Postblogging Technology, February 1956, I: The Work of a Dozen Engineers

R_., C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada

Dear Father:

The February blues are upon the city by the bay. Yours truly is coping with consent decrees and the many ways of turning germanium and silicon into husband replacements, as I pointed out to James when we discussed the many traumas of kindergarten. (He'll be on leave at the end of the month, and it's poor May-May who has to deal with the storms and gales of the pint-sized social life.) But it is never untimely to point out to your hubby how he is on the verge of being replaced by a pile of wires. 

Oh. Oh. At work. Never  mind, then!

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

The Economist, 4 February, 1956

Leaders

I was going to insert Franklin Pierce's distinctly boy-bandish presidential portrait, but then I saw
this. You see, Pierce was born in a log cabin --where his family lived while this place was being
built. At least it doesn't say that he killed a bear when he was only three. 

"Focus on Investment" If the standard of living is to double in a generation (and obviously it will and must) then we are going to have to invest lots and lots in all that capital machinery and stuff. And yet Labour has a problem with investment! Specifically, it has a problem with the investment allowance, or, in other words, the big  tax break for investors. But just because Labour is bad and wrong doesn't mean that reasonable people are saying the same thing. How can this be? Is investment good, or bad? It is because spending money on stuff causes inflation, you see, which is why interest rates have to go up to stop excessive investment.  Clearly the problem is that there has been too much spending on other stuff, like "government activities" and consumption, and the solution is more public and private saving. The Economist, in its discussion of how to do this, points out the Guaranteed Annual Wage as a promising approach. Follows a full page Leader about how Ike has to say "No" to the latest Soviet peace proposal because Communism is awful and one on the Guillebaud report on the NHS that finds that health care expenditures aren't as low as they could be, but also aren't as high as they could be.
 

The Economist of 1856 editorialises on "Presidential Thunder" to the effect that President Buchanan's demand for the recall of Ambassador Crampton is, obviously, not an American intervention in the Crimean War, which seems to be over, anyway. It's just some Presidential blithering by a very un-Presidential President. 

Somehow I grew up not knowing that the Syrians broke through in the southern 
sector of the Golan, and their advancing tanks were only haltted at the Jordan 
river bridges because President Assad was informed of the "The Third Temple
has fallen!" go-ahead for the assembly of Israel's atomic warheads. The ones, just to
stay relevant for a second, that Guy Mollet was instrumental in creating. 

Notes of the Week

Somehow, after all the fuss, France has a Socialist government. It probably wont' last very long, but that won't be Guy Mollet's fault. The Economist looks at Rab's new job, which appears to be to disappear into very important, very serious duties and make some money for the punters betting on Macmillan! The Minister of Education has given in and raised teachers' salaries, which is terrible, because it is declassee for teachers to act like vulgar trade unionists and they should have settled for lower pay like real professionals. East Germany's army is going to have tanks now. The Czechs and Poles are apparently not impressed. Kubitschek's inauguration has gone ahead notwithstanding trepidations, but the are plenty of signs that the Army will act, if not against the President, than against Joao Goulart, his Vice-President and likely successor. Arcane Notes discuss the "pardon" of three recently wrongly-convicted men, whose names are being protected for privacy reasons, and changes in the proposed British regime for testing old cars. The new Hospitaller eye hospital in East Jerusalem is to be celebrated, British farmers etc., Greek nationalists in Cyprus etc, etc. The new electoral law that the Diem government has promulgated in South Vietnam is not a hopeful sign ahead of the country-wide elections mandated for July by the Geneva agreement. The Economist is pleased to see the first signs that Nikolai Voznesensky is being rehabilitated, as the sudden disappearance of the Soviet Union's wartime economic planner and postwar Politburo member and head of Gosplan in 1949 is quite the mystery, and let's cut to the chase, the Reds did in an economist! Old Bolsheviks, Trotskyites, Beria, generals, doctors --okay, if you must. But not economists! India's decision to nationalise its life insurance industry is bad. 

Letters

John Boyd explains the Rolls-Royce engineers' strike, J. O. N. Perkins of the Australian National University explains that Australia needs disinflationary policy, not exchange rate tinkering,  and N. J. Muschaud is appalled(!) that new coal mining machinery is being made with  high-cost imported steel for lack of sufficient British production, even though coal is used to make steel. 

Books

Homer Carey Hockett and Geoffrey Barraclough have thoughts about the practice of history, in The Critical Method in Historical Research and Writing, and History in a Changing World, respectively. Hockett is old fashioned in wanting more source criticism and facts, Barraclough modern in wanting history to change with the times. Does Russian victory at Stalingrad prove that the whole old interpretative framework of European history is wrong? Well, no, actually, but that's the kind of question that now has to be asked. The best kind of David Hume is David Hume the economist, naturally, so good to have Eugene Rotwein's edited collection of his economic writings. I look forward to having it explained to me by some daringly atheistic, slightly drunk, philosophy graduate student at his(!!!) earliest convenience. A new legal monograph by John Llewelyn Jones Edwards (I had to look him up in Who's Who to sort out the initials the review used to identify him) gets a favourable notice in spite of being mostly "heavy going." 

American Survey

Anthony Eden's trip to Washington is definitely worth a two-page Leader, as it is an excellent excuse for a tour d'horizon of American affairs. Did you know that American conservatives dislike foreign aid? It's true! 

"Casus Belli" The second Leader looks at surging efforts to protect segregation across the South. We get a summary of American arguments over tight money, again, the "guessing game" over Eisenhower's decision to run for a second term with an explanation of how Bill Knowland and the RNC have kissed and made up (supposedly); and a full Note about the settlement of the antitrust suits against AT&T, IBM, and RCA, which together amount to  "freeing electronics," since AT&T has agreed to share their patents, IBM has agreed to sell rather than lease its large computers, and RCA may have agreed to patent sharing in the same way as AT&T has. 

The World Overseas

We take a bit more of a look at France's new government, before going on to the political crisis in Finland, Nepal's new premier (who  might be the right man to deal with the Chinese on the frontier), collectivisation in China, which The Economist deems unlikely to go well, the possibility that Siam's Chinese community might be a Red Fifth Column, which seems unlikely especially given the Siamese government's recent efforts to whip up hostility towards them.

The Business World

"Inquiry into Electricity" Edwin Herbert's Herbert Report is part of a proposed genre of regular investigations into nationalised industries. Two years in the making, it finds British electricity wanting in various ways. (Mainly, it is not making enough money to cover depreciation according to a more rigorous schedule than it uses. 

Business Notes

The British work force continues to grow faster than expected, just as investment appears to be higher than expected. It had best not be in television, which on recent developments (ITA wants more money from the GPO to get going and the heads of both London television, uhm, thingies, as they don't call them channels or studios or even networks over there) have resigned. An international sugar conference is in the works, the price of cacao is falling, Standards Motors' offer for Beans Industries is the latest consolidation effort in an industry that seems to have been hit by a seasonal dip. 

Robert Hotz's Editorial is impressed with the Harding Report, which is an example of good national aviation policy, as opposed to the bad British kind. It predicts no global wars, North American vulnerability to air attack, US population rising to 215 million over the next twenty years, and GNP to $730 billion. Commercial aircraft speed will rise from 300mph to 1000mph, maximum operating altitude from 25,000 to 40,000ft, new jet transports with the same passenger capacity as trans-Atlantic liners, and a  30% reduction in passenger seat-mile costs, 80% reduction in cargo ton-miles. 

Industry Observer reports that Douglas is continuing to work on its "Ding Dong" atomic anti-aircraft missile, that Convair has jiggered up the Tradewind as a fuel tanker to see who bites, that the first F-104A has rolled off the production line and straight into development, that North American is working on an anti-missile missile for anti-ballistic missile defence, that the Navy is ignoring the Secretary of Defence and setting up an attempt on the trans-continental speed record with an A3D, that the Convair Sea Dart can land on its hydroski in rough water, won't someone please buy one, that the U.S. Army is going to set up one of those Decca thingies in "the New York area" to see if it will actually work on American soil, that TWA is the last on the market for jet transports because all decisions have to be approved by Howard Hughes and he is crazy, that various planes are undergoing various testing, including the Ryan VTOL, the Lockheed T2V-1, the second SeaMaster prototype, and the C-130 (specifically in its case, cargo drop tests). The T2V-1 is just a T-33 redesigned for carrier operations, but Aviation Week finds its boundary layer control features fascinating.

It's magnificent, but it's not news.

Washington Roundup reports that there is too  much security around the Pentagon, that various profit investigations are going forward under Democratic control in Congress, and the Air Force and Navy are squabbling about whether carriers are good for anything again. Finally, "some shrewd observers" say that the consent decrees signed by AT&T and IBM don't mean very much and there won't be a rush of new transistor companies, because no company that was willing to invest $2 million on production capacity would have balked at the $25,000 license fee required under the old arrangement. The lead story in Aviation News is the rollout of Douglas' C-133, the giant turboprop cargoliner for the USAF. The extra large cargo hold and doors make it a unique airplane that the USAF really, really needs, but it's got the T-34 and Curtiss Electric props, so I am not expecting a happy service history, and I am certainly not giving the section a header on the basis of this story. (Past some inside-the-industry stuff about contracts, we check in with Henry Jackson, who is worried about "Red missile progress," Stuart Symington "protesting air cuts," because of course, proposed new rules for helicopter pilots, and some factory and production news. And that "Aerocycle" picture gets printed again. 

This is your regular reminder that Sweden exists, and has its own defence aviation industry.

A full page pictorial of what looks like hand-drawn sketches of cruiser-sized ships firing off missiles is labelled "How Navy Planners View Tomorrow." Through the bottom of a shotglass, thank you very much!

Robert H. Cushman reports for Aeronautical Engineering that "Fairchild J44 Designed to Replace Rato. Fairchild bought Ranger with mad money from war contracts and designed a small, expendable turbojet that is just like all the other small turbojets, and after a decade of producing it in small numbers for target drones, is marketing it as a takeoff booster. New Aviation Products has some (physical) valves, including one with an actuator, various electronic components that are smaller than the other ones, yet another high speed test camera, from Beckman & Whitley this time, and a "pump for jet fuel systems" from Lear. It turns out that this also describes New Avionics Products this week, which describes six new products, five of which are miniaturised versions of old ones. The odd piece out is a delay line from Litton. There are, however, separate sections for microwave devices (including a silicon diode from Bomac Industries), instrumentation, communication equipment, and data processing equipment. The big news in the latter are another digital-to-analog decoder and a "decimal to binary converter."

Would you have guessed that the article about how the British aviation industry is failing and falling down is from Roy Fedden, because you apparently can't disgrace a man enough to shut him up if he can't be embarrassed. It is the usual nonsense about how he toured a West Coast factory (this time as an "Nato advisor" and was embarrassed for backwards British tooling. Philip J. Klass reports for Avionics taht "Arinc Tests Pinpoint Major Cause of Avionic Equipment Failures." It's tube failure, and the Arinc test is a new quality control approach to vacuum tubes. The Friez Instrument Division of Bendix has a new optical amplifier that amplifies "light reflected by dimly lit objects" by 10,000 to 40,000 times" in an equipment it has dubbed the "Lumicon." 

Safety reports on the Boeing 377 runway overrun at Chicago Midway last August, where it turns out that the prop reverse circuits were turned off, and that this was an operating error by an unidentified person having charge of the controls between its last previous flight and the one in which the accident occurred. You just can't win with Turbocompound props! Evert Clark reports for Air Transport that atomic transports are 15--20 years away, depending. Captain Robson's Cockpit Viewpoint dissects a recent traffic control-caused near accident at an unidentified large airport and points out the general lack of informative signage that might have averted the near miss. Letters has A. E. Campbell of the Civil Air Patrol on hats issues. (That is, if you happen to ignore all the times we've made that joke covering Flight, about the niceties of pilot training organisation, that is, who gets to wear which nice hat or badge.) H. A. Perry proposes a practice industrial mobilisation to see how it would go. The Wright Air Development Centre is still hiring, and is still too cheap to buy a "Help Wanted" ad in the Aviation Week classifieds. E. D. Weiner thinks everyone would be fine with lightplanes whizzing about busy airports if the pilots just got a bit more training in that whole "landing" thing. 

  

The Economist, 11 February 1956

"Not so Prodigal Son" Aneurin Bevan was out in public, which reminds The Economist that socialsim these days is awful. Now that the election is over it's time for disinflation, says the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Britain's not going to be in Euroatom because it's a bunch of Europeans. 

Notes of the Week

"The Saudis and the West" The Anglo-American comminque had an interesting pasage on the Middle East to the effect that the U.S. and Britain are going to kiss and make up. Given the news, that seems unlikely, but on the other hand if the Saudis would just stop promoting anti-Baghdad Pact settlement, everything could be fine. We move on to the situation in the Gulf, and then a Note to hammer  home the fact that "Aneurin Bevan is a spectacularly bad politician," and then some stuff about the teachers' pay settlement. 

"Government by Rotten Tomato" Guy Mollet is off to a terrible start, cancelling his appointment of General Georges Catroux as Resident in Algeria after wild protests by settlers during his visit to Algiers. The settlers are now demanding 250,000 soldiers in Algeria, a 40,000 increase. The question is whether it is the army's duty to "defend the settlers no matter what they demand." The BAOR is very expensive in terms of the British balance of payments at £70 million in hard currency. Something should be done about that. The widow's allowance hasn't been increased in a very long time and should be. Pensions shouldn't be, is my instant skim of a full column Note. The Economist of 1856 finally shows some sensible signs of the paper it is to become by posting a long and arcane bit about the new bill to govern limited stock companies that was being debated in 1856. Marshal Zhukov seems to be on the rise in Russia, one of the things disagreed about in the Washington talks was trade with China, it says here, I can't believe it! London talks about the West Indies Federation are repored to have been full and frank. 

Books

J.E. Meade, The Theory of International Economic Policy, Volume II, Trade and Welfare is a very worthy book. Nay, monograph! J. B. Perry Robinson and C. A. Henniker have written books about Malaya these days. Robinson is interested in its "Transformation," Herriker in its "Red shadow." You can guess the rest. Leon Edel has edited, with a commentary, Selected Letters of Henry Adams, 120 of 7000 that survive, but the best ones! 

Letters

Alexander MacGregor of Birmingham writes at very great length about how fluoridation is actually bad and science will prove it any minute now. I know that it is bad for dentists' bottom line, and that dentists have a great deal of pocket change to promote their opinions, but what about science? Well, for that you go for long paragraphs long in innuendo in the hopes that people won't read them all the way through. F. Schon of Marchon Products explains that the opening of a competing manufacturer of Dodecyl Benzene is actually good news for his company. 

American Survey

The Leader is devoted to the Gas Bill. Democrats, in breaking news, are fighting over the nomination for '56. Who would have believed it!? And you'd never guess it, but the guys who are fighting over the nomination are the ones they've been saying will chase it since the second Wednesday of November, 1952! But it's not like there's no actual news. Evidently the candidates are campaigning for support from President Truman and also some Californians. After that blast of news, it's a relief to turn to the report of the AEC's Panel on the Impact of the Peaceful Use of Atomic Energy, which forecasts the use of atomic power in your toaster. Well, no, actually. But fusion power is just around the corner, and prototype power reactors will be available for industry next year, plus boats and ships. However, Mr. Strauss has scolded the panel for suggesting that atomic secrecy has gone too far, and the coal industry is upset at it for saying that atomic power will be good for, oh, say, a quarter of industrial supply by 1980. That's even worse than building dams! (Maybe it'll turn out that atomic reactors are bad for fish, too. Here's hoping!) The President's health program for '56 is everything but socialised medicine. Research, pollution abatement, more medical schools, more psychiatrists, you name it. It is supposed that a cartel of financiers, including devious foreign Canadians, are behind Patrick McGinnis' hiring by the Boston and Maine directly he was given the boot by the New Haven and Hartford for being a bit too free with the reserves. It is further supposed that the cartel's ultimate ambition  is a rail monopoly in New England. 

One of McGinnis' FL9 electro-diesels with the suspiciously slick, Madison Ave
friendly livery. By Roger Puta - https://www.flickr.com/photos
/129679309@N05/26136601654/,
Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org
/w/index.php?curid=54434933

The World Overseas

"Rhodesia in the Rains" Timely rain has revived hopes for a bumper tobacco crop this year and a sizeable budget surplus for Southern Rhodesia, resulting in the Southern Rhodesians discovering that they never liked the Federation of Central Africa, anyway, and they certainly don't want to pay for hydroelectric in other provinces, and why are the Africans so cheeky, anyway? (Presumably it is outside agitators, but that's not the point!) Maybe spending that money paying white Europeans to emigrate is the solution! Now that West Germany has a government and an economy, it can have fights between the right-minded people who want more governmental budgetary economy and the spendthrifts who want to spend it. The Maltese are fighting over the incredibly generous offer to let them be part of the United Kingdom. It must be an outbreak of nationalist irrationality and also Catholic influence. Spanish students are rioting against Franco's government, which is still not Fascist at all. (It's still bad to be a Fascist, right? I'll check in again later.) 

The Business World

Pensions blah blah. If they get it wrong, this will certainly be a big story in, oh, say, 1976. Maybe I can even combine my review of Spanish fascism with the British pension crisis! 

Business Notes

Money! Money! You'll never guess it, but there are troubling signs about Britain's dollar balance, this week featuring the European Payment Union. A new round of domestic refinery capacity expansion has been announced. The Ministry of Supply has announced much lower than planned aircraft deliveries for 1955 due mainly to cancellation of the Swift, but also teething troubles for the Javelin and  other new planes. The Minister points out that, nevertheless, aircraft deliveries are up 2 1/2 times since 1951, and that if you look at things closely, aircraft development takes about as long in Britain as it does in the U.S. The Minister of Transport's address to the assembled metropolitan engineers and surveyors of some worthy institution or institutions of last week is not uncontroversial in the particular priorities for roadwork he singled out, but prioritisation is inevitable given shortages of men, material, and machines. Nevertheless, you will be zipping up to Birmingham from London in no time. Tin, rubber, and Rhodesian copper are the commodities that are up, down, or sideways this month. (Rhodesian copper production is being held back by a lack of industrial power, with the Central African coal industry, such as it is, at its limits, and nothing to be done before the already-mentioned hydroelectric works come online.)  

Sure. Why not? It's only money. 
By http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm
/app1/sm-73.html, Public Domain, https:/
/commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2355036

Robert Hotz's Editorial highlights a "clarification" of a national wire news service that "quoted Aviation Week erroneously" as saying that the '57 budget had effectively junked the plan to re-arm SAC with B-52s and K-97 tankers. In fact, what was junked was General LeMay's plan to do so as fast as possible by going to three shifts and unlimited overtime at Boeing plants. Don't be in any doubt that the General's plan is the right one given the torrent of new Russian jet bombers reaching frontline squadrons, and the fact that SAC is going to have to use B-36s right through 1958, however. Then we talk some more about industrial mobilisation. Industry Observer reports that the Navy is testing a "device" that allows jet bombers to drop bombs at Mach 1.2, that the T34 is a pretty economical engine, that now Fairchild has a missile contract because the services just won't stop handing them out, that the Martin Bullpup is a pretty neat air-to-surface missile, aeronautically speaking, that Vickers is cutting its Viscount delivery rate from 8 to six per month, that Convair will decide on whether or not to develop a jetliner soon, that the Bureau of Aeronautics is working all-out to develop a rollable titanium alloy or process for making proper sheet. Washington Roundup this week is just what it says, coverage of all the air-related stuff going on in committee, which is all pretty boring except now Carl Vinson is trying to get in on the "How did the Reds suddenly outnumber us in the air?" game. As with last week, Aviation News has real news, but all small potato stuff from our perspective. Trevor Gardner has resigned as head of Air Force R&D but promises to keep up the good fight on account of the Reds being awful and awesome, while the new Air Force Under-Secretary wants to make a name for himself promoting training over new weapon systems. At a conference in Washington, it was glumly predicted that the airport noise problem will keep on getting worse for at least a few years yet. We also get pictures of Lockheed's turboprop Constellation testbed that no-one wants, but if you keep putting its picture in Aviation Week maybe someone, somewhere . . . The Soviet Union is offering Argentina MiG-15s, it is reported. The squabble at the Piasecki board keeps on getting uglier. Convair wants us to know that it is reorganising its research division because it has just realised that research is even more important than it used to think it was, which was pretty darn important! Goodyear is actually testing that ridiculous rubber airplane scheme I mentioned last time. Avro is working on a Mach 3.5 wind tunnel, and SNECMA's version of a jet engine VTO type is going ahead into testing. 

A pictorial of Navy test balloons is inserted to break up the boredom before we really get into it with Irving Stone reporting for Missile Engineering that now Cal Tech is involved. Specifically, JPL, which, the university wants us to know, has done testing work on a lot of missiles, and even developed the Corporal. Then we give Roy Fedden five pages to explain that the Ministry of Supply is "stodgy" and is standing in the way of progress. 

Northrop wants us to know that its new epoxy resin casting process produces precision parts thanks to steel molds with knife-edge-sharp lines. Philip J. Klass catches up with Captain Robson for Avionics with "Communication Chores Limit Capacity to Control Traffic." He is summarising a paper given to the IAS by an ANDB expert, so this is something that Aviation Week can be expected to cover, but it is not really new news. In congested air space during instrument flying weather, there is simply too much of a burden on the available controllers and channels to stay ahead of the combined needs of monitoring communications and directing traffic, and more automation is needed. Concretely, an automatic interrogator is suggested. Sperry Rand wants us to know that its Integrated Instrument System now has more dials and pointers, making it better than ever. 

New Avionics Products has a whole bunch of electronic products,  including a magnetic clutch, a xenon thyratron, a miniaturised radio reed, a pressure transducer, an ac/dc converter, and a miniature synchro. New Aviation Products has power and hydraulic equipment, another "pre-fire detector," from Vapor Heating, and a 40Hz power supply for field tests. Also on the Market turns into a four page feature, admittedly wrapped around abundant paid advertising, but . . . 

Safety reports on the 29 August DC3-Piper collision at Lea County Airport in New Mexico that seriously injured the Piper's pilot and sole occupant. It concludes that the DC3 cockpit crew should have been looking where they were going.

Air Transport has an unsigned article entitled "British Program super Britannia Subsidy: Convair, Canadair Eliminated from British Plans to Build Turboprop in British Move to Compete with U.S." Usually an unsigned article in Aviation Week emanates from an official source, but I don't see one. The section goes on to speculate that the Comet IV might be cancelled, reports that the Comet II "fails test," even though the failure, of a wing component, came after 12,000 hours, and thus exceeds the RAF requirement, and quotes Peter Masefield as saying that Britannia deliveries are on schedule. Preble Staver reports for the section that "Air Congestion Acccepted as Problem," which kind of confirms my theory about a competition to write the dumbest headline in the Aviation Week bullpen. Substantially, it is a report on a recent ATC-sponsored convention in Washington that concludes that Something Must Be Done! An unsigned article following reports that the new head of the CAA has released the long-sealed report on CAA reorganisation. Senator Monroney says that it was unsealed to "bring some of the impractical and dangerous recommendations into the light of day." This seems to be in aid of the fight over Monroney's proposal to separate the CAA from the Department of Commerce. 

TWA has finally made its move and ordered 707s. CAB has refused permission for Atlantic fare hikes for the coming season. Captain Robson's Cockpit Viewpoint points out that cabin furniture is so cleverly designed that passengers have no idea how to use it, and maybe designers need to think about how people are going to figure out how to fasten washroom doors, open ashtrays, and so on. He rather condescendingly makes his culprit a "young lady" with "polished fingernails," but the point is still made. USAF Pilot (Name Withheld) points out that Wright Air Development Centre wouldn't have so much trouble hiring engineers if it just, you know, hired engineers like him! Glenn Darlington of B-G Detection Service corrects Aviation Week by giving credit where credit is due for early airport x-ray screening equipment from Triplet & Barton. Name Withheld is upset that the press isn't doing enough to highlight how awful and awesome the Red strategic bomber force is. Dr. Ervin E. Ladd was leafing through an old Aviation Week in his waiting room and discovered that Aviation Week thinks that research is important. So does he! E. A. Williford of Link Aviation thinks that the key to the shortage of engineers in the aviation industry is more engineers, which admittedly will cost a bit to get them through university, but that's how you deal with the Reds!

Fortune's Wheel turns into a full-page spread of summaries of this issue's articles. 

Letters has Neil Staebler of the Michigan state Democratic Party writing to point out that the reason that Democrats do so well in Michigan is that Michigan likes Democrats. Fortune replies that, well, yes, but one party states are wrong, so Michigan ought to vote Republican even if they don't like Republicans, for democracy. Six readers write in to say how much they liked Henry Luce's think piece about what 1976 will be like. Absolutely no-one wrote in to point out that it was self-regarding blather! Norman Watson, director of P.R. at Lear, writes to explain at length that Lear is even more awesome than the article about Lear intimated. William J. Smith, the director of the St. Peter's Institute of Industrial Relations, writes to defend unions. Fortune is dismissive. Wages have gone up in the U.S. due to progress, not organised labour. Representative Thomas Curtis of Missouri is upset that just because he is in favour of tariffs to protect jobs, Fortune presented him as some kind of protectionist. 

Business Roundup explains that even though all signs point to a business slowdown and recession in the wake of tightened money supplies, real incomes are still going up, so there's nothing to worry about. Business Globe is mainly concerned with international trade barriers, and, above all, the lack of dollar/pound convertibility, concluding that for this to happen, there needs to be far more "hard currency," that is, gold and U.S. dollars in non-American hands out there to back up the pound than currently exists. One solution, it suggests, is to decontrol the price of gold. There's also a bit about the new Caterpillar plant in Sao Paolo, the "fiasco" on French financial markets after the last election, and a puff piece about a British business executive, some guy at Unilever, I'd have to look at my notes to be sure, and I'm  not going to do that. 

Leaders leads off with the "Farm Problem," which is that we're going to keep on keeping on paying farmers to vote (and farm, that's important, too, right?) no matter how people grumble. Also, Senator O'Mahoney thinks that the rush for Ford shares is unseemly, but he's a Democrat from Wyoming, so what does he know? The penny shortage brings home the fact that this is actually the age of the twenty-dollar bill, which is the biggest unit of currency in current circulation in the U.S. Tax reductions might be in order next year if the federal budget surplus is as big as expected, Fortune doesn't like trouble on the picket line, but it does like more foreign aid, which friends are currently trying to get through Congress, for irrigation works in Ceylon and such. 

Dero A. Saunders has "The Airline's Flight From Reality" U.S. airlines have ordered 141 jetliners in the last year, at $6 million each, plus props and turboprops. New planes are about two thirds of airline capital spending, so this is a net $2.5 billion investment, when their revenues last year were $1.6 billion. This scale of expansion is warranted on the basis of ten year trends, but inter-city travel is the only consumer spending trend in the U.S. that is tracking a relative decline.

"No, Henry, you can't put art in this issue, and especially not modern art. Business magazine, remember? It doesn't matter how bored you are." -"Cartoon? [Sigh}. Okay."

You know who needs more Fortune puff pieces? Actual Nazis. So here's a company profile of Krupp. It's long, and has all the colour photos, because it would look bad if the next puff piece, about the Eisenhower Administration, had them. And, anyway, charcoal sketches are very nostalgic and old-timey. Grand Old Party, you see. Follows one about the "De-Decentralising of Blaw-Knox," which has decided that it carried that whole "diversifying" thing too far back in the day. Royal Little of Texttronexplains why companies sell out. To make money by getting out of New England textiles while you still can, you see. John T. Connor gets a loving colour photo because he is the president of Merck and it is doing pretty well and also because Henry has a crush on him and you have to give Henry something. Then there's a land boom in Florida going on right now. It's probably different from the last one, or from booms in the rest of the country in that you won't lose your shirt if you get in now. Herbert Solow is off to make love to the longhairs (business division) with "Operations Research is in Business." 

The O.R. guys can help redesign your mining equipment with their science! Harlow Curtis gets a puff piece, but in black and white. Tasteful black and white, though. 

So, that's this month. Not much in this issue of The Loves and Lives of Henry Luce unless you think operational research is a science, and not some consultants looking for a buck. Well, except for the airlines over-investing in jets and getting ready to come crashing down.