Postblogging Technology, March 1954, I: Hard Money, Hard Plastics, Hard Men

R_.C_.,

Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada




Dear Father:

Here in London the winter of our discontent is rushing to an end. The Economist is at its wit's end trying to portray Rab Butler as some kind of genius after income tax cuts had to be followed by a 4.5% bank rate, and is worried about a Labour resurgence ahead of the election that can't now be too far away. The thought here is that Churchill can't possibly go on any longer, as his senility is leading to public blundering about in diplomacy after we came far too close to a war over Formosa. Whoever replaces him, and it now looks much more likely to be Eden than Butler, will have to call a general election. The tortuous theory that Bevan has staged his little revolt to undermine Labour (and Hugh Gaitskell's) prospects seems a bit conspiratorial, but it might be true. 

Thais have discreetly pointed out how insulting the dinky
American exhibit at the recent Bangkok Trades Fair was. 

If you're wondering how I got so much more political of late, it's because I've been pricing homes in Berkeley and wondering how we can afford them. It is time for our little Air Force family to stop wandering, since I have to settle down somewhere and practice once I join the California bar, and I have actually had a very intriguing response to some feelers I have put out. It turns out that having a personal connection with Bill and David is very attractive in some circles!  James and the Air Force have to decide whether they will part ways some time in the next ten years, and we certainly do not want to drag James-James and little Lizzy through one nursery school after another! Bill and David will certainly have a big enough company to require a Vice-President In Charge of Something Indefinitely Important by 1965. and in a perfect world  he'll be married to one of the company's patent lawyers. 

So, you see, some people are making plans, even with Korea II, 1948 War II, or even WWIII upon us!

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

The memorial to the IDF paratrooper losses in the 28 February 1955  OPERATION BLACK ARROW
is sited between Kibbutz Mefsalim and the fortified border of the Gaza Strip. Mefsalim's armed security
was successful in holding off attackers on 9 October.

The Economist, 5 March 1955

Leaders

We missed coverage of the 1955 Defence White 
Paper last week. 

"Nipped in the Bud" The news isn't that Britain is back to a negative balance of trade since January, but that the Government has jumped into action to fix the problem and Rab Butler is The Economist's new hero for pushing the Bank rate up to 4.5% to strengthen sterling. The British people haven't been punished enough for their "over-consumption," but the magazine is now confident that Butler is the man to do it if the numbers don't turn around right quick. On the other hand, Europe isn't coming to an end as everyone expected due to the list of insurmountable problems from last month and not the list of insurmountable problems from last year or last decade. I hate to be facetious about this and I will wear egg on my face the day that Europe actually does collapse, but it gets a bit wearying to read that France has a government after all and that neo-Nazis and socialists didn't storm the Bundestag over the latest Saar compromise and that the Communists still haven't taken over Italy. At least Russia is still Communist!The London fine art market then gets a three page Leader, as prices are up and The Economist would like to be able to tell you whether that means that you should or shouldn't invest in the market, but it can't do that honestly, so it waffles around listing surprising prices for awhile instead. Also maybe Japan is going to go nationalist and neutral instead of Communist and neutral. 

Notes of the Week

"Hideous Epoch" Looking back on the debate over the defence estimates, it is hard to understand this world of H-bombs. Is there really still a possibility of a war with Russia that isn't just an exercise in mutual annihilation, and Mr. Bevan leading 57 Labour MPs to abstain from the vote to accept the White Paper on the grounds that it doesn't specify the circumstances in which the H-bomb shows that Bevan would rather have Labour in opposition for the  next five years than sit at the margins of a Labour government that wins on the strength of the economic bust that follows from a 4.5% Bank rate.  He is also in trouble for calling for talks with the Russians "at the highest level," which is bad for reasons that either don't need to be explained or need to be explained down at the bottom of the Note after my fragile attention has given way. In Southeast Asia, says The Economist, there is a growing sense amongst the locals that the American programme for defeating the communist offensive against the old colonial empires to replace them with an American colonial empire, and they are not impressed. Malenkov has been demoted again. What happens  next? The Economist is beside itself with glee that the Tories have positioned themselves as being more anti-monopoly than Labour, which is also ashamedly close to the toffs of the Country Landowners' Association because the CLA wants more money for farmers and Labour wants the LCC to roll back house rate increases and these are actually the same thing. 

The failure of the winter rains in Tunisia is leading to the traditional south-to-north migration and "hungry roamers" raiding bakeries and grain stores. Tens of thousands of farmers, including French, are facing disaster, livestock is being slaughtered in the south, and locusts are making inroads. The fear is that the nationalists will oust Ben Ammar's government with the argument that Tunisia needs a major land reform that will involve encroaching on religious property and hence a revision of the "Moslem system of land tenure," and that only an all-Tunisian government could see something so drastic through. 

A Russian proposal to invite delegations of MPs speak to address their parliament is actually a sinister ploy. The Economist sympathises with Franco, who is trying to persuade his followers to accept the return of the monarchy and patronising treatment from, it seems, the Americans as well as The Economist. (Spanish contractors "prefer sixteen mules to a bulldozer.") Britain is still short of teachers and nurses, and will now pay teachers more, but not nurses. The Daily Worker correspondents who went into the North Korean POW camps and maintained contact between British POWs and their loved ones, are now in trouble for being Communists. 

"Recklessness at Gaza" "Whoever fired the first shot near Gaza last Monday, the Israel army was either out of control or else obeying orders that its superiors had no business to give when it blew up one third of the Gaza water supply and mined a road inside the Gaza strip." Israelis are upset about the seizure of Bat Galim, the execution of two Jews in Cairo on charges of espionage, and cross-border raids from Gaza. Israeli civilians may feel better after the retaliations, but everyone else feels worse. There are still 65,000 Jews living in Egypt, and the refugee camps in Gaza, which hold 200,000 people, saw rioting on Tuesday and Wednesday calling for "arms not bread." 

"High Flats and Tall Costs" The Economist went to the recent conference on tall flats by at the Royal Institute of Architects and heard a paper from Dr. J. C. Weston of the Building Research Station to the effect that the cost per square foot exclusive of access space rises from 32s for a two-story house to between 55 and 80s or even more for six to twelve story buildings. Thus the cost and economic rent of a two-bedroom flat is higher than that for a house. London County Council wants "mixed housing" schemes including tall flats, maisonettes and terrace housing, but low rise housing is preferred by tenants as well as cheaper and existing developments have too little of it to satisfy demand, typically less than 10% of units in the developments. A discussion of issues in the progress of legal aid reform follows, than The Economist gives us an old man's rant about how much it hates "the mid-century fashion in shortening cumbrous titles not merely into groups of initials but pronounceable words," occasioned by proposals to turn "Gatt" into the "OTC." Then it lists all the other ones like ecafe, ecla, cocomm, and so on, and makes bad jokes about them so that they will be ashamed and go away. The King of Cambodia has abdicated, but he is young and silly and won't go away and neither will the Communists. Average wages are up and The Economist is tired of reporting on the French crisis so it tries ginning something up about Schleswig. Remember them? 

From The Economist of 1855 comes evidence that James Wilson is about to hit on the classic magazine trick of writing about something so boring that he can get away with just writing "rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb" in the middle third of the article, in this case, "Reforming the Civil Service." He's against it by the way, because it would lead to the country being run by smart people instead of businessmen like him. (Ronnie only paraphrases!)

Letters

T. Balogh tells everyone to stop worrying about Asian debt and start worrying about Asian investment rates. India's, at only 7%, is not high enough to keep up with population growth, although China's 8% is more respectable. C. Carpenter and M. Harris write on the magazine's support of price maintenance. J. Spottiswode explains why the "cigar-shaped" fallout distribution map in the 29 February issue is not realistic due to variable winds and the need for allowances for personal protective measures. W. A. L. Coulborn writes with a correction from Oglethorpe University in Georgia, and M. Le Nan simply has a correction. 

Books

The Secret Diary of Harold I. Ickes is out in its first two volumes bringing Ickes' interpretation to us in great detail along with a lot of gossip. The reviewer begins with an odd sequitur about how if the members of the Roosevelt Administration actually were "the Marxists their professional critics call them," they could not have been more concerned with their place in history, and ends by asking how American government can function at all given the picture of it in the diary. John Carswell's The Good Old Cause is a thrilling account of three Whig politicians of the mid-Eighteenth Century who finally get more attention than they already had, which is a lot, and which now might be enough attention. Unlikely! Who doesn't want to read more about "Charles James Fox"? Was he ever embarrassed about jokes about his last name? Inquiring minds want to know! I want to know! Eric Roll's The History of Economic Thought, 3rd edition, was published within a year of Joseph Schumpeter's History of Economic Analysis, so no-one cares, which is too bad because it is good and readable. J. Middleton Murry's Keats has room for the poet's poems and his love life. Enid Lakeman and James Lambert's Voting in Democracies is a very worthy book. Patrick Moore's Guide to the Planets is too ambitious for the book he wrote, unlike his Guide to the Moon. 

Remains of a conveyor belt system running from mines in Meig County to the Gavin Power Plant on the Ohio River.
Photo credit to Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/groups/1404354243808955/posts/1668478827396494/), photographer not there named.
Do a Google Image search to see Sage beclown itself. 

American Survey

"Fifty Little Mayors" A full page on the Chicago municipal elections. Chicago has a machine! Shame!!! Senator Kefauver's Armed Services Committee hearings on fallout is finally giving civil defence the attention it deserves, and Director Val Peterson is out to point out that the implications of those "cigar maps" of fallout are that New York City's air defence begins at Pittsburgh and that the only defence is mass evacuation. Southern Democrats on the Senate Judicial Committee are delaying the approval of John Marshall Harlan's nomination to the Supreme Court in hopes of putting off the Court's hearing of various appeals of the Federal government's actions in response to the desegregation order, which is serious politics. The "crackpot witnesses" who denounced him at the hearing for being a Rhodes Scholar and a member of the Atlantic Union are another matter.  The 103 mile long "rolling road," the belt conveyor intended to move coal and iron ore between the Ohio River and Lake Erie has progressed far enough that a local interest has coalesced to stop it politically for very good reasons relating to how much money railroads make. 

"A Nation on Wheels" The President's long-awaited Highway Message argues that if America is to remain a "nation on wheels," it needs massive investment in its national highway system to arrest its deterioration, increase public safety, and reduce the additional maintenance burden on the nation's auto stock, estimated at $5 billion a year. It will also facilitate mass evacuations in the event of atomic war and alleviate the "deadly congestion" that would otherwise be caused at the edge of the present system of roads in critical areas, and will accommodate the 81 million cars of 1965, compared with the 58 million today. The message visualises a ten year, 100 billion dollar plan to expand the existing system of interstate highways. Opposition turns on the inflationary effects of the bonds the President intends to issue to cover the programme and on the basis of the interest of the states, with  Senators Gore and Byrd proposing Federal tax cuts to make room for state increases that would allow them to take their share in a combined state and Federal building programme. We get a review of the fights at CAB over various air routes, with the President embarrassing himself in the fight between Northwest and Pan-American over the San Francisco-Honolulu route, first stepping in to reverse the aware of the route to one airline, then changing his mind to finally end up with an extension of the status quo, with both airlines running the route. Someone finally takes all those puff pieces about LAA and NYA over at Aviation seriously and looks in at it, and it is The Economist, which makes the plain point that existing helicopters are far too expensive to provide the services that these airlines promise (30 to 35 cents a mile, and not conceivably reducible to 10 cents a mile, at which point they would still be five times as expensive as running a Convairliner the same route), and that the only solution is larger helicopters of the future.

 

The five members of the Communist Party jailed in 1949 have been released and then re-arrested now that the Supreme Court says that it is absolutely legal to put somebody in jail for thinking Communist thoughts. The Commerce Department is working on a new sizing system for women's clothes, some meat packers are producing "pansize" bacon, and the latest Montgomery Ward completely omits horse-drawn carriages. 

The World Overseas

So that's where it is!

"Taking Counsel in Bangkok" Australia and New Zealand want America to send to mainland Asia. America doesn't want to, and the mainland Asian states are reluctant to receive them, although they're not actually saying so. Everyone is against Communism. Two columns on how difficult it is to be Konrad Adenauer. The Somalis of British Somaliland are aghast at the British betrayal giving up the "Reserved Area" they accidentally ceded to Ethiopia in 1897 that contains seasonal wells and grazing grounds that support some 300,000 people. The Ministry of Defence report on British Pows is entitled "1984 on the Yalu River" and details Communist brainwashing while downplaying reports of actual abuses against the prisoners. We look forward to Edgar Faure's government impaling itself on the deficit, the Tunisian settlement, and Germany. Uruguay is no longer a one-party state, and the surprising and unexpected rioting in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, is explained. Rich people oppress poor people. (But the history of Sierra Leone is sufficiently unique that we need to explain who the rich people and the poor people are.)

The Business World

Leaders on how the new currency board amounts to backdoor convertibility and the "war on the terms of trade," which, since there isn't really an explanation for why they suddenly went negative, turns into an explanation of how monetary policy works. By making everyone not buy stuff on credit! You're welcome. Another Leader relates how steel is now two-thirds denationalised. 

Business Notes takes two-and-a-half pages to get to something besides finance, so exciting are those "monetary measures" against the trade balance swing, and it is a review of the "coal winter," which is looking dire on account of colder weather leading to more coal being burned and slightly less coal being raised, with the result that coal exports have been cut by almost a million tons to 11.5 million, and winter imports of expensive American coal are expected, with the Coal Board likely to run a deficit again, with the Board likely seeking a price increase to satisfy demand from the industrial boom. The cotton industry is in a funk over India's decision to reduce imports, the Government has approved BOAC's request to buy DC7s ("Seven Seas") in part, ten instead of the 18 originally requested at a price of £13 million including spares. BOAC has also confirmed an order for 8 long-range Britannias for non-stop Atlantic service, with two of the 25 shorter-ranged Britannias on order to be converted to the long-ranged version. In America, Pan American is closing in on an order for the interim Lockheed turboprop Super Constellation to compete with TWA's DC-7s, but these will arrive after the Britannias. Meanwhile the Britannia's overseas sales prospects have received a sharp check from the DC7, since the Douglas plane is a good interim plane to bridge the gap to jetliners. On the one hand Bristol seems to be closing in on its own new deal, 5 planes to El Al. On the other, BOAC is quite vocally upset about delays in the Britannia test flying programme, and its doubts that the Britannia will be delivered on time. Airwork's Atlantic cargo service is operating. Industrial production is up 4.5% in January over last year, but the rate of increase is declining. Productivity is estimated to have risen 4%, the rate of 1946-51, and which was regained in 1953. A further increase is likely in 1956 thanks to the new factories coming into production then. Retail sales are up, and car exports by British, American, and German makers to South Africa are up £4 1/2 million, and since most of these are knock-down, one may be interested in knowing about new assembly plants in South Africa, including one for Vauxhall,  opening in 1956. 

Flight, 4 March 1955

Leaders

"Prejudice and Pride" Flight is upset at all the irresponsible critics battening on the bad bits in the Explanatory Statements and endangering security. Remember that the new radar chain is "complete and largely underground," that the Canberra squadrons are at full strength, that Valiants are being delivered, that Hunters are in squadron service and that the pilots are happy with them, that light aircraft and Bristol Sycamore helicopters are proving themselves in Malaya, that the whole of Bomber and Fighter Command is now housed in good, permanent facilities, recruiting is up to the numbers, and that enrollments at Halton, Locking, and Cosford are "satisfactory."  That, in spite of difficulties recruiting for the engineering and other skilled trades, the "position is encouraging." Air trooping is growing and the Navy reports "solid progress" on aircraft and carriers. 

From All Quarters reports that BOAC's purchase of 10 DC7s is fine, and the provision that they will be resold for dollars once Britannias become available will probably be waived, because who will want DC7s, except at a deep discount by then? Airworks' Atlantic air service is a big deal. Did you know that Airworks shareholders include Pearsons, and members of the Guiness and Furness families? Tests of a British pilotless rocket bomber begin next week at Woomera. RAF Comet 2s will be used on the Woomera shuttle. The Fleet Air Arm's new "Audio" system gives audible indication of approach speed. As long as the pilot is below the cutoff, it plays comforting music in the headphones. If the aircraft exceeds it, the music shifts to a panicked voice yelling, "You're going to die!" It uses a nose pitot to measure air speed. London Airport celebrated its 50,000th talkdown this week. USAF spokesmen are now allowed to say that Atlas is an intercontinental ballistic missile under development with a range of 5000 miles and an accuracy of 20 miles. The Snark is a long-range pilotless bomber with a similar range. The Air Ministry is appointing a committee to review servicing.

Boeing Washington with Red Rapier

"The Air Estimates" £513,900,000, up £22 million on last year, including £26 million in MSDAP aid from the United States. Average strength will be lower (260,000), but payroll higher due to higher National Insurance payments. 2nd Taaf is getting Canberra intruders. Overseas reinforcement exercises continue. The Radio Engineer training group is the biggest training problem.  

Here and There reports that Geoffrey Lloyd, the Minister of Fuel and Power, "made reference to atomic-powered submarines" at a dinner the other night and Lincoln Gordon, the Minister of Economic Affairs, said that there could have been comments about "very advanced work with atomic power in the aircraft industry, too."  Bell might have a new contract for a light helicopter for Navy casualty evacuation, the Siamese national police force has bought some  helicopters, the mobile cradle for the Tradewind gets some press, and not to be ignored, French work with the short landing field Mistral and the coleopter get a mention. 

"The British Helicopter Industry: Is It Working on the Right Lines? A Critical Examination" A HERETIC thinks it is all wrong and the Americans are better. On the other hand the RNLI are buying some and the Army likes them. The First Lord's Explanatory Statement on the Naval Estimates doesn't get the same attention as its RAF equivalent, coming at the bottom of the short bits on helicopters, but we do learn that the navy likes carriers, of which it will have Ark Royal, Eagle, Bulwark, and Centaur in service next year along with two training carriers, and is getting on with putting the Gannet and Wyvern into service. A report from America says that they're fiddling with jet noise over there, too.

 

Fokker S. 14s are flowing out of the factories, Taylorcraft is up to the AOP9 version of the Auster (Cirrus Bombardier engines), the prototype Italian G. 91 "Sagittario" has rolled out, a Russian plane was seen in Brazil the other week picking up a load of "special metal" for Czechoslovakia, a country with which Brazil has (GASP) normal diplomatic relations. 

"Implications of Rocket Propulsion: Mr. A. V. Cleaver's Lecture before the RUSI" Intercontinental missiles are scary, artificial earth satellites are exciting, and will be followed by the end of this century by permanent orbiting observation satellites, with telescopes for astronomy besides ones for looking at Earth. and perhaps there will be interplanetary commerce in a few centuries.  Pictures of the Earth from space will probably expand our minds. The discovery of life on other worlds would be very exciting. Filling out the second page of this precis is a report of Dennis Hurden's talk to the British Interplanetary Society, "Stories of the Snarler," about Armstrong Siddeley's work with the  liquid oxygen/kerosene powered aircraft auxiliary rocket motor. Unfortunately for journalistic colour, it turned out not to be very snarly. 

Aircraft Intelligence reports on variant models of the De Havilland Venom and Hunter, that the Bell XV-3 tilting-rotor plane has a small Pratt & Whitney radial engine, that the F-104 is a very hot ship, and that the Russians' Valiantski seems like a fine plane. Flight then finds difficulties making up the page count, so here's a pictorial comparing London Airport with Waikiki that manages to not make the point that Waikiki is a tropical paradise in comparison. That's some fine camera work, lads! There's a slightly better pictorial spread on B-52 production later, and a pointless one on high speed photography.

"Double Mamba Progress" "The problems of control of turboprop aircraft are many and complicated." Now that's a mouthful! I guess looking back on the last ten years it is pretty amazing that Double Mamba planes aren't falling from the sky, and we'd like to know more about it, but it seems like it was basically time, elbow grease and "measure twice, cut once" over at Antsy and Parkside, the Coventry-area Armstrong Siddeley plants. Time is the main thing. They were working on fixing the constant speed unit and putting in an airscrew brake in 1950! 

Correspondence

N. Kadmon looks at ongoing work with simple approaches to boundary layer control (like a leading wire) to improve high lift devices. W. S. Whales has hat-related issues, S. Davies recalls years ago, before the war, J. Drew takes a very long time to get around to saying that an airliner pressure cabin can be made so heavy, safe, and sturdy, that the resulting airliner won't be economical, so let's not do that. "JET LIFT," "SLIPSTICK," and G. Young have an interesting exchange about jet lift, which is to say, using jets to launch aircraft into the air. SLIPSTICK thinks that it is not likely to be economical and has further thoughts about very high supersonic speeds being economically impractical. JET LIFT replies that it is so a good idea allowing for some vague ideas he(? Call me sexist, but I think so!) has. 

Civil Aviation reports that an Australian airline has ordered more Heralds, Sabena has ordered DC7s, that the United States will not order Decca to replace the troubled VOR/DME system or the TACAN intended to replace it, because Decca wasn't invented in America. Hurel Dubois wants us to know that the HD31 is fine for Africa. Cathay Pacific pilots who have survived close brushes with the Chinese Red air force get a nice dinner. Some pictures of a "refined version" of the Il-12 visiting London Airport are shown. 

The Industry reports on better Fiberglas from Rubber Improvement, Ltd., and 26 Pye radio-telephones installed on Shell-Mex and BP ground tankers working at London Airport. 

  

The Economist, 12 March 1955

Leaders

The Labour Party is exploding over Bevan, part one million. (Also, the immediate cause is the British hydrogen bomb they're going to have as soon as they test it, and what will happen if there's an election soon.) The real point of the Formosa issue is that it is driving a wedge between Britain and the United States, which is because Britain is right and the United States are wrong, but you can't say that until you can, and this is not then, but it might be soon. 

"The Diamond Coast" Okay, okay, I guess we've got to pay attention to this "Sierra Leone" business. It's a colony. It's British. It has diamond mines, and people are very poor, and there is diamond smuggling, which is awfully bad for the whole "diamonds are an artificial monopoly" business. Although the Selection Trust claims that its interests are entirely benevolent, since only its methods can win the maximum yield from a given acre of gravel. The illegal side is worth perhaps £2  million a year and employs "between 10,000 and 30,000 'miners'." And the Treasury gets a big annual payment from Selection Trust, for the good of the Sierra Leonese people, of course, so it had better do something. Oh, wait, people aren't bored yet, here's Belgium. No news from Belgium, because how could there be when the King is behaving himself, but Belgium. 

From The Economist of 1855 we have reflections on the "Death of the Tsar." Is this an excuse to end the war! No! The war must continue until Britain's objectives of the final resolution of all things are achieved, as they can be if we just keep persevering. 

Notes of the Week

Pontecorvo: Good with neutrinos, women. 

Bevan is out for sure, it's time to talk about the Saar some more, Egypt is trying to create an "Arab Leaguelet" because it is still upset that Iraq is allying with Turkey. There's a lot to say about the latest proposals to reform the House of Lords, but you can wedge in a punch at Labour while you're at it, so that's good. You can't do that with the adoption of the latest London County Council development plan, which might make this too boring for even The Economist, so we make room for making fun of Duncan Sandys, instead. Boo, Duncan Sandys! The very important Balkan Pact is two years old! Professor Pontecorvo gave a press conference in Moscow where he sort of admitted that he was a Soviet spy when he was at Harwell and  proceeded not to say that Communism is awful, which means that Communism is awful. The ILO has the same problem! A private bill to allow the hanging of collaborator Pows if the Korean War happens again is an understandable but bad idea. The nationalist leader who has won the election in Malta is terrible because he doesn't like Britain because he likes it too much. The Debates on the Army and Navy estimates saw much disagreement about how much in the way of conventional armaments Britain needed in this brave new world. The navy, who needs it? The Army, just rocket launchers? Also, more missiles, please. The ECE has been grudgingly forced to admit that the European economy is going pretty well, actually. Some Communists have been seen spending money on sports cars and the like. Hypocrites! Not all teachers are happy with their new wage settlement because they didn't get as much as they wanted, particularly women. (Why, exactly are women teachers treated differently?) White miners in the Copperbelt are much too racist.  British newspaper ownership is much too concentrated and the big papers are awful. 

Letters

Harold Wilson takes The Economist to task for characterising Labour as being "the pro-monopoly party." A. R. Conan is afraid of the decline in the balance of payments. R. H. M. Boyle takes the Somali side in the border treaty resolution issue. Leonard Browett explains that the Commons committee concerned with the matter agrees that the speed limit for heavy goods vehicles in Britain is much too low. Arthur Gaskell explains why higher interest rates make rents go up, as The Economist is a bit slow. Jack Keiser explains how exam-conscious modern schools are not all good, mainly relating to apprenticeships. W. Hamilton Whyte wishes some more economist would study Nigeria, since no-one has any real idea what's going on there. 

Books 

W. A. Robson has edited Great Cities of the World: Their Government, Politics, and Planning. It is a very worthy book, but "book" is not the right scale to approach the problem, because great cities are big and so is the world. Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and The War Years is a "one volume Lincoln," and pretty good. E. M. Hodgson has translated a life of the King of Bulgaria,a Prince of the House of Battenberg, from the original Ruritanian to the edification of all. C. K. Allen has an edition of his Spectator columns out. D. W. Gillingham's Umiak is the story of his six year voyage in the Northwest Passage on a Hudson Bay Company steamer out of Vancouver, back in the days when Vancouver was very romantic, as the Arctic still is. Good thing that the steamer was crushed by ice in 1931, freeing the author to come back to civilisation to enjoy the Great Depression! Oswell Blakeston's Portuguese Panorama tells us what it is like holidaying in Portugal. Quite nice, actually! 

American Survey 

It seems like something new has happened with the whole "Army versus air power" argument in Washington because people keep talking about it, so we'll keep talking about it, even though it's not true. Sam Rayburn's income tax cut proposal has the GOP defending current tax rates. Hubert Humphrey calls for cutting US foreign aid to keep the federal deficit down, especially to Europe. Harold Stassen wants Uncle Sam to throw money around Asia to buy friends, and it is thought that Secretary Dulles agrees. Wall Street is down, which must be significant. The President and Herb Brownell have noticed that they don't have a leg to stand on in their internal security programme after the government's informers noticed that there was even more money in informing on the investigators. They are tentatively agreeing that civil servants should get a hearing or something, with lawyers, even, before they're summarily fired for thinking Communist thoughts, especially when they're rich men looking to renew their radio station licenses and not civil servants at all. The oil and gas industry's argument that the country benefits if their prices are not regulated at all is not going well. Richard Nixon's awful visit to Central America was actually a success! 

The World Overseas

"A Special Correspondent Lately in Addis Ababa" writes on a "New Leaf for Ethiopia," as it has come to the attention of Ethiopians that only the Somalis are in the news, and that's bad. Reporting from the capital, the Special Correspondent finds that Ethiopia is sort of nice and coffee is good. We look back at two years without Stalin, the Indian budget, The SPD in Germany, Australia's Labour Party moving to the left, and the new state in southeastern India which is a very important development that people will care about in the future. The Economist disapproves of most of it. I mean, it's not like Andhra state has to be physically wiped from the face of the Earth. It's okay that it exists. But the rest of it? Oh, boy. 

The Business World

House loans are up and department stores are showing good sales. 

Business Notes

Finance, weakness in the cotton industry debated, name change for the Gatt discussed, the board of one of the four commercial television contractors has been rearranged, the shipping industry is worried about German competition. 

"Turbo-alternators Under Stress" The failure of the two 100 mW turbo-alternators built for a Toronto power station by Parsons, much covered in The Engineer, is now a mainstream news story. It is fatigue again, which was not sufficiently considered in the adoption of new methods for cold working non-magnetic austenitic steels, which are now  used along with nonferrous alloys in bell ends instead of the former non-magnetic alloy steels, mainly due to drilled out holes for temperature regulation. We get an in-depth discussion of British methods for rotating wool stock to keep it from deteriorating in storage, the American attempt to get rid of its raw cotton surplus is a problem for Lancashire since the Government is out of the commodities trading business and can't just buy up the surplus. Or won't. I think "won't" is the right word, here. 

"No Potash from ICI" ICI has abandoned its plans to exploit vast Yorkshire potas deposits by washing out potassium chloride at 3500 to 4000ft below ground, which proved too expensive. 

Leaders

"Concerning This Issue" Air Forces keep our advertisers in business, and many of our advertisers. Of course we support the world's air forces, which exist because the "times are fraught with fear and bedevilled with mustrust," but let's not worry about that because planes are cool. 

From All Quarters reports that Continental might buy Viscounts, that the Australian government has denied reports that it has plans to buy some V-bombers, that Armstrong Siddeley is selling some engines on the continent, that the Bulgarian Air Force has some MiGs, that two squadrons of Wyverns have gone aboard Eagle. BEA has turned in its first profit. Russia has a jet freighter, the Il-20[?], in service. Armstrong Whitworth's Sea Hawk order has been cut,  and William Verdon Smith, the smart Verdon Smith brother, has resigned as chairman of Bristol Aeroplane. Bristol? Well, "smartest Verdon-Smith" is relative! Louis Breguet has died, the first Dutch Hunters have been delivered, and C. S. Draper's Wilbur Wright Lecture to the R.Ae.S. will be on "Flight Control." 

A year to live. Ronnie's premonition of mortality leads her to 
avoid her usual snarky comment about the suicidal tendencies
of sport gliders and parachutists. 

Here and There reports that a USAF mission is on a special tour of Australia, that British aircraft industry employment continues to rise at a rate of 2000/month to a January figure of 241,000, and that Leo Valentin will show off his "delayed drop" parachuting techniques at an air show at Yeadon on 30 May. 

"More Thoughts on Jet Lift" Since we haven't heard enough from anonymous writes about VTOL jet lift, here's "Quidnunc," or possibly QUIDNUNC, if we are still doing that quaint thing where submissions by serving members of the armed forces are given all-capitalised pen-names. The subject is the 4 February Flight article describing a 300,000lb auw jet lift aircraft with a wing loading f 300lb/square inch, thrust loading of 2.5 lb per lb, and maximum jet lift of 500,000lb. Working through the numbers, this only seems possible with a very long ramp. 

Breguet is working on a a four-engined high, unbraced, double-flapped wing turboprop transport that will have something like a helicopter pad's worth of takeoff run and lots of safety. It might be a civil or  military transport or an anti-submarine aircraft.

RuthAS

  

"Routine Crossing" It is so very boring in aviation right now that here's that "I was a passenger on a long flight" article again. BOAC Stratocruiser, New York to London. Left the New York East Terminal at 3:30 on an airport limousine operated by Carey Transports ($1.30 fare), arrived at Idlewild at 4, checked in with 41 other passengers first class, (£141 plus another $50 for a sleeping berth), left at 5, "flag stop" at Boston if there are any passengers to be picked up there, "technical stop" at Goose Bay, Gander, or Sydney, Nova Scotia; dinner en route to Sydney (2 1/2  hours), eight hours to London, article continues on another page, I do not follow it. 

Civil Aviation reports that IATA is allowing family fares on Atlantic crossings in the off season, and Lufthansa has begun flying international routes. The "World's Air Forces" sectio is 58pp long and completely irrelevant to us, even where it might be of interest in theory. (Those pre-eminent disturbers of the peace are the Israeli Air Force of the Israel Defence Force, and have "several squadrons" of fighters, bombers, and transports. Who would have thought?)

Correspondence has B. H. Liddell Hart writing to praise R. C. O. Lovelock's recent life of T., E. Lawrence for some reason, an explanation of some boundary layer control phenomena from F. Gerrie Wilcox, discussions of one kind of aerial mirages by F. A. Carbury and R. G. Howland, and Peter G. Cooksley, F. A. Kapsey, and Douglas F. Taylor on matters long gone and in memory yet green. The Aeronautical Bookshelf briefly reviews Arthur C. Clarke's Expedition to Earth, and Adolf Galland's The First and the Last. Both are fiction, and the first seems less incredible than the latter. I kid! I am sure that Galland's account of being not at all a Nazi while winning WWII single-handed (except for Hitler!) is completely accurate! 

 

 

Fortune's Wheel looks at the process of researching and writing this week's Technolog story, "The Next Great Synthetic." Editor Francis Bello and researcher Marjorie Jack (who seems to be the boss of another researcher, Mireille Geroud) directed two writers: Bello, again, and Edmund Van Deusen. The great visualisation is, as usual, from Max Gschwind. 

Including this picture of Max Schwind makes Bench Grass officially the best
online biographical source on Fortune artist Max Gschwind (Dates Unknown)

Letters

J. James Gordon isn't impressed by his fellow twenty-five-year-olds, who seem pretty terrible to him. Jack C. Werter agrees, although he may not be twenty-five. Louis Finkelstein points out that we have to educate lots of scientists and engineers to maintain our rising standard of living and fight Communism. I think. He runs a seminary and pitches it pretty high. E. W. Hitter of GE writes in to point out that David Sarnoff is the greatest genius in th ehistory of geniuses. The President of the Radio-Television Manufacturers Association writes in to explain why import tariffs on radios and televisions are too low, actually. H. K. Fox remembers the years long ago, before the war. Dorothy Whitney Frohman is worried about deforestation, and S. Robert Anshen points out that the circular streets of the Fairmeadow neighbourhood in Palo Alto have been dubbed "hot rod circles" by the police. 

Business Roundup reports that there has been no war scare visible in the economy, that we are moving towards tighter money as federal tax receipts exceed government spending at the end of the year, producing a deflationary pressure. The FRB is also being less accommodating of money expansion, although credit purchases are still increasing. Profits and dividends are rising, although a general pullback on cars is predicted. 

Business Notes From Abroad takes up on Rab's 4.5% discount. The European economies are reporting an "amber light" on inflation. Stocks are up, they're still trying to find more oil in the Po valley, they're definitely finding (and working) more oil in Indonesia, the Japanese are a strange people who might or might not become nationalist, Communist, or something else. France. FRANCE! CIBA is worth an investor's look. 

Leaders

"Is Housing Out of Hand?" Some people think so! In particular, the no-money-down mortgage seems pretty dubious. The Editors point out that while the Russians might be a military threat, there is, in fact, no reason to think that they will catch up economically with the U.S., Canada, and Western Europe. Socony-VAcuum has withdrawn its traditional statement to new employees calling for "conservative personal views," but is still in trouble with the twenty-five-year-old set because it, and other companies like it, obviously still thinks that. Fortune has hope for ghee (exports to Asia), and closes out the editorial section with a swipe at protectionists. From the sounds of things, Fortune has not had good ghee. 

"Why the Depression Lasted So Long?" I don't have to tell you, my dear father-in-law, that amongst the dead-enders it is said that the New Deal actually prolonged the Depression. The title of the article feints in this direction. But does the point arrive on the target? It does not! On the contrary, it criticises Roosevelt for not running a large enough deficit!  

Fortune follows up with the next installment in its lonely fight to get business to appreciate modern art, and then a look at the longhairs at Arthur D. Little, which sells scientific expertise to business on a per consultation basis. In 1955 it has looked at replacing hog bristles in brushes, desalination in the Navy, and glassmaking. So those are interesting endeavours, but the rest of the article is about how the company organises itself, which is about as interesting to us as articles on delegation in management, Campbell's Soup, and the chairman of John Morrell, Inc., an "independent meat packer of Ottumwa, Illinois."

After giving all that editorial credit in Fortune's Wheel, "The Next Great Synthetic" is credited to Francis Bello as single author. It's mainly about polyurethane solid rubber, which the industry hopes will be the so-far illusive synthetic that demonstrates immediate superiority.

A Max Gschwind original, it turns out. 

 That's the last of the big articles, but as usual there's a box story buried in the middle of the "Continueds" in the back, in this case about three Californians (Carl Rehnborg, Leo S. Mytinger, and William Casselberry), and their product, "Nutrilite," "a food supplement made of alfalfa, water cress, parsley, vitamins, minerals, and yeast." It's sold door-to-door by some 35,000 distributors, who buy their supply from the manufacturer and then hire their own in a "pyramid" of distributors. Soon, everyone will be eating nothing but Nutrilite. Or possibly look up Charles Ponzi in their Funk & Wagnalls. Honestly, I thought Fortune was better than this.