth, the critics have no idea what they are talking about, and are just getting in the way of next year's crop.
The Business World
The big article is London Stock Exchange argle-bargle. Stock prices are depressed, and this mkeans that the country cannot balance savings against investment, and that means disaster of some unspecified kind but which is obviously on the way. Sensing my need to get this one to bed before Fred Allen comes on, The Economist then launches right into a "thumb sucker" about the recent decline in the American cost of living. The theory is that this might be due to the possible American recession as much as the rising supply, and that a falling demand for commodities would, by reducing commodity-exporting nations' American earnings, cut into the British terms of trade.
Business Notes
Look! The Budget!
Once again, the Socialists have made room for a swingeing reduction of the National Debt. Once again, it is not enough because the budget has gone up.
We then spend most of a page on the sorry state of South Africa's economy, where there are now exchange controls and rationing. On the one hand, The Economist is, of course, all for austerity. On the second hand, South Africa's plea for a rise in the price of gold to match all the other commodities has justice and reason. On my extra, third hand, America buys all the gold, so what America says, goes.
I've been ignoring the financial notes, but I have to mention that there's been an award on the Cable and Wireless nationalisation stock compensation. Which is important because that is the tubes that the electricity goes through. Especially the complicated electricity that says things. Me Ronnie! Me science good!
"World Shipbuilding 1948" Lloyds' Register records that 2,309,743 tons were launched in 1948, excluding vessels of less than 100 tons. Of this, 342 ships, totaling 1,176,346 tons, were launched in British and Northern Irish yards. That is down 16,143 tons on 1947, while foreign tonnage increased 223,535 tons. The British world share is thus down from 56% to %0%, and the total below launches in 7 years during the 1920s. One third of global tonnage was launched for British owners, Norway coming next at 419,615 tons. Of the 17 ships of more than 10,000 tons gross launched abroad, all but one were tankers. In the United Kingdom, it was 7 of 23, the balance being passenger and refrigerated cargo liners. That still means that tankers consisted of 27.2% of British tonnage compared with 11.7% in 1947. The increase in foreign launches shows that overseas competition is reviving, except in the United States, where it continues its decline. Japanese and German launches also seem to be increasing, and The Economist looks forward to Lloyds' finding a way to collect those statistics in the future.
Finally, the Argentines are having trouble selling meat to Britain, because Britain is bargaining hard, and France has now stepped in to offer a major contract. While the price will be high, it will help balance trade, and could be a major step towards European co-operation. In shorter news, the Rank Organisation is closing the Gainsborough studio, with 550 dismissals. The clothing industry has sent off a junket to Canada to report on styling, colour, sizes and distribution methods. The Board of Trade export targets are basically the same as last year's. The first team of workers' delegates for the Anglo-American Council on Productivity are off to America to look at steel founding. Last week's coal production was the highest for the year, at 4,333,9000 tons. The Coal Board intends to ask for an extension of Saturday morning overtime working for another year, as the extra 7 million tons of coal is needed, even though the shift is highly uneconomic due to 25% absenteeism.
And that's it, thanks to the stock market swoon generating a lot of financial news. So if the world ends due to all the British building societies going broke, blame me for not telling you!
Flight, 10 March 1949
Leaders
"Round the World Non-Stop" The USAF has just flown a B-29 around the world, which is amazing and opens up a whole new vista of bombing places that are as far away from an American airbase as, say, Moscow. It is also really a British achievement, because it used Flight Refuelling equipment.
"Dear, Doubtful Defence" £760 million is both too little and too much for defence, but the real crime is the Government not saying more about the Air Estimates. The Americans say more about defence! (Sometimes, Americans do something right! It's a concession that will come back to haunt Flight, although not when it is complaining about the RAF buying B-29s.)
"Curiouser and Curiouser" The other thing that the government won't talk about because of the egg-on-face risk is the Tudor IV. Actually, the Government said that the Tudor IV will only be used for freight, but that isn't nearly enough said, so Flight gets in advanced criticising. First, lots of American planes were lost in the same general area, so maybe "the mysterious cause may have nothing to do with the type of aircraft." Flight is also upset that the leadership at BEA has been changed. Really, everything is awful except the Tudor.
Maurice Smith, "Self-Aligning Autocrat in the Air: Goodyear Cross-wind Undercarriage Available for Auster Owners: Experience with the Prototype" Auster will put the Goodyear "self aligning" undercarriage, plus included hydraulic brakes, on an Auster for £130. It works fine, but is a bit alarming, although if you want to take off against the wind, and have £130 to spare, you can live with that.
"Interceptor, 1949: A Turbojet-cum-Rocket Republic with Reverse-Tapered Wings" The XF-91 is very Shape-of-Things-To-Come. It is a rocket-assisted jet interceptor with those reverse-tapered wings, which reduce the risk of all the lift-producing air sliding off the wing and causing it to not-lift for a moment until it starts lifting again, which is a problem because the side effects include hitting the pilot with a baseball bat made of gravity.
Here and There
The French Dassault 450 Ouragon gets a lead photograph. A new conversion of the B-36 to carry four turbojets in pods below the wing to assist the six piston engines will be called the B-56. Mr. Atlee took a tour around the Berlin Airlift and was very impressed. The second Saab-29 prototype has flown. The Brabazon has been out and about on taxing trials, while the USN has shown off its latest Piasecki, the HJP-1. The French will be testing the Nord 1400, NC 2171 and Breguet 761 soon, which will take the sting out of the cancellation of the SNCAC 211. RAAF will buy the Hawker P. 1040 interceptor. Curtiss-Wright has contracts to deliver Cyclone 7s to power the 266 North American Texan trainers ordered last year, and to recondition 100 C-46 Commando transports. Russia is conducting an aerial wolf-hunt int he Volga steppe region, with one expert pilot shooting 250 of 1300 wolves exterminated in the last year. Auster's latest Autocrat, the J-5, is just the thing for crop-dusting and aerial "dressing."
"Strength of the Royal Air Force: Debate in House of Lords Reveals Great Uneasiness: Government Reply Unsatisfactory;" Also, "Defence Debate: Doubts Expressed Concerning Any Real Policy: Are Huge Sums Being Frittered Away" I've already summarised this as Britain is spending too much money on defence, and also not enough. Lord Trenchard does make the reasonable point that, if you want to improve RAF recruiting and morale, you should pay them more, but it is lost in argle-bargle about aerial Maginot Lines and buying more Lancasters and Lincolns.
If it didn't come through clearly enough, I'm a bit disgusted at Flight's nakedly partisan coverage.
Civil Aviation News
There's a bit more explanation of the Societe Internationale de Telecommunications Aeronautiques, which will be run by a consortium of all the major airlines to take care of aerial communications in Europe. ICAO and West African Airlines are making similar progress in integration, coordination, administration and standardisation.
"Helicopter Night Mail: BEA Peterborough-Norwich Experimental Service; Progress with Instrument-flying: S.51 Modifications" The BEA Helicopter Unit has 3 Sikorskis and two Bells. It has been given ten acres of former FTS airfield in Peterborough, with some hangar, storage and office space. The Bells do training and crop dusting investigations. One of the Sikorskis has been kitted out for blind flying training. The other two will be running a Peterborough-Norwich round service with actual mail starting next month. Next month!? From the coverage, I had the impression that this had been going on for years! Anyway, they'll have a VHF beacon and signal lights in Norwich and Peterborough. The helicopters also have a "landing aid," which is promoter-talk for a light on the top of the rotors with a lampshade facing down. They will fly at over 1000ft in good weather, but come down lower if there is a headwind, although they will have to fly through "bumpy" air in that case. Everyone hopes that there won't be an engine failure in flight. Good plan!
"For Happier Landings: A Review of Work Now on Hand at Electro-Hydraulics, Ltd." Electro-Hydraulics does the Hermes and the de Havilland Vampire. Its bogie wheels are a new design, and their testing equipment is amazing. I can't say the same for their pull at Flight, as a Dowty ad is very cheekily inserted between pages in the advertisement-cum-article.
"Air Safety: Four Papers of Widely Differing Viewpoints Presented Before the RAeS in Full-day Symposium" John North introduced the symposium with a paper that tried to take an abstract point of view. That seems very satisfactorily philosophical, rather like when the logical positivists (DON'T ASK!!!!) try to explain science, or Mr. Heidegger (DOUBLE DON'T ASK!!!) takes on the "framework" of technology. But either he can't pull it off, or Flight can't get at what he's saying. A pilot, Captain W. G. James, follows up by blaming cockpit layout over pilot health, because he's terrified of those every-six-month exams that ruin professional careers and then brings up crash-proof tanks. Dr. Bergin follows that up by raising all kinds of doubts about easy assumptions about human competence, notably the illusion that you're flying straight and level out of visual conditions when, in fact, you're headed straight into the ground. The upshot for both James and Bergin is that instruments have to be better, but James complicates the question by saying that they have to be useful. Or maybe that's me transmitting Reggie's gripes about not being able to use the information that radar is supposed to give him. G. E. Bell talks about traffic control research, especially in regards to making radio communications effective.
That might not be of the clearest, but I hung around for the wine-and-cheese after Dr. Bouwsma's symposium, and I might not be the clearest, either. If you know what I mean.
We have another half-page for bonus news afterwards, as the main story, a youth-service training centre at Battle of Britain House, only takes up half a page. Which is odd, because the half-news includes an Army win in an interservices rugby match, the annual general meeting of the Aerodrome Owners Association, and, oh, by the way, no big news, let your eyes glance over this trivial bit of hardly-information at all, BRITAIN HAS BEEN PRODUCING PLUTONIUM FOR SOME TIME, AND YOU ONLY NEED 100LBS OF IT FOR AN ATOM BOMB.
"Airline Mariners: A Glimpse at BOAC's Marine Craft Organisation" BOAC is still running some flying boat routes, so it has 200 boats for fishing out driftwood and touching up the paint and scraping barnacles and such, which is more important news than British plutonium. You know what? Forget I said anything. Atom bombs. Pfft. So 1946.
"A Girdle Around the Earth: Boeing B-50, Using Flight Refuelling, Circumnavigates the Globe in 94 Hours" B-50 "Lucky Lady II" was the second attempt, the first having ended in a ditching 1000 miles in with an engine on fire. The article implies that all 350 of the B-50s ordered, will be equipped for air refuelling, and ends with the announcement that one of the B-29 flying tankers that supported the largely equatorial cruise, had "failed to return to its base in the Philippines."
The inquiry into the deaths of Lindsay Neale and Peter Tisshaw in the prototype Balliol crash has returned an accidental death finding, concluding that it was probably due to the windshield tearing away. John North thinks that it was perhaps because of bird strike.
"Civil Aviation Debate: Criticism of Government Policy: Tudor IV for Freight Only" Everyone agrees that the British airlines were built up with an excessive staff in the postwar years, and that is why there have been all the redundancies. The "criticism" amounts to the argument that the government can't run an airline, but it seems muted, given that the American airlines aren't making money, either. The Ministry spokesmen in the Commons (I forget his name already) explained that the Tudor IV was going to be confined to cargo service because, basically, no passenger was going to get on a Tudor IV voluntarily after two unexplained losses, no matter what Flight seems to think about the possible actions of the Royal Shangri-La Air Force.
Correspondence
Regular correspondent Simon Warrender says something stupid, specifically, that the SR 45 should be called a "flying ship" instead of a "flying boat." "Chairborne" thinks that the revelation that HMAS Sydney will only carry 24(!) aircraft shows that giant new aircraft carriers of the American 45,000 and 60,000 ton classes (Midway and United States, I'm told) and, and this is why I mention it, the Ark Royal class, won't have enough planes. Also, everything is useless now there are atom bombs. Claude Aldbury doesn't echo G. S. Orchard in calling for some kind of automated distress call device that will allow searchers to home in on crash locations. They both came up with the idea at the same time, but Flight could only print one of the letters, because it had to make room for Simon Warrender's letter about how the blotch on his wallpaper looks like Father Christmas. D. Chisholm thinks that much light would be shed on RAF manpower if someone just talked to the rankers. "Serving Officer" is sick and tired of all the malcontents who write in about the RAF, when serving officers can't talk back. Frank Whittle writes to deny that he divulged any confidential information about the De Havilland Comet, which is what we are calling the DH 106 now. V. Galitzine, the publicity officer for Percival Aircraft, writes to answer all the criticisms made about the new Percival Prentice blind flying trainer.
So I am probably the last person to hear about this, and you will no doubt be chuckling at the silly girl who does not keep abreast of he-man stuff, but it turns out that Ark Royal is a 37,000 ton aircraft carrier which has been under construction since 1942(!), and is expected to be launched next year. My confusion is perhaps coming from the fact that it has been re-named twice? Or more likely it slipped my mind because I didn't understand that it qualified as a "giant" aircraft carrier.
The Economist, 11 March 1949
Leaders
"Turning Point" The cabinet changes announced in Moscow this week mean something for sure. But no-one can agree what. Probably that they will keep on whining about the Atlantic Pact. The Economist explains why we should ignore them. Perhaps it is all down to Norway agreeing to sign on to the Atlantic Pact and not a non-aggression pact with Moscow. On the other hand, it looks like Italy won't come into the Pact on creation, because of incomprehensible party tensions. It sounds as though the right wing Socialists are in, the left wing Socialists are out, and so the right wing Socialists won't force the issue, but will nevertheless remain in the Gasperi government, which, of course, is committed to coming in.
"The Price of Government, I: Disinflation Continued?" The Economist reluctantly accepts that the balance of payments crisis is almost over, and that the government really is going to run a budget surplus again. This might make it seem as though disinflation has run its course, but not a bit of it, the budget must continue to have a surplus, and to achieve that, the Government should definitely cut expenditures and raise taxes going into an election. In other words, it is a regrettable necessity that the Socialists fall on their swords for the good of the nation.
"Indian Rampart" I assume that the Indian government is going to give The Economist a favourable postal rate or something. Anyway, the nice things said last week under World Overseas get expanded upon at some length. India is a bulwark against world communism, independence (and partition) came at just the right time (pat on the back!), and Congress' secular rule is for the best.
"Too Many Problems" Someone named Mr. Albert Brinkman, of Boreham Wood, is now the Ministry of Works' model for achieving the "perfect house" with the "norm of heating comfort." This will be familiar to you and I from Engineering, but the picture of experts fussing around Mr. Brinkman as he reclines in his recliner is so funny to The Economist that it launches into a little jeu d'esprit about the norms of "mental comfort" of "brain workers," who might be too much subject to "mental heats and chills." Currently, The Economist has had it up to here with the "soil erosionoists," but, in the past, it has had occasion to be upset about "the atomic bombers; before that, the groundnutters," and before that the dieticians and the population experts who worried that soon there would be four retired for every able bodied worker. Before you know it, we will be back to old standbys like Lebensraum, the American slump, and the decline of the national intelligence. Unless there are newcomers. "Too many problems are chasing too few minds." Only a "sturdy refusal to be perplexed" can save the day.
There's a wonder. The Economist has a humour article that I liked. Perhaps they've locked Mr. Crowther in a closet and a bright new day is dawning! Literally!
Notes of the Week
India is going to be a republic soon. The Conservatives, meeting over Hammersmith, are chewing over the notion that perhaps Mr. Churchill should be encouraged to do a bit less, well, not leading, since he doesn't do that already; perhaps less being present while leading is being done?
"Wheat Surplus and Dollar Shortage" Britain would rather buy wheat from Canada than the United States. Since it will be using Marshall Plan money to do it, Americans are upset.
There are three "administrative" stories in a row. Truman's plan to extend American expertise to disadvantaged parts of the world is being pressed on Uno, which might be a good place to do these things if it weren't completely ineffective. The OEEC may not change the way it does tings this eyar after all, and Sir Ronald Weeks thinks that the service ministries should be combined into a single Ministry of Defence sooner rather than later. The Economist sees the usual "too many problems." It was nice while it lasted.
"Boys for the Jobs" It is suggested that the nationalised industries need to pay more to get the best class of business administrator.
"Rationing by the Purse" The supply of eggs and milk is coming up to demand so quickly that rationising is going or gone. The Economist pats itself on the back over the success of disinflation and then commences to worry that the country will soon overproduce these things, and the only way to cover off the farm subsidies will be higher taxes on beer, tobacco and gambling, which will reduce demand on them.
In world leadership news, The Economist is pleased by Atlee's visit to Berlin to see how the Airlift is going, and trots out the usual numbers of thousands of tons per day. Tito, and the Westerners who promote him as the chink in Communism's armour, are trapped, it seems, between nationalists who want him to demand the part of Macedonia that is in Greece, and the Austrians who don't want to give him the bits of Austria that have Slavs.
At home, the Private Member's Bill banning tied houses (public houses that have to sell their owning brewery's beer) seems to be going through. The Economist thinks that "basic English" spelling reforms are silly. While all concerned officials think that there are more young delinquents, the actual evidence is making itself scarce.
"French Defence Dilemma" France can find room for 350 billion francs (£350 million) for defence, from which it hopes to provide for 5 army divisions at home without compromising whatever the Hell lit is doing in Annam. Considering that it costs 920 million francs to operate an armoured division and 530 million to equip an infantry division with vehicles, you can see that the money won't go far, and Le Monde hopes that the money (including Marshall aid) will be spent with skill and subtlety.
"Suspense in China" Premier Sun Fo has resigned, and there is no government. the Acting President, Li Tsung-jen, is negotiating with the Communists. Everyone hopes that some kind of negotiated transfer of power to a Communist-led government will happen, and that the "war criminals" will not return from Canton and Chekiang to attempt to keep the south and west out of Communist hands, heedless of the cost.
Shorter Notes mentions that London County Council needs to find £217 million over the next two years for education and housing, so rates aren't going down. At least world coal production is going up, with Europe closing its deficit to 1.5 million tons next year. Trygve Lie brings everyone's attention to the plight of a million Greek refugees, while there is likely to be a storm in the house over the Analgesia in Childbirth Bill due to the Government backing being "half-hearted."
Letters
Leo T. Little, of University College of the South West, writes to urge the Board of Trade to keep statistics about the foreign earnings of British insurance companies. About time someone took a stand! T. E. M. McKittrick thinks that The Economist misinterpreted his recent pamphlet. The Editor is not budging. Actually, The Editor is hot. Ernest Wimble, Chairman of something called the British Timed Tourism Board, writes to defend his organisation against charges that its new-fangled schemes of staggered holiday weeks is leading to increased absenteeism on traditional holiday weeks. F. B. Marsh, of David Brown Tractors, writes to point out that The Economist has no idea how the tractor business works. In particular, the auto companies don't build tractors in America, so that is not the route to full technical efficiency. D. J. Mitchell, the Private Secretary to the Economic Secretary, writes to point out that the figures for National Debt reduction in the estimates is exclusive of Marshall money, as it says right in the statement, so that A. H. Abbati's criticisms are wrong and stupid.
From The Economist of 1849
The Economist reluctantly accepts that shipowners who want to claim that their ships are British and deserve British protection should have to do something about making them British. British captain, built in Britain, some British crew.Something like that. Seems harsh, but fair. It's not as though some draconian crushing of the soul such as registration is on the horizon!
American Survey
"Surveying the State of the National Economy" The Joint Committee on the economy met with the Council of Economic Affairs, but can't agree whether the President's policy is mostly wrong (GOP) or mostly right. (Democrats.) Mostly! Bipartisanship!
"Trial by Jury" For the last seven weeks, the trial of the Communist Party of the USA leadership has been held up the Communists' lawyers attempt to prove that the jury has systematically excluded "Negroes, Jews, manual workers, women, Communist Party members and others of the 'underprivileged.'" Judge Medina has found that it hasn't, so the "American heresy trial" can go forward. The Economist spends the rest of the article explaining why this was probably the right decision, notwithstanding some state and Supreme Court gestures in the direction of nullifying egregiously unrepresentative juries. Including a case in Chicago where the courts would only call women recommended by the League of Women Voters.
American Notes
"The New Secretary of Defence" It looks like we can all agree that a man who has to be forcibly restrained from harming himself is probably not the right choice for an active Secretary of Defence! Louis Johnson comes up out of Truman's coterie of cronies, but he is also popular with Wall Street and Republicans in the House. It can't be said that he is inexperienced, considering that he was Army Secretary from 1937 to 1940. It does mean that Secretary of State Acheson will find it easier to impose state department control over the vast occupational empires of Clay and MacArthur.
"Fair Deal or Civil Rights?" The Economist's take on the Senate filibuster is that the South can get a lot more not done there than at the convention, by holding up Marshall appropriations and the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act. With Taft-Hartley repeal and rent control also running out of time, the filibuster is set to restore the good old rule of two-thirds majority for anything the South (with Republican support) doesn't want. I mean, for controversial, important changes that the Senate is supposed to saucer-of-cooled-tea away.
"Unions under A Cloud" With unemployment up by half a million, it is not surprising that the Labour Committee hasn't been steam-rollered into giving way on Taft-Hartley. Increases in the minimum wage and detailed rules about overtime payment for irregular hours are quite enough when the unemployment statistics don't yet show if this is the dangerous kind of "chain unemployment."
How Good Neighbours? America won't be at the next meeting of the American states, because the rest of the American states are mad at America over one thing or the other. Mainly that it is too kind on coups, it seems, but also that it won't take a stand on colonial possessions like British Honduras and all those Guineas. The Federal Reserve has relaxed the restraints on consumer credit it imposed six months ago, and the French have sent their own trainload of gifts to repay America for the Friendship Train of last year. A pair of pink gloves "for a coloured child" seems weird, but what do I know. Oh, wait, no, there is someone with an undergraduate degree (almost) in Frenchness here. Has America done something to upset France lately? Hmm. HMM. Could it be anti-communist hysteria? I think it could be!
The World Overseas
"A Dictator's Dilemma" In case you'd forgotten, because it is small and no-one cares, but Portugal still has a dictator. His dilemma is to get rid of the Fascists in his government (so yesterday's news), find a "loyal opposition" so that he can be democratic, and do all that without unleashing the communist revolution dying to be born.
"Forerunners of Vishinsky" If you were dying of curiosity about the deeper meaning of Molotov and Litvinov losing their cabinet positions and being relegated to the deputy member of the Politburo ranks, here is a page or two on the theme of how all Moscow shuffles must now be interpreted in the light of the succession.
"Danger Signs in Trinidad?" Trinidad is the least "tawdry" colony, due to oil, but it still has slums and shanty towns, and malaria and tuberculosis are on the upswing, showing rising poverty, and a rising population means that "Malthusian factors" will "begin to operate." Perhaps a terrible revolution, or just a repeat of the 1937 riots is on the way unless oil exploration increases or there is more agricultural investment.
The Business World
"Finance for Industry" The resounding chorus of "We don't care, we're busy hitting our export targets" that industry addressed to the Stock Exchange when it whined about falling shares seems to have inspired the emission of a great many pages of nocturnal The Economist emissions. A case in point is two pages showing that industry will soon (soon!) face a critical shortage of capital!
"Sterling Under the Curtain" How nice of The Economist to speed me on my way to the sitting room. And Fred Allen isn't even on! The girls will probably make me listen to Amos and Andy. It's almost enough to make me read this . . .
No, let's not go mad here. Although I've gleaned enough to see that the issue is that arrangements for paying for Eastern European goods are being resisted on the grounds that piles of spare sterling might form on the far side of the Iron Curtain, then sneak back across and buy exports bound for dollar countries.
Business Notes
"Difficulties in Export Markets" Falls in orders for Ferguson tractors are a warning of trouble, as are South African restrictions on British auto imports. More on the same follows. Britain will probably have to take more South African goods to keep the trade balanced. It's just not sure what those goods will be. Snoek is probably not included! On the other hand, trade with Germany is up, and Britain is still enjoying having Argentina over the barrel. Trade with China is down, although trade with Hong Kong is up a lot.
"New Manpower Statistics" The Ministry of Labour Gazette has published a new and more accurate survey of the working population. The June 1948 count was 20,286,000, but the one for this year is 23,146,000. The new count also does away with the one million supposedly idle "spivs and drones," who look like they were just a leak from one column to another. New and better unemployment statistics will now be possible.
"Miners' Pay and Hours" The NUM and the Coal Board are butting heads at the wrong time, it seems, with the overtime agreement due to expire in April. Pressure for wage increases in steel and textiles are also being felt. There are proposals for putting the burden for compensating landowners for mining subsidence on the Coal Board.
"IMF and Gold" South Africa's attempt to wring a practical increase in the price of gold by selling "industrial gold" at $41/oz seem to have failed, because the brokers who undertook it have had "enough abuse." Nevertheless, South Africa is still pressing for a revaluation of gold in all currencies, which the IMF can do. The United States has made it clear that it will not allow that. It has no domestic gold industry, can get all the gold it needs at $35/oz, is afraid of the inflationary implications of writing up its gold reserves, and doesn't want more world resources committed tdo gold mining at the expense of other industries. However, it has signalled that it is not adversely opposed to a general European monetary devaluation, which will bring the European price of gold up. Which is big news far beyond South Africa!
"Belgium Frees Note Imports" Foreign Belgian note holdings, acquired legitimately or on the black market, can now be brought back to Belgium. Belgium hopes that this will bring it in line with the other hard currencies and discourage hoarding. It even hopes that it will be less inflationary than financing the foreign note holdings by expanding external credits. Soon it may even join the select group of IMF members who have no protection on their currencies at all. (Although the list includes El Salvador, so I'm not sure how select it is.)
British store profits are down, the rubber industry has recovered from the war and is looking for a trade agreement, and the three-dominion wool cartel may well be able to liquidate its remaining war surplus of greasy and burr wool bales (the ones no-one wants) at a profit, if the wool market doesn't collapse first. The cocoa situation seems to be fine. Last year, a world shortage seemed to be looming due to swollen shoot disease, which could only be addressed by uprooting trees, and the West African farmers were resisting that because what do they know. The Economist stands by its superior horticultural (arboricultural) knowledge, but has to conceded that an increased supply has been wrung out of West Africa by higher prices somehow, and therefore the crisis is over this year, although hopefully it will be back next year.
Speaking of being wrong, coal output was down last week compared with the previous week, but is still a million tons ahead of the same time last year. (Nine weeks of 52 means, if the trend is continued, five million more tons, so officially no more coal crisis. We'll see.) Base metal prices are down for the first time in two years, and we can look forward to talk about trade talks with Brazil.
Business Roundup
Is there a business recession in America? Well, there's a Democrat in the White House, so Fortune knows the answer. Unemployment is up 700,000, commodity markets have collapsed, the "businessman's expectations point down." So, naturally, two members of the cabinet say everything is fine, which is just like Hoover in 1930, or "the economist Keyserling," who said in 1947 that the problem was inflation. I'm not sure I follow, but that's what Fortune says. At least there's the heartwarming story of Byron A. Gray, President of the International Shoe Company, who was downright cheerful about how a recession focusses business on producing the best product at the lowest price. Well, that and the fact that he was able to use the cost of living clause in his contact to cut wages by 3 cents an hour. For others, the best news of the month was that the Senate Finance Committee came out against an increase in the income tax. Fortune went out and found a builder in Denver who put up a million dollars worth of homes in the Denver area, got 5%, and found that since it put him in the 84% bracket, got "very little" out of it. Ronnie's flashing fingers say --a little more than three thousand dollars. Why, that's not even half the price of a house!
So: Discounts, salesmanship, inventory reduction, layoffs, substitutions of machinery for labour, "technological unemployment." That's the order of the day. Speaking of technological unemployment, or something, H.B. Stewart, of the Akron, Canton and Youngstown Railway, has come up with a 130 mile, two-way conveyor belt that will carry coal from the Ohio mines to Lake Erie, and iron limestone from the lake to the Youngstown area. Continuous operation will cut freight costs an estimated 40 cents to $1.50/ton. Stewart has convinced Goodyear engineers of the feasibility of his plan; they just need the steelmen to come in.
CBS has taken out a forty million dollar loan from Prudential to pay for William Paley's talent raiding. At least we get to laugh when Mary Margaret MacBride of NBC asks Fred Waring if he wants to hear something funny, and he answers, "What, on this network?" Columbia is still pushing its long-playing 33 1/3 rpm records, even though it is old news with RCA Victor's 45 coming out. Manufacturers are scrambling to meet demand for three speeds and television. Television is big news, with book manufacturers threatened and Hollywood sanguine. What everyone is forgetting is that television shows that industrial progress is not dead. The business is already nearly as big as atomic fission, and is set to get bigger. All the manufacturers, except the geniuses at Farnsworth, are making money.
Coal mining is "in chaos," with anthracite miners on a two-day week. Bituminous stockpiles are high, railways are seeking another fare increase, although some warn that they are pricing themselves out of the market. Insurance companies may be up for congressional investigation, as they are by far the largest players in the government bond market. I'm not sure why they need to be investigated. Fortune doesn't say. ATT has been asked to sell Western Electric and spread its supply orders around, while du Pont, GE and GM are being investigated for monopolistic practices. Truman has asked for a record $5.4 million for antitrust investigations, so there is more to come. Beauticians are ganging up on home permanent kits, farmers are "alarmingly aggressive" about tariffs, and between announcements of rounds of layoffs, "you could hear mindless mutterings about D.P.s."
Fortune follows permanent waves with an apparently non-permanent fad. The non-scheduled airlines, which are still in trouble with the CAA, are undercutting the regular scheduled airlines with their scheduled flights (Ronnie sees an issue), are apparently doing so using war-surplus DC-3s and engines. The airline executives say that when the war surplus runs out, the non-skeds will fold, and that in the meantime the issue is the damage they are doing to the bottom line. Complicating things, Douglas is now offering a rebuild that will add ten years to the DC-3s life, which is planned to expire in 1953.
Corning Glass has announced "photosensitive" glass that responds to ultraviolet light like regular camera film does to visible light. You heat it up to a thousand degrees, shoot it with a ultraviolet image, treat it with some chemicals, cool it down, and you get a picture on glass.
Cleveland's Eaton Manufacturing Company has come up with a magnetic clutch that might be useful in machine tools, appliances, automobiles and windshield-wiper motors. Consolidated Engineering, of Pasadena, as an "atomic nose," a spectrometer that "smells" odors atom-by-atom and identifies the smell within a half hour by calculation. Standard Oil Company likes the idea, perfumers don't. Tahlen Manufacturing, of down home in Vancouver, has an improved hammer that eliminates recoil. Duplex Electric has a "drive-in" for bank customers that involves apparatus for depositing money and inspecting cheques that are so ridiculously convoluted that I absolutely refuse to believe I read about them!
Bad news for Uncle Henry, as Kaiser-Frazer, once touted as the fourth largest auto maker, fell to eighth, behind everyone but Willys. Ford has formed a new international division, Briggs Manufacturing is opening new plants in Youngstown, confectioners are predicting more candy at Easter due to cheaper cocoa and resistance to the nickel bar. Sam Goldwyn has quit the MPAA for Ellis Arnall's Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers, bad news for Eric Johnston. Chase Manhattan is loaning Chile $20 million to finish its steel plant. The Florida citrus boom is fizzling as the price of oranges falls thirty cents a box after the boom that followed the California freeze. (No marmalade this year! So sad --I was sure that James would smuggle me a crate!) Bell and Howell signed a deal to sell its microfilm recording apparatus through the Burroughs Adding Machine Company, filling a gap in Burroughs' line.
The Fortune Survey
The survey finds the better educated you are, the more movies that you go to, that the main reason for not going to movies is time, that cowboy movies are the most popular, that radio is better liked than movies, that books are becoming less popular.
Fortune's Wheel
Fortune's cartoonist of the month is Zdzislaw Czermanski, a refugee from Pilsudski who has recently branched out into oils. The drawing of the 20 acre, $4 million Hibbard, Spencer and Bartlett warehouse is by Rolf Klep, who grew up in Astoria and has a child's book out. The article about fly fishing is by Freeman Lincoln. At Fortune, people with English names and no discernable talent get the easy jobs. Dean Griswold of Harvard Law writes to oppose changing stock options from regular income, taxable as such, to capital gains, which are taxed at much lower rates. He points out that they are actually income, and that the change is objectionable on social grounds since it is a "special tax reduction for a particular class." Dean Griswold is at a loss as to why business executives even need special incentives. Everyone is paying high taxes! Moritz Millburn, of Centennial Flouring Mills, writes to reject Fortune's implication that it is having difficulties getting financing. Fortune was repeating a general complaint from various Seattle financial people, and not information from industry, either Centennial or Northwest, a Seattle-based competitor. It's almost as though this "business can't get capital" thing has some kind of secret agenda.
Taxes: Fortune's new "Letter from a Tax Lawyer" feature continues. I am not going to read it to see if Fortune has hit on the idea of telling made-up domestic stories to personalise the letters yet.
John Davenport, "Socialism by Default" Now that there's a Democrat in the White House and Fortune has had a few months to collect its bearings, it is obvious what is going on in America: Socialism is sneaking up on it while it's not looking! I personally think that Davenport misses a beat by not going the full communism, but he didn't ask my opinion, so I can't give it!
"Truman's 'Global Recovery Plan'" Truman hopes to start a flood of American capital to the backwards parts of the Earth by priming it with Marshall Plan aid. This will stop communism, with its promises of a better tomorrow, in its tracks. That is Fortune's interpretation, anyway.
"Confessions of a Diaper Salesman: It Doesn't Make Any Difference How You Get It, You Got to Get the Geschaeft" Since high pressure sales are back, Fortune reprints a golden oldie from a year or so ago about that time a down-on-her-luck society girl hired on with a diaper service run by some of those oh-so-funny Yiddish salesmen types who hilariously lie about everything to get the sale. Geschaeft. Heh. Because it sounds like --! In English, anyway.
"ECA Hasn't Sold the French" Fortune's man in France wanders off to find a French worker in a beret and pencil thin mustache, with cigarette in one hand, wine glass in another, baguette in a third, and his fourth propping up his racing bicycle. "What about those Americans?" Fortune asks. "Heine! I am a Communist and I hate the Americans! I know nothing about this ECA and care to know nothing! I think I will go on strike now to express my ingratitude!" Says the Frenchman in a ridiculously French accent. My summary. One percent accurate, except about the facts, which I do not report because I am pretty sure they don't matter. Again, I promise the humblest "You told me so" apology the moment that France has an actual revolution, right or left.
Fairman Dick, "Let's Restore the Railroad's Credit: A Banker Foresees Government Ownership Unless ICC Allows Higher Earnings" Sure. Whatever.
"The Initiative Goes Haywire: California's Unwary Voters Saddle Themselves with a Prodigious Old-Age Pension" This seems like a departure from Fortune's new business-magazine model, but who cares, governments are in danger of spending tax money!
"Southeast Asia: A Glossary: Self-Government Delayed by Internal Politics, European Resistance" Fortune visits the Hundred Kingdoms of the South and spends about a half paragraph on each one. Ho Chi Minh has a sparse beard and has been to Paris. He is a Communist, but may not know what that is, because Annam's radio reception isn't very good.
Alfred Winslow Jones, "Fashions in Forecasting" Just to prove that this is a terrible issue of Fortune that no-one wrote because no-one will read it, here is a whole article about a new stock picking system. It is very scientific. Says Alfred Winslow Jones. Not like those unscientific systems, which are just systems.
"Minnesota Mining in Motion" Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing is a very successful company that is growing very quickly on the strength of the "Scotch" line of coated abrasives, as well as paint pigments, sound-recording tape, Scotchlight, Safety-Walk and Scotch-Top. It all started out with a corundum deposit near Crystal Bay that led to sandpaper that led to other things. No-one knows what business "3M" is in. It certainly isn't mining any more. The corundumn was fluor spar, and the mine closed long ago. It does good business, and has been a good grower. The question, Fortune asks itself, is whether it is going to keep on growing. That's the trick with these articles!
"The Shipping Men" Fortune goes down to the wharf to greet the fleet in its most fetching dress, finds that there is no actual fleet, boldly predicts that the fleet will come back and grow. Uncle George says it is still okay to ignore these articles, because American lines still only run to Hawaii, Alaska and Puerto Rico because Congress protects them, and there's no sign of that changing.
"Southern Game Fishing" There really isn't very much in this issue.
Peter Drucker, "The Function of Profits" In much the same article as ran in The Economist, Drucker argues that profits and stock prices are so important. He even quotes Ricardo and Marx. Well, if smart dead people say so! (I will now go put myself in prison for five years for saying that Karl Marx was smart. It's right thing to do.)
"Handlers of Hardware" Hibbard, Spencer, Bartlett and Company of Evanston, Illinois, run the "Willow Run of hardware wholesaling," a twenty acre warehouse that stocks 30,000 different items received from 3000 manufacturers and ships them by rail to 9000 regular customers. It does so at much lower costs than the regular warehouse industry because of the warehouse's horizontality (fancy talk for being on one floor) and by "the full employment of modern materials-handling techniques." The factory, which cost $4 million, or $5/foot, was opened last June, although the company's history runs back 94 years.
Hibbard's old warehouse in Chicago, still in use, is a fourteen story building in which 12% of the space is taken up by elevators and stairs. Meanwhile, the roof supports that hold up the twenty acres of roof at the Evanston warehouse take up only 7% of the space. There are also heavy savings on elevator operation, inspection and maintenance. With a forklift, the Evanston warehouse has unloaded and stored two freight cars of nails weighing 160,000lbs in 4.75 hours at an average costs of 0.11 cents/keg. The plant is harder to heat and air condition, and snow removal and landscaping are a burden, but that is a small price to pay.
Modern techniques include using "pallets" to handle goods. "Pallets" can be moved by fork trucks. Power tractors pull trains of trailers, hand guided transporters and dragline conveyers are also used. But the devices are only part of the story, because organisation is key. "Where is what?"
C. J. Whipple, the engineer-trained chairman, was so impressed by pioneering Army use of pallets , s and fork trucks that he decided to bring it to his employer. Drag lines came from American Express, giant buildings from Willow Run. The organisation is based on giving salesmen carefully planned forms, so that they can write the catalogue numbers in. Those numbers show exactly where the product is stored in the warehouse, so that a clerical department of 350 workers can send them by conveyor belt to a visible card file battery, which shows how the items are packed, so that address labels can be prepared. Addressographs hold the addresses of regular customers. Forms are photographed full size by a Bruning Volumatic machine to provide file copies and invoices. Orders ship within six hours of receipt.
Books and Ideas
I was going to say something about ideas being scarce in this issue, so thank heavens for the back pages, but I turn to them and get --
"The Relevance of Burke," a title review of Ross J. Hoffman, and Paul Lovack, Burke's Politics. Not only is Burke a famous early British conservative, but the review starts out by mentioning Hayek for some reason. Anyway, it is a very long and expansive review, so it has room to start out by talking about everyone else who has talked about Burke before, and then summarises his ideas, which are a little far afield of electronic engineering, so forgive me, etc. Burke has arrived in the realm of the middlebrow. We're told. I've seen precious little evidence of it. This isn't the sort of thing that the middlebrow likes, and good on it.
Lewis C. Ord, "Politics and Poverty" is a "Work on Paper Work." By that is meant that Ord is upset that wages haven't risen as fast in Britain as in America since 1880, although they went up at the same rate from 1814 to 1880. Whereas writers like Colin Clark see economic equilibria developing everywhere, Ord sees nothing of the sort. British industrial output began to level off seventeen years ago, about the time America adopted antitrust, and Britain adopted cartels, followed by nationalisation. Ord shows that these arrangements are less efficient, and this is the point where paper work comes in. American know-how is opposed to European "paper work." Grr. Ord just said that it was antitrust that did it! The article about Truman being a socialist pitched antitrust as a vehicle of socialism. This complacency is why the Communists are winning!
P. C. Armstrong's Two by Two: A Study of Economic Superstitions is an attempt to mine the gold gthat Gustav Stolper found with Age of Fable and Henry Hazlitt with Economics in One Lesson. The difference is that those two authors (debatedly) know what an economic myth is. Mr. Anderson does not.
That's it until next month!
Leaders
"Moderation" The fact that Labour held the marginal seat of South Hammersworth in the recent byelection doesn't show that Labour doesn't need to moderate its policies to win re-election because Labour's vote share is down, and because the Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot by being too "anti-Socialist," (see Fortune!!!) and will learn their lesson, especially once they move away from "moderation" where it really matters. (In other words, they should be pro-welfare state, but only in the abstract, since they need to adopt an "extreme" economic programme that isn't just lukewarm anti-nationalisation, and the "extreme" part is basically an attack on the welfare state as it actually exists. In other words, it is to survive as platitudes. In other, other words, we want our tax cuts.)
"Anglo-French Trade Talks" Britain needs to find a way to accept more French exports so that the French can pay for British imports so that we can move towards the sunny uplands of a larger, more efficient, "federal" "integrated" market in Europe.
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| Source |
It also observes that the Scheme is unlikely to attract Africans as long as they are to be laborers rather than small farmers. Perhaps if the natives had been given their own small blocks of land, it would have been easier to "demonstrate to the Africans how their own land should be worked." I'm not sure if The Economist means that to be read in a facetious tone, or not. Probably not. Lastly, if it is true that the world is going to need ten or twelve projects on the scale of the Groundnuts Scheme, the capitalisation has to be brought back to Earth, as it cannot afford to spend £25 million on each.
. . . When you're ready to spend £750 million on the services n a single year, and the point of the scheme is as much to develop a colony as to provide edible fats, I'm not sure why £25 million is too much, but The Economist says so, so it must be true.
"Scientists and Politicians" This is what we're doing here, right? Science, technology, investment opportunities? So I have to read what The Economist is saying, and summarise it? Sweet Angel of Mercy! Okay, here goes. It seems that the Dean of Canterbury said, "in his testimonial to the Soviet Union for the defence of the Kravchenko libel" that the Soviets "welcome" science and scientists. But should politicians welcome scientists? That is an interesting question that we will leave hanging for a moment! Moving on, do the Soviets value science? They say they do. They say they plan science and direct it into useful paths. But maybe they don't! We don't know for sure, because when Galileo was persecuted, everyone knew it.
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| Won't catch a Marxist in a suit like that! |
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| Now that's a Marxist! By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32872616 |
Notes of the Week
"Mr. Mayhew's Bombshell" The upshot of the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs' statement to the General Assembly isn't that Congress will throw a fit over anything, but, rather, that Socialist ministers are "not merely boastful in public, but crazy in private," if they think that the recovery is complete.
"The Cost of Social Services" Social Services were fine back when they were in the future and didn't cost anything, but now that the Health Service has turned out to cost a third as much as defence (or as much as ten Groundnut Schemes), that is much too much. ,"The Tudor Stalls Again" The Economist is upset about the waste, you see. Also, because the Tudor will have to be replaced on BSAA passenger services, there will be a new cost, and the airlines will have a larger deficit. Also, the removal of Gerard d'Erlanger from the chair of the board of BEA is because he objected to cost cutting, and now that cost cutting is necessary to replace the Tudor at a reasonable budget, so everything is okay, and the rest of the Press should take a lesson from Canada and Holland, where the press is keen to see national airlines run like a business instead of a service.
"Togliatti Rallies the Fifth Column" Itailian Communists are the worst except for French Communists. See also "Fruitless Talks on Austria." Except there it is Jugoslav and Russian communists.
"Cloak and Dagger" Eastern Europeans seem obsessed by British and American intelligence operations "straight out of a secret service novel." The Economist points out that "there is no doubt that some American and British officials had such cloak and dagger tastes in the years immediately after the war," but they should not go too far; and if even five percent of the allegations made against American agents in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria are true, that is too much. Eastern Europeans must not be left to think that the Western Powers are engaged in an aggressive crusade. "Only Communists gain if Eastern Europe goes on believing war to be imminent." "Containment" should be the watchword.
"Curtain Raiser on Defence" The Economist's account of the Lords debate emphasises that two former Secretary of State for the Air and two Marshals of the Royal Air Force spoke for the opposition, but only Lord Henderson for the Government, and he seems to have been nominated because he is the brother of the Secretary of State for Air, and didn't have a strong grasp of the facts. The opposition thinks that Britain should have 180, or perhaps 220 squadrons, including 50 long range bomber squadrons. The Economist suggests or implies or pussyfoots around the notion of suggesting the implication that perhaps just maybe Britain should think about "medium range" bombers, instead. Lord Portal suggests that maybe there is too much secrecy.
I guess I don't have to point out that the B-36 is the only existing "long range bomber," unless you count the renumbered B-29, and that Parliament is in a tizzy over buying ten Brabazons. At twelve planes per squadron, I run out of fingers before tallying up how many fifty squadrons worth of Brabazon bombers is, but it's a lot! Uncle George says that all the talk of "secrecy" means that everyone is dying to tell everyone about the British jet bombers, and that they are probably going to look more "medium range" than "long range." The B-47 is a "medium bomber," and weighs 80,000lbs empty, with 6 engines giving 36,000lbs thrust, so I guess that they're telling us that that is what the British bombers will look like, whenever they arrive."Wooing Wales" and "Public Assistance to Landlords" are The Economist in a nutshell. The Conservatives have put forward their election platform for Wales, which, since it involves public spending on this and that, is bribing Welsh voters and wrong. The new Housing Bill, meanwhile, offers public assistance to landlords for renovations that they can't afford under rent control, which is good policy and good politics, because landlords take The Economist.
"Israel's Economics" Israel is absorbing 800 new immigrants a day, about evenly divided between people from south-eastern Europe and "less advanced immigrants" from North Africa and the Yemen. They are said to be costing the government $45 a day to support. The new Israeli economic plan calls for $2500 million over ten years, with $135 million already allocated by the Export-Import Bank, but even with all that money, you will be astonished to learn that Israel can only accommodate all of this influx by reducing the standard of living. Helpful advice from The Economist! I put that sentence in because I need you to lose your chain of thought before I go on. Perhaps you could take a pause to powder your nose?
That's better. To continue, the most urgent need is demobilisation, because the country is desperately short of . . . labour. Are you sure you finished your business in the little busineman's room? Perhaps you should go back, and distract yourself for a few minutes before I end with the conclusion that, unless austerity is immediately imposed, immigration must be curbed.
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| Also, ex-HMS Aurora defected to the Chinese Communists on 25 February, and this would be a good place to acknowledge that it happened without making some kind of news story out of it. |
"Food or Towns?" Everyone says that Britain should preserve good farmland, and everyone says that that means that development must be . . . At this point one realises that one is about to say something nice about the Socialists' New Towns, and one is reduced to The Economist's equivalent of sputtering, which is a long burble around how some New Towns are in the wrong place somehow, and that perhaps the amount of land designated for homes and gardens must increase from 3% to 6%.
Also, something about technical changes in the Housing Bill and abolishing special juries, which is something that Radicals do. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has had to raise pay for university teachers in medical and dental schools, after it was gently pointed out to him that they are doctors, and Malan has decided to campaign in the upcoming South African provincial elections on apartheid, which is a national issue, which The Economist disapproves of. It hopes that the opposition will run on the "muddle" the Nationalists have made of the economy, and leave that distasteful apartheid stuff off to the side.
Books
Folk Bernadotte wrote a book before he was murdered. It is called Instead of Arms, and it is a very nice book, although perhaps short of concrete recommendations about what to do about Russia, if not some arms, if not 30 Groundnut Schemes per year's worth. John Spedan Lewis' Partnership for All is one of the most exciting books on business experience this reviewer has read." Hjalmar Schacht's memoirs are out. It turns out that, he was against Hitler. But secretly. Like all the other Germans. |
| John Spedan Lewis. By Andysmith248 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=77354649 |
Letters
H. A. Abbati questions whether more of the Marshall Plan money ought not have been spent reducing the National Debt, and criticises the government for comparing its success in reducing same to Churchill's failure at the same task, without noticing that reducing the Debt during deflations is bad and hard, while it is easy and good during inflations. D. L. Savory, an MP, I think from Northern Ireland, has strong opinions about the border with the Republic. J. M. Campbell, of the West Indies Committee, points out that The Economist's case for reducing the sugar subsidy is harshly exploitative of the West Indies for reasons I do not take the time to parse, as I'm sure he's right! M. G. Ionides points out that Arab refugees from Palestine need to be accommodated on newly irrigated land, which is a good reason for undertaking projects in the lower Jordan Valley, the Ghab Valley in the middle Orontes, on the Upper Euphrates in Syria, and on the Tigris and Euphrates in Iraq. |
| The now-reclaimed 41,000 hectares of the Ghab Valley. |
From The Economist of 1849
The Economist of 1849 scolds its contemporaries for believing in strong government. Why, strong governments raise the public expenditure! Russia has a strong government, but it is backwards; America has a weak government, and it is prosperous! Strong government "crushes the soul." And raises taxes, I'll bet.
American Survey
"Lobbies for Democracy" There are only 435 Congressmen for 150 million Americans, so as much as one may object to all of the lobbies that dominate American public life, they are the only way that Americans can make their voices heard. That is, those lobbies that represent actual Americans, and not, say, the chambers of commerce of America.
American Notes
Senator Taft supports the North Atlantic Pact, which makes it a sure thing. President Truman supports expanding Social Security, but it is not a sure thing, since Congress is reluctant to fund the full increase with more payroll taxes. There is also a long note on Federal versus state support for the poor, elderly and disabled. Some of it is eye-watering, and is in the news elsewhere, so I won't go into sliding scales and eligibility for Social Security. I will notice talk of the Federal government taking over medical care for the poor, which would relieve the states of a heavy burden and, for a change, direct the help where it is needed.
"Majors and Minors in Oil" The Economist is lumping a bunch of stories under one heading to save time and space. That's my job! To cover them off: American domestic oil producers are finally cutting back production in response to over-supply, and this has triggered a resumption of the "war" between major and minor producers. The minors blame the majors for over-producing, and have been going at it in the hearings on the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act. They are also upset about the provision in the Marshall Plan that oil bought for Europe under the Plan be bought outside the United States. That was supposed to be to protect the American consumer during a shortage, but is now seen as the cause of falling prices, as it subsidises production outside the United States. The independents are also poised to be upset over the resumption of steel pipe exports and the exploitation of the new Canadian discoveries. The minors want the price of oil to remain high, to encourage exploration and development, while the majors want to import and keep it low, for the health of the economy.
"Divorces and Disorder" I'm sure you've heard about the New York court that was effectively offering divorces to all. That has led to a scandal in New York, with the archdiocese calling for a ban on divorces entirely, while women lawyers want the allowable grounds for divorce increased. This brings The Economist to the fact that not a single Assembly(MAN!!) being willing to sponsor a new divorce bill, and to the more general and deplorable state of divorce law in America, and the equally deplorable steady rise in the divorce rate.
The World Overseas
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| Warsak Dam |
The International Council of the European Movement has assembled in Brussels to bring closer the glorious day of the United States of Europe, while delegates of the Arab nations have assembled on Rhodes and near Beirut to hash out a settlement, and, incidentally, come up with an alibi. Their story, to which they are sticking, is that they decided to intervene, only if necessary, only if, after the British withdrew in August of 1948, the war went poorly for indigenous forces and the "Liberation Army." Instead, the fighting got out of hand in the months before the withdrawal, not that that means anything or deserves comment (Ooh! Ooh! Double alibi!) and the armies of the Arab League were assembled on the frontiers of Palestine to enforce the democratic rights of indigenous Palestinians, but without much preparation or planning.When they were rushed across on a few weeks notice, the fighting was scrappy, but the official position is that they would have won without the first ceasefire of 11 June. However, they also acknowledge that at the time of the invasion, the Jews had 120,000 under arms compared with 60,000 Arabs, which doesn't sound like a recipe for victory to me. Anyway, by the time the truce expired, the Arab armies had wilted away for lack of pay to go with lack of ammunition before. Also, The Economist can't resist calling the Palestinian Arabs names.
To the extent that it might be all Egypt's fault, it is thought that Egypt might leave the Arab League or be kicked out, so some progress, I guess.
"Life with Groundnuts" Here is the letter that The Economist summarised. First, the planned town at Kongwa isn't very nice; the wife doesn't like it, and there aren't enough electrical plug-ins in the bungalow. Second, the stores aren't very full. Third, the domestic help only speaks Swahili. Fourth, the critics have no idea what they are talking about, and are just getting in the way of next year's crop.
The Business World
The big article is London Stock Exchange argle-bargle. Stock prices are depressed, and this mkeans that the country cannot balance savings against investment, and that means disaster of some unspecified kind but which is obviously on the way. Sensing my need to get this one to bed before Fred Allen comes on, The Economist then launches right into a "thumb sucker" about the recent decline in the American cost of living. The theory is that this might be due to the possible American recession as much as the rising supply, and that a falling demand for commodities would, by reducing commodity-exporting nations' American earnings, cut into the British terms of trade.Business Notes
Look! The Budget!
Once again, the Socialists have made room for a swingeing reduction of the National Debt. Once again, it is not enough because the budget has gone up.
We then spend most of a page on the sorry state of South Africa's economy, where there are now exchange controls and rationing. On the one hand, The Economist is, of course, all for austerity. On the second hand, South Africa's plea for a rise in the price of gold to match all the other commodities has justice and reason. On my extra, third hand, America buys all the gold, so what America says, goes.
I've been ignoring the financial notes, but I have to mention that there's been an award on the Cable and Wireless nationalisation stock compensation. Which is important because that is the tubes that the electricity goes through. Especially the complicated electricity that says things. Me Ronnie! Me science good!
"World Shipbuilding 1948" Lloyds' Register records that 2,309,743 tons were launched in 1948, excluding vessels of less than 100 tons. Of this, 342 ships, totaling 1,176,346 tons, were launched in British and Northern Irish yards. That is down 16,143 tons on 1947, while foreign tonnage increased 223,535 tons. The British world share is thus down from 56% to %0%, and the total below launches in 7 years during the 1920s. One third of global tonnage was launched for British owners, Norway coming next at 419,615 tons. Of the 17 ships of more than 10,000 tons gross launched abroad, all but one were tankers. In the United Kingdom, it was 7 of 23, the balance being passenger and refrigerated cargo liners. That still means that tankers consisted of 27.2% of British tonnage compared with 11.7% in 1947. The increase in foreign launches shows that overseas competition is reviving, except in the United States, where it continues its decline. Japanese and German launches also seem to be increasing, and The Economist looks forward to Lloyds' finding a way to collect those statistics in the future.
Finally, the Argentines are having trouble selling meat to Britain, because Britain is bargaining hard, and France has now stepped in to offer a major contract. While the price will be high, it will help balance trade, and could be a major step towards European co-operation. In shorter news, the Rank Organisation is closing the Gainsborough studio, with 550 dismissals. The clothing industry has sent off a junket to Canada to report on styling, colour, sizes and distribution methods. The Board of Trade export targets are basically the same as last year's. The first team of workers' delegates for the Anglo-American Council on Productivity are off to America to look at steel founding. Last week's coal production was the highest for the year, at 4,333,9000 tons. The Coal Board intends to ask for an extension of Saturday morning overtime working for another year, as the extra 7 million tons of coal is needed, even though the shift is highly uneconomic due to 25% absenteeism.
And that's it, thanks to the stock market swoon generating a lot of financial news. So if the world ends due to all the British building societies going broke, blame me for not telling you!
Flight, 10 March 1949
Leaders
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| The Boeing Washington will enter service in March, 1950, so we've still got a year of this to go! |
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| For example . . . |
"Curiouser and Curiouser" The other thing that the government won't talk about because of the egg-on-face risk is the Tudor IV. Actually, the Government said that the Tudor IV will only be used for freight, but that isn't nearly enough said, so Flight gets in advanced criticising. First, lots of American planes were lost in the same general area, so maybe "the mysterious cause may have nothing to do with the type of aircraft." Flight is also upset that the leadership at BEA has been changed. Really, everything is awful except the Tudor.
Maurice Smith, "Self-Aligning Autocrat in the Air: Goodyear Cross-wind Undercarriage Available for Auster Owners: Experience with the Prototype" Auster will put the Goodyear "self aligning" undercarriage, plus included hydraulic brakes, on an Auster for £130. It works fine, but is a bit alarming, although if you want to take off against the wind, and have £130 to spare, you can live with that.
"Interceptor, 1949: A Turbojet-cum-Rocket Republic with Reverse-Tapered Wings" The XF-91 is very Shape-of-Things-To-Come. It is a rocket-assisted jet interceptor with those reverse-tapered wings, which reduce the risk of all the lift-producing air sliding off the wing and causing it to not-lift for a moment until it starts lifting again, which is a problem because the side effects include hitting the pilot with a baseball bat made of gravity.
Here and There
The French Dassault 450 Ouragon gets a lead photograph. A new conversion of the B-36 to carry four turbojets in pods below the wing to assist the six piston engines will be called the B-56. Mr. Atlee took a tour around the Berlin Airlift and was very impressed. The second Saab-29 prototype has flown. The Brabazon has been out and about on taxing trials, while the USN has shown off its latest Piasecki, the HJP-1. The French will be testing the Nord 1400, NC 2171 and Breguet 761 soon, which will take the sting out of the cancellation of the SNCAC 211. RAAF will buy the Hawker P. 1040 interceptor. Curtiss-Wright has contracts to deliver Cyclone 7s to power the 266 North American Texan trainers ordered last year, and to recondition 100 C-46 Commando transports. Russia is conducting an aerial wolf-hunt int he Volga steppe region, with one expert pilot shooting 250 of 1300 wolves exterminated in the last year. Auster's latest Autocrat, the J-5, is just the thing for crop-dusting and aerial "dressing."
"Strength of the Royal Air Force: Debate in House of Lords Reveals Great Uneasiness: Government Reply Unsatisfactory;" Also, "Defence Debate: Doubts Expressed Concerning Any Real Policy: Are Huge Sums Being Frittered Away" I've already summarised this as Britain is spending too much money on defence, and also not enough. Lord Trenchard does make the reasonable point that, if you want to improve RAF recruiting and morale, you should pay them more, but it is lost in argle-bargle about aerial Maginot Lines and buying more Lancasters and Lincolns.
If it didn't come through clearly enough, I'm a bit disgusted at Flight's nakedly partisan coverage.
Civil Aviation News
There's a bit more explanation of the Societe Internationale de Telecommunications Aeronautiques, which will be run by a consortium of all the major airlines to take care of aerial communications in Europe. ICAO and West African Airlines are making similar progress in integration, coordination, administration and standardisation.
"Helicopter Night Mail: BEA Peterborough-Norwich Experimental Service; Progress with Instrument-flying: S.51 Modifications" The BEA Helicopter Unit has 3 Sikorskis and two Bells. It has been given ten acres of former FTS airfield in Peterborough, with some hangar, storage and office space. The Bells do training and crop dusting investigations. One of the Sikorskis has been kitted out for blind flying training. The other two will be running a Peterborough-Norwich round service with actual mail starting next month. Next month!? From the coverage, I had the impression that this had been going on for years! Anyway, they'll have a VHF beacon and signal lights in Norwich and Peterborough. The helicopters also have a "landing aid," which is promoter-talk for a light on the top of the rotors with a lampshade facing down. They will fly at over 1000ft in good weather, but come down lower if there is a headwind, although they will have to fly through "bumpy" air in that case. Everyone hopes that there won't be an engine failure in flight. Good plan!
"For Happier Landings: A Review of Work Now on Hand at Electro-Hydraulics, Ltd." Electro-Hydraulics does the Hermes and the de Havilland Vampire. Its bogie wheels are a new design, and their testing equipment is amazing. I can't say the same for their pull at Flight, as a Dowty ad is very cheekily inserted between pages in the advertisement-cum-article.
"Air Safety: Four Papers of Widely Differing Viewpoints Presented Before the RAeS in Full-day Symposium" John North introduced the symposium with a paper that tried to take an abstract point of view. That seems very satisfactorily philosophical, rather like when the logical positivists (DON'T ASK!!!!) try to explain science, or Mr. Heidegger (DOUBLE DON'T ASK!!!) takes on the "framework" of technology. But either he can't pull it off, or Flight can't get at what he's saying. A pilot, Captain W. G. James, follows up by blaming cockpit layout over pilot health, because he's terrified of those every-six-month exams that ruin professional careers and then brings up crash-proof tanks. Dr. Bergin follows that up by raising all kinds of doubts about easy assumptions about human competence, notably the illusion that you're flying straight and level out of visual conditions when, in fact, you're headed straight into the ground. The upshot for both James and Bergin is that instruments have to be better, but James complicates the question by saying that they have to be useful. Or maybe that's me transmitting Reggie's gripes about not being able to use the information that radar is supposed to give him. G. E. Bell talks about traffic control research, especially in regards to making radio communications effective.
That might not be of the clearest, but I hung around for the wine-and-cheese after Dr. Bouwsma's symposium, and I might not be the clearest, either. If you know what I mean.
We have another half-page for bonus news afterwards, as the main story, a youth-service training centre at Battle of Britain House, only takes up half a page. Which is odd, because the half-news includes an Army win in an interservices rugby match, the annual general meeting of the Aerodrome Owners Association, and, oh, by the way, no big news, let your eyes glance over this trivial bit of hardly-information at all, BRITAIN HAS BEEN PRODUCING PLUTONIUM FOR SOME TIME, AND YOU ONLY NEED 100LBS OF IT FOR AN ATOM BOMB.
Boom!
"Airline Mariners: A Glimpse at BOAC's Marine Craft Organisation" BOAC is still running some flying boat routes, so it has 200 boats for fishing out driftwood and touching up the paint and scraping barnacles and such, which is more important news than British plutonium. You know what? Forget I said anything. Atom bombs. Pfft. So 1946.
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| By RuthAS - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11791444 |
The inquiry into the deaths of Lindsay Neale and Peter Tisshaw in the prototype Balliol crash has returned an accidental death finding, concluding that it was probably due to the windshield tearing away. John North thinks that it was perhaps because of bird strike.
"Civil Aviation Debate: Criticism of Government Policy: Tudor IV for Freight Only" Everyone agrees that the British airlines were built up with an excessive staff in the postwar years, and that is why there have been all the redundancies. The "criticism" amounts to the argument that the government can't run an airline, but it seems muted, given that the American airlines aren't making money, either. The Ministry spokesmen in the Commons (I forget his name already) explained that the Tudor IV was going to be confined to cargo service because, basically, no passenger was going to get on a Tudor IV voluntarily after two unexplained losses, no matter what Flight seems to think about the possible actions of the Royal Shangri-La Air Force.
Correspondence
Regular correspondent Simon Warrender says something stupid, specifically, that the SR 45 should be called a "flying ship" instead of a "flying boat." "Chairborne" thinks that the revelation that HMAS Sydney will only carry 24(!) aircraft shows that giant new aircraft carriers of the American 45,000 and 60,000 ton classes (Midway and United States, I'm told) and, and this is why I mention it, the Ark Royal class, won't have enough planes. Also, everything is useless now there are atom bombs. Claude Aldbury doesn't echo G. S. Orchard in calling for some kind of automated distress call device that will allow searchers to home in on crash locations. They both came up with the idea at the same time, but Flight could only print one of the letters, because it had to make room for Simon Warrender's letter about how the blotch on his wallpaper looks like Father Christmas. D. Chisholm thinks that much light would be shed on RAF manpower if someone just talked to the rankers. "Serving Officer" is sick and tired of all the malcontents who write in about the RAF, when serving officers can't talk back. Frank Whittle writes to deny that he divulged any confidential information about the De Havilland Comet, which is what we are calling the DH 106 now. V. Galitzine, the publicity officer for Percival Aircraft, writes to answer all the criticisms made about the new Percival Prentice blind flying trainer.So I am probably the last person to hear about this, and you will no doubt be chuckling at the silly girl who does not keep abreast of he-man stuff, but it turns out that Ark Royal is a 37,000 ton aircraft carrier which has been under construction since 1942(!), and is expected to be launched next year. My confusion is perhaps coming from the fact that it has been re-named twice? Or more likely it slipped my mind because I didn't understand that it qualified as a "giant" aircraft carrier.
The Economist, 11 March 1949
Leaders
"Turning Point" The cabinet changes announced in Moscow this week mean something for sure. But no-one can agree what. Probably that they will keep on whining about the Atlantic Pact. The Economist explains why we should ignore them. Perhaps it is all down to Norway agreeing to sign on to the Atlantic Pact and not a non-aggression pact with Moscow. On the other hand, it looks like Italy won't come into the Pact on creation, because of incomprehensible party tensions. It sounds as though the right wing Socialists are in, the left wing Socialists are out, and so the right wing Socialists won't force the issue, but will nevertheless remain in the Gasperi government, which, of course, is committed to coming in.
"The Price of Government, I: Disinflation Continued?" The Economist reluctantly accepts that the balance of payments crisis is almost over, and that the government really is going to run a budget surplus again. This might make it seem as though disinflation has run its course, but not a bit of it, the budget must continue to have a surplus, and to achieve that, the Government should definitely cut expenditures and raise taxes going into an election. In other words, it is a regrettable necessity that the Socialists fall on their swords for the good of the nation.
"Indian Rampart" I assume that the Indian government is going to give The Economist a favourable postal rate or something. Anyway, the nice things said last week under World Overseas get expanded upon at some length. India is a bulwark against world communism, independence (and partition) came at just the right time (pat on the back!), and Congress' secular rule is for the best.
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| "I, like quite a few people am fortunate enough not to have to live in Borehamwood." Speaking for myself, I count myself fortunate that I don't know th author of this blog. Thanks for the image, though. Credit where due. |
There's a wonder. The Economist has a humour article that I liked. Perhaps they've locked Mr. Crowther in a closet and a bright new day is dawning! Literally!
Notes of the Week
India is going to be a republic soon. The Conservatives, meeting over Hammersmith, are chewing over the notion that perhaps Mr. Churchill should be encouraged to do a bit less, well, not leading, since he doesn't do that already; perhaps less being present while leading is being done?
"Wheat Surplus and Dollar Shortage" Britain would rather buy wheat from Canada than the United States. Since it will be using Marshall Plan money to do it, Americans are upset.
There are three "administrative" stories in a row. Truman's plan to extend American expertise to disadvantaged parts of the world is being pressed on Uno, which might be a good place to do these things if it weren't completely ineffective. The OEEC may not change the way it does tings this eyar after all, and Sir Ronald Weeks thinks that the service ministries should be combined into a single Ministry of Defence sooner rather than later. The Economist sees the usual "too many problems." It was nice while it lasted.
"Boys for the Jobs" It is suggested that the nationalised industries need to pay more to get the best class of business administrator.
"Rationing by the Purse" The supply of eggs and milk is coming up to demand so quickly that rationising is going or gone. The Economist pats itself on the back over the success of disinflation and then commences to worry that the country will soon overproduce these things, and the only way to cover off the farm subsidies will be higher taxes on beer, tobacco and gambling, which will reduce demand on them.
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| Let's worry about Macedonia! |
At home, the Private Member's Bill banning tied houses (public houses that have to sell their owning brewery's beer) seems to be going through. The Economist thinks that "basic English" spelling reforms are silly. While all concerned officials think that there are more young delinquents, the actual evidence is making itself scarce.
"French Defence Dilemma" France can find room for 350 billion francs (£350 million) for defence, from which it hopes to provide for 5 army divisions at home without compromising whatever the Hell lit is doing in Annam. Considering that it costs 920 million francs to operate an armoured division and 530 million to equip an infantry division with vehicles, you can see that the money won't go far, and Le Monde hopes that the money (including Marshall aid) will be spent with skill and subtlety.
"Suspense in China" Premier Sun Fo has resigned, and there is no government. the Acting President, Li Tsung-jen, is negotiating with the Communists. Everyone hopes that some kind of negotiated transfer of power to a Communist-led government will happen, and that the "war criminals" will not return from Canton and Chekiang to attempt to keep the south and west out of Communist hands, heedless of the cost.
Shorter Notes mentions that London County Council needs to find £217 million over the next two years for education and housing, so rates aren't going down. At least world coal production is going up, with Europe closing its deficit to 1.5 million tons next year. Trygve Lie brings everyone's attention to the plight of a million Greek refugees, while there is likely to be a storm in the house over the Analgesia in Childbirth Bill due to the Government backing being "half-hearted."
Letters
Leo T. Little, of University College of the South West, writes to urge the Board of Trade to keep statistics about the foreign earnings of British insurance companies. About time someone took a stand! T. E. M. McKittrick thinks that The Economist misinterpreted his recent pamphlet. The Editor is not budging. Actually, The Editor is hot. Ernest Wimble, Chairman of something called the British Timed Tourism Board, writes to defend his organisation against charges that its new-fangled schemes of staggered holiday weeks is leading to increased absenteeism on traditional holiday weeks. F. B. Marsh, of David Brown Tractors, writes to point out that The Economist has no idea how the tractor business works. In particular, the auto companies don't build tractors in America, so that is not the route to full technical efficiency. D. J. Mitchell, the Private Secretary to the Economic Secretary, writes to point out that the figures for National Debt reduction in the estimates is exclusive of Marshall money, as it says right in the statement, so that A. H. Abbati's criticisms are wrong and stupid.
From The Economist of 1849
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| Google Images thinks that this sketch of the Castle of Arta has something to do with the Don Pacifico Affair. I don't see why, but I l like it more than any of the pictures that are relevant. |
American Survey
"Surveying the State of the National Economy" The Joint Committee on the economy met with the Council of Economic Affairs, but can't agree whether the President's policy is mostly wrong (GOP) or mostly right. (Democrats.) Mostly! Bipartisanship!
"Trial by Jury" For the last seven weeks, the trial of the Communist Party of the USA leadership has been held up the Communists' lawyers attempt to prove that the jury has systematically excluded "Negroes, Jews, manual workers, women, Communist Party members and others of the 'underprivileged.'" Judge Medina has found that it hasn't, so the "American heresy trial" can go forward. The Economist spends the rest of the article explaining why this was probably the right decision, notwithstanding some state and Supreme Court gestures in the direction of nullifying egregiously unrepresentative juries. Including a case in Chicago where the courts would only call women recommended by the League of Women Voters.
American Notes
"The New Secretary of Defence" It looks like we can all agree that a man who has to be forcibly restrained from harming himself is probably not the right choice for an active Secretary of Defence! Louis Johnson comes up out of Truman's coterie of cronies, but he is also popular with Wall Street and Republicans in the House. It can't be said that he is inexperienced, considering that he was Army Secretary from 1937 to 1940. It does mean that Secretary of State Acheson will find it easier to impose state department control over the vast occupational empires of Clay and MacArthur.
"Fair Deal or Civil Rights?" The Economist's take on the Senate filibuster is that the South can get a lot more not done there than at the convention, by holding up Marshall appropriations and the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act. With Taft-Hartley repeal and rent control also running out of time, the filibuster is set to restore the good old rule of two-thirds majority for anything the South (with Republican support) doesn't want. I mean, for controversial, important changes that the Senate is supposed to saucer-of-cooled-tea away.
"Unions under A Cloud" With unemployment up by half a million, it is not surprising that the Labour Committee hasn't been steam-rollered into giving way on Taft-Hartley. Increases in the minimum wage and detailed rules about overtime payment for irregular hours are quite enough when the unemployment statistics don't yet show if this is the dangerous kind of "chain unemployment."
How Good Neighbours? America won't be at the next meeting of the American states, because the rest of the American states are mad at America over one thing or the other. Mainly that it is too kind on coups, it seems, but also that it won't take a stand on colonial possessions like British Honduras and all those Guineas. The Federal Reserve has relaxed the restraints on consumer credit it imposed six months ago, and the French have sent their own trainload of gifts to repay America for the Friendship Train of last year. A pair of pink gloves "for a coloured child" seems weird, but what do I know. Oh, wait, no, there is someone with an undergraduate degree (almost) in Frenchness here. Has America done something to upset France lately? Hmm. HMM. Could it be anti-communist hysteria? I think it could be!
The World Overseas
"A Dictator's Dilemma" In case you'd forgotten, because it is small and no-one cares, but Portugal still has a dictator. His dilemma is to get rid of the Fascists in his government (so yesterday's news), find a "loyal opposition" so that he can be democratic, and do all that without unleashing the communist revolution dying to be born.
"Forerunners of Vishinsky" If you were dying of curiosity about the deeper meaning of Molotov and Litvinov losing their cabinet positions and being relegated to the deputy member of the Politburo ranks, here is a page or two on the theme of how all Moscow shuffles must now be interpreted in the light of the succession.
"Danger Signs in Trinidad?" Trinidad is the least "tawdry" colony, due to oil, but it still has slums and shanty towns, and malaria and tuberculosis are on the upswing, showing rising poverty, and a rising population means that "Malthusian factors" will "begin to operate." Perhaps a terrible revolution, or just a repeat of the 1937 riots is on the way unless oil exploration increases or there is more agricultural investment.
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| It's as plain as the nose on your face! |
The Business World
"Finance for Industry" The resounding chorus of "We don't care, we're busy hitting our export targets" that industry addressed to the Stock Exchange when it whined about falling shares seems to have inspired the emission of a great many pages of nocturnal The Economist emissions. A case in point is two pages showing that industry will soon (soon!) face a critical shortage of capital!
"Sterling Under the Curtain" How nice of The Economist to speed me on my way to the sitting room. And Fred Allen isn't even on! The girls will probably make me listen to Amos and Andy. It's almost enough to make me read this . . .
No, let's not go mad here. Although I've gleaned enough to see that the issue is that arrangements for paying for Eastern European goods are being resisted on the grounds that piles of spare sterling might form on the far side of the Iron Curtain, then sneak back across and buy exports bound for dollar countries.
Business Notes
"New Manpower Statistics" The Ministry of Labour Gazette has published a new and more accurate survey of the working population. The June 1948 count was 20,286,000, but the one for this year is 23,146,000. The new count also does away with the one million supposedly idle "spivs and drones," who look like they were just a leak from one column to another. New and better unemployment statistics will now be possible."Miners' Pay and Hours" The NUM and the Coal Board are butting heads at the wrong time, it seems, with the overtime agreement due to expire in April. Pressure for wage increases in steel and textiles are also being felt. There are proposals for putting the burden for compensating landowners for mining subsidence on the Coal Board.
"IMF and Gold" South Africa's attempt to wring a practical increase in the price of gold by selling "industrial gold" at $41/oz seem to have failed, because the brokers who undertook it have had "enough abuse." Nevertheless, South Africa is still pressing for a revaluation of gold in all currencies, which the IMF can do. The United States has made it clear that it will not allow that. It has no domestic gold industry, can get all the gold it needs at $35/oz, is afraid of the inflationary implications of writing up its gold reserves, and doesn't want more world resources committed tdo gold mining at the expense of other industries. However, it has signalled that it is not adversely opposed to a general European monetary devaluation, which will bring the European price of gold up. Which is big news far beyond South Africa!
"Belgium Frees Note Imports" Foreign Belgian note holdings, acquired legitimately or on the black market, can now be brought back to Belgium. Belgium hopes that this will bring it in line with the other hard currencies and discourage hoarding. It even hopes that it will be less inflationary than financing the foreign note holdings by expanding external credits. Soon it may even join the select group of IMF members who have no protection on their currencies at all. (Although the list includes El Salvador, so I'm not sure how select it is.)
British store profits are down, the rubber industry has recovered from the war and is looking for a trade agreement, and the three-dominion wool cartel may well be able to liquidate its remaining war surplus of greasy and burr wool bales (the ones no-one wants) at a profit, if the wool market doesn't collapse first. The cocoa situation seems to be fine. Last year, a world shortage seemed to be looming due to swollen shoot disease, which could only be addressed by uprooting trees, and the West African farmers were resisting that because what do they know. The Economist stands by its superior horticultural (arboricultural) knowledge, but has to conceded that an increased supply has been wrung out of West Africa by higher prices somehow, and therefore the crisis is over this year, although hopefully it will be back next year.Speaking of being wrong, coal output was down last week compared with the previous week, but is still a million tons ahead of the same time last year. (Nine weeks of 52 means, if the trend is continued, five million more tons, so officially no more coal crisis. We'll see.) Base metal prices are down for the first time in two years, and we can look forward to talk about trade talks with Brazil.
Is there a business recession in America? Well, there's a Democrat in the White House, so Fortune knows the answer. Unemployment is up 700,000, commodity markets have collapsed, the "businessman's expectations point down." So, naturally, two members of the cabinet say everything is fine, which is just like Hoover in 1930, or "the economist Keyserling," who said in 1947 that the problem was inflation. I'm not sure I follow, but that's what Fortune says. At least there's the heartwarming story of Byron A. Gray, President of the International Shoe Company, who was downright cheerful about how a recession focusses business on producing the best product at the lowest price. Well, that and the fact that he was able to use the cost of living clause in his contact to cut wages by 3 cents an hour. For others, the best news of the month was that the Senate Finance Committee came out against an increase in the income tax. Fortune went out and found a builder in Denver who put up a million dollars worth of homes in the Denver area, got 5%, and found that since it put him in the 84% bracket, got "very little" out of it. Ronnie's flashing fingers say --a little more than three thousand dollars. Why, that's not even half the price of a house!
So: Discounts, salesmanship, inventory reduction, layoffs, substitutions of machinery for labour, "technological unemployment." That's the order of the day. Speaking of technological unemployment, or something, H.B. Stewart, of the Akron, Canton and Youngstown Railway, has come up with a 130 mile, two-way conveyor belt that will carry coal from the Ohio mines to Lake Erie, and iron limestone from the lake to the Youngstown area. Continuous operation will cut freight costs an estimated 40 cents to $1.50/ton. Stewart has convinced Goodyear engineers of the feasibility of his plan; they just need the steelmen to come in.
Coal mining is "in chaos," with anthracite miners on a two-day week. Bituminous stockpiles are high, railways are seeking another fare increase, although some warn that they are pricing themselves out of the market. Insurance companies may be up for congressional investigation, as they are by far the largest players in the government bond market. I'm not sure why they need to be investigated. Fortune doesn't say. ATT has been asked to sell Western Electric and spread its supply orders around, while du Pont, GE and GM are being investigated for monopolistic practices. Truman has asked for a record $5.4 million for antitrust investigations, so there is more to come. Beauticians are ganging up on home permanent kits, farmers are "alarmingly aggressive" about tariffs, and between announcements of rounds of layoffs, "you could hear mindless mutterings about D.P.s."Fortune follows permanent waves with an apparently non-permanent fad. The non-scheduled airlines, which are still in trouble with the CAA, are undercutting the regular scheduled airlines with their scheduled flights (Ronnie sees an issue), are apparently doing so using war-surplus DC-3s and engines. The airline executives say that when the war surplus runs out, the non-skeds will fold, and that in the meantime the issue is the damage they are doing to the bottom line. Complicating things, Douglas is now offering a rebuild that will add ten years to the DC-3s life, which is planned to expire in 1953.
Corning Glass has announced "photosensitive" glass that responds to ultraviolet light like regular camera film does to visible light. You heat it up to a thousand degrees, shoot it with a ultraviolet image, treat it with some chemicals, cool it down, and you get a picture on glass.
Bad news for Uncle Henry, as Kaiser-Frazer, once touted as the fourth largest auto maker, fell to eighth, behind everyone but Willys. Ford has formed a new international division, Briggs Manufacturing is opening new plants in Youngstown, confectioners are predicting more candy at Easter due to cheaper cocoa and resistance to the nickel bar. Sam Goldwyn has quit the MPAA for Ellis Arnall's Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers, bad news for Eric Johnston. Chase Manhattan is loaning Chile $20 million to finish its steel plant. The Florida citrus boom is fizzling as the price of oranges falls thirty cents a box after the boom that followed the California freeze. (No marmalade this year! So sad --I was sure that James would smuggle me a crate!) Bell and Howell signed a deal to sell its microfilm recording apparatus through the Burroughs Adding Machine Company, filling a gap in Burroughs' line.The Fortune Survey
The survey finds the better educated you are, the more movies that you go to, that the main reason for not going to movies is time, that cowboy movies are the most popular, that radio is better liked than movies, that books are becoming less popular.Fortune's Wheel
Fortune's cartoonist of the month is Zdzislaw Czermanski, a refugee from Pilsudski who has recently branched out into oils. The drawing of the 20 acre, $4 million Hibbard, Spencer and Bartlett warehouse is by Rolf Klep, who grew up in Astoria and has a child's book out. The article about fly fishing is by Freeman Lincoln. At Fortune, people with English names and no discernable talent get the easy jobs. Dean Griswold of Harvard Law writes to oppose changing stock options from regular income, taxable as such, to capital gains, which are taxed at much lower rates. He points out that they are actually income, and that the change is objectionable on social grounds since it is a "special tax reduction for a particular class." Dean Griswold is at a loss as to why business executives even need special incentives. Everyone is paying high taxes! Moritz Millburn, of Centennial Flouring Mills, writes to reject Fortune's implication that it is having difficulties getting financing. Fortune was repeating a general complaint from various Seattle financial people, and not information from industry, either Centennial or Northwest, a Seattle-based competitor. It's almost as though this "business can't get capital" thing has some kind of secret agenda.
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| Not only did that uncouth clown from St. Louis have the nerve to win the election, he had the nerve to throw a "bread and circuses" celebration. John Davenport's Wiki biography is about what you'd expect. Mount Pelerin Society founder, and defender of Apartheid. |
John Davenport, "Socialism by Default" Now that there's a Democrat in the White House and Fortune has had a few months to collect its bearings, it is obvious what is going on in America: Socialism is sneaking up on it while it's not looking! I personally think that Davenport misses a beat by not going the full communism, but he didn't ask my opinion, so I can't give it!
"Truman's 'Global Recovery Plan'" Truman hopes to start a flood of American capital to the backwards parts of the Earth by priming it with Marshall Plan aid. This will stop communism, with its promises of a better tomorrow, in its tracks. That is Fortune's interpretation, anyway.
"Confessions of a Diaper Salesman: It Doesn't Make Any Difference How You Get It, You Got to Get the Geschaeft" Since high pressure sales are back, Fortune reprints a golden oldie from a year or so ago about that time a down-on-her-luck society girl hired on with a diaper service run by some of those oh-so-funny Yiddish salesmen types who hilariously lie about everything to get the sale. Geschaeft. Heh. Because it sounds like --! In English, anyway.
"ECA Hasn't Sold the French" Fortune's man in France wanders off to find a French worker in a beret and pencil thin mustache, with cigarette in one hand, wine glass in another, baguette in a third, and his fourth propping up his racing bicycle. "What about those Americans?" Fortune asks. "Heine! I am a Communist and I hate the Americans! I know nothing about this ECA and care to know nothing! I think I will go on strike now to express my ingratitude!" Says the Frenchman in a ridiculously French accent. My summary. One percent accurate, except about the facts, which I do not report because I am pretty sure they don't matter. Again, I promise the humblest "You told me so" apology the moment that France has an actual revolution, right or left.
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| The Pipe of Seriousness is Back! |
"The Initiative Goes Haywire: California's Unwary Voters Saddle Themselves with a Prodigious Old-Age Pension" This seems like a departure from Fortune's new business-magazine model, but who cares, governments are in danger of spending tax money!
"Southeast Asia: A Glossary: Self-Government Delayed by Internal Politics, European Resistance" Fortune visits the Hundred Kingdoms of the South and spends about a half paragraph on each one. Ho Chi Minh has a sparse beard and has been to Paris. He is a Communist, but may not know what that is, because Annam's radio reception isn't very good.
Alfred Winslow Jones, "Fashions in Forecasting" Just to prove that this is a terrible issue of Fortune that no-one wrote because no-one will read it, here is a whole article about a new stock picking system. It is very scientific. Says Alfred Winslow Jones. Not like those unscientific systems, which are just systems.
"The Shipping Men" Fortune goes down to the wharf to greet the fleet in its most fetching dress, finds that there is no actual fleet, boldly predicts that the fleet will come back and grow. Uncle George says it is still okay to ignore these articles, because American lines still only run to Hawaii, Alaska and Puerto Rico because Congress protects them, and there's no sign of that changing.
"Southern Game Fishing" There really isn't very much in this issue.
"Handlers of Hardware" Hibbard, Spencer, Bartlett and Company of Evanston, Illinois, run the "Willow Run of hardware wholesaling," a twenty acre warehouse that stocks 30,000 different items received from 3000 manufacturers and ships them by rail to 9000 regular customers. It does so at much lower costs than the regular warehouse industry because of the warehouse's horizontality (fancy talk for being on one floor) and by "the full employment of modern materials-handling techniques." The factory, which cost $4 million, or $5/foot, was opened last June, although the company's history runs back 94 years.
Hibbard's old warehouse in Chicago, still in use, is a fourteen story building in which 12% of the space is taken up by elevators and stairs. Meanwhile, the roof supports that hold up the twenty acres of roof at the Evanston warehouse take up only 7% of the space. There are also heavy savings on elevator operation, inspection and maintenance. With a forklift, the Evanston warehouse has unloaded and stored two freight cars of nails weighing 160,000lbs in 4.75 hours at an average costs of 0.11 cents/keg. The plant is harder to heat and air condition, and snow removal and landscaping are a burden, but that is a small price to pay.
Modern techniques include using "pallets" to handle goods. "Pallets" can be moved by fork trucks. Power tractors pull trains of trailers, hand guided transporters and dragline conveyers are also used. But the devices are only part of the story, because organisation is key. "Where is what?"
C. J. Whipple, the engineer-trained chairman, was so impressed by pioneering Army use of pallets , s and fork trucks that he decided to bring it to his employer. Drag lines came from American Express, giant buildings from Willow Run. The organisation is based on giving salesmen carefully planned forms, so that they can write the catalogue numbers in. Those numbers show exactly where the product is stored in the warehouse, so that a clerical department of 350 workers can send them by conveyor belt to a visible card file battery, which shows how the items are packed, so that address labels can be prepared. Addressographs hold the addresses of regular customers. Forms are photographed full size by a Bruning Volumatic machine to provide file copies and invoices. Orders ship within six hours of receipt.
Books and Ideas
I was going to say something about ideas being scarce in this issue, so thank heavens for the back pages, but I turn to them and get --
"The Relevance of Burke," a title review of Ross J. Hoffman, and Paul Lovack, Burke's Politics. Not only is Burke a famous early British conservative, but the review starts out by mentioning Hayek for some reason. Anyway, it is a very long and expansive review, so it has room to start out by talking about everyone else who has talked about Burke before, and then summarises his ideas, which are a little far afield of electronic engineering, so forgive me, etc. Burke has arrived in the realm of the middlebrow. We're told. I've seen precious little evidence of it. This isn't the sort of thing that the middlebrow likes, and good on it.
Lewis C. Ord, "Politics and Poverty" is a "Work on Paper Work." By that is meant that Ord is upset that wages haven't risen as fast in Britain as in America since 1880, although they went up at the same rate from 1814 to 1880. Whereas writers like Colin Clark see economic equilibria developing everywhere, Ord sees nothing of the sort. British industrial output began to level off seventeen years ago, about the time America adopted antitrust, and Britain adopted cartels, followed by nationalisation. Ord shows that these arrangements are less efficient, and this is the point where paper work comes in. American know-how is opposed to European "paper work." Grr. Ord just said that it was antitrust that did it! The article about Truman being a socialist pitched antitrust as a vehicle of socialism. This complacency is why the Communists are winning!P. C. Armstrong's Two by Two: A Study of Economic Superstitions is an attempt to mine the gold gthat Gustav Stolper found with Age of Fable and Henry Hazlitt with Economics in One Lesson. The difference is that those two authors (debatedly) know what an economic myth is. Mr. Anderson does not.
That's it until next month!
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| a little preview. I look forward to learning why Japanese reconstruction is a bust. |
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