Nakusp,
British Columbia,
Canada
Your Loving Daughter,
Ronnie
"President Eisenhower Rides Again" In a willfully naive tour of American horizons, The Economist proposes that Americans won't vote for Republicans, that the Republican right is "in retreat," and that Ike is governing as, in effect, Truman's successor, which is why he is popular with all Americans whatsoever, and will win in '56 now that he has announced that he will run in '56 if he is nominated. We apparently don't notice that the President has been barely able to run his own Administration, that his cabinet has been doing its best to move to the right, under the rubric of being "businesslike," and that Dulles has mainly been restrained from being a Joe McCarthy with power by, on the one hand, the fear that throwing A-bombs around will just be atrocities without consequence; and, on the other, by the obvious advantages of being able to command a majority in the General Assembly and, to a lesser extent, the Security Council.
"The Universities of Industry" As usual we are catching up with British news that decided to happen while we were reading Newsweek instead. The magazine gestures at "cuts in Government expenditure in general," and the "slowing down of educational building in particular" before discussing the proposed £80 million investment in British technical colleges over the next five years. This is to meet the general shortage of technologists and technicians, as The Economist puts it, but, it concludes, will also need to soak up about a third of prospective university students given demography on the one hand and university expansion plans on the other. That said, there is no way that the country can scrounge up all the teachers it will need. Industry will have to provide them.
"The Role of the Services" The Explanatory Statements on the Estimates have now been published. The Economist observes that the Air Force knows what it is doing (fighting an atomic war), and so does the Army, except that Transport Command is not up to strength so that the Army can't actually intervene around the world in support of the civil power, and won't be able to until the Command gets its Beverlys and Britannias. The Navy, on the other hand, has no idea what it is doin. On the one hand, it is focussed on minesweepers and escorts to defend Nato's external lines of communication. On the other, are those threatened? The First Sea Lord wants a "battle group centred around the modern aircraft carrier," and cruisers, whose usefulness "for mounting atomic attack," is apparently too obvious to need elaboration. My opinion is that Regulus is at best one step up from atomic bomb balloons and that the only use for cruisers in an atomic war will be to carry bands of plucky survivors off to start a new civilisation in the bracing airs of South Georgia. The Navy is also looking at turning some of its more questionable carrier hulls into aircraft maintenance ships, just like in the Thirties.
"A Warning From Sebabna" Sixty-five Algerian riflemen have just defected to the guerilla side in mid-battle. Sixty-five might not be much from an army of 210,000, including 45,000 Algerian Muslim troops, but it is still a bad sign, especially since the NCO who led them over had served in Indo-China, showing that communism is contagious. Also, India is still upset about Pakistan and Seato, so maybe if we gave Indian guns like we give Pakistan guns, everyone will be happy! The Economist explains that the real reason that Bevan doesn't like Gaitskell's current half-measure nationalisation proposals is that he is some kind of secret communist. The Franks Commissions on Administrative Tribunals is busy looking at misbehaving administrative tribunals. The Economist is very excited about Evelyn Sharp, who is their kind of woman. Antonio Segni is off to Washington to explain that the left wing of the Christian Democrats isn't too dangerously left wing even though the current government is running a deficit to pay civil servants a living wage, as is the only possible alternative. Austrian neutrality is either too pro-Russian or too anti-Russian or both, take your pick, here's your expense vouchers for your trip to Vienna. Everyone who is lobbying for tax exemptions in the new budget is bad, we'll concede, but let's focus on the TUC.
From The Economist of 1856, "Mr. Ruskin's Art Criticism." Ruskin shouldn't be so mean. Making fun of people in print is only okay if you need words to keep the ads apart or if you woke up on the wrong side of the bed or some pacifist, philanthropist, leveller, or anti-free trader or such like reminded you that they exist. Those politicians down in the Central African Federation have turned out to be anti-business economic know-nothings just like every other politician everywhere. Too bad the opposition has decided to run on "apartheid is keen." Speaking of which, no-one who counts minds that the Nationalists have removed Cape Coloureds from the voting rules by running roughshod over all the checks and balances meant to restrain them, because they guaranteed English language rights. The New Towns that got such a favourable deal on the development costs of building sewers and such should now be expected to at least pay the rates needed to maintain them, and not just rely on business taxes, which are bad. 
"Hauliers Haul Up" On the occasion of some stock offerings for consolidating road transport concerns that break with the past precedent of railroads being big and "hauliers" being small, The Economist looks at the steady expansion of "road hauliage" in the United States as more and more factories, shopping centres, and even towns are located away from rail lines, which have not expanded to keep up with the growth of the United States, as opposed to road transport, which now delivers over 40% of fresh produce by truck oveall, and almost all of it in new cities like Los Angeles. Trucks are even carrying manufactured goods, which is the reason why 70% of goods coming out of Indianopolis, for example, are now carried by trucks. "Heavy Weather Over for Cars" looks at the astonishing way that the automobile industry has contracted since the Treasury tightened credit. Who could have seen that coming? 70,000 workers have been laid off and 850,00 new cars have accumulated at 42,000 dealers. The auto industry has even bestirred itself to extort less money from its dealers, at least for the moment. American schools are silly because they show students so many educational films.
Pakistan is now both an Islamic Republic and a member of the Commonwealth, which is clearly an important thing to notice and also something where it is hard to explain why it is important. So to make a full Leader, we're off on the good old tour of the horizons. Pakistan's relationship with India is rocky! Who knew? It has now been explained to the White settlers of Kenya that, while Britain won't back down to a bunch of Mau Maus, it also won't pay for them to play their silly manifest destiny games. There will be universal franchise for the election of African members of the Legislative Council, and they will soon, obviously, be running the country as the only members with a democratic mandate, and although the settlers are managing to be oblivious to this, everyone else sees the writing on the wall.
"Technical Education" After complaining about printing troubles preventing the magazine from giving adequate attention to the White Paper on Technical Education, The Engineer is pleased by the invention of the new class of "technician," by proposals to increase the intake of girls and women into science and technology careers, and for more continuing technical education. To follow through on coverage replicating The Economist, there is also a discussion of the new Restrictive Trade Practices Bill, as always along the lines of "monopolies are bad but actually there are no monopolies."
Eric C. Simons, 'A History of the Tropenas Process" The Bessemer Process requires a heavy air blast, and way back in 1866, one Monsieur Robert (Mon Dieu!) of that country across the Channel came up with a process that, with fiendish Gallic cleverness, he contrived to have named after someone else involving "tangential tuyeres" gyrating about, Ooh la la! Just to be sure that we are on he same page, Simons tells us that the man who brought Robert-by-Tropenas to Britain in 1887 was "contemplating marriage" and eager to shed his responsibilities, which somehow the new process or partnership permitted. And so it came to pass that whilst Robert Woodward was shacked up in matrimonial bliss, tuyeres were being vigorously blown in Blaenoven or perhaps Sheffield and the Welsh name is just for a partner firm I don't know because my attention was lagging. In the event and in the end, all was well and the Tropenas Process continues to this very day, and the jokes would continue to write themselves if this were not a family newsletter.
American Engineering News reports that the Baldwin-Lima Works have received a gigantic convertible Planing Machine for planing all plannable surfaces of a casting small enough to be carried on a standard railway trailer, plus a forging bed to hold it. Various presumably impressive operating statistics are given, and the convenience of working to-and-from, back-and-forth is emphasised. In the same vein, albeit completely different machines for other companies, two high speed strip rolling mills for American Brass of Torrington, Connecticut. Continental Engineering News is also, and as last week, an advertorial, this week for a hydraulic copying attachment for planing machines, from Adolf Waldrich Coburg of Bavaria. Also, the European Productivity Agency wants us to know about anew conveyor guide roller, and police in Hamburg are testing television control of road intersections.
Letters
I regret to report that Armageddon is scheduled for next Thursday, 3 O'clock sharp.
British Columbia,
Canada
Dear Father:
I hope that this letter finds you well and in full recovery. Do not worry about me just because Aviation Week (and Flight) are lacking this week. I won't regale you with the sordid details of the logistical issues that got in the way, but I will say that when it comes time to bind the current numbers of Aviation Week, they'd better have a January/February volume, or the librarians won't be able to lift it!
At the very least, focusing on Fortune and The Economist instead of the trade press lets us hear the voices (on the right) calling for cuts in defence expenditure. Yes, I know that I am sounding shrill and partisan and womanly this week, but I hear far too much from James' friends about "pacifists and socialists" when these discussions come up! (Remember when Bevan was drummed out of the cabinet for saying that the emergency defence budget called for more spending than British output could support, and how Winston Churchill was allowed to announce spending cuts on the same argument just a few months later?) I am just glad to see Ike and Eden (or Rab, really) owning the cuts this time.
Oops. Sorry, politics! To compensate you, charming pictures of grandchildren under separate cover.
Your Loving Daughter,
Ronnie
The Economist, 3 March 1956
Leaders
"Towards a Caribbean Dominion" The West Indies Federation could be a great thing.
Notes
The Economist leads by needling Alfred Robens for being soft on German neutralism before explaining "The Uses of Seato," which seem to be stopping communism over and against the objections of every leftist in southern Asia, followed by criticism of the government for not taking the lead on the current drive to abolish capital punishment, and ongoing worries about armed forces pay and professional retention.
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| Can't have penguin farms without penguin farmers! |
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| But eighty years later you can boil it down to "she liked high rises." |
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| Because of the printer's strike or whatever it is, there are only four or five ads this issue. |
Books
Tom Driberg has Beaverbrook, which is "the most penetrating study. . . " of the man to be expected in his lifetime. Driberg, who is an old Beaverbrook press columnist, does not lack for affection for the man, but the theme of the book is the contrast between "the little Canadian adventurer's" success in business and failure in politics. T. K. Derry and T. L. Jarman have The Making of Modern Britain, which has the subtitle, "From Adam Smith to the Present Day." I'll just remind the reader that Adam Smith lived at the time of little things like Lord Clive, David Hume, Methodism, American Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the Jacobites, and, heck, the birth rise of the English novel. So picking him as a bookend tells you something right away. About the reviewer, anyway. Richard Pares' Yankees and Creoles sounds very spicy but the Creoles aren't Southern belles, but rather the planters who bought American wheat to feed their slaves and sold back some molasses even though, as the review points out at length, the accounts were mainly balanced in London. Pares is apparently one of the few historians working in the field, and a good writer.
(And Evelyn Waugh's first gay lover, says Wikipedia!)
American Survey
"Unhappy Warrior" John Foster Dulles was up before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to explain why he's always got his foot in his mouth, and why it is good that American foreign policy is being run by a malevolent nitwit. So he regaled them with his close analysis of the Party Congress in Moscow for a couple hours, and that seems to have done nothing in particular. News! The Coloured boycott of public transit in Montgomery has brought the municipally-owned transit system to the brink of bankruptcy, which is bad, but let's bear in mind that the only thing worse than racist Southerners is putting "too much pressure" on them "too soon." A better approach is like the recent judicial decision in New Orleans that its public school system would have to desegregate some day, when the stars were right. We get a summary of Selective Service in the United States. It's not working very well right now, but maybe with the latest changes, it will, but it probably won't.
"Ten Days That Shook Stalinism" The big news out of Moscow is the Twentieth Party Congress rejecting Stalinism. Siam's crack down on democracy and free speech gets the second story. Pibul Songgram might not be a democrat, but he's ours! The difficulties that India is having scrounging up investment capital for the Five Year Plan gets a story, and following that, The Economist endorses the elections in South Vietnam, because even though they are not even remotely democratic, South Vietnam is evolving towards democracy, unlike those Viet Minh communists. Massacres in Sudan show how hard it is to get to be democratic.
The Engineer, 2 March 1956
Gertrude Williams, "Households and Earners" Many people, when they talk about wages and earnings, work from an income distribution across a population consisting of notional families of breadwinner, wife, and three children, when, in fact, impertinent women and obnoxious statisticians like Eleanor Rathbone and "Dr. Bowley" have shown that just 9% of working class families look like this, and that those that do, and thus the vast majority of families with children are disproportionately assigned to the lowest income group, and that therefore children are primarily the children of the poor. Basic unemployment insurance, once this was taken into account, was skewed in favour of families with children, and the result was the family allowance, then tax deductions from income tax once that was extended to low income earners. What's needed, it turns out, is equal pay for equal work, rather than swingeing wage settlements on the basis that the "ordinary" worker has four mouths behind him.
A different perspective on the future of coal from H. Cunliffe of Industrial Fuels, speaking to a conference on fuel efficiency lately, who points out that while there is a projected fuel gap widening to as much as 75 million tons of coal by 1975 that requires conversion from coal to oil, on the other hand existing plans to convert to oil in the form of several oil-fired generating plants under construction by the CEA and the conversion of British Rails to Diesel, there will be a 6 million ton excess of coal by 1960 to be taken up industry.
There is only room for one advertorial, so it had better be a pretty big roller, which it is! Some soil compaction rollers available through Jack Olding and Company, but made by Onions and Sons (Levellers)'s Sheepsfoot division. I hope it's a whole division because that whole sentence is divine! The rollers, on the other hand, are basically just big old weights on big old rubber tires.
The economy is fine; Labour is either bad because it is too against monopolies or because it is for them. don't expect me to read that blather; The French are complaining about Germany and Nato again, and Adenauer might prefer being in Nato than reunification with a bunch of Prussian socialists. CYPRUS!
From The Economist of 1856 comes "Invasions of Property," which is some words to keep the ads apart, I suppose. (The government continues to do unspecified things that violate the rights of property.)
D. Harris Wilson has James VI and I, who is one person, because he had a separate number for Scotland. Wilson explains why he was just another Scot come to make good at the expense of the English. M. de la Fuye and Emile Babeau have The Apostle of Liberty: A Life of La Fayette, which is how you render "Lafayette" at The Economist, which speaks French, you know. No-one likes La Fayette because he was always on about liberty and democracy and republicanism and that stuff's only good if there's no tariffs. Ernst Gower and Gerald Gardner have books about capital punishment, which The Economist reviews together in way of saying get on with it and abolish hanging already.
"Nuclear Plenty" The United States seems enthusiastic about exporting (enriched) uranium as fuel for the reactors of other countries, but not so much about building installed atomic power. The AEC looks at the financials and does not see an argument, except, as Commissioner Thomas Murray says, for the need for millions of MW of installed atomic power by 1963, which can only be achieved with Federal government subsidies, about which private industry has been quiet. And when you look at the fights over new dams, you can see why!
The World Overseas
The Business World is on about the bank rate again.
Business Notes
Money! "Disinflation in hard goods," has been accomplished by cracking down on hire purchase and hiring, which might be why industrial output seems to be down, fuel uranium is cheap, the motor industry is being affected by the crackdown on production for domestic markets, even though the big new Fords are very impressive. Lufthansa is edging towards a price war with BEA, and Britain and Russia are edging towards a price war over providing plant for the Indian Five Year Plan. English Electric is having a good year, showing that the future is still electric, and maybe something has to be done about an emerging platinum monopoly.
Leaders
"Simple Economics of Inflation" The Engineer takes a long sigh and explains for the millionth time that you stop inflation by removing excess demand from the economy with taxes, not with credit restraint or by, well, basically compulsory saving, although that's not how Labour defines its solution. (Take away all the unworthy-of-purchase stuff that people demand, and there's no demand!)
"Institution of Electrical Engineers" It is resolved that the shortage of engineers and scientists is brought about by industry and government wasting the efforts of the scientists and engineers they have. Also, on the atomic industry front, Vickers and Rolls Royce are going in half each on nuclear engines for ships, while BTH, Metro-Vick, and John Thompson are forming AEI to do atomic power plants.
"High Energy Laboratory at Hinston Hall, Cambridge" The Engineer popped by Cambridge to see the student scientists there resurrect the corpses of criminals as a monstrous new form of life using the occult powers of radiation. They used a nice Van de Graaf generator from High Voltage Engineering of Cambridge, Mass., and some nice X-ray machines that they also use to irradiate this and that for industry when they are not blaspheming against God and Nature. And they do a nice fish and chips.
Literature
A. Kenneth Graham, Electroplating Engineering Handbook, H. Cotton, Applied Electricity, and J. S. S. Brame, J. G. King Fuel: Solid, Liquid, and Gaseous and W. Trink, Industrial Furnaces, Vol. 2 get reviews this week. Trink and King are new editions of good books. The reviewer points out some diagram caption errors in King to show that the reviewer was paying attention. Cotton is good, and much more mathematically literate than other works one could name. And in case anyone thinks this column is a soft touch, Graham gets roasted through and through.
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| Something about nice women not making history |
Well! That was more interesting than the run of engineering research papers that appear in this magazine in normal times, and I applaud the Editor for running it, even though I feel as though there's a hook hidden in the bait!
J. F. Coales and R. M. Noton, "An O
n-Off Servo Mechanism with a Predicted On-Off" Automatic control requires switching when the actual output is different from the predicted output, and you get much more automation out of the automation, or alternatively, efficiency by not operating in "saturated" conditions,. when the switchover is automated by a predictive mechanism. This servo works by solving a partial differential equation in terms of error and error rate by an analog method. It is not necessary to design the analogue computer-controlled servo for every process, since it can be "programmed" from the observed characteristics of the system.
n-Off Servo Mechanism with a Predicted On-Off" Automatic control requires switching when the actual output is different from the predicted output, and you get much more automation out of the automation, or alternatively, efficiency by not operating in "saturated" conditions,. when the switchover is automated by a predictive mechanism. This servo works by solving a partial differential equation in terms of error and error rate by an analog method. It is not necessary to design the analogue computer-controlled servo for every process, since it can be "programmed" from the observed characteristics of the system.
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Vickers Vigor, not Onion and Sons, unfortunately By Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums - https://www.flickr.com/photos/twm_news/ 26242480853/, No restrictions, https://commons. wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53194512 |
American Engineering News has coverage of the recent California and Oregon floods, the moral of which appears to be that the Bureau of Reclamation isn't entirely just another New Deal boondoggle, even though its ambitions in California onw reach $2 billion in construction. The shock of devastating flooding on two coasts within six months of each other and might also finally push through some reasonable regime of Federal disaster aid. MIT is to have a School of Advanced Studies because it is tired of Princeton getting all the press. The AEC continues to fiddle with ways of using atomics in industry that doesn't generate power in competition with private utilities. (At least they're not building dams!) They're looking at shooting chemicals with radiation, just to see what might happen.
Continental Engineer News reports that Asea of Sweden has a nice industrial metal detector, which seems to be for finding metal debris in feed streams, although that is not clear after two full columns of details about how precise and stable it is, electronically speaking. African Engineering News reports on South Africa's five year railway plan, the helical gears they can make in South Africa now, a gold extraction plant, "progress" in converting brine into sweet water, mainly in replacing expensive distillation with electro-dialysis, which sounds keen if it will just work, and a Lever Brother factory, which counts as news in South Africa, where nothing ever happens. Launches and Trial Trips has four entries, two steamers and two motorships, two cargo and passenger liners and one ship, and a trawler.
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| SS Clan Ross (1956) cr. Royal Museums Greenwich |
The Economist, 10 March 1956
Leaders
"Shifting Sands" King Hussein has fired General Glubb because Jordan sees its main security problem is Israel and not the Communists for some reason perhaps involving "Communism" being the reason that no Arab country can be allowed to be independent, while Israel is palpably lusting for East Jerusalem. One might draw uncomfortable conclusions, but it is much less trouble to take off on a patented Economist tour of the horizons. The second Leader is about how the Government is getting involved in bacon and eggs, before explaining, in breaking news and in service of reminding would-be neutralists that they're not allowed to be neutral, that Communism is bad.
Notes of the Week
"Attack on Defence" Parliament has been arguing all week over whether the country is getting its money's worth for the £1.5 billion it is spending on defence. Labour is arguing that "limited war" is unlikely, and therefore the Navy is pretty much irrelevant. And if the Air Force is all that matters, it is worth looking at how the country isn't getting enough, good enough planes. (Mainly, Hunters can't fire their guns.) Aneurin Bevan is running for the Labour Party treasurer-ship because he pretty much has to to remain relevant. Jordan is looking for new regional allies because obviously they can't possibly go on without British money, which will cause the trade balance to go negative, and "some people will die." The latest parliamentary manoeuvres in Germany suggest that Adenauer's coalition is breaking down. A short Note on "Cross Currents in Wages" presumably concludes that the latest wage settlements are bad, but you won't catch me actually reading it!
"Contrasts in Vaccination" The Health Ministry is going all in on polio vaccinations, so why isn't it on about the tuberculosis vaccination? The conclusion is that the polio vaccine is a bit much and the Ministry is just responding to parental pressure. India's latest budget isn't taking the capital demands of the five year plan very seriously because it can't, due to India not having the tax-bearing capacity to make the Plan practical. This might seem to imply that the Plan is impractical, but shh, we have steel plants to sell, and, by the way, why are the Communists competing and pushing the price of steel plants down? Probably so they can take over the world. Also, we ask what's keeping the Atomic United States of Europe, and look at something even more exciting than rent control and farm subsidies, which is to say, farm rents.
Books
D. Harris Wilson has James VI and I, who is one person, because he had a separate number for Scotland. Wilson explains why he was just another Scot come to make good at the expense of the English. M. de la Fuye and Emile Babeau have The Apostle of Liberty: A Life of La Fayette, which is how you render "Lafayette" at The Economist, which speaks French, you know. No-one likes La Fayette because he was always on about liberty and democracy and republicanism and that stuff's only good if there's no tariffs. Ernst Gower and Gerald Gardner have books about capital punishment, which The Economist reviews together in way of saying get on with it and abolish hanging already.
American Survey
"Hail to the Chief" Ike is going to run again in '56 now that it has been made clear that he's not going to do any work, and that no-one expects him to. "Democrats Also Running" follows, showing that even The Economist is in on the joke. Kefauver is still going to offer a left wing alternative, you may snort now, and Stevenson is still going to get the Democrats' Twentieth Century quota of bald candidates out of the way in a no hope blowout. (Coming up in the 21st Century I am sure we will see Coloured and woman candidates carrying three states, I'm sure.) The Department of Agriculture has decided to sell off the American cotton surplus at market prices, in a radical break with past policy.
The World Overseas
"Brains on Strike in Israel" Israel's professionals had a "strike" because they are not paid enough more than labour (the ratio is 1.8 to 1, which is even worse than the intolerable situation in Britain), and the Labour government has capitulated to their demands. The Economist looks at the Moselle Canal, and the fact that cotton sales to the Communist bloc are shoring up Egyptian cotton prices, which are under pressure from the American surplus and Sudanese exports.
The Business World
Stock issues are being hurt by the high bank rate, which makes leaving the money in bonds a better deal. WHICH IS THE POINT! I think people pretend not to know these things so that they don't have to acknowledge what Keynes said about the alternative being higher taxes and maybe wage and price controls.
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| 1,972 Hunters, 197 Swifts, 436 Javelins, 337 Lightnings 76 Scimitars, 151 Sea Vixens |
Business Notes
This is probably why the decline in auto sales is supposed to be news.
"Hunters and the Hunted" The Ministry of Supply answered its critics in the House this week. It is proposed that the industry hasn't looked too hard at production because its many development contracts have been so profitable, and that by cutting the number of development contracts it can turn the industry's attention to production. But if the government is going to risk producing fewer designs, will it also commit to buying abroad if the industry fails to meet a specification? Also, the Hunter situation is so too shameful. The Economist can't pretend to understand transonic aerodynamics, but it feels as though it is taking far too long to get the Hunter's guns working. The Australian Atomic Energy Authority's purchase of a contract for uranium production from a private mine is a big story because it is very colourful to talk about "Mary Kathleen McConachy's uranium? but the buried lede is that there is so much uranium on the market now that the price is under threat. Large new plant and increasing competition in the Brtiish domestic "soft tissue" market for "hygienic and other purposes" is a noteworthy story with major new plant going in at Bowater-Scott Northfleet.
The Engineer, 9 March 1956
Leaders
"Atomic Energy and Propulsion" Sir John Cockcroft gave a nice paper on the subject concluding that a commercial version of the USS Nautilus' power plant would raise fuel cost four-fold and capital costs tenfold, but there is room for economy here, thank Heavens! Aircraft reactors continue to be somewhat loopy, and even American enthusiasts see no commercial application in the next fifteen to twenty years. Atomic locomotives have some advantages, but are much more loopy than even high-temperature, practically unshielded aeronautical reactors, because you can just put your atom power into generating plants and electrify the lines. The North of Scotland Hydroelectric Board has made a loss for the first time on back of low rainfall.
Literature
Joseph Stills, Mechanism, R. McAdam and D. Davison, Mine Rescue Work, H. F. Sanderson, Railway Commercial Practice, Supplement to Volume I and II, and B. B. Low, Strength of Materials, 2ne Edition, get reviews. Stills is thoughtful and useful, and very mathematical, coming in for criticism for not discussing more gear teeth forming methods than just "generation." McAdam and Davison are mainly concerned with breathing mechanisms, it turns out. Sanderson's review, like Sandeson's book, is a bewildering journey through jargon and administrative detail. Low is adequate, and justifies the new edition with a discussion of Nimonic.
I like how Google just assumes that I want to hear about the Fischer-Tropsch Process even when I explicitly search for "Tropenas Process." Also, how 'bout that French accent, there. Socially active old women are silly! Good thing that Nineteenth Century corps de ballet weren't being outrageously sexually exploited or anything.
Our one permitted advertorial continues to be an interesting choice, "a range of three-stage hydrodynamic torque convertors" licensed from the Twin-Disc Clutch Company for production at Rolls-Royce. Also, Lloyd's Register of Shipping is out, the annual dinner of the Association of Consulting Engineers was a fine and boozy affair, and a page is devoted to some engravings from the 1861 number are included.
Robert E. Johnson of United Air Lines, A. E. Raymond of Douglas, and Grasty Crews II (which is a real name) of General Aviation write in to make fun of the article about the coming civil aviation crash due to overinvestment in jet planes. E. Maclay Gearhart III of the College of Business Administration wants to solve the farm crisis by "buying out surplus farmers." Raymond Pitcairn of Philadelphia is just happy to see Fortune carrying some Republican propaganda. About time!
Business Roundup reports that the business recession that isn't happening and isn't so bad will definitely be over by the middle of '56. The Business Globe reports that the reason foreigners seemto be doing so well in spite of not having freedom like the United States is that they are cooking their books. Japan is posed for a recovery as "miraculous" as Germany, Germany is threatened by Communist infiltration (sigh, even here), Joscelino Kubitscheck might be an okay President of Brazil if he would just throw open Brazil's oil industry to foreign companies and "restore financial integrity."
Editorial (now labelled as such)
"Anti-Trust: The Barnes Era" I haven't gone very far into the details of anti-trust legislation in Britain and action in the United States because it seems like an ongoing process in which philosophy counts for more than apparent motion in the moment. That is, I expect the right to be friendly to trusts, and if that is political partisanship, so be it.
Gilbert Burck and Sanford Packer, "The Coming Turn in Consumer Credit"
Proctor and Gamble get a corporate profile, William Goss of Scovill and Andre Soriano get "Men Henry Wants to Have Lunch With" profiles, Fortune defends Ike's defence cuts on the grounds that they're good for the economy in the long run twilight struggle with Communism. Westinghouse's problems are diagnosed. It's not that they keep messing up new jet engines, that's actually the Navy's fault. It's unions or something. Speaking of aviation-sector companies with an ever-lengthening litany of failures, "Barrier-Breaking Bell Aircraft" follows. Remember the last X-plane to actually fly? What are we up to now, the X-15?
Herrymon Maurer, "Twenty Minutes to a Career" You know what's more fun than covering business news for Fortune? Using a hiring fair as an excuse to spend the day on campus!
"I think Henry's nodded off. Anyone got anything arty? 'Architecture's New Technology?' Does it have pretty pictures of pretty buildings? Run it."
"Estate Planning," Fortune annouonces with ghoulish glee, is a "New Growth Industry." Even more ghoulish, details on tax manoeuvres to cut your estate tax obligation.
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