Postblogging Technoloy, March, 1954, I: Towards an Electronic Office

R_.C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada

Dear Father:

With a month on the job I can tell you that exporting Vickers Viscounts and Rolls Royce Darts is not quite the thrill ride that wading in the "B-movie" pool was. On the other hand, I get to feel like someone who has been to law school, and I had a meeting with an unbelievably rude Australian who warmed up when I pretended to be Canadian. (It's almost true!) I hope we don't lose the sale when he learns the truth, but honestly I couldn't take any more  stories about how MacArthur personally shot his kangaroo. I have also been invited to Weybridge to see the prototype Super-Viscount so I can sell that. The hubby can't come because he's playing with a Nomad.  

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

The Economist, 6 March 1954

Leaders

We begin with two pages on the wage disputes in Britain. The Economist concedes that in an ideal world the unions would squeeze all the pay increases out of their employers that they could, and then make no resistance to the introduction of labour saving equipment, and that in a perfect world a bit of inflation due to wages rising ahead of prices catching up, would be ideal. It is only because Germany isn't inflating right now that Britain can't possibly afford pay increases. Convenient! A similarly long but ephemeral piece covers current developments in the "open prisons" experiment in a "It seems fine but what if it all goes wrong?" vein. 

"McCarthy Against the President" The Economist's habit of assuming that you already know the facts of the case and winging off on comments about what it all means is a lot more aggravating when I don't walk pass a newsstand every day. In this case, it would be an American newsstand in stead of a British one, but the same principle applies. I had to go pick up a Herald-Tribune to find out what the "Stevens affair" was. I assume that between the CBC and the Sun you're not so blessedly ignorant, so I won't go on too long about how the President has left Army Secretary Robert Stevens to defend himself against a particularly ridiculous attack from McCarthy to the effect that the Army was protecting a dangerously Communistic dentist-major, Now, the fact that the Republican leadership in Congress see McCarthy as their main hope of restoring their Congressional majority means that McCarthyites are likely to dominate Congress and check the President's "moderate" policy until McCarthy is ready to run in '56. 


"The In-and-Out in Cairo" We catch up with the ongoing power struggle between Colonel Nasser and General Naguib, after the latter was briefly removed and then restored over the weekend. Instability in Egypt, the magazine muses, is bad for business and the Suez negotiations.

From The Economist of 1854, "East-West Trade" A hundred years ago this week, war is imminent, and London is worried about its Russian trade. The Economist of 1854 points out that while a third of Russia's trade goes to Britain, only one part in 78 of british goes to Russia. Britain gets grain, timber, hemp, tallow, and other "products of a rude agriculture" from Russia, but only the grain is pressing, and the price is currently high enough to support overland transport, so the blockade and embargo won't affect the supply. The other stuff can all be got from America, so the main effect of the war will be to promote "the clearing and civilisation of the new world."  

Notes

"Laboured Defence" The White Paper on Defence for 1954--55 was covered last week, so as traditional in these letters I'm not going to talk about it (or The Economist's reaction to it very much, which boils down to "Why don't we sponge off our Allies more?"), but there is a bit that I can't avoid commenting on as not generally appreciated. Above all, there are almost a half million men in the British army right now, deployed in the equivalent of 11 divisions, almost all over seas, and only four of those in Germany. That is why there is a two year National Service term, and not even the Bevanites think that it can be reduced. They can, however, force a discussion of the cost of defence, which has been a theme for Bevan for three years now. They aren't arguing that this year's expenditures, high as they are, are unsustainable, but that the long term burden is too much. That puts the Labour front bench between their Bevanite critics and the Government, which is a bad place to be.

"Pay Packets and Big Battalions" As much as Shinwell had to weave between the unusstainability of a half-million-man army and the impossibility of cutting National Service, he made one good point, which was that  the Army needs to be paying regulars a lot more to keep them in the Service, and the Government has had to concede the point with pay increases, taxfree allowances, and an increase in officers' pensions, and also by making RAF reservists, who were getting off easy on mandatory summer manoeuvres compared to the Army, take training in civil defence. Also speaking of a half-million-man army, the magazine is ecstatic about Waruhin Itote agreeing to cooperate with the government to avoid hanging, which no doubt means that the rest of the Mau Maus are on the verge of packing it in in favour of politics, which is"ominous writing on the wall" for the settlers, who need to give in on multiracialism before it is forced on them. And it looks like the SDP is coming around to everyone on Earth except possibly The Economist and accepting a new German army without an EDC.
 

"Sir Winston Wishes" The Prime Minister explains to Parliament why the Berlin Conference wasn't a farce, but just looked that way. The new Town and Country Planning Bill recognises the failure of the 1947 bill by getting rid of the parts of the old bill that tried to prevent speculation and introduces a new way of dealing with the costs imposed by future planning restrictions. (That's when the Government pays the owner of a field something when it rules that the owner can't build a shopping plaza after all.) Speaking of regulation and private business, the bill on commercial television is going to allow the new tv broadcasters to charge licenses as well as sell advertising. 

"Old Look in Syria"  The Syrian army decided to revolt against Shishakly the same day that the Egyptian army moved against Naguib. The revolt spread rapidly around the provinces, and in Damascus the Chamber organised a vote of nonconfidence by the evening, as the Egyptians started to have second thoughts, and Shishakly fled across the Lebanese frontier, and the ousted President, Hashem el-Atassi, was restored. Turkey is getting ready for elections, which will be free, fair, and impartial. the government swears! The Economist likes the new European Economic Commission is okay with the increase in telegram rates, is worried about the underfunded teacher pension fund, and supports an inquiry into laws on  homosexuality, with the expressed hope that homosexuality would be decriminalised. It has doubts about the current arrangements for funding the British universities and proposed ways of changing them. 

"Russians Off the Land" By which is meant the push to move Russian town dwellers east to farm the "Virgin Lands" of Kazakhstan and  southern Siberia to produce much more food to support the "mushroom towns" which have sprung up to exploit the rich ore deposits. The question is where the Russians are going to find volunteers who want to go off to Siberia to build a new Soviet Union. The plan is to encourage them harder, as opposed to paying them more. I'm really not sure that will work! 

"Films, Flongs and Small Fry" Philippe Bouchard's The Child Audience, published for Unesco by the HMSO, has thoughts about popular children's literature these days. It's bad for them! Especially Superman! The Economist suggests that "educators, child psychologists, and the public-spirited producers" of high brow(?!) children's entertainment might want to look into what makes American "flongs" so popular in Europe, but the high browed have nearly as little time for The Economist as for supermen. Also from the UN comes word that £76 goes as far as £96 in Paris and £100 in London. (Copenhagen is a bargain at £66.)

Letters

J. A. Huntsworth of the Banking Information Service is upset about the recent article about how British banks are slow to adopt "mechanisation." Henry Bradsher of Louisiana is throwing a gasket over Professor D. W. R. Hertzog's defence of apartheid in South African universities, which is that the alternative is lynching, as in the U.S.A., where to quote Bradsher quoting Hertzog, "the Federal Government, ideologically blinded by the theory of equality, has been enforcing contact on the people." That's not how it is in the Southern U.S. at all (it's not all sweetness and light, but the lynching days are over), and of course it wouldn't be, because the problem of accommodating a Coloured minority is completely different from one of imposing white minority rule. Whatever solution South Africans work out for that, making up stories about America isn't helping. Edward Osborn points out that since daily race mixing is inevitable in South Africa, what Professor Hertzog must mean is academic mixing, and as far as Edward could tell when he was there, that part was fine. 

Books

Peter Calvocoressi reviews 1951 in Survey of International Affairs, 1951, which somehow also has Denise Follior as editor. It's okay (especially about the Mediterranean, which was in reality much more important than boring old Korea, but not anti-communist enough. Nancy Mitford has a life of Madame Pompadour. If you're waiting for a punchline now, just go on to the next review, because this is a case where art can't improve on nature. A. C. L. Day's The Future of Sterling is not an academic treatise, but is too academic, and inadvertently helps explain why people think economics is a  muddled science these days. The reviewer hated Maurice Ashley's Cromwell's Generals,and isn't any too fond of Cromwell, either. Gaetano Salvenini explains The French Revolution to us. Did you know that there is an entire French history journal about the revolution? There's a joke about how the four French historical periodicals are Journal of the North , Journal of the South, Journal of the Revolution, and Journal of Everything Else. It's a funnier joke if you translate French a lot, but the point is that writing a single book about the French Revolution is  a very precious thing to do, and this one is a new edition of a 1907 book, so even more you'd think that time has passed it by, and, guess what, the reviewer says, it has! At least the lads down at the pulp mill have  a job. Cary Towers Grayson has Austria's International Partition, 1938--1953. This is a collection of documents, but the reviewer's complaint is that there are too many mistakes in the editorial comment around the documents, which strikes me as unfair. I know, I know, I am a very mean reviewer of reviews!

American Survey

"Which Way to Prosperity?" Americans, I read here, are worried about the Eisenhower slump. No kidding! As Professor Alvin Hansen said to the Joint Congressional Committee on the Economic Report, the worry is that the Administration is going to settle for a series of "second best years," that the Administration will prevent a slump, but won't commit to "maximum employment, production, and purchasing power." There is a danger of the United States "moving on to a flat plateau and eventually, after some years, finding itself in a depression engendered by stagnation." The Administration is suspected of having at best a "trickle down" theory of how its tax cuts will benefit the American public, and no-one believes that tax relief for business will actually "trickle down." On the other hand, production does need to expand to satisfy a rising population. 

"Men from the FBI" Americans have never looked kindly on the police, but the FBI has been an exception over the last twenty years, but now people are complaining about excessive security vettings, most recently for doctors going abroad to the annual WHO conference. (And The Economist points out that the various problems people have with the FBI have a great deal to do with Hoover's use of it to prevent the creation of a national police force, which Hoover thinks would be a bad idea, but is that really true?) 

American Notes

"Free Puerto Rico" The Free Puerto Rico shooting is buried way down here because honestly it's not big news when five Congressmen are shot on the House floor by terrorists in the public gallery. Happens all the time! The Economist explains what has the Puerto Ricans so upset. The attack was also timed to the discussion of "colonialism" at the Caracas OAS conference, where the United States was hoping to confine discussion to anti-communism, and Mr. Dulles is having exercise all  his diplomatic(!) skill to keep the twenty national delegations focussed on the threat from the left while ignoring various right wing dictatorships, like the host country. Treasury Department figures show that US private investment in South America is up, so what do they have to complain about, to which Latin Americans point out that it is all in raw material extraction, and those prices fluctuate, and what they really need is price guarantees, and that "Mr. Dulles cannot provide." 

"Victory for the Constitution" The Economist is happy about the defeat of the ridiculous Bricker Amendment, but upset that it took a Democratic bloc to stop it, leaving the prospects of Republicans rallying around the President more distant than ever, and leading to a discussion of Senator Langer's disruption of the confirmation hearings for Chief Justice Warren with "silly and unsubstantiated charges," after which he lined up with the majority to vote to confirm, and then he and Senator Knowland joined a in laugh about the notion of revisiting seniority rules so that people like "Wild Bill" Langer are kept off important committees, because no-one in the Senate is going to vote against seniority! The President's foot is "half down" on McCarthy after his press conference this week, Dulles had to appear in Congress to be abused about being some kind of "Chamberlain of Asia" for contemplating talks with the Viet Minh between Berlin and Caracas, and it looks like he might be about to crack. 


It might not be true that only 4 refugees have been admitted into the U. S. under last summer's emergency legislation, but it is true that the 15,000 total isn't likely to be met. Poland's three US consulates have been ordered closed because they are a bunch of Communists. Robert Young's attempt to take over the New York Central proceeds. 
   

The World Overseas

"Spears against Egypt" The Khartoum riot that greeted General Naguib gets a bit more attention, as it makes it clear that the National Unity Party's electoral victory has not "prepared the way for the return of Egypt" at all. Did you know that the leader of the main opposition party is the son of the current Mahdi? I didn't! Stagnant production is keeping the United States of Europe. We get a review of the current state of affairs with respect to a German army, and check in with the Soviet Union a year after Stalin. It is odd that Beria took the lead in the reformist group that dismantled the old police state and then became the first victim of the new "collectivist leadership." Except for the revival of Army influence, it isn't at all clear what happened. Denmark's economy is in difficulties because of the bulge in population growth during the war years which must now be helped through adolescence, and might be severely affected by a world recession. Cyprus, on the other hand, is prospering under benevolent British rule. 

The Business World

The Budget shows an increase in spending over last year, which is most depressing after all the cuts, but might indicate accounting problems. We also get an overview of labour changes over three years of rearmament. The British labour force continues to grow, and the engineering sector h as added 200,000, but there are still grave shortages of skilled labour. It is hoped that it will continue to grow over the next few years, as labour moves from defence to consumer goods like radios, televisions and cars. 

Hugh Gaitskell is on about how dividends are too high. Boo! Dollar earnings continue to fall with declining American imports due to the recession there. Steel has so far absorbed rising freight rates without anything more than premiums on speciality steels. The government expects another £40 in US orders for British arms, enough for 100 bombers or 400 fighters and offered in hopes of countering the defence stretchout and reaching the originally planned RAF strength in Europe. Aside from financial news, we hear about planning for atomic power beginning with the plant being built in Cumberland, wool consumption is down, the Ministry of Supply is worried about delays in deliveries of the new supersonic fighter in light of delays in Hunter and Swift deliveries, but The Economist thinks that ordering 20 pre-production aircraft is a uneconomical and unnecessary. Russian oil exports are up and are displacing American dollar-denominated exports, which is a good thing, but future growth in Russian exports might be limited by the aging facilities built to accommodate them in the Twenties. Wool consumption is down, Lancashire definitely will definitely buy more US cotton when imports are freed in November at the expense of the Brazilian suppliers of last year's jets-for-raw-materials deal. U.S. cotton is cheaper. However, it will not use the "aid cotton" offered to Britain at bargain prices to reduce the US cotton surplus, because restrictions on its sale are too rigid, which means that Britain will be spending dollars for cotton it could have bought for sterline. Woolwich Arsenal is a "white elephant" that needs "slimming," and will give up its filling plant, while the gun and ammunition factories will be amalgamated. A hundred acres at the north end of the Arsenal will be sold to the London County Council, and the marsh at its bottom will be reclaimed. The filling plant has to be cleared and decontaminated, so it is not on the real estate market, but the Ministry hopes that once all the land is sold and put under private factories, employment at the Arsenal site will exceed the current 14,000. Brick and cement manufacturers are doing so well with the housing boom that they are all offering dividends. 

Flight, 5 March 19554

Leaders

Flight went to the Aerodrome Owners' Association annual dinner and got an earful of complaints to the effect that their vital role in British aviation is being neglected due to them not getting enough money. 

From All Quarters reports on the new plans for speeding aircraft production that we've also heard about from The Economist. The head of Aeroflot is touring Europe seeing the sights and giving speeches on the brave new day of East-West commercial flying. Sir Raymond Quilter has joined the board of Follands, and the Boeing 707 has been revealed. A brief writeup says that it will weigh 190,000lbs all up, and that if it had the range to make it across the Atlantic it would offer 5hour service eastbound, eight hours westward. 

"Safety in the Air: Sir Vernon Brown's Lecture Before the Royal Society of Arts" The late Chief Inspector of Accidents says that flying is much safer these days and burbles on at some length.

"The Navy and Army Estimates" Last week Flight discussed the Statement on Defence and the Memorandum on the Estimates, and we didn't miss much. This week some more highlights. The Navy now recognises the carrier as the modern capital ship and has 11 in service and will complete three more this year, the Eagle's 37,000 ton sister ship, Ark Royal, and the 20,000t Bulwark and Centaur. New expenses for the Army include atomic artillery and radiation detection equipment. 

Here and There reports that some Canberras have been sent down to Eniwetok for high altitude atmosphere sampling after the bombs go off. The Ministry of Defence estimates that the Soviets have 23,000 aircraft. Senators Bridges and Symington will be at various British factories this week to see how MSDAP money is spent. Kawasaki is joining up with Lockheed to produce the T-33 trainer and F-94 all-weather fighter and a picture of the YF-102 shows up on the page, but is outshadowed by another bombshell in the next column. 
. 

"The Big Flask" Flight visits Vickers-Armstrong Weybridge to check in with high altitude research, which they do in a giant thermos, which will keep your chicken soup and hot chocolate lukewarm at 60,000 feet FOR SCIENCE!!! They are shown around by a tour guide named "Mr. Boorer."  He explains about giant refrigeration, pumps, fans. Blackburn's new stretch-forming equipment is very economical. Pye has won the contract for VHF radios for the crash vehicles at British airports. 

W. P. Bowles, "The Throttle Benders, No. 5"  This is the latest installment of a continuing series on that fabulous team of British air racers called the "Throttle Benders," who I guess you have to bear in mind that Flight is the official journal of the R Ae.C. so there has to be some sporting coverage, and the gliders are all busy staying out of winter weather right now. 

Aircraft Intelligence reports that V.1000s are being considered by various buyers with both by--pass Conways and regular jet engines. The prototype V.1000 will fly in 1955 and is regarded as a  near-lock for Transport Command's new high capacity transport. Canadair's ideas about the Britannia it will build under license are developing rapidly. It will have Turbo-compound engines for long range at low altitudes. Cessna is forming a helicopter division, the RCAF has some weather Meteors, SNCASE will build the Sea Venom, and work on the SNCASO fighter continues. 

"Fifteen Years Service" The Spitfire gets a two-picture pictorial on the occasion of its retirement from active service. Flight is jealous of all of The Engineer's locomotive-riding travelogue space-fillers, so it pays Robert Blackburn to fly to Frankfurt and Berlin on a Pan-Am Clipper and write enough about it to fill the space between the pictures. 

"Gas Turbine Manufacture: Aviation Examples in Production Engineer's Lecture in Derby" Frank Norris' "Efficient Utilisation of Material" is given a new title because this is a precis, and, more importantly, because no-one would have read it otherwise. It's still about how you make jet turbines while grinding, filing, reacting, cutting and otherwise getting rid of the least amount of stuff you had to pay for. The average cost of a pound of materials for the Avon is twice that of a Merlin 724, so it's important. It has required lots of new and better machine tools, but with a varying emphasis on mass production as between America and Britain.

Correspondence

"Senrab" and H. J. Goodwin recall the old days, before the war. B. A. Murphy answers "A Canadian Correspondent" by over-egging the cake, says the Editor. Frank A. B. Preston, the General Manager of Glenrothes Development Corporation, points out that Glenrothes New Town will have a heliport, and how do you backwards folks who haven't bought a lot in Glenrothes like that? The Industry gives the floor to British Thomson Houston to tell us about their precision speed indicator for measuring, for example, the turnover speed of jet turbines on the testbench. Measuring 10,000rpm is hard! Civil Aviation reports an agreement to keep the Atlantic weather ship fleet at sea, the director-general of IATA has appealed for a relaxation of the currency control arrangements which are limiting the number of Atlantic air passengers. 

Flight, 12 March 1954

Leaders

"Accelerated Development and Delivery" Flight kicks the tyres of the new prototype procurement policy that may or may not fix the problem. In a separate Leader it asks that the kick-in-the-pants approach be extended to helicopters. 

From All Quarters reports the Government speeches in the Air Power Debate, which tell us that MSDAP money will pay for more fighters and bombers next year, that the first Valiants will be delivered to squadron service next  year, that radar defences will have double the fighter-direction capacity when current upgrades are complete, that improved and upgraded Shackletons will soon be delivered, and Hunters and Swifts, which will be armed with 4 30mm guns each. The Government reiterates that it has no requirement for the Gnat. Aries IV is back from its latest series of Arctic flights. Sperry Duplex Flight Control System will reduce error by having duplicated gyros and indicators. Glenn Evan's talk on "Building the Martin Canberra," given to the SAE in Washington, is well worth a summary because of the light it sheds on American production practices. 

Civil Aviation reports on the Civil Aviation Debate, ongoing Comet salvage operations, new Comet services, a Viet Minh sabotage attack on Hanoi airport that caused £2 million in damages and which will have a serious impact on air support of anti-rebel forces. I'm skipping Here and There, which h as nothing interesting this week; speaking of which, it is on to the "Special Helicopter Issue" content! The guide to 35 helicopters includes seventeen that don't exist, or are only prototypes with no hope of production. It is fairly easy to tell the difference between a helicopter which exists, because it is small, has a rotor on top and one on the tail, and does boring jobs like, at best, ferrying troops and mountain guns around the jungle, and ones that don't which look like they belong on the front cover of Analog. (It's a science fiction magazine. And that's a lie. Marilyn Monroe belongs on the cover of Analog, just in a metal swim suit instead of a flight suit.) Maybe the Gyrodyne will exist today and maybe it will be scuppered by the noise. Otherwise, it's still as much science fiction as the "helicopter in every garage" of 1945. There's certainly room for new methods of power delivery to the rotor, and for different ways of varying rotor pitch, and for gas turbine engines, but there's nothing you can do about airspeed. Okay, those schemes for swivelling the rotors have potential, but they're so  much harder to achieve in practice than in daydreams that they might be a generation away. 

Correspondence has "Novice" writing in with a funny poem about aircraft carriers. J. M. Bruce wants to argue with Americans about what to call things. (They should be "canted decks," not "angled decks.") Donald A. S. MacKay wants to share some extraordinarily boring memories of the old days, before the war, specifically the manufacturer's designations for the first 20 Sopwiths, which proves something about how things were done in those days.

 

The Economist, 13 March 1954

Leaders

"Risks in Germany" German rearmament is at risk somehow. Or it is a risk. 

"Television Aunt" We finally know what's in the Television Bill, and what is in it is the Independent Television Authority, which might be too prim and proper to be a proper television network but also too crass and private to save the nation from the dangers of television. Only time will tell if either or both of these worries come true. Djakarta is being nice to prospective foreign investors, but not nice enough, so they don't get any cake! And now that the price of rubber is falling, they really need cake. Oh, whatever will they do? The twelve open prisons have saved the taxpayer lots of money and have yet to flood the countryside with escaped prisoners, but people still don't like them because they think that the convicts have it too easy. The Economist waves an admonitory finger. They are not for the "sort of person who likes to winter in his favourite jail," because that sort of person isn't sent there. 

Notes

Are you as tired of not reading about the Berlin Conference as we are of randomly typing words and putting them under a clever title that includes the word "Berlin"? Don't worry, it will all be over soon and we can move on to something equally ephemeral. 

"A Chance for Kenya?" Oliver Lyttleton has put his foot down! He has made the most important sort of changes: constitutional changes! Kenya is now to be ruled by a War Council consisting of the Governor-General, the Commander-in-Chief, and an "unofficial member," presumably the settler leader, Michael Blundell; it will be over a Council of Ministers consisting of 6 officials, 3 Europeans, 2 Asians, and an African plus two nominated delegates, over an Executive Council, which already exists but will be enlarged with another African and an Arab, and the also-already existing Legislative Council, which will not be changed except in that it will be the bottom tier in four levels of government. And they'll all have to express confidence in the governor and racial harmony or the Colonial Secretary will get just so mad at them! Egypt is back to the way it was before last week's attempted coup, only it's really not. Iranians are rioting because they still can't believe that they aren't allowed to sell their oil as they choose. Iraq is having a cabinet shuffle because the constitution says that ministers have to be in parliament, and besides the government needs to get a land tax and land redistribution bill through the legislature, which is proving to be difficult what with the members all being landlords; and also because everyone is waiting for Lord Salter to come out and tell them how to spend their oil money. People are still talking about equal pay for female civil servants, which is fine, The Economist says, but would cost too much. Bonsor versus the Musicians' Union was a great court case that could have really stuck it to the unions, which would be great, because the rules in question have applied since 1915, so changing them would be progress, and progress is good.  Too bad Bonsor died and the case is moot. Someone should bring him back from the dead, or something. Pay raises are still bad! The French Communist Party is having infighting. The Bulgarian Communist Party is having infighting. It looks like the OAS is going to adopt some robust anti-colonialist resolutions. After General Peron sent them a note about the Falkland Islands and Antarctica, the Guianas and British Honduras were put on the agenda, too. The Economist is so very disappointed. The Essex development plan is being swamped in emotional objections to building anything anywhere on farmland. The Milk Marketing Board takes over from the Ministry of Food next week and will have to deal with the milk surplus. Ireland is going to have an election after two byelections went to the opposition and wiped out de Valera's  majority. French talk about negotiations in Indo-China have gone as far as arguing over who they will negotiate with. Will it be Bao Dai? Mao Tse-tung? Ho Chi Minh as some outside chance? While there is no doubt that the expeditionary corps can weather the current Viet Minh offensive, the Bao Dai government cannot govern, so there must be negotiations. Mendes-France wants to sit down directly with Ho, while Premier Laniel wants a general sit down in Geneva.  The Finnish election hasn't changed anything. Hopefully a new term of minority government under Premier Tuomioja will be as successful as the last in "tackling Finland's . . . economic problems." Football betting is controversial in England now! The Economist has reservations about William Alexander's latest proposed educational reform. 

Chen Chen has a much better but less lively skate from later in her career on Youtube. Anyway, Levan Polka, Finland. It's relevant! Which is another way of saying that I was looking for an excuse to point out that I linked to the Daily Express for a story about the Pool Betting Bill of 1954.

Letters

 "Statistician" writes to point out that the "stamp it out" school of homosexuality law activism really needs to look at the numbers and understand just how many people they propose to stamp on. E. R. Roper Power and S. S. Westover have opinions about whether the British banks are modernising properly or not. Sheila T. Van Der Horst writes from Capetown to assure Professor Hertzog that it is not just foreigners criticising apartheid, on practical as well as moral grounds, since creating separate higher education facilities for non-whites in South Africa, which already has too many universities, would be economically disastrous. John Seekings writes to point out that Airwork really is being given an economically significant monopoly on North Atlantic air cargo. Henry Maddick of the University of Birmingham has opinons about the new city government in Coventry. 

Books

The Economist has decided to review Christopher Lloyd's The Nation and the Navy the week of the debate on the Naval Estimates for no reason I can see, since even the magazine thinks that the best place for the book is in a high school library. (Not that Britain has high school libraries, although Bill Alexander would like to fix that.) G. C. Allan and A. G. Donnithorne have Western Enterprise in Far Eastern Economic Development proves that western capital aren't guilty of exploiting China because the Chinese made foreign capital exploit China. Henry Pelling's The Origins of the Labour Party, which is pretty good. Andre Philip's L'Europe et sa place dans l'economie internationale gets a very long review that concludes that the US cannot be the international financial capital in the same way that Britain was in the Nineteenth Century because Americans don't invest enough overseas, and the alternative is internationalism in Europe and in the Commonwealth. Patrick Crttwell's The Shakespearean Movement is an important piece of literary history rooted in a study of the sonnets, for those who care, which is unlikely to be many readers, but sometimes you have to amuse  yourself. Norman Longmate's Oxford Triumphant is a dumb book by a silly young man.

American Survey

"The McCarthy Drama" It is now clear that Secretary Stevens was not the victim of the Administration undercutting him after coolly deciding that the Peress case wasn't a strong enough one to stand up to McCarthy on. It was the result of everyone stampeding for cover after the Army Secretary decided to stand up to McCarthy. The Peress case was perfectly sound; it was just that the President decided not to back up Stevens. So now it us up to the President to stop McCarthy from doing what he has already done to State (take over appointments under the pretext of security), which is why his press conference was such a lead balloon. Instead the real challenge came from Foster Dulles, who removed McCarthy's deputy at State from responsibility for appointments, and then ran for Caracas to burnish his anti-communist credentials there by pushing Guatemala around. The difference is that Dulles has given up on the hope of being popular with the Republican right, because no Secretary of State can please them, and the President hasn't. Now it looks as though instead of losing right wing votes, the Republicans stand to lose their left and centre. Follows an extended discussion of the new wool subsidy that would have been a lot more interesting before we got out of sheep. 

American Notes

The Ways and Means Committee is likely to cost the Administration much more than a billion dollars in tax relief. The Battle Act provisions against trading with the East Bloc are not likely to cut off  military aid to five key European allies are not likely to be allowed to take effect, but the cost of cuts to aid at a time when overall American aid is falling are not small. While John Kane has been clear that he resigned as special assistant to the Secretary of Defence because the Administration did not back up Secretary Stevens, Roger Kyes has been less forthcoming about .his resignation, which frees the press to theorise that the Administration's plan to put the "best brains in business" in charge of Defence, is not working out well. Everyone is upset about the one day strike on the New York waterfront. The teamsters are open to the sea transport of fully-laden trailers for tractor-trailers opens the way for "piggy back" transport by rail on new flatcars that can take two trailers each, which could be good for the railways and the truck drivers.  President Eisenhower's appointment of Ernest Wilkins as Assistant Secretary of Labour makes him the highest place Coloured man in any Administration. (Yes, not counting "passers," Uncle George.) 

The World Overseas

Gree's devaluation shows that the country is willing to take harsh measures to put its economy in order. French worker-priests (Catholic priests who go to work in the factories to reach the working class) is having unexpected consequences, as working priests go Communist rather than Communists going Catholic. Hmm. HMM! The Vatican's solution is to put them on short weeks. We get an update on Chinese agricultural reform, which is proceeding very slowly, Australia is cutting its import restrictions, Asia is showing a rice surplus (imagine that given the state of things just after the war!) and The Economist helps ease concerns about the European Defence Community with a handy catechism of concerns about the EDC. No, there will not be a GErman general staff. Yes, Allied forces will remain in Germany.

The Business World

By Geni - Photo by user:geni, CC BY-SA 4.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19898731

"The Electronic Abacus" "Opinion is for the moment divided on he place of electronic calculating machines in ordinary business." Just a year ago it would have been absurd to say that an electronic brain could handle a payroll calculation, but for the last month the bakery staff of J. Lyons have been paid through a full-sized electronic computer operating at Cadby Hall, designed and built by the firm, because it could find nothing for the job on the market. "Is this the first step in an accounting revolution or merely an interesting and expensive experiment?"Some say electronics have no place in business, some say they might have a minor role, but at J. Lyons they think that a revolution is at hand, with a single "electronic office" handling all the current punch card work. Computers, you see, count units in "millionths of a second" and pulses travel "through labyrinthine circuits at the speed of light." The computer will "test one pattern of impulses against another, to decide what kind of operation needs to be carried out on any given piece of data." Lyons has 33,000 employees, and up to 20 items might be added or deducted to their pay packets to determine their final pay. 

This might seem like under-employment of a computer's capabilities, but just as computers are being used to do mathematical calculations which cannot be done by non-computers (just last time round we were looking at "numerical analysis!"), and Lyons has 230 tea shops carrying a "wide range of perishable stocks." Imagine if stock control and ordering could be handled by a computer! Banks, too, have a wide range of calculations to do. In fact, the limits might be on the computer side, since even the largest device has only 4000 to 5000 tubes, and since these have a habit of failing, it is best to have at least two computers on the job, at an installed cost, says Ferranti, of £100,000 each. Office machines might be expensive, but they aren't that expensive! These include simpler electronic calculators for doing simple sums, which might cost £5000, but speed office work by minding the pence and shillings.  "Programmable" calculators would be even handier, but might cost £25,000 each, and engineers really aren't convinced that they are worth it, making an all-purpose general electronic computer more attractive, expensive or not. If more companies follow J. Lyons' lead, Ferranti, which has sold eight computers to government and industry, will be interested; but so will English Electric, Elliott Brothers, British Tabulating, and possibly Lyons, which has formed its own Lyons Electronic Office. (There's also a box explainer about how computers work that I will spare you as it lacks the kind of pretty pictures Fortune would put in it.) 

We then take a long look at the Housing Repairs and Rents Bill. 

Business Notes

User: Charles01; Wiki attribution tag not parsing.

Finance! Commodities up (in spite of the American recession); investment risks in South America; exports are down in February; the Airwork ("competition in the Sky") Debate; the Standard/Rover merger; Japan needs markets or Japan will go Red; Charles Clore is taking over everything! Electronic appliances are in a stage of "rapid growth" in the British kitchen. And Standard Motors will offer a diesel version of the Vanguard salon car in the fall. 

I am not for a second personally offended that after Fortune made such a big deal of narrowing its focus to business and getting rid of the arts and letter back pages along with all the other "non-business" stuff, that the rest of it has snuck back into the magazine with no reviews or essays in sight. No, I am too big a woman for that. I am confident in the intellectual superiority of the liberal arts and have no intention of rubbing Fortune's hypocrisy in its face, so that isn't the reason that I've clipped and glued the "California from the air" pictorial through this number of the newsletter. It must be that I am nostalgic for the Golden State! 

So what else has Fortune to say for itself this month? Fortune's Wheel explains how the Editor thinks you should read the magazine. It's not as patronising as it sounds, but it's not something I'd run if I were the Editor. It's also completely useless for anyone looking for a summary of the March '54 number of Fortune. Business Roundup says that there is going to be a quick pick-up in the economy in the third quarter, but a record peacetime deficit.  Stocks may or may not continue to rise, since they are buoyed by rising prices for bonds and not falling corporate profits; machinery orders will soon start to rise again. Businessmen in the News must have noticed how boring the personal gossip is, because once again the second page features businessmen who actually do things. Which isn't to say that the point of the column isn't still to butter up Henry Luce's friends, which we get back to on the third page of the feature. 

Leaders begin with yet more exhortations to "crack the foreign market," which is somehow paired with an aerial of the recently completed Detroit downtown freeway interchange. Shorter editorial content includes advice to Republicans to answer Democrats who tell them every time the Republicans get in they start a recession with the bulletproof rejoinder that "stuff happens." After all, Americans don't understand economics, anyway! G. M. Giannini is going to get into computers because it sees a market for cheap computers for "plodding" work that sell for under a grand. Advertising agency Ruthrauff and Ryan is looking at hypnotic ads, by which is meant ads which are analysed by hypnotising customers who have seen them, and not the other thing. (The mind-control ads thing.) Howard Hughes is still a pain in the posterior. 

"Benson's High Flyer" Secretary Benson is sure that he can make his no-more-subsidies-well-okay-some-subsidies farm plan work. 

Fortune is politely skeptical. 

"Twilight of American Woolen" is about how the old woolen company might come back from the brink of bankruptcy if it can just find something to do with its buildings, possibly including making woollens in them, my interest wanes but there's an evocative picture of a neighbourhood I wanted to share. Fortune also has a report on the home furnishings business, which is apparently somehow in trouble in spite of inventing dozens of new appliances and pushing them into the home in an unending stream for ten straight years. It might, however, be more of an illusion than reality, as the industry needs a shakeout of the more dubious players, and the home furnishing market plateaus with rising income, unlike autos, where you can always just sell a better car. (Hmm.) 

"How Are We Fixed For Water?" Everyone says that we have an incipient water shortage. They're wrong. There are lots of problems, but the water's there. Except possibly in southern California and Texas. 

Pollution needs to be cleaned up, and various places need more drinking water, notably New York but not Los Angeles. About $7.5 billion in investment is needed. Industrial expenditure on water supplies has simply not been a significant item on the bottom line.