Postblogging Technology, January 1951, I: A Whole New Year

R_.C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada




Dear Father:

Thank you again for your hospitality, which I am sorry I am so late, but things in London have been hectic. You may have noticed from the calendar that we flew out of Montreal the day of the Comet grounding, and London was an absolute zoo when we got there. On the other hand the Azores are BEAUTIFUL, which is just as well because renting a car and touring made up for spending a week there.  Or almost did, because why did there have to be an entire class of children aboard that plane? Why? 

All this bad enough before the Britannia accident. And, yes, this should have been in the mail long before the first week of February, but what can I say?  I've been touring James around because we've only the one car and I've had business in the counties, too trying to get the business of assorted people who were trying to move sterling into dollars ahead of the Crash of '54 and don't hold with old-fashioned surface shipping any more. 

So. Late. Sorry. Grateful. Missing you. Busy. Azores nice. Summaries good.  

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

The Economist, 2 January 1954

Leaders

"Leadership and Policy" It turns out that Churchill is old! And The Economist is faintly uneasy about it. After all, while "Mr. Attlee's more orderly methods produced less helpful results for the nation," you can hardly disagree that the government has been weak, hapless, and disorganised. Since Labour is worse, always fiddling with food prices and inclined to give Guiana to the Communists and Buganda to the natives, it is probably time for Churchill to go, although Heaven forbid that we come out and explicitly say so.  

"Berlin Prospects" Talking to Communists is bad except it is good. Maybe something will happen with Germany. Maybe not!

"Japanese Trade with China" Japan is a big trading country with lots of industry and China needs stuff, but it used to be that Japan ran a puppet state in the north (news!) and invested there, and that was where the demand came from. China doesn't want Japanese consumer goods, and that's what Japan is good at. Maybe it can turn its merchant fleet and advanced engineering brains to good use? The important thing is that it's a market for Japan that isn't a British market, I suspect. 

"Rules for Developers" Speaking of which, what about all those other countries that need development? Reports on the Gold Coast and the West Indies are expected imminently. Arthur Lewis is expected to recommend agricultural development in the underpopulated Gold Coast to create a food and export surplus to support the development of consumer demand for homemade goods, while the commission studying the West Indies identifies overpopulation (or rural underemployment) as a serious problem. Industry would absorb it, but cannot compete, so must be ruled out. Arthur Lewis, writing on the problems of the West Indies, has argued for government support for industry so long as rural overpopulation persists. Since there is no such problem in the Gold Coast, there is no need for government support for industry. Except for public utilities, which are being neglected in both places. The big thing is apparently the lack of "managerial capacity," which prevents loans and the building up of capital through credit, because the feckless locals will just waste all the money. The problem of building up managerial capacity locally is obviously that there's something wrong with the locals, since if it were colour prejudice the invisible hand of the market would have swept these inefficiencies away in the face of the higher price of expatriate labour. Lewis wants quotas for local employees at foreign-owned businesses, while the Colonial Office is inclined to  import students from the less developed countries and train them up in management here. Given that all of that is settled, the West Indies need to develop from the basis of their shipyards, the Gold Coast from the railway shops, building supplies, and food containers --that is, glass bottles. Textiles are rated "marginal." I'm sure they are! But first, let's come back around to "it's obviously not a colour bar." 

From The Economist of 1854, "War with a Despot" We were too pacifistic with Russia and now we have to have a war with them because of it! The Economist is very excited about the idea. 

Notes of the Week

The engineering and shipbuilding unions will go ahead with their overtime ban as of 18 January since the employers have now also rejected arbitration. The Economist suggests that when the Commonwealth finance ministers meet in Sydney they should focus on a plan to reduce dollar imports, since the current situation is imports of $3--$3.2 million and exports that "fluctuate wildly between $2.5 and $.4.2 billion," but which fell as low as $1.8 billion during the 1948 recession, and there is no reason that they couldn't fall similarly this time round. The Economist also thinks that it is probably time for the Communists to give up on trying to persuade the 3,224 Red prisoners still held in Korea to come back behind the Iron Curtain, because things are dragging out beyond anyone's patience. The Kabaka of Buganda is not to be allowed to go back to Buganda, and the upshot of the messy affair is that the Bugandans aren't going to be allowed to run Uganda. The Atlantic Alliance isn't doing enough about civil defence, Lord Ismay thinks. The supply of school teachers isn't likely to be any farther short of need in 1960 than now. Traditionally, the premier and his government resigns when France elects a new  President, but if Laniel resigns for President Coty, they won't be able to put another government together, so maybe the government's resignation should be deferred until the Social Democrats and Radicals splinter on left/right divisions and it becomes clearer who can maintain a majority in the Assembly. 

Or maybe the Viet Minh will be the first colonials to get a vote in metropolitan affairs!

The Egyptians say they want to be neutral, but look how that worked out for Belgium! Britain wants to have kind of a seat in a sort of United States of Europe as long as it's just about coal and steel. Labour unrest is expected in the Copper Belt because the European unions still won't give way on hiring African labour in skilled positions. But what about the invisible hand of the market? Obviously it doesn't apply to labour! British Guiana's new constitution gets rid of communists by getting rid of elected members on the legislative council. The tuberculosis death rate is falling much more rapidly than expected thanks to improvements in chest surgery, The Economist thinks. Sure. That's why the rate is falling so much faster in London, notwithstanding the fogs, then in Yorkshire and on Merseyside, and why the rate of new cases has stabilised. Heroic surgery! What other explanation could there possibly be? The NHS and better housing? That's socialism! The Economist peers into the tea cup to disscern why Beria was tried and convicted in a summary secret trial, and not a public show. Beria's fall also means that the "vigilance campaign" associated with Russian nationalists and the police, is back. Oh, and there's a political crisis in Italy, because the Latin peoples are too soft for democracy. (By which is meant, government by the elected majority once communists are excluded. Can't see a problem there!) Some German newspapers have said rude things about the British, which probably means the Fourth Reich is around the corner. The Standing Group of the Atlantic alliance should be the General Staff of the alliance, but isn't because it has to listen to the countries that make up the alliance, but also especially America, and that's bad because fresh strategic thought is needed. 


 

"Scare on the Mekong" The Viet Minh column which has crossed the Mekong has admittedly closed the river route to supply Laos, but is no threat to Laos, much less, as some have said, Siam. What this little move has done is reinforce all the faint-hearted French politicians who don't want to fight Communism and are eager to negotiate their way out. Or, at least, get even more Allied support for their war effort. 

Letters

H. W. B. Skinner writes from the University of Liverpool that the solution to the teacher shortage is more resources for university science departments. C. H. P. Gifford has no time for Roy Jenkins' call for dividend restraint. If he didnt' want to see shareholders at the trough gorging until they burst, he shouldn't have lost the election! Douglas Robinson explains how to achieve universal atomic disarmament. It involves county council, Leagues, Assemblies, and Charters. E. O. Bishop explains that the National Joint Council for Local Authorities' Fire Brigades in England and Wales has the problem of keeping fire protection costs in hand, and certainly won't involve wage parity with the police. Bernard Berg points out a flaw in the statistics apparently showing a 5% fall in consumer sales in October. L. J. Brown explains that the article about the end of the EMI/RCA sales relationship was mistaken on the minor point of the relationship not actually ending. 

Books 

'E says the role of the I tanks was exaggerated! By Alan Wilson from Peterborough,
 Cambs, UK - A12 Matilda II ‘
T10459’ “THE PRINCESS ROYAL”, CC BY-SA 2.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=90423930

Gavin Long's Australia in the War of 1939--45: To Benghazi presents the Australian side of the early war in the desert, where you may remember Churchill's account of the difficulties relating to the relief of 6 Australian Division from Tobruk, which contributed to the catastrophe there and at Gazala. From the Australian point of view, it is all the fault of Churchill and his cabinet for intervening in Greece in 1941 and throwing away the chance to secure Libya and a Mediterranean passage. Long disagrees with Wavell that supply difficulties ruled out an advance from Sirte to Tripoli, but then the reviewer admits that this is next to irrelevant to the actual book, which is about the raising of the Australian expeditionary force and 6 Division's early fights at Bardia and Tobruk in the 1940/1 advance. Unfortunately, he's not a very dramatic writer. Alvin Hansen (he of the "secular stagnation beloved of Our New York Correspondent of days gone by) and Richard V. Clemens have an edited volume, Readings in Business Cycles and National Income. The reviewer really liked it, but focusses more on the "inside economics" aspect of the book than on any summary of the field that might be interesting to a non-economist. Bolton Survey, by the Field Naturalists' Society of Bolton, is a survey of, get this, Bolton! Which is a place in England. The Economist explains why it didn't like it, but not what business the book has being reviewed here. Stephen Spender's The Creative Element is some essays about literature. The Economist also didn't like it very much, because the theme is old hat ('artist versus society') and Spender is full of himself, as you'r think he would be! B. M. Spinley's The Deprived and the Privileged explains why slum children turn out differently from privileged children, with hundreds of case studies of slum children and some postal surveys of privileged children, which makes the treatment a bit uneven. J. C. Revill's World History isn't a world history like wells or Spengler. Continuing a theme, the reviewer didn't like it very much because it skips over the history of ideas (and the history of the criticism of the history of ideas, like when Marx says that they say it is all about ideas when it is actually about money. None of that here, is what we're saying.) A book about sport fishing gets reviewed, a bit more defensible than a survey of Bolton, and then it's on to D. H. Grist's Rice, which is very interesting and comprehensive, but very dated in style, with references to "Asiatics" and "Chosen." It's also out of date in another sense, in that it accepts the idea of a rice shortage, when "rice is a buyer's market right now."

American Survey

"Getting Busy on the Farm" We get caught up on farm price support policy and the Administration's position on it, which is, "Oops, too late, it's an election year already!" Has Our New York Correspondent gone to Reno? Could be! Anyway, A Correspondent in Reno reports from McCarran country. Nevada is a desert with tourism, but exists because of silver mines, and also has ranches. Gambling is legal, Las Vegas is sin city, and now that we've filled up our editorial to the required length, it's time for the point of the story, which is that Stanley Dollar is an interest peddler and owes his success to the McCarran machine, which might be in trouble due to a coalition of Eisenhower Republicans and "Real Democrats."

American Notes 

"Bi-Partisan Tight-rope" The President's invitation to Democrats to read the draft of his State of the Union address is the "tight-rope" in question, and the Note is largely about the gripes of conservative Democrats, who have alrleady been supporting the President and are upset that they are taking fire from not only McCarthy, but now Governor Dewey, who is reported to be thinking that he needs to shore up his right flank as he prepares to save the GOP from McCarthy in '56, explaining why he is quoted as saying that "the words 'Truman' and 'Democrat,' mean diplomatic failure, death, and tragedy." And if you're wondering who these long-suffering Democrats are, they are specifically the Southerners who are upset that Hawaiian statehood is on the table again. Senator Long of Louisiana is now set to demand that if Hawaii is let in, so must Alaska be, the logic being reported as Republican Hawaii being balanced by Democratic Alaska, and not Coloured Hawaii being balanced by white supremacist Alaska, because that would be rude to say out loud. Senate Republicans are jubilant at the idea of two more Republican Senators to eke out their majority, but Southerners are afraid that they will make it easier to impose cloture and pass a civil rights bill, even though the President says he has no plans for a civil rights bill.  

"Better Look at the Recession" Everyone was glued to the tv screen for the discussion between Sentor Douglas ("the Democrat who is the Senate's acknowledged economic expert," and I cannot think of a worse thing to say about the Senate than that Douglas is their deepest thinker about anything) and Gabriel Hauge was very disquieting, since Senator Douglas brought up plenty of statistics to show that there actually is a recession going on, and that the country is "not just coming down from an overtime economy." We then wander off to explain why the impact of the 1949 recession is now said to be less than was thought at the time. It is due to new and better statistical series that do a better job of assessing economic output. For example, direct statistics of clothes sold do a better job of capturing activity in the garments industry than textiles produced, the old measure. Who would have thought!? We catch up with the situation on the New York docks, and with Universal Military Training, which is no closer than ever, as people talk about poor pay and benefits in the services as causes for the difficulty in retaining men, and the brassbound officer corps that no-one wants to see getting rewarded for their obtuse resistance to good conditions in the ranks. Maybe the recession will improve recruiting and no-one will have to do anything! (The best solution!)

Pat McCarran, not Rene Coty, because the angel of death
is more obviously sitting on his shoulders.  

"Eighth Year in Indo-China" So far the sum total of France's attempt to re-establish itself in its so-recently conquered colonies is the creation in fire and blood of a new communist nation of Viet Nam out of the old hundred kingdoms of the south. This reality flits like a phantom through The Economist's field of view and occasions some thoughts. The French want out, and are willing to negotiate with a negotiating partner, which means that the French are ready to recognise the existence of Viet Nam. "No, no, no," the magazine insists. Reality is for the weak! The American vision of an anti-Communist Viet Nam can still be achieved. Somehow. The French aren't training Viet Namese generals, Bao Dai isn't the calibre of man that Syngman Rhee is (Thank Heavens!). What  happens if the French leave? The Economist is worried about it, but pointedly doesn't say. We then move over to France and Rene Coty, who gets a brief biography. Yet another Huguenot of the Radical right, the kind of man that France, if not French politics, has passed by. 

"Baffled by Food Surpluses" How can it be that we have too much food, the FAO asks itself at its annual conference this year? Where is the famine we were promised? Clearly the solution is to cut farm subsidies and lower protective barriers! So say the Commissin's experts, but the politicians who make the decisions just won't listen. What have they got against starvation? If only the technical staff ruled the world. We'd be back in the halcyon days of the Ninteenth Century in no time. In China, Communism turns out to be bad. German industry is taking the occasion of an announcement of huge export trade surpluses to express their various desires for this and that. (More money for us, more money from you.) 

Commercial History and Review

This year's annual retrospective is entitled "Twilight of the Boom: Retrospect on Britain's Reflation" The year 1953 was either a happy balance between deflation and inflation, or the twilight of the postwar boom. Britain deliberately reflated in the spring, America hesitated in the autumn. Britain went ahead with an unannounced convertibility scheme and then abandoned it without acknowledging that, either. Germany and Japan re-emerged on the world stage. British domestic incomes grew more rapidly than in any year since the war. Commodities were down, which helped the importers and hurt everyone else, ont that we care, wogs starting at Calais and all that. Industrial production boomed as Rab Butler's budget put £170 million back into the hands of taxpayers, "of which £125 million" went to consumers." "They spent it, and more." Houses and defence took the rest of the spending. Engineering was down most of the year as a consequence of growing competition from the rest of the world and lower industrial investment, but began to recover at the end of the year. But no-one is saving enough, because no-one ever saves enough, the spending will end any day now, mark my words, and what about America? 

"Doubts About America's Deflation" The great American deflation has led to a recession. Who could have thought? But it is  very minor one, Practically not a recession at all! But it will get worse if the deflation continues, as the Administration keeps promising that it will as it seeks a balanced budget. If the Administration abandons that objective and embraces Keynesian logic, it will reflate, and all will be well. If it doesn't, America will sneeze and the world will catch cold. Follows "Outlook on Policy," which begins "It is always difficult to strike a balance between the platitudinous and the pretentious." I don't know, The Economist manages both, here as elsewhere, as it thumb sucks around the usual tour d'horizon ending where the last article did. There's only so much Britain can do. What it can do will mean prosperity for another year if the Americans see reason and abandon budget austerity. If they don't "the political consequences of a hungry mid-fifties defy imagination." 

The Business World

  "Engines on Heavy Duty:Diesels on the Road: I" The Economist explains how diesel engines work. In America, diesel has conquered the rails but not the roads. In Britain, it is the other way round. The problem with diesels on the road is that road traffic requires lots of stops and starts. Gas engines manage 5--7lb per bhp and run at 3000rpm with considerable variation available and fuel consumption of 0.6lb/hp hour, while diesels get 12--14lbs per bhp, and 2000rpm, and cannot vary engine speeds by more than about 10% to get a fuel consumption of 0.4lb/hp hr. They are also more expensive due to heavy cylinder blocks and fuel injectors, but the cost difference will fall as more diesels are built. Diesels have practically replaced gasoline commercial vehicles for disposable load weights of more than 4t. What about smaller diesels? The Germans are experimenting with air-cooled, and Vauxhall and Ford are fiddling with approaches to a small diesel. Experiments with London taxis, which operate more like diesel vehicles than most cars, are not encouraging. 

"A Lifebelt for Tin" Tin production has exceeded consumption since 1948, with the US strategic surplus taking up the excess so far, but stockpiling has tailed off and the price of tin has fallen from £950 to £650, hence the International Tin Agreement, which will try to manage the surplus and maintain prices without American participation, which doesn't sound like it will work, but what can you do when the GOP is full of "FREE MARKET!!!" idiots
. 

Business Notes

£700,000 for that? No thanks. 

"Commonwealth Looks Ahead" Britain can't afford to subsidise Commonwealth development what with the balance of payments and the American recession and all. We also get a closer look at the industrial recovery, and a separate Note on the engineering recovery. The Atomic Research and Development Establishment has been transferred from the Ministry of Supply to the Lord President of the Council, whatever that means, except for atomic weapons at Aldermaston. It has something to do with atomic industry but it's a bit puzzling administratively. Investors are happy with higher dividends and no apologies. Persian oil and Russian gold are back. Aircraft exports are up £20 million over last year at £64 million, with Viscounts going for £300,000, Comets for £500,000, and Britannias, £700,000. The industry will probably hit a £100 million per year rate soon, so that's good. The British industry needs to build up a healthy export business for the same reason as the motor industry, as the air forces will only take £120 million or so, and should try to saturate the civil market for as long as its gas turbine monopoly endures, about a year or so. We get a review of the confusing and perhaps shifty methods Japan is meeting its sterling deficit. The Economist reviews the government support Sabena is getting for its helicopter passenger operations why can't BEA get the same here? Because helicopter passenger services are stupid, that's why. Second hand ship prices are falling, a bad sign for the market, and here's some investment and banking news. 

Flight, 1 January 1954

Leaders

"The Merchant Airman" Flight thanks everyone who participated in the who has better hats --that is, the discussion about training the next generation of commercial aircrew. 

"SAAB 91C Safir: Personal Impressions on a Brief Air Test" Flight took a joyride in the new(-ish) Swedish basic trainer, which apart from a nice radio and a rheostat-controlled instrument lighting system doesn't strike me as very interesting. 

From All Quarters reports on the fiftieth anniversary shindig in Washington, scooped by Newsweek and Aviation last month, if you're keeping up with your 2000mph spaceships. Canberras go fast again, Shell has a nice film about Powered Flight: The Story of the Century available by mail. Captain Majendie is leaving BOAC for a research and development position at Smiths (and by mid-month this was a much bigger story), while Patrick Johnson is leaving Power Jets and Handley Page had a party. I mention these because  Majendie is famous, being the Fleet Captain for the Comet, and I am surprised every day Power Jets doesn't collapse[!].

Here and There reports that Fiat is shipping its first Sabre, the Avon-Mystere has flown, a monument to the CPA Comet crew has been dedicated in Karachi, various parties have been held, including the R.Ae.S./R. Ae. C jubilee dinner, which gets a separate page to capture all the nice things Lord Brabazon said about the people he knew years ago, before the war. An English Electric Canberra is being used as a tanker aircraft to develop the probe-and-drogue refuelling method for high speed/high altitude operations. 

Speaking of years ago, before the war, we have J. M. Bruce, "The Sopwith Pup: Military Aircraft No. 6," which I would pay much more attention to if I were covering the latest news of 1917, and that is followed by a squadron history of No. 65 (East India) Squadron, so named because the East India Fund donated some Spifires in 1940, and, ,speaking of ancient planes, flies Meteors these days. 

 Aircraft Intelligence reports that the Short Seamew will probably carry a guided torpedo in action, the same used by the Fairey Gannet. The SE Baroudeur and Vautour have been flight tested. The Baroudeur is the one designed to take off from a trolley and land on skids, while the Vautour is the one with the heavy forward gun battery for ground support, although it is also marketed as an all-weather fighter and fighter-bomber. The USAF is said to be holding its own in budget talks so far, while the production B-52 will be seven feet longer, with a complete rear gun turret with its own radar, a new bomb-bay door,  and side-by-side seating for the pilot and co-pilot. Republic has gone from nose to root intakes on the F-84F and chucked the swept, variable incidence tail for one similar to that of the F-100. Extensive use of titanium has saved 100lbs of weight on the fuselage. The Douglas DC-7 has its CAA approval and the A4D is being shown in mock-up.

"Discussing Production: The Southampton Conference Reviews the Subject from Contrasting Angles" The lead paper, from Supermarine designer S. P. Woodley, pointed out the difficulties in dealing with forged, high-stressed, heat treated components, and predicted that tooling costs would go down with the increasing use of template or even numerically-controlled machine tools. Beverley Shenstone, chief engineer of BEA, then got up and proceeded to set himself on fire. In other words, he complained that the new British airliners were a maintenance nightmare due to construction problems with fatigue life and lack of interchangeable spare parts due to the British industry using fewer jigs to save costs. 

"Supersonic Shapes: Lockheed Designer Questions the Delta Configuration" Speaking at the latest SAE Conference in LA (you are not wrong, they hold them every week, Clarence Johnson of Lockheed pointed out that deltas aren't the only way to get to supersonic speed, and furthermore they're the wrong way to go about it, as see the fact that Lockheed couldn't get theirs off the drawing board. He also pointed out that everyone who doubted afterburners turned out to be wrong. (Eventually.)  A straight, thin wing with a properly designed tail was better. 

. . . And in the long run . . . 

Civil Aviation reports that Britannia progress is going swimmingly, with seven unnamed airlines interested in a total of 51 planes in addition to the 39 ordered by BOAC and Qantas. The first aircraft will be delivered as early as next December, with subsequent deliveries at one a month for the next four months. The Americans still intend to withdraw the 14 of a total of 25 weather ships on the North Atlantic and are negotiating their money back from the ICAO, with other operators continuing to run theirs. The public didn't get excited about the fiftieth anniversary of powered flight, which is sad, and Silver City Airways wants everyone to know that it is flying cars around even cheaper now. 

Correspondence

Allan Greaves and Harry Harper write about years ago, before the war. The Sopwith Pup had a 100hp engine! It's hard to imagine. A. C. B. writes to explain why there isn't a market for a 250hp turboprop trainer, just because letter writer S.H.E wants to build one for the civil market. Patrick Johnson writes to point out that while some designers said stupid things about jets at the time, the American engineer who imagines that the British thought that there was a "10,000lb" barrier that Americans beat first is just imagining things. 

The Industry has the latest protective finish from Adelaide Engineering, "Cowalite," a BSI standard for ratiometer indicators for aircraft, and a new floor-cleaning machine for factories that uses batteries to avoid the encumbrance of a trailing cable. 

The Economist, 9 January 1954

Leaders

"Wages Cauldron" Will there be an engineering strike? Maybe. Definitely worth two pages of blithering. 

"Mr. Dulles and Mr. Nehru" Jawaharlal Nehru can eat John Doster Dulles for a pre-breakfast snack, but Dulles has the dollars, so maybe he shouldn't. Nehru is upset that the Americans are cozying up to Pakistan, but The Economist supposes that Nehru might be grateful for American bases in Pakistan protecting India's flank against Asiatic communism. Or it might not be, considering that the Congress Party was built on the idea that the menace on the Northwest Frontier was  an imperialist bogeyman. Who can say? The Foreign Office and Nehru are agreed that this is another idiotic Dullesian scheme that is bound to blow up in America's face sooner or later, but The Economist knows better. 

"Civilians Defenceless" Time to talk about civil defence some more! No-one is doing enough, etc, etc. 

On the one hand, civil defence against atomic weapons is as idiotic as the Fallout franchise makes it seem. On the other, perky Ella Purnell sure is perky! Also, spoilers, it turns out. 

"Malaya Without Templer" General Templer's transfer to command the British Army of the Rhine may make it seem as though the Emergency is over, but it isn't! Without Templer it'll all go to heck! At the very least, London needs to back his successor to the hilt. 

Notes of the Week

We will soon see how the new Labour platform affects the voters in the upcoming byelections. The government initiative for equal pay in the civil service is welcome. It is appropriate that atomic diplomacy be conducted quietly and with a low profile, as is being done. The new thing keeping the United States of Europe is Britain's search for a special relationship with the European Coal and Steel Community. Teachers may be the next to strike, and there may actually be a surplus of doctors. Sudans new government hasn't fallen apart yet, so independence can go forward. South Africa is going to end "race mixing" at its universities as quickly as possible by expelling Coloured students from existing universities and sending them to new, "separate but equal" Coloured schools. The Economist is upset at the egg marketing scheme but loved a paper from E. H. Fleming Smith to the Farmer's Club to the effect that now that the landlord isn't the squire and all, he won't invest in the land at low returns and Britiish agriculture is dependent on the government instead and it's practically socialism! 

From The Economist of 1854 we have "What to Do About Strikers?" which seems to be reaching towards binding arbitration. Moscow has given up its fight with Jugoslavia and the Danube is now free for navigation to the sea; the British trade delegation to South America is unfairly neglecting the north of the continent; for the first time since the war, the number of new books fell last year, but given sales this probably just reflects publisher caution, and not market trends. 

Letters

C. L. Overton is upset at Roy Jenkins' letter calling on a voluntary reduction in stock dividends while Jenkins writes to defend himself, arguing that there has been a change in dividend policy in industry, and that has to be reversed. Stocks are a safe investment these days, and do not need a risk premium. B. D. Barton likes the idea of an Atlantic Assembly. The more talk shops, the better! Donald Barber of the Retail Distributor's Association explains that there really, truly was a setback in sales in October, even if the vagaries of the calendar made for one fewer weekend in the month than usual. 

Books

Francis Guigand, Edgar H. Brookes, and a selection of authors edited by G. H. Caplin look at South Africa these days in three books. The reviewer seems very sympathetic to white South Africans, presenting Brookes as the most liberal one can rationally be about South African racial policy, which seems to slant the (implicit) argument here about just how much of the criticism of the apartheid state is justified, but even the reviewer can't stomach de Guingand's politics.   Cyril Falls' a Hundred Years of War argues for a period in military history extending from the Alma to the Yalu, for reasons I cannot begin to guess and which the reviewer doesn't bother to explain. Atomic weapons, maybe? Anyway, these days war is just too horrible to bear, not like in the old days. 

Sure. Looks like jolly fun to me. Skip forward to 2:43 if you want to be really horrified. 

J. B. Himsworth brings us The Story of Cutlery, which seems right up there with natural surveys of Bolton in books that don't need to be reviewed here, but it's got lots of pictures of swords and knives, and boys will be boys. Honor Croome and Gordon King have the Livelihood of Man, the latest effort at aqn introduction to economics, which does as well, or better than most of the others. Ian Stephen's look at India and Pakistan, Horned Moon, is worth a shorter review. 

American Survey

Croome had five children, five novels, and five popular works on economics in
her 52 years, and was a staffer at The Economist. I assume when she died in 1960
it was of overwork, and she got a nice obituary in the magazine. 

"Damming up the Northwest" The Economist looks at the Eisenhower Administration's attempt to privatise hydroelectric development in the Pacific Northwest. In the Northwest this looks a lot more like retreating from hydroelectric and irrigation, and people are upset and likely to vote Democratic, which seems par for the Administration course as ideology collides with reality once again. The Hells' Canyon dam is the main proof that the policy can work, so it is pretty important when the Bonneville Power Administration is already turning down new power-intensive industry. It is possible that the Administration will turn to building as pump-priming in the recession, but also possible that it will be a victim of balanced budget enthusiasms, sectional rivalries, and the we-dare-not-spell-it-out-because-they-subscribe-too private power interests. 

American Notes

A Note that starts out as a review of the President's television address ahead of the State of the Union address turns into the latest blow-up, this one over defence contract allocations, where the South thinks that it has been slighted. The Administration is fighting with Republicans in Congress over patronage jobs for "the boys." 

"Republican Appeasement?" Just to show that the church lady lobby has no limits, Democrats have found a weak spot, and have decided that withdrawing 6 of 8 American divisions from Korea constitutes "appeasement," presumably because they should go to Indo China if not mainland China. Not that the Democrats want that --I hope! (You never know)-- but it sure makes a nice club to hammer the President with! Beef markets are flooded due to a shortage of fodder, with the price of beef down from 90 to 70 cents a pound, but profits still high due to an increase in consumption from 50 to 75ls a year. The margin has actually fallen in spite of higher wages, from 25 to 20 cents an hour, and it is not exactly clear why, although the magazine speculates about a fall in quality. The Weather Bureau is under pressure to modernise, and private meteorologists think that it needs more  money for better forecasts. Postal rates are going up.
 

The World Overseas

"Iran Tries to Catch Up" We get a fuller look at Iran's attempts to re-enter world oil markets. The Economist smugly tells them that all that carrying on means that they won't be able to sell very much or at a very high price, and serves them right! China and Russia are fighting over how much industrial equipment Russia can afford to sell to China. Italy is relying too much on American foreign aid, and Australians are excited about the possibility that there's oil out there somewhere, possibly in Western Australia, because it is large and desert-y, and that's the sort of place where oil is! Or maybe somewhere really remote, which is what Exmouth Gulf sounds like. Didn't we set off an atom bomb around there? Or within a thousand miles of there, anyway? The significance of the local elections in Nigeria is explained, and the "disillusionment" in Rumania over the new economic policy is explored. It hasn't worked out very well, and the premier and strong man, who has one of those unspellable Rumanian names, is in trouble. 

The Business World

"Debate on the Death Duty" and "Diesel Engines for the Motorist --II" take up the big articles this week. Some people want to reform death duties, and diesel cars aren't likely in the short term in Britain, and especially not in America, where cheap gas has kept diesel off the highways in commercial vehicles, too. On the other hand, there are tractors, where two-stroke engines are promising. 

Business Notes

"A relatively high attrition rate"

Dividends, a  major investment in Dunlop, Russian gold pushing up the exchange balance, and preventing a walloping over the year-end settlings of the North American lines of credit and the European Rate Payment scheme. The important thing is that sterling-denominated stock prices didn't fall! The Economist disapproves of the railway workers pay settlement and looks at the terms under which the Lancashire Steel Corporation is going to be sold back to the private sector. The public accounts deficit that Britain suddenly has under the Tories is going to be lower than last year's! Fiscal sanity is within reach! Consolidation and integration continues in the auto industry, we talk a lot about the purchase tax, and a lawsuit over the ownership of Trinidad Petroleum Development Company over in Canada. Oil supply is up, futures trading of grain is back, the outlook for wool is good, coal prices may go up if we can sort out the differential grades of coal "scientifically," savings may have "turned the corner," a pencil sketch accompanies a short Note on the "Sabre's Successor," which is not the F-100, by which I mean it will be the F-100 in America, but its supersonic speed doesn't make up for its poor low speed handling and runway requirements, which is why the Hunter and Swift's jobs are safe. Egypt gets another release of its blocked sterling deposits. I hope it is appropriately grateful! Aluminum is dearer. 

Flight, 8 January 1954

Leaders

"In the Cockpit" talks about the latest in cockpits and flight controls in a way that suggests that it is a meditation on the reported use of a fighter-style stick on the Vulcan rather than the obtrusive control wheel. James is scratching his head, since he's not sure how you get power-assist in there. 

From All Quarters reports that aircraft exports are up, but The Economist scoops us. The new ARA wind tunnels outside Bedford are completely separate from the NAE wind tunnels outside Bedford, as NAE is government, and the Aircraft Research Association is private, and if you can't trust the Tories to keep the two separate, who can you trust? Labour? That's socialism! Albert Plesman has died in a top secret airliner crash. Kidding, but KLM sure gets a lot of passes on safety. The Stress Analysis Group of the Physics Institute is looking at the heating problem in high speed flight. Flight doesn't know quite why atomics were taken out of the Ministry of Supply, either. Sir Thomas Sopwith's annual speech gets a separate page. Flight's coverage emphasises his defence against alleged delays in British aircraft development and the role of Air Services Training in Hawker Siddeley's profitability. 

James is skipped in the New Years Honours once again. 

"Production Training at Belfast" The recent announcement that the Britannia would be built at Short and Harland draws our attention to their enormous, underused factory. 

Here and There reports that a B-36 would drop an H-bomb at Eniwetok, perhaps this spring. Fairey is tether-flying its Gyrodyne. EMI has a £100,000 order for 100 REBECCA sets for the French. Heinrich Focke is in Brazil flogging a 300mph helicopter. The four-year-old LA-New York endurance/speed record by a P-80 has finally been beaten by an F-100. 

"Instrumentation by Reflection: A New Approach to the Design of Aircraft Instrument Panels" 'Tis the idle days of January, the year-end reflections are over, so it must be time for some advertorial content. This comes to us from inventor O. W. Neumark, who extends the gunsight reflector panel to put collimating lenses and mirrors in the way of all the instruments and projecting them on a display on a panel that "extends" the windshield, getting rid of the glare that sometimes makes reflector gunsights hard to use. There are further details in regards to lighting and "indirect" indications where dials are turned into linear scales so as to be easier to see.

M. J. Hardy, "First Spot Your Fish: Aircraft as an Aid to Sea Fishing: Potentialities of the Helicopter" Some whalers are taking helicopters to the Antarctic. Is this the first sign of a trend leading to vast fleets of aircraft carrier/trawlers/"factory" ships? Yes! Probably! Maybe! Probably not. The Americans use light planes to spot tunas, but other than that it is all whales, and people are starting to wonder about why we are whaling at all given whales' long lives and the general "food surplus." 

David Meager, "Producing Those Airline Pilots: A Third Contribution on a Thorny Subject" i.e. which hats do they wear, when. 

Aircraft Intelligence reports that the USN's new McDonnell XF4D Skyray and Vought F7U-3 Cutlass are very pretty. English Electric is working on a DC-3 replacement (sure, right, whatever) with two Double Mambas. The Hawker Hunter is getting a speed brake, but it is not clear what type. The J40 has been confirmed as the standard engine of the "numbers" of Vought F7U-3 Cutlasses coming off the Dallas production lines (where the company recently moved) even thought there are no J40s, because the alternatives, J34s and J35s, are either even more non-existent or too underpowered. Rumour says that Fiat has a contract for its Nene-powered G.82 trainer, developed from the Goblin-powered G.80.

"For Instrument Tickets: The Work of No.1 Air Division Instrument Rating Flight, RCAF" They supervise instrument flying training for the RCAF wing at Zweibrucken, Germany, which is overcast much of the time, so it is a challenge. 

"Rockets on the Mojave" Flight bears a tale of a magical place in a distant land, a windswept, sunbaked desert near the fairy land called "Los Angeles." It is called the Experimental Rocket Engine Test Site, and consists of several test stands with adjustable cradles and a flooding system to cool the stands and in case things get out of hand with the explosive rockets; and between them an observing station with more electronics than pretty much anything. Plus there is enough supporting services, barracks, and so on to support a 200 phone automatic telephone exchange. (Or the other way around.) It is available for contracting to your firm if it wants to develop rocket engines for the Air Force, or whoever, was founded in 1961, and was the brainstorm of Harry Clayton and Richard Gompertz. If you're wondering what the taxpayer gets out of this other than rocket motors, there are all sorts of more broadly applicable discoveries, such as titanium seatings for really, really, hot valves like the ones in rocket motors.  

"Hunting-Clan" Percival Aircraft, Hunting Aerosurveys, Aerofilm, Field Air Services, and Hunting Air Travel now all belong to the Clan Line. It is a strategic alliance and Flight goes into a bit of detail about the planes that Hunting flies (Vikings right now, but Viscounts next year), but has misplaced its Who's Who, and so unfortunately can't tell us that this means that it belongs to the Cayzer clan of Conservative MPs and Jellicoe admirals, which I am sure would be at the tip of the magazine's tongue, otherwise. 

"Discussing Production" After the fire was put out, the Southampton Conference heard some boring papers from D. Keith-Lucas of Short Brothers, G. H. Dowty, and Air Marshal Sir Owen Jones. Keith-It must have been hard to stay awake during the Lucas talk since Flight's notes consist of "deltas good." The audience was raring to go in the discussion, however, with a disagreement about the advantages of integral structures; materials (only steel for Mach 2 versus magnesium-zirconium coming on like a rocket and only being held back by the need to develop new forging and hot shotting practices);  R. E.  Mills of Bristols wanting more production planning versus L. W. Rosenthal of Short Brothers saying that modern drawings are hard enough to follow already; A. Vines of Fairey pointing out how much more capital investment there is in the industry in the States versus G. R. Edwards of Vickers saying that you haven't heard half of what the industry is up to. Dowty's paper was read by Roy Fedden and pointed out how hard close-tolerance machining is. Air Marshal Jones was on about making it easier on maintenance, as usual from the user's side. 

The Industry spares us advertorials in favour of apprentice graduations, prizes, scholarships, and such.

Correspondence

L. Williams isn't convinced that FIDO is the wrong answer to winter fogs. No, I can't see how burning a million gallons of gas could make smog worse, either! E. L. Tuff of the British Productivity Council enjoyed the "Unproductivity" article in the Christmas number, and the author, "Max Entropy, Former Professor of Misapplied Thermodynamics, University of Bogus (Mitteleuropa") replies in character. D. Smith also enjoyed the Christmas issue, while H.E. Scrope was reminded of the old days, before the war. 

Civil Aviation Viscounts are out and about, New York Airways is still telling us that regional helicopter passenger service is just around the corner. (But will they land on post office roofs?), Jan Smuts Airport has terrible service, it is said, London Airport has a new runway lighting system on Runway 10R, world air traffic is up, various new services (London-Detroit!) are announced, the US airlines had a great year; El Al has bought its fourth Constellation. and Woodrow Construction has the contract to build the east apex building in the London Airport central terminal area.

"Cooling of Rocket Motors" The Interplanetary Society heard a paper on the subject from H. Ziebland, the German scientist who designed their 100t around-the-world bomber. He explained the various cooling methods that could be used on a liquid-fuel rocket, which would burn at a higher temperature than almost other material other than "refractory material," which is the polite way of saying pottery. Various cooling schemes could supplement this, including external cooling or injected coolants. More experiment is needed.

So what has Fortune to say for itself this January? 

Fortune's Wheel explains that its economic forecast for 1953 was so darn good that the Fortune Roundup (I've been calling them Leaders) will be forecasts for 1954. The article about Italy and industry and stuff wasn't just an excuse to get some artists to go to Italy and do beautiful charcoals of, uhm, industry and stuff, but I don't believe them. The pictures are great, though, so I've cut them out and sent them on. Since Fortune is now a focussed business magazine and has got away from politics, culture, and the art, there is a long article about the Democrats, who are "Leaderless but Feisty." The reason that they are leaderless is that Stevenson swears he is undecided about '56, if you were wondering. Then there's a story about business leaders, and how they spend their time off, and the Wheel finishes up by previewing the article about "66 Million More Americans," which explains that there will be 206 million Americans by 1975.

They're the 'Schweppeshire" guys

This month's cover is by British graphic artist painters Jan Le Witt and George Him, and illustrates an article about logging giant Crown Zellerbach, which is replanting as fast as it cuts, it swears. 

Business Roundup is on at great length about the "mild but relatively prolonged readjustment for the 1953--55 period," which was entirely predictable and very mild (did we mention that?) and has been managed perfectly by the Administration and the 84th Congress. GNP is predicted to fall 3% below its 1953 level, which just means we will be back to the 1952 level (less all the babies, but that's another story), especially once defence spending stops declining and levels out. Also, the budget will come into "rough balance" and this will reduce inflationary pressure. 

We have to skip "Businessmen in the News," Labour, and Products and Processes to reach the promised Leader on "What did Research Buy," from Francis Bello, a "list of last year's breakthroughs." Hmm. Guess I misunderstood Wheel, or Bello is predicting last year, because it's easier. Bello lists Oxytocin, electrocortin, the Salk polio vaccine, families of chemicals with cancer-specific toxicity, the synthesis of sucrose and of amino acids from a recreated "primeval atmosphere," the decomposition of water into hydrogen and oxygen with sunlight and catalysts, a rust-resistant strain of oats, a "six-dimensional" theory of atomic nucleus from Abraham Pais, new understandings of the distribution of particles in the nucleus thanks to accelerator work at Stanford, a breeder reactor, a hydrogen bomb, an informal 1600mph speed record set by the Bell X-1A, the RCA colour system, the first coast-to-coast colour television broadcast, acrylonitrile, and a new insulator from GE. The impressive dominance of the biological and chemical sciences shows that there is either more room for progress there or that Bello doesn't understand electrical engineering. He also posits that it is a mistake to focus on just 1953 when you consider how much progress there has been since 1938. Well, sure, but what if it is slowing down due to throwing all the scientists on the street for thinking socialist thoughts?  

Charles J. v. Murphy gives us "Strategy Overtakes Mr. Wilson," which is about how he is fighting the Defence Department for cuts and more businesslike management while still implementing the "New Look" of atom bombs for everyone. You've heard it all before. 

Michael Helperin, "Europe's Sound Moneymen: They Have Made Our Allies Solvent Again" Hey, look, Europe's back! Who would have thought it? The important thing is to place the credit where it belongs, on "economic orthodoxy," sound money, deflation, that sort of thing. And, yes, it brought on a recession in 1952, and, yes, we're back to lower interest rates, but it isn't "cheap money," just a temporary expedient, and a sign of "the disappearance from the Bank of England of the last remnant of Keynesianism," to quote one anonymous director of same. Even European leftists are leaning right, it says here. 

Speaking of which, Duncan Norton-Taylor explores "The Leaderless, Lively, Democrats." The expectation is that the Democrats will regain the House in November but possibly not the Senate, because there are fewer vulnerable Republicans up than Democrats, but on the other hand Knowland is an idiot. Nameswise, Symington, Frank Lausche, F.D.R. Jr, Robert Wagner, Robert Meyner, James Finnegan, Foster Furcato, and Richard Neuberger are on the rise; Stevenson, Stephen Mitchell, Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Paul Douglas, Richard Russell, Harry Byrd and John Sparkman are holding steady; Kefauver, Averill Harriman, Truman, Jennen Williams, James Farley, James Byrnes, Jacob Arvey and Joseph Clark are losing ground. That's quite a list! Not losing ground is Crown Zellerbach, which owns so much of America that it is surprising that it isn't richer than it is. Hey, Justice Department? You want to have a look at that?It's not a complete waste of paper, since there's some a pictorial page of employees doing technical things at control boards and shiny modern saws. Even pulp mills have technology!

"Sixty-Six Million More Americans" Did you know that the population of the United States has grown as much in the last three-and-a-half years as the entire Thirties? That's Texas plus Nebraska! And here, not in the political article, it is necessary to spell out why that matters to a businessman. The market is bigger! (Particularly in the suburbs and in the higher income brackets where the growth is highest.) How many Americans will there be in the future? Probably 206 million in 1975 based on birthrate trends. The "dip" in the Thirties, followed by the "boom" means that there will be a "bulge" moving through the market. In other words, baby food might be big right now, but food will be huge in ten years. Most of the article is devoted to explaining and explicating its estimate, and probably doesn't need much summary beyond the information-rich page of graphs which I am also clipping out and sending you. Okay, maybe I'm a bit lazy! (It has to to with a downward movement in marriages from the high of the last decade towards numbers more like the Thirties.)

There's also an interesting box exploring the disastrous GE promotion giving 5 shares to every GE family having a baby on 15 October, which led to it giving out almost a thousand shares instead of 65, because the statisticians first completely screwed up by taking the average American fertility rate instead of the working age fertility rate in the GE pay bracket, and then because it completely missed the incentive effect, which seems odd from a capitalist corporation. The moral here isn't "sell your GE shares; there's rot at the top," it is that we can apply these lessons back to the complete failure to predict the population boom as late as the 1940s when it had already started. There were reasons to be pessimistic in the numbers, but also reasons predisposing people to underestimate future population growth. Fortune doesn't spell them out in as much detail as I'd like, probably because it doesn't have easy answers, but the GE case suggests what some of them might be. (You're actually dumber than the people you think are dumb!) Follows all those great drawings from Italy, of which I've sent you a few, and Willam H. Whyte's "How Hard do Executives Work?" Very hard, we're told. They should probably take it easy. 

"The Push to Hotter Temperatures" Things are getting hotter these days. Here's a picture of something on fire. That's three paragraphs before we mention company names, so no-one will notice this is an advertorial: Ahem. Food Machinery Corporation is building a plant to make fertiliser at higher temperatures so it will be more efficient, and AGE's new steam plant runs at higher temperatures. So will the Detroit Edison nuclear plant, and various companies are working with pottery ("refractory ceramics"). Also there are ramjets, and something called "jet chemistry." However, we need new metals, mainly stainless steels which are vulnerable to oxygen attack at high temperatures right now, to defeat creep before we can have 1500 degree steam plant.