THE WORDS AND WISDOM OF HOWARD SCOTT Volume 1 Technocracy Inc. HOWARD SCOTT 1890 - 1970 Howard Scott was a man ahead of his time, able to discern events analyze conditions, and put them into proper perspective. He was the Chief Engineer of a group known as the Technical Alliance The group consisted of engineers, mathematicians, scientists, statisticians, economists — all prominent in their field — who undertook an energy survey of the North American Continent. All of this was brought on by the productive capacity of the U.S.A. at the end of WW1, which had increased despite the induction into the armed forces of much of the work force. What did this portend for the future? He guided their endeavors through to fruition in 1932. Technocracy Inc. was formed by him in March of 1933, to inform the people of North America of the findings of the Technical Alliance, and to acquaint them with the inadequacies of the Price System and make it clear what was causing their present social problems. Howard Scott single handedly set about the task of forming an organization, undertaking lecture tours of North America to set in place the nucleus of what was to become the fastest-growing organization in North America. These tours were augmented by frequent interviews on radio and in the press. As mentioned elsewhere in this magazine, the organization continued to grow until 1947, when as previously discussed the organization went into decline. He guided it through good times and bad, never deviating from his original intention of presenting only the facts and analyzing where our misguided social policies were leading us. HOWARD SCOTT He remained as Director in Chief of Technocracy Inc. until his death in January of 1970. Was he a visionary or a man of great perception? Or was he a man with an analytical brain, able to see things as they were, not as people would like them to be, or more to the point, hoped they would be? He was a man of great integrity, refusing all kinds of financial inducement to set up a harmless research foundation which would have made him rich, but would have betrayed his principles. He was concerned with the practical problems of running and organizing a modern technological society; to this end he devoted his life. Events have borne out the correctness of his analysis; the predictions of Technocracy have all proved to be accurate. Whether we as a society have the wit to take advantage of these findings remains to be seen. 3 TECHNOCRACY'S HOWARD SCOTT SAID: COMPILED BY SECTION 3, REGIONAL DIVISION 8141 TECHNOCRACY INC. AKRON, OHIO PUBLISHED IN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY SECTION 3, REGIONAL DIVISION 8141 TECHNOCRACY INC. 110 6 KENMORE BOULEVARD AKRON, OHIO 44314 First Edition July 1989 PREFACE This volume represents the efforts of Section 3, Regional Division 8141, Technocracy Inc. to assemble the most complete collection of the spoken words and significant written material of Technocracy's Founder and Director-in-Chief , Howard Scott, as recorded by transcript, disc, wire, and tape. An addendum contains pertinent statements and observations as accounted for by a long-term member-at-large of Technocracy Inc. An appendix contains a reduced-size copy of the first Technical Alliance pamphlet published in 1918. The contents are arranged in the most approximate chronological order. The blanks appearing throughout the transcript are due to either voids in the recordings, inaudible remarks from the audience in question periods, or poor clarity of the audio, making it impossible for the transcriber to decipher the words at that particular point. EVERY ORGANIZATION HAS ITS OBJECTIVES, AND THE OBJECTIVES OF TECHNOCRACY ARE THAT WE ARE AN EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH ORGANIZATION AND IT IS OUR JOB TO KEEP AHEAD OF THE EVENTS AND KEEP THE PUBLIC OF THIS COUNTRY AND THIS CONTINENT INFORMED OF THE TREND OF EVENTS AND THE TECHNOLOGICAL DESIGN MOST CAPABLE OF OPERATING THIS COMPLEX ON THIS CONTINENT FOR THE GENERAL WELFARE AND COMMON GOOD, SO AS TO PROVIDE AND DISTRIBUTE AN ABUNDANCE TO EVERYONE WITH A MAXIMUM OF CONSERVATION OF RESOURCES — HUMAN AND OTHERWISE. — HOWARD SCOTT June 23, 1950 CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE iii Howard Scott Photograph v Objective of Technocracy vi Interview, NEW YORK WORLD, February 20, 1921 13 Technocracy Speaks, December 1932 19 The Imminence of Social Change, July 1933 29 Radio Broadcast, WEVD, New York, February 6, 1935 31 America Prepares for a Turn in the Road, March 16, 1935 ... 35 Radio Broadcast, KFAC, October 14, 1935 51 Lecture, New York City Engineering Auditorium, December 6, 1935 57 Public Lecture, New Empire Theater, Edmonton, December 1935 71 Radio Broadcast, WEVD, New York, January 23, 1936 87 Public Lecture, "Technology and Labor", Chicago, May 20, 1936 93 Radio Broadcast, WCFL, Chicago, 1937 109 Reply to NEW YORKER MAGAZINE, March 1937 113 Public Lecture, Cleveland, March 8, 1937 117 Public Lecture, Conway Hotel, Appleton, August 27, 1937 123 National Tour Quotes, August, 1937 135 National Tour Quotes, 1937 139 Dinner Meeting, Chicago, September 6, 1937 145 Public Lecture, Civic Auditorium, Winnipeg, September 1, 149 1937 National Tour Quotes, September 1937 159 Radio Broadcast, KOMO, Seattle, November 2, 1937 179 Radio Broadcast, WGAR, Cleveland, April 17, 1938 185 Public Lecture, Winnipeg Auditorium, October 25, 1938 191 Interview, Associated Press, United Press, and Int'l News Service, June 28, 1940 203 Lake Erie Cruise, June 30, 1940, September 15, 1940, June 15, 1941 223 Public Lecture, The Defense of America, Akron Armory, April vii CONTENTS PAGE 22, 1941 231 Membership Meeting, Cleveland, Hollenden Hotel, September 27, 1942 235 Public Lecture, Los Angeles, November 26, 1942 249 Public Lecture, Detroit Masonic Temple, December 6, 1942 .. 259 Public Lecture, Total War, Cleveland Arena, December 11, 1942 279 Membership Meeting, 8141-15, Cleveland, December 13, 1942 . 297 Public Lecture, Los Angeles, 1942 315 Membership Meeting, YWCA, Akron, October 10, 1943 343 Membership Meeting, Cleveland Public Auditorium, October 17, 1943 371 Membership Meeting, Detroit Section Headquarters, November 21, 1943 395 Public Lecture, Cleveland, Carter Hotel, February 4, 1945 . 403 Membership Meeting, Cleveland, February 5, 1945 421 Public Lecture, Vancouver Forum, July 2, 1947 449 Membership Meeting, Seattle, July 4, 1947 463 Public Meeting, Seattle, July 29, 1947 487 Membership Meeting, Cleveland, 1950 513 Teleconference, CHQ and 12349, 1951 521 Membership Meeting, Cleveland, 8141-15, 1951 527 Membership Meeting, Detroit, 1951 573 Membership Meeting, Akron, August 29, 1951 621 Public Lecture, Akron, August 30, 1951 677 Public Lecture, Kent, August 31, 1951 699 Birthday Talk, New York, March 29, 1952 721 Membership Meeting, Detroit, December 10, 1952 745 Membership Meeting, Cleveland, Blue Boar Cafe, December 12, 1952 777 Public Lecture, Cleveland, December 13, 1952 795 Membership Meeting, 8141-14, Kent, December 14, 1952 853 Birthday Talk, New York, April 4, 1953 915 viii CONTENTS PAGE Eastern Area Conference, Akron, September 6, 1953 955 Teleconference, CHQ and Los Angeles, March 21, 1954 1007 Public Lecture, "Peace or Prosperity?", Seattle, April 16, 1954 1015 Public Lecture, "Time for Decision", Everett, April 23, 1954 1033 Public Lecture, "Peace or Prosperity?", Los Angeles, May 8, 1954 1057 Membership Question and Answer Period, Canada, 1955 1079 Public Lecture, Chicago, Hotel Sherman, March 15, 1956 .... 1097 Public Lecture, "The Chips are Down", Detroit, March 17, 1956 1143 TV Interview, Dorothy Fuldheim, Cleveland, March 22, 1956 . 1169 Teleconference, Howard Scott and Donald Bruce, Vancouver, April 1956 1173 Teleconference, CHQ and Los Angeles, November 18, 1956 .... 1181 Public Lecture, Chicago, Hotel La Salle, March 8, 1958 .... 1191 Public Lecture, "Design, Direction or Disaster", Detroit, March 15, 1958 1201 TV Interview, Dorothy Fuldheim, WEWS Cleveland, March 19, 1958 1227 Lecture, Cleveland Press Club, March 20, 1958 1231 Public Lecture, Cleveland, Masonic Temple, March 22, 1958 . 1239 Public Lecture, "Design, Direction or Disaster, Akron YMCA, March 25, 1958 1259 Teleconference, CHQ and West Coast, 1958 1281 Teleconference, CHQ and Vancouver, August 30, 1958 1291 Teleconference, CHQ and Hamilton, October 28, 1958 1305 Membership Meeting, Kent, March 21, 1959 1321 Public Lecture, "Decade of Decision", Detroit, April 23, 1960 1355 Public Lecture, "Decade of Decision", Akron, April 26, 1960 1383 Membership Meeting, Cleveland, Shaker-Lee Hall, May 1, 1960 1407 Teleconference, CHQ and Bellingham, 1961 1437 ix CONTENTS PAGE Membership Meeting, 8141-14, Kent, April 9, 1961 1441 Radio Interview, KYW, Cleveland, April 11, 1961 1471 Interview at CHQ by PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, July 7, 1961 ... 1479 Teleconference, Los Angeles and CHQ, December 31, 1961 .... 1495 Teleconference, CHQ and 12247-1 , Everett, March 24, 1962 . 1505 Interview at CHQ, William Swanberg, May 6, 1962 1513 Interview at CHQ, Sue Hall, College Student, June 13, 1962 1529 Teleconference, Los Angeles and CHQ, October 28, 1962 1561 Teleconference, Los Angeles and CHQ, December 31, 1962 .... 1569 Public Lecture, Ashtabula, 1963 1577 Interview at CHQ by Radcliffe Student, 1963 1593 Public Lecture, "The Continuing Crisis", Cleveland Public Hall, April 4, 1963 1609 Public Lecture, "The Continuing Crisis", Detroit Institute of Arts, April 27, 1963 1631 Public Lecture, "The Continuing Crisis", Akron YWCA, May 2, 1963 1655 Interview by CLEVELAND PRESS, Cleveland, May 3, 1963 1679 Interview by CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER, May 4, 1963 1703 Membership Meeting, 8141-16, Cleveland, May 5, 1963 1723 Teleconference, Los Angeles and CHQ, October 27, 1963 1761 Teleconference, CHQ and 12247-1, Everett, February 15, 1964 1783 Telephone-Radio Interview, CHQ and CJOR Vancouver, July 11, 1964 1801 Radio Interview, KYW Cleveland, November 19, 1964 1813 Telephone Interviews, CHQ and Seattle and Los Angeles, March 21, 1965 1839 Teleconference, CHQ and NORTHWEST TECHNOCRAT Office, June 17, 1967 1843 Teleconference, CHQ and Vancouver, September 3, 1967 1859 Table Conversation, Alberta, September 23, 1967 1875 Teleconference, CHQ and 12247-3, March 30, 1968 1881 Teleconference, CHQ and NORTHWEST TECHNOCRAT Staff, August x CONTENTS PAGE 24, 1968 1895 Teleconference, CHQ and Vancouver, September 1, 1968 1911 Teleconference, CHQ and 11833-2, December 31, 1968 1925 Teleconference, CHQ and 12247-3, Seattle, March 22, 1969 .. 1931 Teleconference, CHQ and NORTHWEST TECHNOCRAT Office, May 24, 1969 1945 Teleconference, CHQ and 12349-1, Vancouver, August 31, 1969 1955 Teleconference, CHQ and 8025-A, Miami, September 7, 1969 .. 1967 Teleconference, CHQ and 8342-1 , Detroit, December 14, 1969 1977 ADDENDUM 1989 APPENDIX 1995 INDEX 1997 xi THE BIRTH OF THE TECHNICAL ALLIANCE From an interview given to Charles H. Wood, Associate Editor, THE NEW YORK WORLD, February 20, 1921 "There is no insurmountable problem ahead of the American people. We can have prosperity just as soon as we are willing to go after it. It isn't necessary to wait a single month for Europe. Forget the German indemnity. Never mind what the League of Nations does or doesn't do. As for Congress, let Congress go ahead and talk; it doesn't matter. All that we need in order to get prosperity is sufficient natural wealth, sufficient skill, sufficient industrial equipment, sufficient labor power, and intelligent direction. We have all of these things except the last, and there is no reason under the sun why we can't have that just as soon as the technicians decide to get together." Howard Scott is Chief Engineer of the Technical Alliance , a new organization , with very modest headquarters at No. 23 West 35th Street. It is not a business or commercial organization . It does not intend to direct any special enterprise . It is exactly what its name implies : an attempt to get the technical men of all branches of American industry together . "What for?", I asked Howard Scott. "To find out what the American people want, " he answered, "and to get it for them." The answer was simple and inclusive but why the technical men? Are there no other interests to be consul ted? "The technicians," Mr. Scott explained, "are the only group who know how people get things. They are not the only producers, but they are the only ones who know how production is accomplished. Bankers don't know. Politicians and diplomats don't know. If these fellows did know, they would have got the wheels started before this. They all want production -- everybody does; but those who have been running things don't know how to run them, while those who do know how have not so far considered it their business . " 13 THE BIRTH OF THE TECHNICAL ALLIANCE NEW YORK WORLD INTERVIEW 2-20-21 It took a long time to get even that much from Howard Scott. It is evident that newspapermen rank in his eyes somewhere along with financiers and diplomats . He is an engineer, and he wouldn't argue. He would answer questions if he had the answer, but if he didn't have it, he would express no views. There are no two "sides" to any question in the minds of engineers like this. If they have the answer, there it is. If they haven't, the only thing to do is go and get it. The fact that the answer is still unknown doesn't permit the assumption that there is more than one. Although the Technical Alliance has just been formed, Mr. Scott has been working at the project for several years. Not trying to get the engineer's together -- that is not an engineer's method of forming an organization. He has been getting the problem together. He has been doing research work. He has been gathering data and making charts showing just how industry is being carried on today; and, so far as he could, he has been calculating the percentage of waste. "The whole problem may be stated, " he said, "as the problem of the elimination of waste, but waste to an engineer has a different meaning than it has to the general public. People generally think of waste only in terms of potato peelings or of spending money for what they hanker for, instead of for what they think they ought to buy. If the elimination of that kind of waste could solve the problem, China should be the richest country on earth today; but the engineer recognizes that idleness is waste, that duplication of effort is waste, and that the unnecessary exhaustion of any natural resource is waste. "If we can eliminate idleness and duplication of effort," he said, "we may have immediate prosperity -- such prosperity as the world has never known. If we can find a way then to husband our natural resources, we may make that prosperity permanent, " "Can the engineers and technical men do this?" I asked. "If they can't," he answered, "nobody can. Inasmuch, however, as that is only one thing which they are trained to do, the problem does not seem difficult. The simple fact is that they 14 THE BIRTH OF THE TECHNICAL ALLIANCE NEW YORK WORLD INTERVIEW 2-20-21 have not tackled the problem up to date. They have been trying, with gratifying success, to eliminate idleness and duplication of effort within the various industries in which they have been employed, but so far they have not thought of American industry, which means, practically, that they haven't thought of it as engineers . "The time has come, however, when the engineer must do exactly that. We are reaching a crisis, and the technicians are the only people who can find out what to do. They must survey the whole country, tabulate its resources, discover its possibilities in natural and human power, uncover the present wastes and leakages, and work out a tentative design of coordinated production and distribution." "And suppose you do draw up a seemingly workable plan, " I asked, "what are you going to do with public opinion?" Mr. Scott let me know that he was vastly bored. "It is all a technical matter," he said. "It makes not the slightest difference whether the public knows about it or not. The steam engine didn't need a press agent. The Einstein Theory doesn't require any special legislative enactment. If the only people who can bring order out of our present industrial chaos find out exactly how to do the job, we needn't worry about the next step . " "Won't you run against some political difficulties?" I asked . "Yes, " he said, "in the same way that the well known tide ran against political difficulties in the person of His Majesty King Canute. Politics is our natural approach to matters which we don't understand. When we know exactly what we want and exactly how to get it, we get it. If we don't know what we want, we vote for it with a superstitious hope that a change -- any sort of change -- will bring it out of its hiding place. Mr. Harding was elected by an overwhelming majority because we wanted something badly, and we thought that 'normalcy' might be it. Had we been in a little more pain, we should have probably elected Debs, hoping that a change in ownership would somehow work a miracle." 15 THE BIRTH OF THE TECHNICAL ALLIANCE NEW YORK WORLD INTERVIEW 2-20-21 "Isn't the question of ownership a vital one?' I asked. "No," he answered. "It makes no difference who owns the sun. What concerns us vitally is whether we use it properly or not. No lovers ever quarreled about who owns the moon. Neither does it make a difference who owns the earth if we can only discover how to use it. Ownership is a myth. If we once qet to usinq our coal and iron and our industrial and transportation systems to their full capacity, nobody will be fool enouqh to care whether they are owned or not. "The enqineer especially is not concerned with ownership. Technicians, as such, cannot function in politics. Their traininq has placed them in a position where decisions are the result of intrinsic fact and not of personal opinion, whether autocratic or democratic. They cannot function in finance because their science is one of production and utilization, not one of title or credit. They cannot function in labor unions as at present orqanized because these unions are mere political qroups in which the individual member functions not as an individual responsible for a certain detail of the industrial process but as a voter expressinq some -- usually borrowed -- opinion. "The Technical Alliance is simply an attempt to orqanize the technical workers on their jobs instead of orqanizinq them as an academic qroup outside. In one sense of the word, this may be called the first qenuine labor orqanization in America, for every technician is enqaqed in strateqically important labor and is concerned primarily with the orqanization, that is, the coordination, of industry. "Technical men must necessarily look on industry as industry. The central purpose of industry -- and the only purpose which the enqineer, as such, can pay attention to -- is to serve humanity. Mr. Gantt, in his very conservative estimates, proved that our present industrial machine is not qivinq more than 20 percent of the service it is capable of qivinq, primarily because the machine is controlled by business qroups for business ends, rather than by industrialists for industrial ends. His fiqures were actually far too hiqh, because with the elimination of the business motive would come the elimination of thousands of industries now enqaqed in makinq thinqs which only business orqanizations need; and because with the machine once operatinq 16 THE BIRTH OF THE TECHNICAL ALLIANCE NEW YORK WORLD INTERVIEW 2-20-21 at its full capacity, there would be such an abundance produced for everybody that we would not need to protect private property as it is protected today." Mr. Scott is anything but an enthusiast , and yet I have never heard, an irresponsible soapboxer make more staggering statements. To multiply the nation's wealth by ten -- without waiting for new inventions and without considering a political move -- seemed to him a simple problem for the engineers when once they organize as engineers . For lack of anything better to say, I asked him a question which every advocate of a new order will recognize as an old acquaintance ; "Won't you have to change human nature first?" Mr. Scott smiled dryly. "Did they have to change human nature, " he asked, "in order to keep passengers from standing on car platforms?" "Go on," I said, "I'm listening." "They put up signs first, " he continued, "prohibiting the dangerous practice, but the passengers still crowded the platforms. Then they got ordinances passed, and the platform remained as crowded as before. Policemen, legislators, public service commissions all took a hand but to no effect; then the problem was put up to the engineer. "The engineers solved it easily. They built cars that didn't have any platforms." According to Mr. Scott, the same course will have to be followed in the matter of a still more familiar prohibition : THOU SHALT NOT STEAL. Church and state, he says, have united unanimously throughout all history behind this law, but it has never been enforced . Technical administration alone, he maintains , can enforce it. 17 THE BIRTH OF THE TECHNICAL ALLIANCE NEW YORK WORLD INTERVIEW 2-20-21 How? Let him answer in his own words. "By coordinating the industrial processes; by operating all industries as one agency for one definite purpose: producing and distributing the things that people want so that an abundance of everything shall be accessible to all. "Private property, " he said, "is generally recognized as a burden even today, and few people would want to carry it if they could be rich without having to do so. For the first time in history, though, humanity has a machine at hand which is productive enough to make everybody rich, and it has the technical knowledge at its disposal to run such a machine. All that is necessary is coordination." "But do you expect the engineers to agree upon a program?" I asked. "They have their prejudices and differences, don't they, just like the rest of us?" "They disagree as politicians, " he said, "but not as engineers. We are not trying to organize them, however, into a society to debate something but into an alliance which will discover the facts. Engineers do not disagree on facts. They all know which direction a stone will drop. They all know that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points. If there is anything else they want to know as engineers, they find it out; and when they find it out, there isn't the slightest disagreement. Engineers are not radical or conservative. As engineers, they are no more radical than a yardstick and no more conservative than so many degrees Fahrenheit." 18 TECHNOCRACY SPEAKS By Howard Scott Originally printed in THE LIVING AGE An English Publication December 1932 The very favorable editorial comment on Technocracy presented by Mr. Orage in a recent issue of THE NEW ENGLISH WEEKLY has prompted the editor of THE LIVING AGE to request a statement from Technocracy itself, I should like first to make two corrections in matters of fact. First, the per capita consumption of energy should be, respectively, 2,000 and 150,000 kilogram calories per day, not per annum as Mr. Orage stated. Secondly, the cigarette production is given as at the rate of 'five or six hundred per hour per man, ' instead of per minute per man . The following communication is less a reply to Mr. Orage ' s comments than a statement of the aims and methods of the research body known as Technocracy. Such a statement would seem appropriate after the very considerable publicity given to the specific findings of Technocracy in connection with its Energy Survey of North America. I Technocracy is a research organization, founded in 1920, composed of scientists, technologists, physicists, and biochemists. It was organized to collect and collate data on the physical functioning of the social mechanism on the North American continent, and to portray the relationship of this continent and the magnitude of its operations in quantitative comparison with other continental areas of the world. Its methods are the result of a synthetic integration of the physical sciences that pertain to the determinations of all functional sequences of social phenomena. Technocracy makes one basic postulate: that the phenomena involved in the functional operation of a social mechanism are metrical. It defines science as 'the methodology of the determination of the most probable.' Technocracy therefore assumes from its postulate that there already exist fundamental and arbitrary units which, in conjunction with derived units, can be extended to form a new and basic method for the quantitative analysis and determination of 19 TECHNOCRACY SPEAKS Published in THE LIVING AGE Dec, 1932 the next most probable state of any social mechanism. Technocracy further states that, as all organic and inorganic mechanisms involved in the operation of the social macrocosm are energy- consuming devices, therefore the basic metrical relationships are: the factor of energy conversion, or efficiency; and the rate of conversion of available energy of the mechanism as a functional whole in a given area per time unit. Technocracy accordingly establishes a new technique of social mensuration, that is to say, a process for determining the rates of growth of all energy-consuming devices within the limits of the next most probable energy state. The Energy Survey of North America now being conducted by Technocracy in association with the Industrial Engineering Department of Columbia University and the Architects' Emergency Committee has found that employment of this method has not only yielded new data but has endowed already existing data with a new significance. As the above method is one of measurement, it follows axiomatically that all processes of evaluation are excluded. Value has no metrical equivalent. Value is defined by the economists as the measure of the force of desire. It has its physical manifestation in any one commodity unit by which all other commodities or services are evaluated. Any society using a commodity method of valuation shall herein be said to be employing a price system. A 'social steady state' is a social mechanism whose per capita rate of energy conversion is not changing appreciably with time. Social change, on the other hand, may be defined as the change in the per capita rate of energy conversion or the change from one order of magnitude to another in the social conversion of the available energy. All social history prior to the last century and a half, viewed technologically, may therefore be described as the record of a steady state. Only within the last hundred and fifty years has there been introduced a technique that has specifically caused social change. Technology, as the executor of physical science, is the instrument for effecting social change. During the 200,000 years prior to 1800 the biological progression of man, in his struggle for subsistence on this earth, had advanced so far that the total world population in that year reached the approximate number of 850 million. 20 TECHNOCRACY SPEAKS Published in THE LIVING AGE Dec, 1932 During the subsequent 132 years, world population has attained such heights that it now exceeds a total of 1.8 billion; in other words, the population increase in the last 132 years has been greater than it was in the previous 200, 000. Most of this increase in the human species has been made possible by the social introduction of technological procedures, that is, change in the means whereby we live as brought about solely by the introduction of technology. II A century ago these United States had a population of approximately 12 million, whereas today our census figures give a total of over 122 million -- a tenfold increase in the century. One hundred years ago in these United States, we consumed less than 75 trillion British thermal units of extraneous energy per annum, whereas in 1929 we consumed approximately 27,000 trillion British thermal units -- an increase of 353-fold in the century. Our energy consumption now exceeds 150,000 kilogram calories per capita per day, whereas in the year 1800 our consumption of extraneous energy was probably not less than 1, 600 or more than 2,000 kilogram calories per capita per day. The United States of our forefathers, with 12 million inhabitants, performed its necessary work in almost entire dependence upon the human engine, which, as its chief means of energy conversion, was aided and abetted only by domestic animals and a few waterwheels. The United States today has over one billion installed horsepower. In 1929, these engines of energy conversion, though operated only to partial capacity, nevertheless had an output that represented approximately 50 percent of the total work of the world. When one realizes that the technologist has succeeded to such an extent that he is today capable of building and operating engines of energy conversion that have nine million times the output capacity of the average single human being working an eight-hour day, one begins to understand the significance of this acceleration, beginning with man as the chief engine of energy conversion and culminating with these huge extensions of his original one-tenth of a horsepower. Then add the fact that of this 9 millionfold acceleration, 8,766,000 has occurred since the year 1900. Stated in another way, if the total one billion installed 21 TECHNOCRACY SPEAKS Published in THE LIVING AGE Dec, 1932 horsepower of the United States were operated to full capacity, its output would be equivalent to the human labor of over five times the present total world population. Physical science has outdistanced present social institutions to such an extent that man, for the first time in history, finds himself occupying a position in which a complete utilization of his knowledge would assure the arrival of certainty in a continental social mechanism. Man, in his age-long struggle for leisure and the elimination of toil, is now at last confronted not only by the possibility but by the probability of this arrival. Such a new era in human life is technologically dependent only upon an extension of the physical sciences and the equipment at hand. But the pathway to that new era is blockaded with all the riffraff of social institutions carried over from yesterday's seven thousand static years. The law of the next arrival is depicted by the Gaussian curve of probability, or the next most probable energy state. Ill America faces the threshold of the new era with the greatest total debt load ever carried by any social mechanism, a debt of over $218,000,000,000 against her physical equipment and its operation. With the number of unemployed greater than the total population of a century ago; with one of the most providential geologic setups of any continental area; still possessing more energy and mineral resources than any like area on the world's surface; having more than one billion installed horsepower of prime movers wherewith to degrade available energy into useforms; possessing a personnel of over 300,000 technically trained men in many varied engineering fields and more than 4,000,000 men partially trained and functionally capable of operating the greatest array of productive equipment ever at the disposal of man -- with all this, we have, nevertheless, failed to profit from technological advances and accordingly find ourselves -- for the first time in history -- with an economy of plenty existing in the midst of a hodgepodge of debt and unemployment. America can expect no help in the solution of this problem from any current social theory. What has the world to offer 22 TECHNOCRACY SPEAKS Published in THE LIVING AGE Dec, 1932 toward such a solution? Europe discovered America in 1492. Today America is further away from Europe than she was when Columbus sailed. The America of tomorrow will necessitate a rediscovery by Europe. European culture and traditions have nothing of worthwhile importance to offer America in this twilight period preceding the dawn of a new era. No European importations of social or political theory can have the slightest value in solving the operational problems facing America today. Arising out of areas that lack adeguate physical eguipment and trained personnel, areas in which only a low percentage of the population is disciplined in engineering thought processes, European socio- political philosophies and theories are the natural outgrowth of a more classified division and orientation of the entrepreneur sectionalism of the price system. No theory of social action or governance now existing or proposed in Europe would in any way be endemic to that unigue setup of geologic conformation, technigue, eguipment, and personnel peculiar to North America. Russia, of whose population 92 percent were tillers of the soil under the ancien regime and which had meager technical facilities and more musicians than technologists, found itself in the position of being compelled to inaugurate an industrial era under a communistic price system of production. Soviet Russia was forced to call upon the outside world for technical assistance in order to perpetrate reproductions of factories already obsolescent from an obsolescent price system. Russia, in its Parthian retreat from capitalism, has scored but a Pyrrhic victory. It mistook the name tag of one phase of the price system for that system's entirety; it abandoned the tag but retained the essential mechanics. To approach social phenomena by substituting Hegelian for Aristotelian dialectics may be an interesting intellectual pastime, but it has no functional importance: it is but one more recrudescence of the philosophic futility implicit in European tradition. IV The England of the Black Prince, with its population of 5,000,000, its wealth of oak timber, its hearty people drinking deeply of ale (made not from hops but from barley malt) , its original resources of copper, lead, tin, iron ore, and coal -- this England developed under the price system of production. Inevitably, like the prodigal son, England went forth into the 23 TECHNOCRACY SPEAKS Published in THE LIVING AGE Dec, 1932 world and squandered its inheritance among the harpies of world trade and debt creation. The United Kingdom, with an area of 94,000 square miles and a population of 46,000,000 -- or a density of 490 inhabitants per square mile, with arable land amounting to only 23 percent of the total national area, finds itself in the physical position of possessing only a single energy resource, and that a declining one. Its tin gone, as well as its copper and lead, its iron requiring 56 percent foreign benefaction in order to produce steel, its coal becoming more and more difficult to mine, the United Kingdom is fast retrogressing from its position as the possessor of easily available energy to its next probable energy state as two islands off the coast of the European continent. A valiant race, fighting a losing battle, is displaying an admirable fortitude in the crisis that is resulting from excess population, declining resources, and obsolescent equipment operated by the antiquated methods of a price system. The United Kingdom will be forced by internal pressure to adopt measures even more extreme than the flight from the gold pound. It may be compelled by the growing disparity between its own industrial operation and the world trade balance to such extremities as abandonment of monetary currency and the accompanying credit structure. In that event, a British currency of pure fiat power might be attempted as a last desperate resort. The present deflationary program may be reversed in the near future to one of inflation, a last straw grasped at in England's struggle for the export markets of the world. Sooner or later, in spite of British imperialism, the United Kingdom, under a price system, will be forced to meet a situation that will be increasingly grave in its internal operation. There remains only the colonizing soporific of bestowing a surplus population of 35,000,000 on the oversea Dominions. Fascism, that strange but natural partnership of the Italian political state and vested interests, is a process of consolidating all the minor rackets into one major monopoly. Such a condition brought with it the sequelae of discipline and sanitation that necessarily accompany complete trustification. Italy, which is insufficiently supplied with energy and mineral resources, which possesses only a limited amount of waterpower and volcanic heat, which has some 24 TECHNOCRACY SPEAKS Published in THE LIVING AGE Dec, 1932 mercury and some sulphur but no coal, oil, or gas, no iron ore, copper, tin, lead, or zinc, and which lacks a high enough percentage of arable land to grow sufficient foodstuffs for its own needs -- Italy belongs to the geologic order of areas that cannot create and operate an industrial energy civilization. Fascist Italy is rapidly increasing its dangerous overload of population by granting national bonuses to large families in furtherance of its mare nostrum policy. Fascism is an attempt at a last-ditch defense of a price system, an effort to maintain an unbroken front against oncoming social change, but this unbroken front is spurious in that it is being temporarily maintained by foreign importation of energy-resource materials, supplemented by the manna of the Lord. Egypt, Assyria, Greece, Rome, and, in the Victorian Age, Imperial Britain have all led the world in their day; each in turn has been the vanguard of civilization. The past is strewn with ruins of empire. Now there is but one continental area that from the standpoint of its geologic setup, equipment, personnel, and the state of its technology is competent and ready to inaugurate a new era in the life of man. V America stands on the threshold of that new era, but she will have to leave behind all the wish fulfilling thought and romantic concepts of value that are the concomitants of a price system. So, too, all philosophic approaches to social phenomena, from Plato to -- and including -- Marx, must functionally be avoided as intellectual expressions of dementia praecox. Economics, that pathology of debt, not containing within itself any modulus or calculus of design or operation, must likewise be discarded with the other historical antiquities. No political method of arriving at social decisions is adequate in continental areas under technological control, for the scientific technique of decision arrivation has no political antecedents. Under a price system, wealth arises solely through the creation of debt. In other words, price system wealth consists of debt claims against the operation of the physical equipment and its resultants. Physical wealth, on the other hand, is produced by converting available energy into use forms and services. The process of being wealthy is the degradation of the resultants of 25 TECHNOCRACY SPEAKS Published in THE LIVING AGE Dec, 1932 the above conversions into complete uselessness -- in other words, total consumption. To be physically wealthy is not to own a car but to wear it out. Technology has introduced a new methodology in the creation of physical wealth. It is now able to substitute energy for man-hours on the parity basis that 1,500,000 foot pounds eguals one man's time for eight hours. National income under the price system consists of the debt claims accruing annually from the certificates of debt already extant. Physical income within a continental area under technological control would be the net available energy in ergs, converted into use forms and services over and above the operation and maintenance of physical equipment and structures of the area. Individual income under a price system consists of units that are not commensurate with the quanta by which the rate of flow of the physical equipment is measured and upon which the social mechanism depends for its continuance. Individualism is therefore favored under a price system, since individualism can obtain a monetary equivalent proportional to the individual ' s ability to create debt. Individual income under such a system therefore depends on the extent to which advantage is exercised by means of the interference control that is dominant throughout the whole system of debt creation. Individual income under technological control would consist of units commensurate with the quanta by which the rate of flow of the physical equipment is measured throughout the entire continental area. The unit income of the individual would be determined by the period necessary in that area to maintain a thermodynamically balanced load, that is to say, the time it takes for a complete cycle of the operating and production procedures to be completed. Any unit of value under a price system is a certification of debt. Any unit of measurement under technological control would be a certification of available energy converted. Such units of certification would have validity only during the balanced load period for which they were issued. This method of producing physical wealth and measuring its operation precludes the possibility of creating any kind of debt. It also eliminates the entire domain of philanthropy. Furthermore, all bonds, financial debentures, and other instrumentalities of debt would cease to 26 TECHNOCRACY SPEAKS Published in THE LIVING AGE Dec, 1932 exist, since they do not have one iota of usefulness in the physical operation of such an area under technological control. Technocracy proposes no solution; it merely poses the problem raised by the technological introduction of energy factors in a modern industrial social mechanism. Continental America possesses all the essential gualif ications for such a mechanism -- sufficient energy and mineral resources, adeguate water precipitation, more than enough arable land of proper chemical stability, highly developed technological facilities backed by a trained personnel, powerful research organizations. All these things are entirely sufficient to assure the continuance of a high energy standard of livelihood for at least a thousand years, if they are operated on a non-price basis with the technological means known at present. America stands now at the crossroads, confronting the dilemma of alternatives. The progression of a modern industrial social mechanism is unidirectional and irreversible. Physically this continental area has no choice but to proceed with the further elimination of toil through the substitution of energy for man hours. There can be no guestion of returning to premachine or pretechnological ways of life; a progression once started must continue. Retrogressive evolution does not exist. 27 THE SCIENTIST OR THE LIBERAL? A TIP TO TEACHERS By Howard Scott [Extracts from "THE IMMINENCE OF SOCIAI CHANGE — THE IMPACT OF TECHNOIOGY ON A PRICE SYSTEM, " a speech delivered at the 71st Annual Meeting of the National Educational Association in Chicago, July 1933.] § All of these things bring up questions of how we are going to handle ourselves in the very near future. The manner of arriving at decisions from the time of Pericles to today, socially, has not changed. We still do it on the basis of counting noses, quite contrary to the method used by the scientist, technologist, and the engineer in the determination of any functional sequence . § Technocracy therefore proposes that there be entente between those of the educational field, those of the scientific and technical field of this country, and all others in labor and in industry of functional capacity. We must realize that the day is not far distant, at the trends we are now traveling on, when we shall be called upon to decide those issues, not on the basis of foreign trade or of international war debts or the League of Nations, but of men and things in this country. You cannot laugh off 15,000,000 unemployed and 40,000,000 people on the verge of a breadline. At the present trend, it will not be long until you have 20,000,000 unemployed. § This is not a message of doom or chaos; far from it. To us, it is a message of hope. For the first time in a century, the human beings on this continent are being compelled to have lucid intervals. If it were not for the starvation and deprivation, I would say another three years would be even more beneficial; but the only thing about that is we are running too close to where the oscillations make it so unstable and that we have interruptions . § From that point of view I should like to point out that this change is coming whether we like it or not, 29 THE SCIENTIST OR THE LIBERAL? A TIP TO TEACHERS July 1933 whether we assist or not. Like all periods of change, you can take one of two attitudes. One, as a fabricator of conceptual equipment, is attempting to devise conceptual equipment and furniture that is capable of dealing with those changing conditions. If you assume that attitude, you will be moving forward -- we hope -- comparable with the rate of acceleration. The other attitude is to adopt the shabby tolerance of liberalism and proceed to straddle the fence in defense of an obsolete and outworn piece of junk known as the Price System. What happens in the second case is that the intellectual liberal can never make up his mind. He is afraid of a decision. He is always looking for a man on horseback, that is, he will be thought to be a man on horseback by the general public, but he does not really want a man on horseback for himself; he wants a moron on a jackass. There are these two alternatives facing you today. The second one is probably the easier, safer, and less arduous, up to a certain point. After that it is quite different... It will be rather hard to get off the continent. So that you are faced with the proposition of either providing an objective for the youth of the New America, and at the same time security by which all the human values may be released; or if you adopt the other attitude, the youth of today -- the adults of the New America of tomorrow -- will hold you responsible, those of you who straddle that fence in defense of that piece of junk, and may God have mercy on your soul! 30 RADIO ADDRESS FROM STATION WEVD, NEW YORK, NEW YORK By Howard Scott February 6, 1935 In America's fifth year of the depression with over 12 million total unemployed and with more than 20 million human beings on relief, 126 million Americans are asked by our political leaders to find solace in the "spiritual values" of their political proposals. The people of this continent are the most technologically proficient of the peoples of the world and yet, paradoxically enough, we are at the same time a nation of economic illiterates. Just as long as our population continued to have a yearly increment of 1,800,000 and the total physical equipment of this country was being added to at approximately 7 percent per annum, America had no social problems sufficiently significant to impel the collective recognition of the problem upon the molecular mass of the American people. That this was to be expected is only natural in view of the high pressure conditioning which the American people have been subjected to; namely, the national idiocy of a bigger and better business, a chicken in every pot, and two cars in every garage. Phineas Barnum built up the biggest show business of the circus world upon that fundamental American axiom of never giving the sucker an even break. Quoting Barnum' s own words, he said, "There is one born every minute!" But in 1935, it is obvious that Barnum was wrong, for in these years instead of one a minute, it must be twins! We have the ludicrous example of 40 million Americans in their economic desperation casting their ballots to give the mandate to a different bunch of political racketeers in order to derive the vicarious pleasure of being fooled again. You may dislike the preceding declaration, but you cannot deny that the mandate given in the last two national elections was primarily for the maintenance of this obsolete Price System and not for its abolition. Technocracy therefore contends that those of the electorate of this country who did not receive a cash reward for their ballot are deserving of Barnum' s appellation, for, in maintaining the Price System, the people of this country are insisting upon holding onto an outworn and obsolete method of controlling our national operations. Technocracy insists that it would be impossible to plan a more efficient method of national 31 RADIO ADDRESS - WEVD NEW YORK, NEW YORK 2/6/35 destitution than that which the Price System has evolved and enforced upon this nation and the world in the face of potential plenty . It must be obvious to those in possession of any social knowledge at all that the problem facing the Price System of this continent today is the provision of mass purchasing power sufficient to purchase the mass output of continuous mass production, and that this shall be accomplished with a minimum of human effort and a maximum of human leisure. The solution of this problem axiomatically carries with it the provision of economic security to all from birth to death. Technocracy contends that, therefore, there is no solution possible to this social problem as long as the Price System remains in control, because modern technology is wiping man-hours out of existence by the substitution of extraneous energy and the introduction of more efficient processes. Technocracy conclusively proves that adequate purchasing power necessary for economic security cannot be distributed through the medium of commodity valuation currency and the political administration of this Price System. Our American Price System is dependent upon a continual creation of debt for its existence. It must create debt in large volumes each year in order to validate the outstanding debt claims and to provide those sources of future debt creation known as investments. The national debt load of the United States in short- and long-term public and private debt claims is in excess of $238 billion. The expenditures of the National Administration to the tune of seven to eight billions per year is primarily for the purpose of creating sufficient debt through federal enactment to validate the outstanding debt structure of the country. The more the status quo of the Price System is continued in such a manner, the more will taxes be increased, government costs rise, and extraordinary financial priming be continued. In 1934, the total taxes of the United States -- municipal, county, state, and federal -- were in excess of $9, 500, 000, 000. The total cost of government in 1934 was in excess of $15,600,000,000. This figure does not include any interest charges or debt amortization. Every move of our national administration and our financial interests is mad for the sole purpose of bolstering corporate enterprise and maintaining the debt structure of the Price System. The devaluation of the dollar and the raising of prices are 32 RADIO ADDRESS - WEVD NEW YORK, NEW YORK 2/6/35 for the purpose of creating profits and dividends on a smaller turnover, the theory being that they can maintain the same rate of dividends if they raise the prices in proportion to the increase of unemployment. All of these palliative measures are only footsteps to a fool's paradise of temporary returns. The basic problem still remains, for today in 1935 in the United States of America, life does not begin until after $40.00 per week. Technocracy's analysis of the national income shows that there are over 180 million families in the United States, comprising in excess of 77 million human beings, who are dependent upon an income of less than $40.00 per week per family; or, as the Brookings Institute puts it, 1/10 of 1 percent of the families at the top receive as much income as 42 percent of the families at the bottom of the national income scale. It is self- evident that with a larger and larger proportion of our national income being required to bolster the debt structure and to pay government expenses, the rising prices and the cost of living will lower the consuming power of at least 80 million Americans. Life cannot "begin" for these Americans -- all that is left is subsistence of a low order. Technocracy with its blueprint of a balanced load continental control stands ready to guarantee to the 126 million Americans a standard of living for every adult equivalent to the purchasing power of $20, 000 per year in 1929, Technocracy's proposal is a technological control, functional in structure, necessitating the entire elimination of political administration. Technocracy would abolish the Price System with all its attendant social garbage. In 1932, Technocracy pointed out that a national parade of the dumb, the halt, the lame, and the blind was about to begin. That national parade is on in full swing. We have nationalized Tammany's New Deal, the California Epic Program, old-age pension plans, pleas for social justice, and cries to share the wealth. America might just as well make up its mind that it cannot have economic planning, social justice or guaranteed security under the dominance of a Price System. The political administration of our national affairs is deemed by Technocracy to be totally inadequate and incompetent, irrespective of which political racketeer does the administering. Politics and the financial racketeering of the Price System are blood brothers conceived in the ages of scarcity along with the oxcart, the sickle, the hoe, and the spade; and, like them, they have become as obsolete and must be consigned to historical antiquity. The technology of a 33 RADIO ADDRESS - WEVD NEW YORK, NEW YORK 2/6/35 new America of plenty will not permit Price System sabotage of our national operations nor will it tolerate either a Marxian insurrection or a Fascist suppression. No importation of any social theory or philosophy will avail America in the slightest in solving her operation problems of today and tomorrow. Communism, Socialism, and Fascism were conceived outside this continent and belong to the European philosophical proposals to divide up the results of scarcity. Technocracy is not a philosophy; it is a continental engineering design of a social mechanism for the production of plenty. Technocracy Inc. is a continental organization open to all citizens of this continent who are not affiliated with, or members of, any political organization. Yesterday Technocracy was a body of thought that was ballyhooed across the front pages of the world. Today Technocracy Inc. has organized Sections functioning from New York to Los Angeles and Miami to Edmonton, Canada . Technocracy is the advance of physical science into the social field. It was originated and developed by Americans from out of the technological sequences of this continent; therefore, being American in origin, it is endemic to the social progression of this continent. Technocracy is not a political party; it is the Technological Army of the New America! It is therefore the only organization on this continent that can afford to wait. No other one can, because the installation of economic security and adequate purchasing power to all in this country can only be accomplished by the Technocrats of tomorrow. 34 AMERICA PREPARES FOR A TURN IN THE ROAD By Howard Scott March 16, 1935 [An address at the University of Pennsylvania Club, subsequently published as an official publication of Continental Headquarters of Technocracy Inc.] The road of America's yesterday began at the Plymouth Rock and the James River in the dim Indian trails and the river roads, leading back into a continental wilderness. From these crude beginnings, the relentless drive of pioneer efforts propelled the canoes of the voyageur and the trapper to new hunting grounds. The "ride and tie" and the ox team carried the settler forward to open new lands. From the original settlements on the coast of Massachusetts and the James River of Virginia, men moved ever outward. In the year 1610 on the James River, the settlers had planted thirty acres of corn. America was on the move. The dim Indian trails became roads. The ox team disappeared, displaced by the horse and buggy and the steam locomotive running on two strips of steel that spanned the continent. Three hundred and twenty-five years ago, America started on its road up to today. Shortly after the beginning of this century, the horseless carriage was born, and the road of America's horse-and-buggy days had to be replaced with a smoother pathway in order to accommodate the speed of the swifter moving vehicle. Broad bands of concrete -- smooth pathways of speed -- grew from coast to coast. These rights-of-way of rush were necessitated by twenty- five million vehicles in their demand for smoother speedways. Those original thirty acres of corn on the James River now exceed one hundred million acres producing in excess of two billion five hundred million bushels per annum, when not limited by drought or the unnatural enforced scarcity of the Roosevelt-Farley Administration's agricultural program. AMERICA CHANGES TOOLS With the ox team, the covered wagon, and the horse and buggy went the axe, the sickle, the scythe, the spade, and the hoe -- symbols down the ages of the toil and servitude of men. As the roads of America's yesterday changed from the Santa Fe trail to the Union Pacific, from the Lincoln Highway to the skyway of the 35 AMERICA PREPARES FOR A TURN IN THE ROAD 3/16/35 Transcontinental Airlane, so, too, changed our tools. Man drove his spade with his own power; assisted by his ox, he pulled the crude plow before the advent of James Oliver, and swung his cradle scythe to reap the crops of yesterday's America. Today, the Diesel engine tractor disappears in the distance at four miles an hour, making sixty duck-foot furrows, and technology has reduced human toil to one-eleven hundredth of that of the spade -- for this machine mastodon will plow an acre in .088 of a man- hour. Our railroads of yesterday were built by pick and shovel, brawn of our ever newer Americans; our canals were dug by the same power; our mineral wealth was mined from the earth mainly by pick and shovel which, at the later date, were assisted by powder. Then followed dynamite and machine tools. Today, technology has designed and built these giant machine excavators, the modern power shovel, that will take twenty cubic yards at a bite and deposit it in the cars that move it away at an elevation above which it is dug greater than the height of a six-story building. The ghosts of six thousand men with shovels stand silently in the background of this great shovel as mute testimony to the displacement of human toil. The modern continuous strip-sheet steel mill, twenty-one hundred feet in length, with 32,000 HP of connected motors, is rolling sheet steel ninety-six inches wide at the rate of 760 feet each minute. A few men on the control bridge tend the switches of this automatic giant of the steel industry. No more will men sweat and toil in danger of their lives from flying strips of red-hot steel. Modern technology has rendered them useless as power providers and placed them where they can watch the white-hot ribbon of sheet steel run through continuously to be finished at the end with a precision to within .004 gauge. COTTON PICKERS When Ely Whitney completed the cotton gin, he made possible the immediate extension of cotton cultivation by slave labor, Herbert Spencer said that when Ely Whitney walked out of his workshop in Georgia with the completed cotton gin, anarchy was born. Cotton, that great single crop on which such a vast proportion of American agriculture depends, remained dependent on human hands for its collection. Picking cotton has been eulogized in song and story, mostly as that delightful occupation indulged in by happy negroes amid snowy fields of white. To pluck the 36 AMERICA PREPARES FOR A TURN IN THE ROAD 3/16/35 snowy cotton from the cotton boll is arduous toil in the broiling sun and seldom does a man average more than one hundred pounds in eight hours. That was yesterday. If Herbert Spencer still lived, he would say today that more anarchy was spawned when the Rust Brothers ' cotton picker went down the long rows of cotton at the Mississippi agricultural testing station of the Department of Agriculture. Propelled by an ordinary farm tractor, it picked the cotton from two rows simultaneously, and accomplished 8,200 pounds of picked cotton in seven and a half hours. Modern technology tomorrow will make four, six, and even eight row cotton pickers, using the Rust Brothers' original invention; but it is significant to note that this two-row cotton picker which can be attached to any power-drive tractor is going to be produced in quantity by the Southern Harvester Co., Memphis, Tenn. It won't be long before the negro singing in the snowy fields of white will exist only in the storybook. In the sugar cane fields of north Queensland, Australia, the high cost of white Australian labor gave an Australian engineer named Faulkner his opportunity. Today, the Faulkner Sugar Cane Harvester is running down the rows of sugar cane in north Queensland and both the oriental and the white Australian no longer cut sugar cane by hand. The Allis-Chalmers Corporation of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is now producing the Faulkner Harvester and several have been shipped to Cuba after having been modified in their construction and improved to meet Cuban cane conditions. A few more Faulkners in Cuba and the Haitian and Dominican negroes, who come every year to harvest the cane crop of the island, will no longer come to Cuba! With the coming of the Rust Brothers' cotton pickers, the peonage of hand-picked cotton is doomed, and several million negro and white sharecroppers will be eliminated from the agricultural picture of America and also from a means of livelihood, poor though it may be. As America grew from Indian trail to roadway, from roadway to highway, and from highway to skyway, so, too, did our tools change along with our processes and our methods. With primitive hand-driven tools, we opened up one frontier after another and, as our frontiers disappeared due to the rapid development of transportation, communication, production, and distribution, not only did our tools change but our methods of driving them and 37 AMERICA PREPARES FOR A TURN IN THE ROAD 3/16/35 controlling them also were altered. TECHNOLOGY'S GRAND MARCH Technology had at last started on its grand march, a march that began a little over a century ago, but is really only getting underway now; and yet, so tremendous has been the effect of technology in this short time, that not only did our frontiers disappear, but, strange to say, our employment of human beings reached an all-time peak in the year 1919 -- a peak never to be seen again so long as a Price System dominates America. Since that time, technology has been closing the gaps and accelerating so that, while production in physical volume did not reach the maximum until 1929, employment oscillatingly declined from 1919 on. The technologist and the engineer in designing and installing modern machinery and other energy-consuming devices have inadvertently laid down a social pathway to a new economic order -- a pathway that America must travel whether she likes it or not. The history of American technology is also the primitive morphology of the New America of tomorrow. Our forefathers in attempting to guarantee to future Americans life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, placed their hope of fulfillment in political liberty and reckoned not that the day would arrive when the interference control of the Price System would conflict with the development of technology -- that America would be compelled to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. The ever-expanding America of yesterday in its opening of new frontiers and the uncovering of new mineral wealth, combined with an ever-widening agriculture, was the land of golden opportunity to the emigrant peoples of Europe, providing opportunity to work their way to a higher standard of living than that which they had known in the country of their birth . America became the industrial giant of the world in this 20th century, and then the rate of expansion of our economy started to decline. This was first noticeable in a few instances in the year 1910. After 1920, it became more evident, and men of affairs dismissed the significance of this change of rate by glorifying American initiative and invention with laudatory proclamations to the effect that new industries would be born and 38 AMERICA PREPARES FOR A TURN IN THE ROAD 3/16/35 would be a cure-all for this condition. The tidal wave of debt- created prosperity of the Coolidge and the Hoover regime engendered the national psychology that not only was bigger and better business possible, but that bigger and better business would continue ad infinitum. In retrospect, the economic stupidity of our national leaders of the last decade is but a demonstration of the charming naivete of economic adult infantilism. Our national leaders of the past two decades have always proclaimed the inherent soundness of the Price System. Their voices have always been raised in defending and boosting their own America. Their America was a glorious hunting ground where private corporate enterprise was permitted the privilege of creating debt claims against others faster than they were created against them. It was heads I win, tails you lose; no one else could possibly win. Every consumer was a sucker, legitimate prey for the corporate enterprise of yesterday and today. In the race for lower operating costs and more profits, corporate enterprise in America employed more and more technology. The technologist and the engineer devised new processes, discovered new materials, and installed faster machinery. Each new discovery, each new process, and each new machine consumed more extraneous energy in a given time period, but always its ratio of production to its energy consumption kept increasing. The efficiency of each new process or equipment increased with the growth of total equipment. As the total number of energy-consuming devices grew, so did the production, efficiency, and speed of these devices increase. Production and distribution became larger and larger consumers of extraneous energy, that is to say, they consumed more and more energy from coal, oil, gas, and hydroelectric power. While the peak of our national employment occurred in the year 1919, our extraneous energy consumption continued to rise until 1929, production mounted also until 1929, but employment had decreased from 1919 to such an extent that in 1929 -- the year of our greatest production of physical goods and services, there were between two and three million totally unemployed adult human beings in the United States. And now, in 1935, in the fifth year of the "depression," after an expenditure of $7,100,000,000 of financial priming which has raised the production index 39 AMERICA PREPARES FOR A TURN IN THE ROAD 3/16/35 fifteen points, it is interesting to note that the total unemployed varies between the American Federation of Labor estimate of 11,400,000 and that of the Alexander Hamilton Institute of 15,700,000. In March, 1935, the last figures on relief for the preceding month show the federal government to be maintaining 22,370,000 individuals on the relief rolls of the United States. TAXES AND SPENDING When one realizes that the expenditure of most of this financial priming occurred during the year 1934, when the total taxes in that year -- municipal, county, state and federal -- exceeded $9,500,000,000 and while the cost of all government exceeded $15,600,000,000 (exclusive of debt and amortization charges) , one is compelled to ask the question whether our industrial leaders believe that the creation of more debt will cure the ills of this debt structure. It is similar to the theory that ptomaine poisoning can be cured by a further diet of putrid fish . The creation of monetary wealth under a Price System can only occur through the creation of debt; but, in the conflict of the Price System with modern technology, this America of ours has reached the close of an era and the dawn of a new one. The increase of technological efficiency and the abundance of technological production and distribution, which in the past made possible the greatest debt creation in all human history, has at last brought about the condition where the creation of further debt only ends to aggravate the disease. HUMAN LABOR Once upon a time, the laborer was worthy of his hire, and human effort produced all wealth, but this was only true in the days of Adam Smith. Human labor today is used only where the technologist has not yet applied an energy-consuming device to do the job. Human effort costs too much to compete with the energy of coal, oil, gas, and hydroelectric power. The use of .44 of a pound of coal under the direction of modern technology is equal to the contribution of eight hours of any human being's physical services. It has the further advantage that it performs without the deficiencies of human temperament. Neither the laws of 40 AMERICA PREPARES FOR A TURN IN THE ROAD 3/16/35 gravitation nor energy conversion are on the statute books of our country, but they operate just the same, and no one ever disobeys them. They are their own police power and their own judiciary. The problem, simply stated, is the conflict between the advance of physical science and our outmoded social institutions with their methods of controlling national operation. The alternative is equally clear. Civilization on the North American continent is in a much more serious position than when Lincoln declared that this country could not exist half slave and half free. Today, in order to save the Price System, we shall have to stop the advance of physical science and technology and return to the steady state of operation of an agrarian economy, or we shall have to face the advance of physical science and technology into ever more divisions of our social mechanism -- and that has but one end: we must choose between the Price System and the technological advance. Yesterday, it was possible through the creation of debt to pay out in the production of capital goods sufficient wages and salaries to equal or exceed the capital drag-down that was added to the cost price in the sale of consumer goods, thereby creating an apparent equilibrium in the national purchasing power. This process of maintaining an apparent equilibrium of purchasing power was dependent on the proposition that our national economy should expand at more than five percent per annum, thereby enabling the debt merchant of our American Price System to capitalize this annual increment of expansion into debt claims or mortgages on future generations of Americans. As long as our economy kept growing at five percent per annum, this was possible, but the American debt merchants forgot -- or did not know -- that even debt growth comes to an end, and the America of debt has had her day. PURCHASING POWER In their haste to create debt, they called on the technologist and the engineer for ever lower operating costs, and once the peak was passed, every lowering of cost eliminated purchasing power and potential consumers. Purchasing power in a Price System is directly dependent on the total wages and salaries paid. The total wages and salaries paid out in our national economy are proportional to the total man-hours consumed 41 AMERICA PREPARES FOR A TURN IN THE ROAD 3/16/35 in all national operations. Three major factors have combined to eliminate man-hours and, hence, to abolish consumers. One is the substitution of extraneous energy for man-hours under the dominance of technological control and the instrumentality of the energy-consuming machine devices; second, the decline in the rate of growth of the population of these United States from an annual increment of 1, 800, 000 per year to less than 800, 000 per year; third, that, while all other rates of growth -- both human beings and other energy-consuming devices -- have passed their inflection point and are leveling off, the rate of growth of debt continues merrily upward, bound for the blue sky of the financier's heaven! This last necessitates an ever-greater proportion of the national income to meet its interest and amortization requirements. The combination of the above three factors in conjunction with the efficient development of machinery and processes is ever increasing the rate of productivity per worker employed; so much so that productivity per man-hour has increased faster since 1930 than at any previous time in American history. From January 1, 1930 to August, 1933, the increase in productivity per man-hour was 39.2 percent, and since then the productivity per man-hour has increased considerably more, but 1936 and 1937 will witness greater increases than were ever known. In June, 1936, the power of Boulder Dam will flow over the power lines into Los Angeles and the power from Muscle Shoals, Wheeler, and Norris Dams will be transmitted over several states. This power must be consumed, and the more it is used, the more complicated our problem becomes. The public works of the PWA projects will throw into the agricultural picture millions of acres of high-grade irrigated productive land, producing two or three crops a year. The national insanity of enforced scarcity will become more imbecilic with every technological advance. Yesterday, corn, wheat, and pork were the great items of our export trade; yesterday, the world consumed the major portion of the American cotton crop. In 1934, the world consumed only a fraction of its former consumption of American cotton, and today, in 1935, American cotton consumption by the rest of the world will be in all probability even smaller. Brazil, which in 1929 produced over a million, Brazilian estimates for 1935 production exceed 1,500,000 bales. Russia, a cotton importer since time immemorial, will this year produce, if weather conditions are normal, in excess of 3,000,000 bales, which is a long, long 42 AMERICA PREPARES FOR A TURN IN THE ROAD 3/16/35 jump from the primitive cotton production of prewar Russia. China, India, Sudan, Kenya Territory, Peru, Mexico are all increasing their cotton production. JAPANESE LOOMS America's foreign market for cotton will soon be a thing of the past, for the Japanese with 9,000,000 spindles operating in excess of 600 spindle-hours per month are dumping on the markets of the world 2,300,000,000 square yards of cotton goods. America, with 31,000,000 cotton spindles, succeeds in operating from 22 to 25 million of them at a monthly average of 195 hours. American citizens, the Filipinos, are gliding on the streets of Manila on bicycles made in Japan and sold in the Philippines at $5.65 each. Russia has always been an importer of newsprint, cement, and agricultural implements. In 1934, Russia exported $36,000,000 worth of tractors, plows, mowing machines, and other agricultural implements. Russia no longer imports cement or paper and may at any time in the near future become an exporter to the world of these products. Russia today is the largest producer in the world of plywood and the second largest in the world in the production of oil and pig iron. In 1937, Russia will be a producer of tea and who knows but that, although she's now the largest importer of tea in the world, she may become an exporter of that product? These examples are cited to show that technological development is not the particular possession of any race, creed, color or national enterprise. With Japan exporting lead pencils, matches, electric lamp bulbs, automobile tires, rubber boots, bathing suits, silk shirts and stockings, along with a choice collection of rayon goods, toys, steel pipe, automobiles, bicycles, and even jackets for our "hot dogs," it behooves America to forget the open door in any other part of the world and to open the door to greater purchasing power at home. CAPACITY TO PRODUCE Since the advent of Technocracy in the national and world picture in 1932, there have been put forward many statements on America's capacity to produce. Some of these learned estimates of America's capacity have run into several volumes of the printed page and yet one fundamental error is common to them all: all of the estimates and calculations on America's capacity, while 43 AMERICA PREPARES FOR A TURN IN THE ROAD 3/16/35 inspired by Technocracy's findings, have been predicted upon the theory that America could increase her capacity under the interference control of the Price System and that the present capacity of America and the estimated possible increase could be obtained under a planned operation of all of the facilities of production and distribution; thereby introducing the totally erroneous proposition that planning is possible under a Price System and its political administration! These estimates of America's capacity to produce have been pseudo-statistical propaganda put out by the Coue psychologists of our national debt merchants. In order to counteract the growing prevalence of the abundance theory as expressed in plenty for all, these propagandists of the debt merchants have skillfully hidden the fact that their estimates are based upon a single shift in our industrial operation, which in most cases means one 8-hour shift in the 24. Modern technology defines full-load operation to be the 24-hour operation of all equipment and processes for 365 days in the year at full capacity. Thus, it is seen that at full-load capacity America has installed today sufficient obsolete industrial equipment to produce from two to three times the estimated total production of these apologists for the Price System. Capacity to produce is impossible to determine except by defining the maximum of social usage for any product or service. An example -- one of the many thousands that may be cited -- is that a pound of special strip steel will produce several hundred safety razor blades. If capacity is calculated on a single-shift basis for the machines which produce razor blades, then full-load capacity or 24 hours a day, 365 days in the year, is several times the existing capacity. Witness now the double-dealing under a Price System. The machine that produces razor blades is not concerned whether the razor blade shaves 4, 4,000 or 40,000 shaves per blade, but the manufacturer and distributor are deeply concerned. The manufacturer and distributor of razor blades are required under the rules of the game of the Price System to create debt claims against others faster than debt claims can be created against them. Therefore, good business in razor blades will consist in selling the public a blade that has the least cost involved in its production and distribution, combined with the maximum competitively allowable price and the minimum of use. Therefore, the production of a four-shave razor blade, although ultimate social waste, is considered good business practice in 44 AMERICA PREPARES FOR A TURN IN THE ROAD 3/16/35 the here and now. While production of a 4, 000- or 40,000-shave razor blade is social economy, it would be business suicide today. It is therefore obvious that if there exist 250 percent over-capacity in razor blade equipment for the present market at 4 shaves per blade, the same machinery can just as well produce, in the same time, razor blades of 4,000 shaves per blade and immediately the over-capacity rises a thousand times the 250 percent ! PRICE SYSTEM LIMITATIONS This illustration is given to show that the full technological capacity of any set of equipment that is at present installed cannot be utilized while operated under the limitations that the Price System imposes upon any product or service; namely, either restriction in the output of raw materials or a limitation of the serviceability of mass-produced products to insure a rapid turnover. Capacity to produce can be correctly defined only as the continuous full-load capacity producing the maximum amount under a given operation, the resultant product of which consumes the least energy per unit of time-use. It must be apparent, therefore, that a planned operation of our production and distribution on a balanced-load method of operation is physically impossible of attainment under the interference control of a Price System and its political administration. No capacity can be calculated nor can any plan of operation of any or all of the installed equipment of America, so long as we propose to control the rate of flow of goods and services coming from this technological equipment by a process of commodity evaluation. Our currency, whether based upon gold, silver, salt or sugar, is a process of evaluating all goods and services in terms of some one selected standard commodity. So long as monetary tokens arise solely through the creation of debt and are used to evaluate all goods and services in the further expression of debt, technological America can neither be measured nor controlled. In the early days of America, say, in Andrew Jackson's time, when the total population in the United States was approximately 12,000,000, over 95 percent of that number derived their livelihood directly from the soil. Only after they had produced sufficient to maintain themselves did any goods move into the 45 AMERICA PREPARES FOR A TURN IN THE ROAD 3/16/35 national flow lines of transportation and distribution, and this was only a small percentage of the total production. It is well to remember that these Americans of Jackson's day lived on the soil and obtained their livelihood from it through the use of hand-driven tools. At the same time that the small volume rate of flow existed, 95 percent of the tokens of monetary wealth of that America was in the form of hard money or commodities. Today 1935 America has more unemployed than the total population of the America of Jackson's day and 74 percent of our total population of 126,000,000 Americans no longer derives its livelihood directly from our native soil. ANARCHIC RESULTS Today, in 1935, 95 percent of our tokens of monetary wealth is in debt claims and only 5 percent in currency, so that it is obvious that the control of America's economic highway of today is in the hands of the major holders of debt claims. These holders of debt claims are insisting that their pound of flesh be exacted at every tollgate that they can maintain on the highway of America's progress. Every tollgate of debt collection acts as a bottleneck which retards the flow of purchasing power instead of accelerating it. How long will it be before our national leaders of finance and politics become conscious not only that America cannot spend her way out of this national situation, but also that more of the same medicine of the Price System will lead to further social instability with its accompanying anarchic results ? America has her choice of maintaining the Price System with its rules of the game or of substituting for it a technologically controlled social mechanism for the production of plenty. In 1932, while Mr. Hoover was still President of these United States, Technocracy made the following statements in the public press of the country: "America can no longer deal with the lack of purchasing power, unemployment or debt by individual establishments or businesses, but only as parts of our industrial concepts in a continental order of magnitude. The directors of our national enterprise will be compelled, under the exigency of a Price system, to have no choice of alternatives except that 46 AMERICA PREPARES FOR A TURN IN THE ROAD 3/16/35 expedient, narcotics. The next few years will witness a succession of remedial palliatives to be offered by our legislative bodies, our financial institutions, and social organizations. America in that period will witness a national procession of the dumb, the halt, the lame, and the blind, stumbling from one futile gesture to another into a final sublimation of fear. That procession of the blind will include all the essence of futility in its many varied forms from the mild buck-passing program of share-the-work to the anticipated probable legislation of rent and private debt moratorium to those twins of finality, the dole and complete inflation. These directors will now, or in the near future, be called upon to solve these problems. It is their ship of state, and if they cannot find a solution, the force majeure of continental conditions in the next few years will bring forth those who can. Technology has written 'mene, mene, tekel upharsin' across the face of the Price System." PARADE OF INCOMPETENTS When forty million Americans voted for the New Deal of the Roosevelt-Farley nationalized Tammany machine, the problem was not solved; the mandate merely transferred control to another gang. Since that time, the social ferment has been working, and, in swift succession, Upton Sinclair's Epic Program, the Utopians of California, Townsend's old-age pension plan, Father Coughlin's league for social justice, and Huey Long's share-the-wealth method to make every man a king, have blazed their way across the front page and blared through the loud speakers of every radio set. A national parade of functional incompetents is certainly taking place with a vengeance, with General Hugh Johnson as one of its leading drum majors. The predictions of Technocracy are bearing fruit, and, as Technocracy pointed out several years ago, America nears the end of the road of private enterprise, of commodity evaluation, of debt creation and political administration. The American people have had a grand time traveling along this road. They have passed many milestones of transition in its length, but all things come to an end someday. It is a short alley that has no ash barrels, but a long road that has no turning. America's long road is 47 AMERICA PREPARES FOR A TURN IN THE ROAD 3/16/35 already turning and across the valley lies the fourlane express highway to a new social order. Social change is here; America is in the midst of it. And there will be greater social changes in days to come. Sometime between now and 1940, America will have to set its wheels in motion on that new express highway bound for the "New America of Plenty." America can no longer control its national operation through the obsolete methods of political decision. Political administration of the affairs of the North American Continent is a mere perpetuation of the national insanity of racketeering on a mass scale. The national leaders of yesterday were but the reflectors of public opinion. If this nation continues very much longer under the nominal leadership of the present reflectors of public opinion, America will reach the end of this road in the swamp of mob hysteria. It is high time that every thinking American realizes before it is too late that America's economics of yesterday and today is a grand and workable racket just so long as it maintains its payoff; but when it can no longer do so, it becomes a national washout. AMERICA OF TOMORROW Technocracy points out that the America of tomorrow will have to abandon political administration of its national affairs; that only a technological control of all energy-consuming devices will obtain sufficient precision and measurement for the requirements of an America of plenty; that Technocratic New America must operate its physical equipment at continuous full load with maximum efficiency in order to provide security to all from birth to death and equality of income for every adult at the highest standard of living compatible with wise conservation of its natural resources. Technocracy will provide mass purchasing power sufficient to purchase the output of continuous mass production and, as the total purchasing power of a Technate is a certification of the net cost of all goods and services, it will therefore at any time purchase the total volume of goods and services extant. Purchasing power is the crux of America's problem, and a solution to that problem can be reached only through an energy medium of distribution. The currency of tomorrow cannot be a medium of exchange. It must never be permitted to possess the prerogative of creating debt. A scientific medium of distribution must be devised. Only through such a medium can the America of tomorrow provide mass purchasing power to its people; a medium which cannot be begged or borrowed, 48 AMERICA PREPARES FOR A TURN IN THE ROAD 3/16/35 loaned or stolen, saved or accumulated, and possessing only one prerogative that may be exercised by the individual to whom it is issued; namely that of spending it. Political liberty is a dead issue in America today. Political liberty confers only the power of occasional expression upon the individual citizen. There is but one real power that can be conferred upon any citizen on this continent today: that is sufficient and adequate purchasing power. For the first time in history, the power of social decision would be placed by Technocracy Inc. directly in the hands of the people themselves. Americans must never forget that as you consume so do you have power. He who consumes not is powerless. Technocracy would confer equal purchasing power upon every adult citizen as a constitutional right of the people which even the Technate of a Technocracy could not abrogate. Political power is founded on the racket of spending other people's money. It has become the established custom that the representative of the people, the politician, is the only one competent to spend the people's money. That he has been permitted to do so is chiefly for the reason that the citizens of any previous social system never had sufficient money of their own to learn how to spend it. UNDER A TECHNATE Under a Technate, the citizens for the first time would enjoy the exercise of the only power that exists in a modern social mechanism. The power to rule is therefore vested in the power to consume, with equal though not transferable consuming power conferred upon every citizen of the Technate. The decision to exercise that power may be made by any citizen every day in the year if he so desires. No citizen waits for periodic elections to express his opinion or his desire in the social mechanism. He renders his decision every time he purchases any product or service anywhere within the domain of the Technate. All people in a Technocracy receive equal purchasing power; they will require no representative of the people to spend their "money" for them. The technology of the New America of tomorrow can be administered only by a technological control, continental in scope and functional in structure. Any mob direction of America's destiny on the basis of any horizontal stratification of our social 49 AMERICA PREPARES FOR A TURN IN THE ROAD 3/16/35 structure would be in conflict with the social destiny of this continent and nationally disastrous. Technocracy points out that a vertical alignment only of all functional capacities necessary to run and control all national operations will be required and that such a vertical alignment must be welded into a disciplined body, continental in scope, under the direction of those who are technologically proficient and whose scientific training fits them to properly interpret the blueprint and specifications of the New America of tomorrow. Technocracy stands ready when America reaches the turning of this road to bridge the transition from the obsolescent roadway to the four-lane express highway of America's tomorrow! 50 A RADIO ADDRESS FROM STATION KFAC By Howard Scott October 14, 1935 [This radio address was made available in printed form in THE TECHNOCRAT, Aug., 1935] What constitutes living? There are many and varied definitions, but from the standpoint of the technologist, living is a term used to describe the functioning of any organism on the area in which it exists. One hundred years ago, we had a population of slightly over 12 million. In the United States at that time 75 trillion BTUs of extraneous energy were consumed per annum. Our population at the last census was 122 millions, and in 1929 the energy consumption for this country was approximately 27,000 trillion BTUs. Thus, in 100 years our population increased approximately tenfold, while our total extraneous energy consumption increased 353 times. This change has resulted from the introduction of many new technical processes . In this new industrial order, the machine was no longer conceived as an extension of the hand tool. It became a moving, mechanical element in a sequence of events, the course and rate of which had been arranged in strict accordance with the exact computative calculation of science. The steady state of any social system of the past was set up and limited as such because no nation in history possessed any other engine of energy conversion than that of the human being. The tremendous acceleration in the rate of doing work has altered the entire physical complex of social existence. In 1929, with a total population of approximately 123 million in the United States, of which approximately 49 million were potentially employable, the national income was $81 billion. Now, of the total numbers of families, 42 percent had yearly incomes of less than $1, 500, and from this it follows that a total of 23 million adults had an average income per month of less than $62.50 each. Thus, .1 percent (one-tenth of one percent) received as much as 42 percent of the families of this country in 1929. 51 RADIO ADDRESS FROM STATION KFAC 10/14/35 When considering the words of those sublime optimists who hold out the enticing inducement of $200 a month for all adults as a readily obtainable objective for the people of these United States operating under the Price System, we Americans would do well to remember the fact that such an income under the Price System rules and regulations would necessitate a national income of $180 billion a year. This would require a national debt structure of over $800 billion. Since the American Price System is no longer able to greatly expand its national economy, it cannot capitalize a sufficient increment of the whole to validate its outstanding debt of $238 billion of long- and short-term public and private debt claims. It becomes increasingly obvious that as new debt is not created fast enough to provide sources of investment for the incomes accruing from the outstanding debt claims, the liquidity of all financial institutions will tend to increase towards 100 percent, while, inversely, the rate of interest will tend to decline simultaneously toward zero. These trends are at present clearly in evidence and result in compelling the government to take over the prerogatives of debt creation from private corporate enterprise in order to create sufficient debt to save the existing debt structure and provide the rich with sources of investment . Since 1920, the production per man-hour, as shown in 69,000 establishments, has been rising continually. What is the significance of this? A recovery to the 1929 level of production of goods and services would result in the reemployment of only 5,000,000 of those now unemployed. Technology throws people out of work. It is wiping the bottom out of all values. How can we continue to operate under this fallacious financial setup? Inherent in the government of all Price Systems is the basic proposition that any decision may be arrived at, any problem may be solved, the conflicting opinion of all citizens molded into a common consensus, regardless of whether this consensus is obtained by democratic ballot, autocratic edict or revolutionary fiat. This basic proposition of all political administrations' control sufficed so long as man was the chief provider of power in the performance of all necessary work within the social state, because so long as such condition maintained, there was no other 52 RADIO ADDRESS FROM STATION KFAC 10/14/35 means of providing energy except that converted by man from his required food, air, water, and solar radiation; and, therefore, no knowledge existed in the collective sense sufficient to incur any change whatsoever in the basic operation of the social mechanism conducted under the jurisdiction of political government . In the America of today, the political methods of arriving at social decisions affecting continental control no longer have any meaning, and if it were not for their interference control, they would have no relevancy whatsoever to the present social picture . With the realization that unemployment in North America is chronic and permanent will come the attempt of manufacturers and businessmen to increase the efficiency of their processes and equipment in order to lower the cost of production and distribution so that they may produce certain goods and services cheaply enough to fall within the meager purchasing power range of the 20 to 25 million human beings whose existence from now on out is relegated to that category of being just above starvation and far below a normal standard of living. On the other hand, the operation of this continent from a technological viewpoint has tremendous possibilities. On this side of the picture, Technocracy has made some interesting calculations. If the wheat of this country had to be produced with a spade, it would take five million men to produce 800 million bushels. If the soil were tilled with the best equipment, it would take less than 5,000 men to produce 800 million bushels per annum. Or consider the subway system: the total number of people employed in a subway fare collection system is greater than the total number of employees actually operating the mechanical equipment of the system, including the power plant. From an energy standpoint, it is cheaper to provide free local transportation . This type of calculation requires that we dispense with a number of old habits of thought. Take the matter of the kind of income we could afford to have. We have been conditioned to the idea that jobs are different and men are different and therefore justly receive different compensations. Consider, however, the fact of the enormous expenditure of effort necessary to keep the 53 RADIO ADDRESS FROM STATION KFAC 10/14/35 records to maintain this differentiation of income among the people of this continent. It becomes technically unsound to attempt to differentiate between incomes when there is plenty for all, because of the cumbersomeness and costliness of such practice. We have arrived at this, not from any philosophy of right and wrong or human equality, but from the simple technical reason that to do otherwise would cost too much. If technologists were operating this country, they could not afford to penalize anyone on that basis. The cost of collecting would be greater than the advantage gained, and, moreover, this would upset the income balance of the country. The operational as well as the sociological implications and possibilities of such a controlled system are astounding. The quality of goods to be produced would no longer be the cheap and shoddy variety turned out at present. Instead, the criterion by which goods would be judged would be the energy cost per unit of service, and those goods would be produced which by experimental test were found to cost the least energy expenditure per unit of service . The Technate would not be interested in the expansion of consumption for its own sake, since no profits can accrue. On the contrary, the need of conserving our raw materials would discourage wasteful practices of all kinds. There would be no advertising or salesmanship. As any large retailer or advertising concern now knows very well, but for such practices the present consumption of goods would be considerably reduced. It follows that in a Technocracy, where a very ample variety and quantity of only the best goods would be available for all, the rate of consumption instead of expanding would probably tend to contract or at least reach a state of equilibrium at a moderately simple mode of living. As a final conclusion, Technocracy Inc. clearly states that there are but two alternatives that may honestly be chosen. First, the citizens of this country may accept the vagaries of fortune of this Price System and attempt to patch it up for a little while longer, thereby demonstrating that dominant fixation of adult infantilism in an economic Santa Claus; or, secondly, the people may be convinced either by the facts of today or the relentless urge of an empty stomach that a higher standard of living not only can but must be. Let us, then, with the fortitude 54 RADIO ADDRESS FROM STATION KFAC 10/14/35 of our pioneering forefathers face the situation and the fact that a New America of Plenty is only possible as and when the people of this country so organize as to eliminate the outworn Price System in its totality. 55 AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BY HOWARD SCOTT (Untitled) AT THE ENGINEERING AUDITORIUM NEW YORK, NEW YORK December 6, 1935 For thousands of years, human beings believed this earth to be a flat disk around which the sun revolved and that the earth was the center of the universe. In 1543, Copernicus published his epoch-making work, yet it wasn't until 1610 that Galileo was able to demonstrate the correctness of Copernicus' theory. Several hundred years before that, Aristotle had enunciated the beautiful proposition that objects fall to the earth at a speed proportional to their weight -- and human beings never questioned it. It was accepted as an absolute truth. And so, too, for thousands of years man has conceived of the social system as being one in which human beings could only have a certain maximum of livelihood and that all decisions involved in human life were predicated on the just and ethical conduct of the individual. Just as Galileo and Copernicus upset the concepts and beliefs of thousands of years, Technocracy has been epochal by stating -- for the first time in history -- the mechanics of the social order in quantitative terms. So far, we have never been successfully challenged in our technical findings. Two years ago this month, the front pages of American and world newspapers carried headlines on Technocracy. (One California paper ran Technocracy front page for 29 consecutive days, and the OSAKA MAINICHI, with over three million circulations, ran about half that space.) Yet today few people, comparatively speaking, know what Technocracy really is or what it has proposed to do. At a conference meeting at Teachers College, Columbia University, we predicted the closing of the banks on or before the following April, and Dr. Reynolds, principal of Horace Mann School, said, "You Technocrats cannot possibly mean that the banks will fail. The banks cannot possibly fail because we have the Federal Reserve Bank." Nevertheless, the banks did close. The insanity of the Technocrats must be viewed in quite a different order . We also stated that the North American Continent had reached 57 ADDRESS IN THE ENGINEERING AUDITORIUM (Untitled) 12/6/35 a stage of development it had never before known, and that the reason for this development was not the usual one given. The picture was not one of human quality or antipathy. Technocracy stated that the development of the Price System reached on this continent is unique in that this technological stage has arrived with a financial system consisting of debt claims, mortgages, bonds, and other forms of amortized securities. The nation has made the transition from General Jackson's day of 1830 when 25 percent of the tokens of wealth were in hard money or commodities, to today when 95 percent of the tokens of wealth are debt claims and only 5 percent are in currency. They capitalized year after year until they had piled up a great pyramid of debt -- $238 billion. They had a grand time doing it. Technocracy stated in technical terms that you can only create debt provided that you have an increment of expansion upon which to create. Just as long as you can create debt, a Price System works. It was pointed out that the purchasing power of the Price System is directly dependent on the total man-hours consumed in the operation of the system, and that the total man- hours in this country reached its maximum in 1919. There has been a gradual decline since that time and a lower level of purchasing power . It was also pointed out that as purchasing power is increased the number of human beings on the area is increased up to a maximum. The birthrate will increase until it reaches a maximum and will decline thereafter until it arrives at equilibrium. Our birthrate will level off because our rate of increase in energy consumption is leveling off, so that you can look forward to the birthrate equaling the death rate with a static population of about 130 million in 1940. Technocracy predicted all of these things. We predicted the present situation away back in 1921. We stated that on or before 1930, this continent shall have produced 28 million automobiles and 9 million telephones, and that a crisis would arise about that time. Technocracy was wrong; it beat us by a few months, and that percentage of error can be justly allowed under the circumstances . We have stated that you can go in for all kinds of 58 ADDRESS IN THE ENGINEERING AUDITORIUM (Untitled) 12/6/35 'juggling', but that these trends of population, man-hours, and energy consumption will be maintained. If this is so, there is no cure, no solution of the problem by any of the means used by human beings in history up to this time. We are now dealing with the mammoth problem -- one unlike any the human race has had to face before and will ever have to face again. This unique situation has come about and compelled our attention. Technocracy is the only organization that has laid down in a definite manner a social system of production and distribution that will function on a balanced load principle. He who Creates an Idea It is true that we have imitators. Upton Sinclair (I, Governor of California) proclaimed that the EPIC Movement would bring Technocracy to California. The Utopian Society has lifted many things from Technocracy -- in fact, most of its program with the exception of its ritual. We find it in all places from the President in the White House to the man on the street. They take just so much from Technocracy but stop when it comes to accepting our social design or conclusions. Father Coughlin in his broadcast the other Sunday was using a Technocratic approach very ably but ended up as a lame duck in his conclusion. He who creates has but one purpose; to have it stolen by other human beings. Human psychology is such that if people have to steal anything, they will desire it more highly. The famous Thomas W. Lawson had a large estate in New England and offered a cherished suggestion to beautify the roads of his county; but the county supervisor did not accept the idea of furnishing the roadsides with hedges of roses; so, Lawson had rose hedges planted on his own estate, and they were so attractive when in bloom that many people from distant parts came to observe the display. One day the gardener announced that over 200 of his rose hedges had been stolen and remarked, 'We cannot allow this to continue, " "Complain and threaten them with arrest, ' ordered Lawson, 'but never catch any of them, and see that you order more rose bushes . ' Today you will find rose bushes in every direction in that area. Technocracy, too, does not mind people stealing its ideas. 59 ADDRESS IN THE ENGINEERING AUDITORIUM (Untitled) 12/6/35 You are welcome. You will never be able to go back to the old ways. Our position with regard to all of these social propositions is the same; they can go only so far and then they will either have to stop or go the whole distance with Technocracy . Unfortunately, perhaps, for us, we did not have the money in 1932 to put on an organization campaign. We have never been subsidized, never had an angel. We have done without money, with barely enough to buy gasoline to send men from one place to another, but we have a vitality that is astounding. We have our study classes running, and we will graduate a corps of speakers that will be trained to carry this message to the people of the North American Continent. We are organizing a type of individual unknown in history. No other organization on this continent has ever been built on a condition of functional capacity, including every range of human activity. It is more than surprising that we have experienced the growth that we have. Watch our meeting at Green Bay, Wisconsin, tonight, for instance. One of our speakers is finishing a tour tomorrow night in Appleton. That same speaker will be in St. Louis on the 12th, Chicago on the 14th, Detroit on the 16th, and Cleveland on the 17th. We have another speaker in Alberta for meetings in that area. These men have done this without any high organizing salaries. If you have any illusions about going into this organization, if you think you are going to make any more than is offered on relief projects, you are mistaken. Technocracy isn't a racket. It is entirely different from any other kind of organization that has existed in this country. We have no illusions as to where we are going; but we find, on the other hand, that many people do have these illusions . We find that some people consider it even more respectable to be compared with communists than with Technocrats. A prominent individual once said, ' I will tell you that we are not worried about being told we are robbers or crooks; we don't mind advertising opposition; but when someone tells us that we are incompetent and proves it, we don't like it! Calling one names means nothing, but actual blueprinting -- that becomes dangerous ! Technocracy has never participated in political action and 60 ADDRESS IN THE ENGINEERING AUDITORIUM (Untitled) 12/6/35 never will. You cannot be a member of any political party and be a member of our organization. We don't rule voting as constituting membership in a political organization, but we do look at it as one of the idiosyncrasies of the human mind. If you are intelligent enough to be a Technocrat, then you will see that you are paid for your vote. In many ways, there is a condition here that is unknown in any other country. We have more ability than any other part of the world's surface of egual size. We can demonstrate more and better eguipment than many countries put together. This has been an astounding progression. Intellectual Liberalism The intellectual of foreign countries will sell out for a price, but on this continent he will sell out any cause for nothing. That beautiful double-crossing of yourself and your fellowmen is more evident here than in any other place in the world. As a nation, we have been psychologized by the politician and are so accustomed to be lousy that we don't know anything different. The politician is the louse of the Price System, and he will stick to you to the end. No engineer would attempt to decide any issue like you attempt to decide issues today. You don't vote on the engineering principles of bridge construction, power plants, etc., and if you did, it wouldn't accomplish anything. The telephone company bondholders and subscribers are not consulted when a new telephone system is designed, and if they were consulted, it would be totally irrelevant because they don't know anything about it. People are filled up with the bologna that they are capable of managing the affairs of the country. Yes, it was a wonderful country when the Indians had it, but the only trouble today is that we cannot even give it back to the Indians. They wouldn't take it! We have reached a total of 28 million automobiles, 13 million telephones, and 20 million human beings on relief. It seems that somewhere a long time ago we heard about a full dinner pail, a chicken in every pot, and two cars in every garage. Well, you haven't got them yet. You have 4,820,000 families on relief. Perhaps you can answer Roosevelt's question: 'How do you fare under the New Deal?' You have only 13 millions more on relief than in October, 1933. 61 ADDRESS IN THE ENGINEERING AUDITORIUM (Untitled) 12/6/35 In the past month or so, the State of New York has been conducting publicity campaigns for the increased use of milk. Yet in spite of the campaign, 5,300,000 fewer quarts were consumed since and during the campaign than the previous year in New York State. Why can't we consume it? We have the milk-raising capacity; but in the meantime, the United States Government is purchasing skim milk, whole milk, powdered milk, and condensed milk from the corporations as it has done with other commodities. While producing economic distribution to corporate enterprise, the government metes out starvation to the individual. The government has spent $7 billion for relief. Five billions have gone to rescue corporations in the United States and but two billions have been claimed as the direct sustenance of the individual -- 5/7 for the rescue of the status quo! This all presents a pretty picture. The ratio we have stated is known. Congress and corporations are well aware -- from the tons of figures from every governmental department -- that man- hours in almost every industry have been declining, that production has been rising, and that the workers displaced can never be employed again. All this data are available. You can even find Technocracy mentioned in the Department of Labor pamphlets, and yet in the face of that knowledge, Congress and corporate enterprise have the audacity and hypocrisy to lie to 125 million people in this country. They are so dumb that they cannot see what is literally in front of their noses. There was a time when lying was considered a fine art and it was done gracefully, but now it is done on a wholesale scale in order to kid and pacify the public. The relief program of the United States Government has not had the slightest results in rehabilitating our social economy, it has not rehabilitated one single economic element -- pure nonsense! The relief program is for nothing more than soap for the people, help in blanketing such serious disturbances as revolutions, the preservation of corporate enterprise, and to inform the public that the political louse is capable of doing anything. No matter what possibilities an individual may have in this age, after four years in a political setup he will emerge as a louse, his possibilities destroyed . 62 ADDRESS IN THE ENGINEERING AUDITORIUM (Untitled) 12/6/35 The present program has the effect of getting the public worn down by malnutrition, so that no vitality or inclination to think is left. Then they have the nerve to issue a Thanksgiving Proclamation -- a fine Christian country! If Christ were alive today, He would starve to death. They wouldn't have to crucify Him. Try living on the relief sustenance. It is not even good pig food, because pigs are intelligent. That is the kind of stuff they shove out to human beings. They feel themselves that they can juggle the system and that something will 'turn up' just around the corner. This psychology is so ingrained and so well developed that after you turn one alleged corner, you believe that there will be another corner, and then that there will be another and that you will finally reach some corner around which you will discover a chiffon-covered ashcan. Instead, you will find a cast iron cover, and it will hurt you. The Consolidation of the Rackets The liberal believes that social action occurs only by means of cogitation or mental effort. If that were so, we would have had social action on this continent long ago. As a collective body, we do not act that way. Human beings are only too willing to pass the buck and 'let George do it.' Technocracy defines social action as occurring at a rate proportional to the approach of the front of the stomach to the spinal column, and apparently that is what is going to bring social change on this continent. There are over 12 million unemployed, and there would be several million more if the national Tammany organization had not pumped billions of dollars into the economic machine to give it a semblance of vitality. It is not hard to picture exactly what has happened. Speaking in the vernacular, a mob today is a mob, and a gang is composed of those who run the racket. What happens when the mob finds the racket washed up? It seeks new territory. This is what has happened. Local politicians used to dispense from the ward bosses, but they have reached the point where they cannot hold out any longer; so, they have moved to the banks of the Potomac and consolidated the minor rackets into one major racket. The next congress will have to spend around $15 billion more to hold the structure from falling into the cellar. You can view the situation in many ways. You can still feel that the 63 ADDRESS IN THE ENGINEERING AUDITORIUM (Untitled) 12/6/35 Republican Party, now smelling pretty badly, has a chance to come back or you can feel that the Democrats will do something. We can see that the socialists will combine with the communists in the near future. The tendency of rackets to combine is becoming more and more noticeable. Yet any combination will leave the setup in the same position. You shall witness more on relief, larger appropriations, larger injections of federal credit, and then what? The situation has not been altered one iota. The basic proposition has not been faced. No one, from Roosevelt down, has faced the issue. They have sidestepped the issue. They borrow from Technocracy, then blab about economic security under a Price System. If present trends are maintained, conditions in 1935 and 1936 will be yet more unstable. More than $15 billion will be pumped into the situation, and this will cause a production cycle uprise. The more that is pumped in, the greater will be the fall. You cannot have a planned economy under a Price System. You could not make money if there was a constant in a Price System. There would not be anyone to trim; therefore, it wouldn't be nice. Technocracy has no illusions that the coming social change is going to be easy. We know that no movement can get anywhere unless it is ridiculed. We are getting it now, and we will get more tomorrow; but we can stand it. We have said before that we are the only organization that can afford to wait. No other organization can afford to do so. The best salesmen for Technocracy are not in Technocracy; they are in Washington, Ottawa, and on Wall Street. Mr. Harriman of the United States Chamber of Commerce proposes that they no longer issue figures and statistics on industry, and that corporate enterprise issue the figures instead, because the public does not understand them anyway. Mr. Aldrich of the Chase National Bank spoke at the Commonwealth Club, San Francisco, dwelling on how serious the situation was, and the best he had to offer was the same lot of stupidity, the same lot of crooked nonsense that has been said the past four years. Technocracy would like to believe that they are deluding themselves . Past 1 leaders ' in our country were unfortunately not leaders 64 ADDRESS IN THE ENGINEERING AUDITORIUM (Untitled) 12/6/35 but just reflectors of public opinion. Thomas Jefferson made the statement that all the land west of the Mississippi would not be inhabited for 1,000 years. Abraham Lincoln wanted to build the Union Pacific Railroad with a three-foot gauge. He didn't know anything about railroads. Woodrow Wilson, a college president, was elected to the presidency of the United States because he promised to keep us out of war. We went to war. The United States and Canada require leadership and not the reflection of some minority group. We will not get anywhere by listening to Father Coughlin, the EPIC Program or any other nonsense. It was fortunate for Upton Sinclair that he was not elected. He could not have achieved anything if he had become Governor of California. Huey Long has done a good job on the state racket, and so have other local types which are all similar in that they all propose ways and means of either alleviating or solving the present situation. We have state institutions for the mentally defective, and the originators of these proposals should not be permitted to roam at large. Toward Dementia If we should ever have another civil war, let us have it for something and not for nothing. The tendency of the natural liaison of big business today is for a furtherance of fascism. Technocracy defines fascism to be 'a consolidation of all the minor rackets into one major monopoly for the preservation of the values of the Price System. ' We are trying fascism in a subtle form, and the general trend is in that direction. The problem facing America is so serious that it will transcend every other problem in history. If there were 17 million more out of work, we would face it more quickly. Our only regrets are that there are not 17 million going out of work tomorrow morning. They are going to try sustenance farming. They are going to subsidize corporations so that they can declare a profit. (A few corporations have declared larger dividends during this period because they have succeeded in lowering their operating costs, and if the 1929 production was repeated, they would employ less people than they do now.) In other words, the people are such fools that they permit the corporations to be saved. They permit 65 ADDRESS IN THE ENGINEERING AUDITORIUM (Untitled) 12/6/35 800,000 depositors who hold two-thirds of the nation's deposits to be insured to the detriment of 13 million others. Suckers? No, they are simps. If they are not trimmed, they don't appreciate anything . It was just the same in the gold movement. Technocracy pointed out that on or before September 1, 1933, Roosevelt would declare a partial free market of $30 an ounce. He did, at $29.62, three days before September 1 . They send money abroad and then they bring it back at $35 an ounce. Call it a racket? The rest of the racketeers were pikers. They use the funds of the United States Treasury to wash up several millions profits for the gang. You take it and like it. Of course, that wasn't stealing at all! Technocracy defines a criminal to be a human being with predatory instincts and living under a Price System without sufficient capital to start a corporation. When done on a large scale, it is high finance -- not stealing. Well, what are you going to do about it? Nationalized Tammany will utilize the funds of the treasury to build the machine larger. There are now 682,000 government employees -- the most since the war. Speaking of war, we now have a war on but don't know it. The only ones who are satisfied under this system today are those who possess large debt claims or hold fat government jobs. There are not enough of these fat jobs today, but the tendency is toward increase. We are always in favor of paying a bonus under the Price System, Technocracy is strongly in favor of bigger and better bonuses, for the sooner they spend into complete insolvency, the better. Now they are trying to cut out work relief and build up home relief. Americans are not entitled to a decent livelihood! Fifty cents a day has been reduced to 26 cents a day. Technocracy would be in favor of abolishing relief entirely, but we are not in favor of reducing the payments one penny. Make them all suffer -- fine! If they try to save the situation, they will not succeed. They are going to spend billions more to keep the boat from rocking to preserve the status quo. You find a very definite feeling growing on the Pacific coast and other places, and they are afraid that it will become epidemic -- far larger than the epidemic of 'Sixty-nine' -- in the movements for old-age 66 ADDRESS IN THE ENGINEERING AUDITORIUM (Untitled) 12/6/35 pensions. Everyone has a movement to save everyone else, but everything will remain just as it is as far as these movements are concerned. A few more niceties and a few more laws are all that will result. Technocracy states that no political movement is competent to operate the technical equipment of today. It might have been possible in Thomas Jefferson's time but not today. The Constitution was written with the spade and a sickle. We are not out to destroy the Constitution. We wish it to be perfectly preserved, wrapped in cellophane and placed in the Smithsonian Institution where it belongs. It was all right when the nation consisted of log cabins and small farms but not today. We must get rid of it. Our monetary system is just as obsolete. You don't run a power system by senatorial decision. You don't take a vote to determine the load or power factor. You have evolved a method of control in modern powerhouse operation today that is peculiar to the apparatus -- a method that has no precedent in all social history, a method of technological control. Science versus Chaos The clash is on. Democracies and all forms of the Price System are antipathetic to modern technology. You can't have both. You must either stop technology or throw the Price System overboard. You will have to close research laboratories and prevent discovery by law or your lousy Price System will fail down around your ears . Technocracy is not a social theory. It is a social mechanics, a methodology of accounting the rates of growth of all energy-consuming devices, organic or inorganic, applied to an order of human affairs on a definite, quantitative basis for the first time in history. It is a far greater jump to Technocracy than has ever been made by any other social system. Plutocracy, aristocracy, etc, are terms which mean nothing in this modern day and age. There are so many decisions made today -- take the telephone, for instance, in which neither the stockholder nor the subscriber are consulted -- that are made with a high degree of accuracy . 67 ADDRESS IN THE ENGINEERING AUDITORIUM (Untitled) 12/6/35 Socially, and where the people are vitally concerned, a method of decision is still used that was highly considered in Plato's day. Do you have to be kicked in the lower end of your spine in order to be rid of this idea? No amount of trial and error will bring social change. Technocracy is proposing an extension of technology on the North American Continent. Ideas must be reconstructed. No philosophical, political social system yet promulgated can provide production and distribution on the balanced-load principle. You can dump all your social institutions in the garbage can. You cannot design, construct, and operate one piece of equipment with any social theory ever heard of from Karl Marx on down. The physical equipment has gone way beyond the concepts and the institutions. This problem today is a technological one and not a political one. You cannot, by political legislation, alter the standard of livelihood. By juggling, you can only stave off the inevitable and prolong the final disaster. Maybe it is less painful to die from malnutrition. (In Germany after the war, you saw children that were apparently seven or eight years of age but who were actually thirteen or fourteen. They did not have the proper nutrition and never grew up.) Malnutrition is frightful. It has only started here. A noted increase of cases is now observed, and it will continue to rise as long as this nonsensical Price System is continued. During the recent election, several millions of morons chucked ballots into the boxes hoping that it would change something; but you don't change a racket by agreeing with it, which is what you do when you vote. You must find another way of doing it. Even a political organization which had all of Technocracy in its preamble -- still organized only to get a vote and having convinced millions of Americans -- would not be capable of operating anything in this country. The same mistake was made in Germany, and they never changed any of the means whereby they lived. They changed the nameplate on the door -- the facade; then a man with a mustache came along and put the lid down. It will probably blow off someday, and there will be more hell. On this continent, we must build a system organized along the lines of the functional sequences of the North American Continent. We must have an organization to 68 ADDRESS IN THE ENGINEERING AUDITORIUM (Untitled) 12/6/35 take over the functions. Technocracy is trying to show that in the growth of the organization. Our Sections are developing and increasing without money. We are going to be dealt with as an organization from the Panama to the Pole and from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Continentally, if the present trends continue, you are going to see a new alignment -- a new alignment that will puzzle a lot of people. You will see republicans, democrats, socialists, fascists, and communists all on one side of the fence. They will all smell the same. They will be totally incompetent of running the continent. They won't like each other much, and, put together, the smells on that side of the fence won't agree with the different varieties of molecular bombardment. You will see that the Protestants will definitely have to make up their minds whether to defend or attack the Price System. They have shown more tendency toward the attack. This places other religious beliefs in a rather interesting position. Fascism has always developed mainly from a Catholic background. Catholics are a minority in the United States. The policy of the Farley- nationalized Tammany cannot be carried much further, because it will not be possible to identify fascism with a religious belief. If that is so, it will force a division in the religious beliefs in this country. There will be one terrible mixup. It would throw the question of race and religion definitely on various sides in this battle. This alignment will come about partly from these forces I am discussing. We are just citing the forces at work. There are more components at hand of the nature of nitroglycerin in the United States and Canada than anywhere else. Just carry out this policy of national Tammanization and you will get it -- and how -- the biggest blowout you ever had! 69 PUBLIC LECTURE HOWARD SCOTT EDMONTON, ALBERTA, CANADA DECEMBER 1935 This lecture was held at the New Empire Theater in Edmonton to a capacity crowd; as a matter of fact, many people were unable to get into the hall and others standing in the wings. The talk lasted for two hours and was followed by a question period of forty-five minutes. This accounting originally appeared in THE TECHNOCRACY DIGEST, Tabloid Edition, Vol. 3, No. 4, in December 1935. MASS LUXURY He pictured homes of a new type, air-conditioned and equipped with every modern convenience, of cookery by high- frequency current that will make housekeeping a matter of minutes, of automobiles -- one of which is already built -- that will make 120 miles an hour, have a life of 350,000 miles and be driven by two-cycle opposed piston Diesel weighing 30 pounds, giving 42 miles to a gallon of crude oil; of a standard of living eighteen times more rich than our present standards when every man and woman will have his and her own money furnished by the state; when all the work of life can be accomplished by each man between the ages of 20 and 45 working four hours a day, four days a week, for eight months of the year, with education until the age of 25, and leisure after 45, and each citizen be assured of a fair division of the goods of the technocratic state in right of his or her citizenship. POPULAR PICTURE Applause punctuated the speech of the Technocrat throughout his address and at the close of was given an ovation. Although the meeting was advertised to start at 8:30, every seat in the theater was filled by 7:30, and the chairman, E.S. Cowper, announced at 7:30 that the meeting would begin. With crowds standing jammed in the lobby of the theater, waiting in the hope of being able to gain admission or to see the distinguished visitor, Mr. Scott's secretary, Miss Helen Hockett, 71 PUBLIC LECTURE, HOWARD SCOTT EDMONTON, ALBERTA, CANADA December 1935 who was in charge of the literature table, undertook to keep the lobby crowd entertained. For over an hour, she spoke on Technocracy, repeating many of the things her chief had spoken on his 100,000-mile trip. Each time she attempted to stop, the crowd urged her to, "Go on; don't stop." She continued for an hour and a half to an audience of 250, while Scott was speaking inside the auditorium to an audience of nearer 2,000. PLAIN-SPEAKING Scott took a delight in hurling thought-provoking facts at his audience. At one time he told them: "We're not politicians. We haven't come here to tell you how clever you are. We're here, frankly, to tell you what dubs you are -- to insult you and make you like it -- to try and get some barbs under your hides that will make you think." And the audience applauded back. They liked his frank manner and his interpretation of facts. "People today," he told them, "are divided into two main classes -- the chisellers and the suckers. The aim of the ambitious sucker is only to become a small-scale chiseller." OLD ORDER OBSOLETE "I'm not blaming the politicians and the bankers," he told them later. "They're the products of a system that had its origin when the only power in the world was manpower. Modern engineering and technology in this power age has created a new set of conditions and made the old social mechanism obsolete." "They have got to be put out of work, " he told them. "Every new advance in machinery puts men out of work. We're going to put machines into operation that will put more men out of work than ever before. What is there about work that you like? There are 37,000,000 people in United States dependent on the collection of taxes. When we force more armies of men onto relief, we are taking the quickest method of putting this outworn system on the scrap heap and making way for a scientific system that will fit the facts of life in the new age of extraneous power." RELIEF NO STIGMA "You've got to rid your minds of the old idea -- that had its roots in the old English poor law -- that there is something 72 PUBLIC LECTURE, HOWARD SCOTT EDMONTON, ALBERTA, CANADA December 1935 shameful in being on relief and you may just as well get used to it. Being on relief and learning how to use your leisure is good preparation for the time when you'll only have to work 660 hours a year in the years between 25 and 40, and have leisure for education and the enjoyment of life." The tall Technocrat made it clear that he has no more use for Communism and Fascism than for the other parties whom he criticized as being props for an outworn system. "The operation of a high energy civilization has nothing to learn from the social mechanics of Moscow or Berlin or Rome, " he said, amid loud applause . ANALYSES SCORED "What about Social Credit?" someone called out. "I regard the Social Credit wave that struck Alberta, " said Scott, "as an expression of the people of this province of their impatience with a social system that can no longer function to give you people the necessities of life. Its defect, and the defect of all other social credit plans, like the Townsend plan, is that it doesn't touch the real cause of your social collapse. Apart from that, they have this defect, that they are dependent on collecting funds from your scant purchasing power and must deduct the cost of collection and the cost of distribution before they make distribution. In so doing they reduce purchasing power instead of increasing it." "I'll say this for your Social Credit premier," he added. "He will have the distinction -- if he survives his five-year term -- of being the last premier of Alberta. Before five years are over there will be great and far-reaching changes in government all over this northern continent. It will help the processes of collective disillusionment that must take place -- and you are going to be disillusioned." BIRTH OF MOVEMENT Speaking of the genesis of the Technocratic movement, Scott said that it was started 16 years ago, at the close of the Great War, by a group of engineers, who gave not only their time but three percent of their monthly incomes, to carry out the research. Technocracy jumped into fame because of efforts of the 73 PUBLIC LECTURE, HOWARD SCOTT EDMONTON, ALBERTA, CANADA December 1935 publicity department of Columbia University discovering that it had 260 engineers on research work. They were pleased to write it up as a buildup for academic education -- then when the heat was turned on, they ran into the hole and dragged the hole in after them. Since then we have gone forward. SEEN DECADE AHEAD "In 1920 we predicted this condition of depression would start in 1930. We predicted it as a growth of kilowatt loads brought about by the increased use of motors, internal combustion engines, electricity. "We predicted that by 1930 this would bring about a serious change in conditions on the North American continent. It came in 1929, and we are still in it. In July 1932, we predicted that there would be a national frigidity which would result in the closing of all the banks in the United States on or before April 1, 1933. The banks of the U.S.A. obliged us by closing somewhat prior to that date." HAD NO AID "We have done quite a bit of work but nowhere near what we would like to or which we would do if we had the money. This organization has done what it has without a subsidy of a single dollar from anyone. The only money we have is obtained from membership fees. We have not had a dollar from any corporation or financial institution. We don't want it, because we refuse to accept money that has any strings attached to it. No officer draws salary or makes any money out of this corporation." TOO BUSY TO GYP "In this way it is the most unique on the North American Continent -- but we have not had time to gyp our fellowman. This is not because we are more moral than anyone else, but it is because we are too busy doing something else. "We are trying to picture to the people of this continent something vastly different to anything past or present. It is not a presentation of any political opinion, and is in no way concerned with any political party. No one can belong to any 74 PUBLIC LECTURE, HOWARD SCOTT EDMONTON, ALBERTA, CANADA December 1935 political party and be a member of Technocracy Incorporated." ALL ARE RACKETS "The reason for this is that we have no time to recondition human beings or change them from a racket, and all political parties are rackets in one form or another. We have no objection to a good racket as long as it maintains the pay-off, but when it does not maintain its pay-off, it just becomes a washout; and that is the state we are in now." "We make very little distinction and play no favorites; a Republican or a Democrat, a Liberal or Conservative, or a member of any other political group smells as bad as a Communist. They all belong to an old order of things; they belong to that day of civilization when there was a conflict of opinions." VIEWING HISTORY "If you think back and view history six or seven thousand years ago, the most ancient monument we have is the great pyramid at Gizeh composed of two or three million blocks of stone. It required 100,000 men working 20 years to build it. Without the use of machines used in building the Panama Canal in 1904 we would still be digging the big ditch in 2007, and the original diggers would not see the finish of it." SUCKERS-CHI SELLERS "The social system is divided into two classes -- chisellers and suckers. It is the desire of every sucker to graduate and become a chiseller. When you have been trimmed, you immediately drag your friends in and watch them get trimmed also, so you can have the fun of watching them. One of the axioms of the great showman Barnum was 'Never give a sucker an even break' and business never has. That is no reason why you should blame the banker or the businessman. It is your own fault. If you are sucker enough to be trimmed, it is your own fault, not theirs. Do not blame any individual for the present condition. It is the fault of the system, and it was inevitable from the beginning. It is the mechanics of corporate enterprise." MAXIMUMS GONE 75 PUBLIC LECTURE, HOWARD SCOTT EDMONTON, ALBERTA, CANADA December 1935 "In the year 1920, we had maximum employment and never again will human employment go back to that figure. It will decrease continually from now on; however, there is one rather consoling thought, 'No one but a sucker ever tried to get rich by working.' The only way you can get rich is to get a bunch of suckers working for you; but the chisellers and suckers are now in the same boat, because the racket is all washed up. We will now see how it came to be all washed up." "A century ago, in President Jackson's day, in the United States there were 12 million citizens; 96 percent of the citizens of the U.S.A. were living on the land and derived their livelihood from it; 95 percent of the total wealth was in hard cash or commodities; and 5 percent was in debt claims, such as mortgages, bank loans, or other amortizable securities. Now 95 percent of the total wealth is in debt claims, and only 5 percent in cash money or commodities. There is an entirely reverse situation existing now to that existing a century ago." "The output rate of human energy is low -- it is equal to about what a 1/10 h.p. motor could do in 8 hours. Anybody can purchase for a few cents a 1/10 h.p. motor that can do all you can do and won't talk back. The introduction of power machines has forced millions on relief, and tomorrow there will be more. We are now converting 153,000 kilogram calories of energy per person, and the rate of growth of energy consumption shows a possible increase of 30 percent or more from now until 1940 and 1942. If 153,000 are ruinous to your social structure, now consider what 200,000 per person will do. Not a single social institution will be out of the dump heap. All labor will be in the ash can. A modern Diesel tractor will cultivate soil in 1/1000 of the time taken to do it with a spade. The new equipment will do the work in 1/3600 of the time it takes to do it with a spade . " GLASS BLOWER GONE "Anyone over 45 can remember in the history of this continent when the Glass Blowers' Union was one of the strongest unions we had. Where is the glass blower today? He has entirely disappeared . 76 PUBLIC LECTURE, HOWARD SCOTT EDMONTON, ALBERTA, CANADA December 1935 "You can remember how difficult it was to get into the Glass Blowers' Union; in fact, a man had to be born into it. But your engineer came along and out went the Glass Blowers' Union. In 1923 came Colborne of the Toledo Glass with a machine requiring a couple of people on the switchboard to operate it. It rolls the glass out in a continuous sheet; cuts it, boxes it; puts the cover on the box; labels and addresses and plants the boxes in files. Machinery now blows lamp bulbs at a rate of 52 per minute. There are new plants being built that will blow 1,100 per minute. There will be only a couple of those machines needed to blow all the lamp bulbs we can use." MACHINE DEVELOPMENT "We technologists say, 'Why not?' There is quite a bit of humor in it no matter what field you are in. Take, for example, the cigarmaker. We can remember when the cigarmakers used to roll out the cigars . Where are they today? The cigars are made by the Washington machine at the rate of one million cigars per year with four girls operating the machine. We will have a machine in the next year and a half that will turn out 10 million cigars, with no girls . " THOSE BAKESHOPS "Many of you have seen the modern bakery, the bread oven many times wider than this stage, fired by gas or oil, slowly moving and turning around -- that is just a bunch of junk now. The new oven is much smaller and the loaves come with the speed of newspapers coming off the press. The bread is not cooked from the outside in as we have it now but from the inside out. A lot of stoves are due for the junk pile. We can go on and on giving examples to show how extraneous energy is being substituted for human energy." "It used to take 36 hours to do a 3-color photoengraving. Today there is a machine that can do the work in 30 minutes flat without the engraver. It can do engraving 3,000 miles away; it is transmitted by wire or by wireless across the continent. As for the linotype operator, we don't need him anymore. You slip a paper into the transmitting machine, it sets the type anyplace on the continent on either one machine or ten or twenty. You can have the whole makeup of one paper or a hundred all made up and 77 PUBLIC LECTURE, HOWARD SCOTT EDMONTON, ALBERTA, CANADA December 1935 sent over the wire and all the type set automatically. Well, why not?" NEW MINING PLANS "In Illinois, a coal mine produces ten thousand tons of bituminous coal in eight hours with 800 men. This is considered high speed. We propose a new type of process that will go into your mine and produce thirty thousand tons in 24 hours with 12 men. Well, why not? Where is the particular virtue in mining coal; why should a man mine coal if it can be done by machinery? So we propose to do away with the job. Most coal miners are so dumb that they won't quit, so we shove them out of their job and shove them onto relief; and we would like to install a machine right here in Alberta. We just want to help put more people on relief . " INSURANCE GROWTH "If you have a mortgage or life insurance policy, you have that holier-than-thou feeling in regard to your fellowman. Over 30 years ago, in 1900, there were only two billion dollars worth of life insurance premiums. They continued to grow until they reached a peak of 108 billions a couple of years ago. Then they started to decline and today we have 68 million life insurance policyholders with invested assets of 21 billion. If the life insurance companies were to continue in their growth (of approximately 7.78 percent per annum), the life insurance companies would own 85 percent of everything on the North American continent; so that if the life insurance companies don't get you, the Technocrats will." MERE DEBT CLAIM "Most of you still have that strange idea that when you go down town and deposit money in the bank that the money is yours; well, that just proves how dumb you are, because it is not yours at all. You sell a debt claim to the banker for a time demand. You do not own a dollar in any bank on this continent or any other. They are not your deposits. They belong to the bank, not to you. In normal times, all the bank requires is cash for eight to ten percent of the deposits. They loan the other 92 percent. It is a process of creating debt. Since the war and up to 1929, 78 PUBLIC LECTURE, HOWARD SCOTT EDMONTON, ALBERTA, CANADA December 1935 we were creating annually between twelve and fifteen billion dollars of new debt claims." BANKING FORECASTS "In 1933 Technocracy predicted the closing of the banks in the U.S.A. and pointed out that the banks would be only opened by accepting federal funds. We said it would result in a new condition where the federal government would have to take over the prerogative of debt creation from private enterprise, and every businessman in the United States owes Roosevelt a debt of gratitude for keeping them from going down entirely in the last few years. Today private corporate enterprise is only creating 2% to 3% of annual debt creation instead of 5% and 6% as is required. Governments are taking over to where they are practically the sole creators of debt today, which means that 76% of all large incomes are reinvested in the new debt claims of economic expansion. Therefore, if there are no new debt claims, funds become frozen; as this approaches 100%, the interest rate tends to decline towards zero." HAVE THEIR LIMITS "Now, to go on a step. As there are no new debt claims, your financial institutions will be compelled to invest more in government debt claims. Then we go on. When more than 60 percent of the financial institutions have more than 60 percent of collateral invested in government debt claims, they will not be merchandisers of debt; they will have to return the deposits to the depositors or be nationalized by the government." "We are sorry for the banker. He has done a good job of debt creating up to now, but his day is almost done. It will be like the case of the organ: "It was a good organ while it lasted, but it's done played its last tune.' We are faced with that in the near future. In the United States, at the next Congress, they will vote the soldiers' bonus, and they will not increase taxes before the elections but will do so immediately after. We may expect larger and larger appropriations for taxes. BIG INCOME TAX "In the next couple of years, the federal income tax will be 79 PUBLIC LECTURE, HOWARD SCOTT EDMONTON, ALBERTA, CANADA December 1935 $738 per year on a $5, 000-per-year income in the United States, and you will have the same thing here. It is the same sort of institution. It is a sweet proposition to consider, but it is one that must be faced." "Now where is it all leading to? In 1932, thirty-five million morons in the United States were interested enough in politics to vote. They thought they were going to get a new deal. Well, they got it, but what does it amount to? They just helped someone get what they wanted, and still they are dumb enough to help someone else get something and get nothing for themselves. If you vote at all, you are supporting the existing status guo; and by voting, you are allowing the same status guo to continue." "A man who votes has no integrity. No man who wears a necktie has any integrity; no law compels man to wear a necktie -- he wears it because of fear." WEALTH VS INTEREST "When the majority of the men wear neckties, the individual hasn't the courage to go without one. A man who has a million dollars has an integrity about as thick as a piece of tissue paper; and a man who has a billion dollars has an integrity such that he can donate dimes to little girls without impunity, " "For thousands of years you could count noses and arrive at the only social divisions, but when you count noses today you are just wasting time and merely adding noses. Democrat, Republican, Socialist or Communist makes no difference. What powers of decision have you?" "Do you decide the design of your radio, your car, lighting eguipment, or anything like that? There are only two decisions you ever make for yourself. One is, you decide to purchase, provided you have the wherewithal -- and so few have the wherewithal these days. The other is the decision to die, and there are damn few around who decide this. You just allow inertia to creep up behind you and catch you." VOTING SUCKER "When you go down and mark X on your ballot, what do you 80 PUBLIC LECTURE, HOWARD SCOTT EDMONTON, ALBERTA, CANADA December 1935 think you are doing? Participating in the government of the country? Like hell you are. You are being made a sucker, that is all. Because counting noses does not decide the problems facing this country at this time." "The problems of this country are technical problems of providing money and purchasing power. You are not going to do that by voting in any political party on this continent. If that is your racket, that is all right. We Technocrats have no ruling against voting, except that if you are intelligent enough to be a Technocrat, you will have to be intelligent enough to get a cash reward for your vote; because that is all you will ever get for it. Wonderful, isn't it?" "Of course, 30 years ago or 100 years ago, you could not have changed things even if you wanted to. You could not have altered the standard of livelihood one percent. They talk about bringing China up to our standard of living. How wonderful! Well, to do that you would have to multiply 470 million by 153 thousand by 365 to get the number of energy calories required. Quit kidding yourselves about these ideas. The fact we are faced with is that of running this civilization today." PRODUCTION-POPULATION (Mr. Scott used the blackboard to show that the rate of production is increasing faster than the rate of population; the rate of debt increase is greater than either; and the rate of energy production is growing faster than all three.) Continuing, he said, "The man hours per unit produced are declining, and there is no solution. It is quite a mathematical problem. You reach the period where political machinery and valuation of currency are no longer capable of running the social system. For the first time, technology is rendering the Price System totally obsolete, and there must be a distribution of income and purchasing power on a new basis. The individual citizen will contribute less than he does now and we must find a way to distribute purchasing power. This is not the Townsend Plan or Communism or Socialism, it is Technocracy. There will be no debt plan. We do not propose to divide up anything," EXASPERATION VOTE 81 PUBLIC LECTURE, HOWARD SCOTT EDMONTON, ALBERTA, CANADA December 1935 "What about Social Credit, Mr. Scott?" "Well, you asked for it and we might as well hand it to you," replied Mr. Scott. "In California and several other states, and in Alberta, people vote for many things because of exasperation; they vote to get rid of the other fellow. We are not in any way deprecating the sincerity of anyone. You want guaranteed economic security. Well, you cannot get it with the Townsend Plan or any other social political eczema on this continent. You people of Alberta have one satisfaction; you have elected a premier who undoubtedly will be the last premier of the province -- if he lasts for his five-year term -- because the next five years you will witness a lot of changes. You cannot in any state or province introduce an innovation that will enable the citizens to furnish sufficient economic security out of wages or salary under this present system. We would like to believe it, but we have no belief when it comes to physical equipment." "You can have a transaction tax collected from each transaction, but the cost of collection and the cost of distribution must be deducted before distribution, and that would make the total net purchasing power less instead of more than when we began." "Any movement that promises the people any solution under this Price System we consider a good thing, because it is an educational disillusionment. Ninety-nine and 99/100 percent of you are still suffering from posterioritis . You want to sit down and let George do it. You want the parcel post to bring it to you. Well, it is not going to be done that way." "We Technocrats are different from any political party. We do not come out and tell you how wonderful you are so we can make suckers out of you. We frankly insult you in the open so we can drive something under your skin to wake you up. We are trying to find out those who think and those who have the guts of our pioneer forefathers. In a few years the people of this continent will have to make up their minds." "We do not care if you agree with us or not. We are not trying to sell you anything. A new kind of social mechanism is yours for the asking, but if you voted 100 percent to put 82 PUBLIC LECTURE, HOWARD SCOTT EDMONTON, ALBERTA, CANADA December 1935 Technocracy in tomorrow, you couldn't do it, because you are not capable of running peanut stands on wheels as an organized body. You think putting X on a ballot is all that is necessary. Wish fulfillment or psychology do not run factory or powerhouses. We can devise plans and struggle along without money, but if you are going to build an organization on this continent to prevent chaos, you had better get going. Unless human beings of ability on this continent realize that they must build an organization to supervise the functional operations on this continent, you will see something that will make the Russian Revolution look like a splash in a mud puddle." WORTHLESS VOTE "It is not a question of voting one bunch in and the other bunch out, because that will maintain the status quo. You might use your vote to abolish this Price System and bring a system of Technocratic order about, but if you cannot organize a disciplined party, your votes are not worth a damn." "How would it strike you to know that wheat can be grown from the seed to the finished head in ten days? There are two machines in Jersey producing wheat and oats for chicken farms experimentally. Operating 365 days a year, with less than 12 men, they would replace 35,000 acres of the finest wheat-producing land on this continent. These things are on the move. We are trying to get you to prepare for it. Physical Science has invaded the Social field. For the first time you will have a currency of distribution and not a medium of exchange." CURRENCY PROBLEM Mr. Scott then went on to explain currency under the Technate: "Currency would be a medium of distribution, not transferable; you cannot loan, borrow or give it away. Male and female both receive the same income. Every woman will be economically independent of each and every male. The female will be denied the pleasure of going down into the male pants pocket on Saturday night, because under the Technate the male currency will not purchase female requirements, such as silk stockings or mink coats. She will purchase her own stockings and coats -- but the male will no longer be able to purchase the silk stockings and mink coats for her, because the male does not use such 83 PUBLIC LECTURE, HOWARD SCOTT EDMONTON, ALBERTA, CANADA December 1935 things, and with the male currency he cannot purchase female requirements. The currency will be watermarked for a balance load period of approximately 15 months or two years, at first. The balance load period will be brought down to a year and then your currency will be watermarked for a year only." "Everyone would have the same income; requirements of citizenship under a Technate are 660 hours of service, 165 days of four hours each, every year for 20 years from 25 to 45 years. After 45 years, the color of your currency changes, and you are free to spend your income playing tiddlywinks in the Bahamas or making mudpies with the Eskimos. Your currency will bear a designating numeral of the occupation of the recipient. We are not taking these numbers out of our head. If we had the organization tonight, we could print the entire proposition tomorrow morning at seven o'clock." PLENTY SCARES AHEAD "It scares you, doesn't it? Well, you will be scared a lot more in the next five years. Under the Technate, there are no insurance policies and no taxes, no litigation. Ninety-six percent of the legal fraternity will be given the same income as anyone else at some other endeavor. You will not be able to sue for breach of promise, alimony, breach of contract or probate of will. If you do not wear a necktie, your economic security is in no way threatened." Mr. Scott went on to show on the board how the numbers on the bills designated the man's occupation, experience, address, male or female, time, etc. "Color of currency changes at 45 showing you have completed the requirements of citizenship; footprints and handprints of every infant would be on record; there would be no lost children; people would be medically examined every six months from birth until death; we would have a maximum of health. You would not be able to tip the waiter. No person will be penalized for commission of a statutory offense. The income of any individual cannot be taken away from him unless he leaves this continent or dies. We propose to run the equipment at the highest load and maximum conservation and minimum of human effort. Any who would refuse to work the 660 hours -- if physically able -- will starve 84 PUBLIC LECTURE, HOWARD SCOTT EDMONTON, ALBERTA, CANADA December 1935 quicker than at any time in history under any other system." NEW TYPE HOMES "Many of you think you have homes. How would you like this kind of a home? Where a square yard of wall, floor or ceilinq would stand a temperature of 750 deqrees C. for 24 hours and not show more than 5 degrees temperature rise on the other side. A home with doors which have no hinges or knobs, which would open when you speak to them. Homes that would be fireproof, waterproof, and soundproof, and would last 1,000 years. They would be air-conditioned; you would heat them or unheat them just as easily. Quite a different kind of thing to what we have now. For the first time, we would have real privacy -- you could beat hell out of your wife and the guests would never know." "With the new type of cooking equipment, a soft-boiled egg could be done in 2-1/4 seconds with high frequency; a five-course dinner cooked while you drink your cocktail -- and I hope when I come next time I will be able to show you that right here on the stage. You cannot have this under the Price System though." "You will have cars that will run 42 miles or better on a quart of crude oil, with a life of 350, 000 miles. Do you think any automobile company would make that kind of a car now? Socially it would be cheaper to produce this kind of a car than some of the cheaper models you get now. Those are just a few of the things. You have to face the facts -- man-hour and human employment is a declining proposition from now on." "This new age will be brought about by the impact of technology against the Price System, and technology is bound to win, " he continued. "The Price System cannot run on for very much longer. Technocracy is proposing a new kind of social order. Hard-boiled technological facts are what the engineer and scientist have on their counter." "We are dealing in the fact of what we have and what can be produced technologically so as to give the greatest purchasing power and the maximum security for all." 85 PUBLIC LECTURE, HOWARD SCOTT EDMONTON, ALBERTA, CANADA December 1935 LEAVES FOR CALGARY Mr. Scott proved himself an adroit and witty answerer of the questions that poured on him from all parts of the theater. At the close, a large number of the audience joined the local Technocracy group under Capt . George Koe, the supply of literature on the subject being sold out completely. Following the meeting, Mr. Scott left on the midnight train for Calgary where he is to deliver two addresses and continue on his way eastward through Canada on his way to New York. He expressed a hope to return to Edmonton in June, when he may have with him the high frequency cookery appliance and the new Technocratic automobile to which he referred in his lecture on Saturday night. 86 TECHNOCRACY AND THE 193 6 NATIONAL PICTURE A Radio Address by Howard Scott STATION WE VP, NEW YORK, NEW YORK January 23, 1936 Technocracy Inc. speaking from Continental Division 7340 to the radio audience of Station WEVD, New York. In 1936, the citizens of the United States will again be asked to decide by the ballot their preference in political parties and candidates for the political administration of our Price System for the next four years. The press, the pulpit, the radio, and the screen will resound with ardent appeals and denunciations from conservatives and radicals, liberals and Bourbons. Big business and little business will extol the virtues of a business administration. There will be ardent appeals made for a return to the "good old days of 1929". Simultaneously, there will be brought forth the demand that a mythical proletariat would be the best managers of this Price System. Amid the claimants of these two extremes will appear the intellectual liberals, ready to endorse all parties in their progressivism and to console each in its difficulties. The conservatives, reactionaries, and Bourbons will hold forth for the Constitution and the creation of debt as guaranteed by the Constitution, vintage pre-1929. The liberals, progressives, and radicals will be clamoring for a modification and amendment of the Constitution so as to permit their particular brand of incompetency to be perpetrated by public opinion. Outside of the participants in the race for political power, propaganda coercion will be brought to bear by those organizations, which, while not political parties, are in actuality national lobbies -- such as the United States Chamber of Commerce, the National Manufacturers Association, the Liberty League, the Townsend Pension Plan, and Father Coughlin's Fascistic Union for Social Justice. Technocracy Inc., as an organization with a social objective, stands alone. Its position is unique. It is not a political party. It neither runs candidates for political office nor does it endorse and support any political program or party. Technocracy Inc. furthermore does not attempt to coerce the probable candidates for political election in any municipal, 87 A RADIO ADDRESS OVER N.Y. STATION WEVD 1/23/36 county, state, or congressional electoral district. What do the people of the United States want? Stated simply, they want a material abundance to be produced, with sufficient purchasing power placed in the hands of all citizens to insure the distribution of that material abundance. The people of these United States want this economic certainty to be guaranteed from birth to death with a minimum expenditure of human effort and a maximum of leisure. The people of these United States want a maximum of good health obtainable by all as a basic reguirement of national citizenship, and no longer subject to the hazard of insufficient individual purchasing power. The people of these United States want an educational system capable of providing efficient education for the entire youth of the country, subject not to the economic limitations of individual income but only to the inherent capacity of the individual to learn. The citizens of the United States are convinced that an abundance for everyone can be produced, and that this continent can produce it here and now. They are convinced that this country and this continent can produce more physical wealth than any other like surface of the globe, and that a scientific means has been found for the distribution of any material abundance that may be produced. The majority of the citizens of the United States is not interested in dividing up the monetary wealth of this Price System. We Americans have never been dividers; we've always been multipliers. They are not interested in sharing the scarcity of this status guo, because they unconsciously know that it is not enough. What the people of these United States are interested in is a rearrangement of our social and economic order so that plenty for all can be provided for the nation. This country and this continent have had no time in the last 400 years of rapid expansion to acguire the traditions of philosophic speculation or to indulge in political preambles. We've been too busy going places and doing things; making big ones out of little ones. We have been so busy that we have never had time to acguire the traditions of social classes. There is really only one class in the United States today -- those who consume -- and this one class is divided into two major divisions, chiselers and suckers. It is the secret ambition of 88 A RADIO ADDRESS OVER N.Y. STATION WEVD 1/23/36 every sucker that he will someday graduate into being a chiseler. What is a chiseler? Well, briefly, a chiseler is he who acquires the most with the expenditure of the least effort. Strangely enough, the only way that we as a nation can obtain more is when our individual citizens contribute less human effort. It is only through the progressive elimination of human toil by the further introduction of electric power and automatic machinery that an abundance of physical wealth may be produced for everyone. A mature Price System -- such as we have in the United States in 1936 -- has only one criterion of social success; namely, the acquisition of monetary wealth. All tokens of monetary wealth in this Price System -- whether they be mortgages, bonds, bank loans, or currency - are debt claims against the total operation of the system; therefore, monetary wealth in our American Price System can only be created through the creation of debt, and to get rich in terms of this Price System, one must create debt claims against others faster than they are created against him. The creation of debt is only possible in an economy of scarcity; an economy of abundance is only possible after the process of creating debt is abolished. National business in the United States today is running on the priming power of $17 billion of newly-created government debt, brought about by the legislative enactments of the Roosevelt-Farley administration. Private corporate enterprise can no longer create sufficient new debt every year with which to validate the outstanding debt -- public and private -- of the country; therefore, the federal government must assume the prerogative of creating debt from private corporate enterprise and create it itself. The federal government in this administration has loaned over $6 billion through the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to corporate business in these United States. It has paid out slightly over $5 billion for all relief expenses. Technocracy Inc. asks, "What is business kicking about?" It got the largest share of the financial gravy from the federal treasury, and the millions on relief got the miserly dole. The beautiful part about it all is that the people of the United States will be taxed to pay both the government bonds for relief and the huge government loans to corporate business enterprise. Corporate business should be overjoyed that the people of these United States don't know when they have been taken for a ride. The best business in the world is that business 89 A RADIO ADDRESS OVER N.Y. STATION WEVD 1/23/36 which can borrow from a lender and then compel the lender to pay back his own loan. On November 3rd, a national election will be held, and millions will cast their votes with the hope that if their candidate is elected, conditions will improve. This national election is simply to decide which political party administers this Price System for the next four years. Regardless of whether the party is republican, democratic, socialists, or communist, they will all be seeking to elect their party members into some political position in the administration of this Price System scarcity. The fundamental problems facing our country and this continent will neither be met nor enunciated. They will very carefully be avoided. There is only one issue facing this country and this continent, and that is whether we, the citizens of the United States, shall maintain this Price System with its attendant 12 million unemployed and 20 million relief dependents, with all of the economic insecurity, insufficient purchasing power, ill health, and general malnutrition of this age of scarcity, or whether we shall vote for the abolition of this Price System and the institution of a technological era of abundance, with guaranteed security to all, with equitable and adequate purchasing power sufficient to consume the mass output of mass production, with a technological administration of this social order that will render these things to all citizens an economic certainty. It is here that Technocracy Inc. says to every voter in the United States that, when you vote in 1936 in the national election, you are casting your vote in favor of the political administration of this age of scarcity of this Price System, regardless of what party is elected. Remember that when you vote to elect a candidate into political office in this Price System, your vote is an endorsement and a support of the system in its entirety. You are helping the debt merchants and the politicians maintain the status quo. In other words, your vote, collectively speaking, is a permit to allow the chiselers four more years of action; so, frankly, all you'll get for your vote is the satisfaction that you haven't changed anything. Sometime in the next decade, you will be able to use your vote to decide the fundamental issue. You can only have scarcity under this Price System; you can only 90 A RADIO ADDRESS OVER N.Y. STATION WEVD 1/23/36 obtain economic security and abundance when you abolish it. Technocracy Inc. will never ask for your votes to elect candidates into the political administration of this Price System. It will ask for your vote for the elimination of this Price System. The technological march of events will make this fundamental issue more apparent in the next few years, and, as electrical power and automatic machinery displace human effort on one hand -- while taxes and government debt and insecurity rise on the other -- it will finally compel you, the voters of these United States, to decide the greatest issue of the age scarcity or abundance. Regardless of your present condition of economic servitude, Technocracy Inc. wishes you a happy landing in the New America. 91 TECHNOLOGY AND LABOR A Lecture by Howard Scott To the Chicago Painters Local Union No. 637 May 20, 1936 Published in FEDERATION NEWS, JULY 4, 193 6 All of you here are members of labor organizations. You are accustomed to paying dues and carrying a union card. You are educated in the theory that in union there is strength, and you are familiar with the battles that organizations of labor, in this country, have been in and are fighting. The point here is that a labor union is also a business institution, sometimes even incorporated in some states, and subject to the same laws, the same advantages and disadvantages, that any corporate enterprise under this price system is subject to. The product which your organization has to sell is man-hours. This product you have to sell, these man-hours, are in ever- diminishing demand as the market for your labor grows smaller and smaller. That is only characteristic of all business enterprises under a price system. The significant thing about a price system is that, once it arrives at maturity, as is the case in the United States, then the man-hours required in production of goods and services decline, so that the price for those man-hours tends to fall. Thus, you are up against the same proposition that corporate business enterprise is up against: high production, falling prices, vanishing profits. The greater efficiency of productive processes reduces the number of man-hours required for all operation, making both you and your unions less and less important as time goes on. The maximum employment in this country was in 1920. I need not tell you what it is today. It will never go back. It will not even remain what it is today but will rapidly diminish from year to year. Of course, you can blame the technician for devising more efficient machinery, but that will not stop the introduction of further labor-saving processes, for many of these processes already invented in recent years are being held in reserve by big industrial concerns. We already have much more efficient equipment than that which is in use today. The consuming public would have had the benefits of it long ago except for the interference control -- the price system -- which cannot yet see 93 TECHNOLOGY AND LABOR HOWARD SCOTT — FEDERATION NEWS 5-20-36 its way clear to install it. But why blame the technician anyhow? Why not go ahead and eliminate labor in every possible way? We engineers never did have any use for hard work. It always hurts us when we see anybody working. We are always pained when we witness human toil. Not that we are indolent -- we will work long hours and days without number to devise a piece of machinery or a process that will go right on with any kind of monotonous job, while the worker is released to do something less exacting -- or even to go his way doing nothing at all. It is only the demented person who keeps right on doing the same thing over and over again. The man who fights for the chance to do work that a machine can do better only demonstrates what a damned fool he is. More of you will have this demonstration in the next four or five years. The experiences of labor organizations in this country have been interesting when viewed in historical perspective. They have been fighting a losing battle all along, and their chief adversary has not been the employer. It has been technological progress. From the use of the simple handtools of a century ago to the machinery we have now, there has been a series of clashes between those who work and those who operate labor-saving eguipment. The principal threat to the continued existence of trade unions has not been employers but technological unemployment . Take one outstanding example. Many of you may remember the Glass Blowers Union. The glass blowers were the ones who brought out that crack about the working class wearing silk shirts. They had a union that any of you might be proud of. They had an organization so tight that the only way a man could get into it was to be born into it. Where are the glass blowers today? Did their union fail them, and were they put out of their jobs by the hostility of employers in the industry? No, they were not. They went out of existence because of the development of machinery. Along came the engineer and out went the Glass Blowers Union. In 1923 came an inventor named Colburn of the Toledo Glass, with a machine requiring a couple of people at the switchboard to operate it. Now you have a piece of equipment 1, 300 feet long which rolls glass out in a continuous sheet, cuts and boxes it, puts a cover on the box, labels and addresses it by putting a 94 TECHNOLOGY AND LABOR HOWARD SCOTT — FEDERATION NEWS 5-20-36 stencil on the box. An operator sits in a chair watching it when he is not reading a detective story, while thousands of would-be glass blowers are walking the streets. Well, why not? Five plants, operated to capacity, will supply the whole window glass industry. The capacity is 20,000,000 boxes per annum. Machinery now blows lamp bulbs at the rate of 552 a minute. New plants are now being built that will blow 1,100 per minute. Only a couple of these machines will be needed to blow all the lamp bulbs we can use. Take the wrought iron puddlers -- there is another instance. Ever since iron has been made it has been made by the old puddling process. Up to 1926 we were making it by the same laborious process employed centuries ago. A man could only puddle about 200 pounds -- his own weight -- each day or a little more, but the Aston process today will make wrought iron at the rate of 500 to 1, 000 tons per day and make it better than it could be made by hand. The wrought iron worker and his union are out. And why not? You will appreciate the joke after a while -- we haven't got to the painters yet. No matter in what field of labor you are serving, you and your protective organization will have to face the same trend of events. Many workers, squeezed out of employment in the industrial centers, have turned to the farm as a last refuge. They found that even the farmer is faced with dilemma . In Andrew Jackson's time, they used to till land with a spade. It was a day of hand axes, sickles, and oxcarts. We were a pioneer nation at that time. It took 96 hours for a good man to spade an acre of ground. Any man who tries to spade it today will find that it would still take that long. The muscle power of a man is no greater now than it was then. It shows you what kind of an animal man is. You can't beat certain standards of production doing things in the same old ways. New ways reveal new possibilities. Today a man with one helper, using a tractor, can work 22 acres a day. They can plow an acre in one seven-hundredth of the time it takes to do it with a spade. The combine is an improvement of about thirteen-hundred to one over the method of reaping grain with the old cradle. That is 95 TECHNOLOGY AND LABOR HOWARD SCOTT — FEDERATION NEWS 5-20-36 better but not much. Still better methods of grain farming are in prospect. We are concerned about more leisure for the farmers of the country. There are about 26 million people on the farms. They still have the idea that they want to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow, and it is pretty hard to get into their heads that they can only produce more by working less. If it were still possible for them to get a good price for their produce, those morons would still go on farming in the old way. Modern technology is making the first invasion into agriculture in the history of mankind. Out in Arizona, there is being used a new process of growing food for man and beast without the use of soil. They only use the soil as a vehicle for supplying the water. You dig a trench four feet deep and fill it with water, which is warmed by electricity. You dissolve the necessary eight or ten ingredients of plant food into a barrel. Stretch a chicken wire over the trench, about two inches above the water. Cover it with straw or excelsior. Plant your seeds in that, followed by another layer of excelsior, and you are off. The roots of the plants thrust themselves down into the liquid and from it draw their nourishment. You don't have to cultivate or bother about bugs. By such a method, we can raise 2,500 bushels of potatoes to the acre. The growing process goes on 24 hours of the day, every day. The average for the whole United States today is only 116 bushels, grown by the old haphazard field method, which only operates on days when the sun shines, the temperature is favorable, and the rain supplies enough moisture. How would it strike you to know that wheat can be grown from the seed to head in ten days flat? There are two machines in New Jersey producing wheat and oats for chicken farms experimentally. Operating 365 days a year, with less than 12 men, they would replace 35,000 acres of the finest wheat-producing land on this continent. These things are on the move. We are trying to get you to prepare for them. We can grow over 200 tons of tomatoes to the acre. Tomato plants will grow 15 feet high. These things can be done. Your farmer wouldn't do anything about it, so we had to. You can't educate the human being easily. The conditioned reflexes have to be reckoned with. Most individuals have that proverbial "hamburger sandwich psychology." The moment they get enough to eat for the day, they are satisfied. Why, if the 96 TECHNOLOGY AND LABOR HOWARD SCOTT — FEDERATION NEWS 5-20-36 average fellow should happen to get a $15.00 a week job tending a gasoline station, the poor fool would go out and get married. He has gotten his hamburger sandwich. The peonage of hand-picked cotton is doomed. Several million of white and colored sharecroppers will be eliminated from employment and means of a livelihood, poor though that may be, by the use of the new mechanical cotton picker invented by the Rust Brothers. The southern farmer is the lowest paid worker on this continent. It was Technocracy that three years ago first introduced that to the world. After that, it was front-page news. The machine picks two rows at a time at a cost of 98 cents per acre -- compared with ten to twenty dollars per acre by hand methods. It picks 8,200 pounds of cotton in 7-1/2 hours. We are looking forward to the production of 12 bales of cotton to the acre and having it picked by the Rust Brothers' cotton picker. There are 2,000,000 cotton pickers headed for the relief rolls. Of these 26,000,000 farmers in the United States, 35 percent have an income for themselves of around $2,200 per year. They produce more than 65 percent of the agricultural produce of the country. Sixty-four percent of them receive an income of less than $360 per year. They produce scarcely more than their own subsistence, so their labor is not needed to help sustain the country. There is no reason why we should not eliminate the farmers. It would be just as well if they were subjected to enforced leisure, but you couldn't teach them that. The advance of technology alone will teach them -- put them under a process of producing without long-suffering toil. We just love to put people on the relief rolls. We are only sorry we cannot put 15,000,000 more on relief. When you get that, you are going to have social readjustment quickly. Social action has never come about through cogitation -- the spontaneous working of the human thought process. It always comes about at the rate of approach of the stomach to the backbone. When you have that, you will get social action, not before. So we Technocrats are trying to help you out. We are not getting anything out of this work. No officer of Technocracy is getting any salary. We are getting along all right. You can live fairly good in some places on $10.00 a week. So we haven't anything to sell you. What we are trying to do is 97 TECHNOLOGY AND LABOR HOWARD SCOTT — FEDERATION NEWS 5-20-36 the reverse of that of the politician. He comes along and tells you how intelligent you are. Because you are a citizen, you are supposed to be capable of running the affairs of this country. We tell you that is a lot of "cockeyed nonsense." We don't try to soft-soap you. We are not trying to be nice to anybody. Your opinion doesn't matter. You can have your beliefs, your superstitions, and your fears; but that is not what it takes to operate the technological processes upon which the future livelihood of the people of this area depend. What you do about it remains to be seen. So, in our approach, we do not flatter you -- we insult you, and leave you with a lot of guestions in your minds. If we can't do that, we are a failure. We are on our way to a new social order on this continent, but the form it will take will not resemble anything in history. The new order that will come about in America will make Communism look bourgeois. What we are trying to point out is the inevitability of the trend. It doesn't make any difference whether any particular group of people are for it or against it. The trend is on, and any form of political interference control only makes matters worse. Every time you develop more efficient eguipment, every time you consume more extraneous energy, you are helping to displace more of the men who have been educated to think that the only way to produce more is to work more. We try to teach you that the way to produce more is to work less. The price system cannot run on much longer. We must realize that the growth of population has been steadily upward for over a century, practically under full employment, so that could always buy back with its wages what the country produced. You could draw a chart and plot the growth of population in the form of a curve. The curve would rise gradually over the past 100 years; but today it is leveling off. By 1940, the population of this continent will have reached its biological eguilibrium, after which it will remain stationary. The meaning of this is that there is not going to be any increase of customers each year. That is not good for business because, at the same time that the population growth is leveling off, the productive capacity of the country will continue to grow. Productive capacity, even in the past five years, has been increasing by leaps and bounds; but the rate of debt creation has been increasing faster than either population or production. 98 TECHNOLOGY AND LABOR HOWARD SCOTT — FEDERATION NEWS 5-20-36 In Andrew Jackson's time, there were 12 million citizens, and 98 percent of the population derived its livelihood from the soil. Today there are less than 26 percent of our population dependent upon the soil for their livelihood. It is the only example of its kind in all history; and 2/3 of those still on the soil are practically useless except for their own subsistence. Today, 74 percent of the population is dependent upon other than agricultural pursuits for their purchasing power. Again in Jackson's time, 95 percent of the tokens of monetary wealth were in the form of hard cash or commodities, and only 5 percent was in the form of debt claims, such as mortgages, bank loans, and other amortizable securities. Now, 95 percent of the tokens of wealth are in debt claims and only 5 percent in cash money or commodities. The situation existing now is exactly the reverse of that existing then, only a century ago. The increase in debt came to a point in 1929 where even the rank-and-file of the people had their wages and salaries mortgaged 2-1/3 years ahead. Business ran to full inventories. We started calling in our loans and shutting down our plants. Yet today, our machinery is two to five times as fast as it was then. We have had more acceleration of speed since 1929 than in any previous period in history. Today, national business is running on the priming power of 17 billions of newly-created government debt, brought about by the legislative enactments of the Roosevelt-Farley Administration. Private corporate enterprise can no longer create sufficient debt each year to validate the outstanding debt, public and private, of the country. The government, under this administration, has loaned $8 billion to corporate business in these United States through the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. It has paid out slightly over $5 billion for all relief purposes. Technocracy asks: "What is business kicking about? It got the largest share of the financial gravy from the federal treasury, and the millions of relief got the miserly dole." The beautiful part of it all is that the people will be taxed to pay both the government bonds for relief and the huge government loans to corporate business enterprise. Corporate business should be glad that the people of the United States do not know when they have been taken for a ride. 99 TECHNOLOGY AND LABOR HOWARD SCOTT — FEDERATION NEWS 5-20-36 But we Technocrats are not interested in fostering class antagonisms. The problem will not be solved by calling Rockefeller, Morgan, and others names. If you or I played poker, we would have to play under the rules of the game. If you are going to play dice, the rules are different, but there are rules there, too, and you would have to play under the rules of that game. There is no sense in calling names. If you had to operate under the same system, you'd operate it worse. There is really only one class in the United States today -- those who consume. This one class is divided into two major divisions: chiselers and suckers. It is the ambition of every sucker to become a chiseler. What is a chiseler? Well, a chiseler is he who acquires the most with the least expenditure of effort. It is the ambition of Technocracy to graduate all of you suckers into chiselers. It can be done . Nor are we interested in trying to solve these problems by the vote. Here we are in a technological age still trying to kid ourselves into believing that we can somehow solve these technical problems by counting noses. On November 3rd, the national election will be held and millions will cast their votes in the hope that if their candidate is elected, somehow conditions will improve. Yet the national election will merely decide which political party will administer this economy of scarcity, under the price system, for the next four years. Regardless of whether the winner is the Republican, Democratic, Socialist or Communist, it will merely win the right to install its members into the respective positions in the administration of this price system scarcity. After the election, then, the fundamental problems facing this country and this continent will still be facing this country and this continent. They will not have been met nor even enunciated. They will have been carefully avoided. What will have been done, then, is merely counted noses. Oh, it is fine to feel, when you have voted, that you have done your part to run your country. It is magnificent, as it was in 1916 when you elected Wilson the second time. You elected him as you will remember, on his promise to keep you out of war. He kept you out long enough to permit the fiscal agents of the Allies to pile up several billions of loans from our people through the big bankers that cost our government 24 billion dollars to collect. And that isn't all it cost. For every spot of French soil occupied by our equipment or materials, we paid rent. We paid rent for them right up to the end of the war, and we pay rent now 100 TECHNOLOGY AND LABOR HOWARD SCOTT — FEDERATION NEWS 5-20-36 for every American grave on French soil. Talk about suckers! We are a pretty sad lot. So, vote for what? When they voted Wilson in, they voted because they were against something -- not for something. We have always voted because we were against something. Now, of course, we have the New Deal; and some of us are developing an idea that we should vote against that, too. If we voted that out, we would be just as stupid as when we voted it in. If you are intelligent enough to be a Technocrat, you are intelligent enough to get paid for any voting you do because you will know in advance that you are not going to get social change by voting for a political party. If you are married and your wife votes, get five dollars for the two of you. The promises the politicians make cannot be fulfilled. Nothing that they can do will increase the production of goods and services except at a prohibitive cost. Even when politicians run on a platform made of planks borrowed from Technocracy, they cannot possibly make good, because Technocracy and politics will not mix. Something is going to happen up in Alberta pretty soon. They can't pay the $25.00 per month they promised to every citizen. They can't even pay the salaries of the employees of the Province; so, they are going to be faced with a proposition of resigning. Politicians undertake such programs for what they can get out of them for themselves. They would not be interested if their own pay depended upon their making good on their promises. They do not want to take the rap for failure when they are getting nothing for it. We, in the United States, are up against the necessity of devising a technological control to replace an outworn social order, the price system. Political palliatives cannot be effective. You have seen what has happened in the past three years. Even the asinine legislation of the present administration has been outlawed by the Supreme Court -- and we deserved what we got . Anybody who works for a living belongs to the class of undeserving people. You really do not deserve anything. You really don't. Nobody but a sucker ever tried to get rich working. The only way to get rich is to get a bunch of suckers working for you. You know it. I am not trying to kid you. When man-hours decline more and more each year as more modern equipment comes 101 TECHNOLOGY AND LABOR HOWARD SCOTT — FEDERATION NEWS 5-20-36 in, the proper attitude for you to take toward work is clearly indicated. You cannot continue to work, even if you want to. There are no new frontiers, no new spaces to open up. The economy of this country is no longer expanding at 5 percent per annum. In the steel industry, for instance, you have 14 continuous strip mills going in this year, and I believe they have a union. By 1937, the Amalgamated Sheet Steel and Tin Workers will not amount to very much, in spite of all that the Committee for Industrial Organization can do for them. Now you should not condemn the employer for putting in these technological improvements. The employers can't help it. It is in the line of progress, even when it confers enforced leisure upon great numbers of workers. As I said before, Technocracy only hopes it can throw another 15 million out of work, because we do not like work. We are trying to throw people out of work fast enough so they will get a chance to appreciate the joys of living -- and the prospects are very good for doing that by 1940 or 1942. You people who still have savings accounts, if you have that "holier than thou" feeling, I would advise you to get rid of that. Maybe you think this is pessimistic. The optimist is he who thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist is he who agrees with him. We Technocrats are not one or the other. We are just trying to point certain things out. The next administration will have to pump more billions during the next three years than during the last three, because we can't run our industrial equipment without that. This means that government debt and taxes will continue to go up. Wait until they get going. With three or four more years -- by 1939, assuming they are going to use more billions -- you are going to have all of it in taxes, plus some of that pumped during the past three years. Small businessmen and some others are going to be paying $736 in tax on an income of $5, 000. That means it is going to be nicer and cheaper to quit business and go on relief. You really will. Now the banker is in a very funny position. I know a lot of people entertain a sort of resentment against him, having read a certain type of emotional articles calling him a plunderer and a robber. He is only exercising the rules of the game. The banker was saved in 1933 by federal funds. The financial institutions were unfrozen with federal money. It was so successful that now the banker is in danger of being frozen in his own liquidity, 102 TECHNOLOGY AND LABOR HOWARD SCOTT — FEDERATION NEWS 5-20-36 with no place to invest his funds except in government bonds. Technocracy predicted, of course, that the banks would close on or before the first of April, 1933. Well, they did. We also pointed out that they would be saved by federal funds, and they were. We also predicted that the interest rate would tend to decline toward zero, and it is well on the way toward that point now. There is a new Canadian loan at .878 of one percent. You are going to have a lot of fun; but be sorry for the banker, not angry, because he isn't going to be a banker much longer, not because you do not want him to be a banker, but he is going out of business. He can no longer merchandise debt, and his business is to buy and sell debt claims. A lot of you are under the fallacious assumption that you own deposits in a bank. There is no depositor that owns any deposit in a bank. You sold the funds to the bank when you deposited them. You don't own a nickel in any bank -- don't kid yourself. The banker is a merchant, and the only reason he stays in business is because he hopes to buy and sell debt and make profit on it. Now the banker's investments are running heavily to government bonds. When this reaches a point where 65 percent of the collateral investments of the banks are in government securities, there will be only two alternatives: they must be taken over by the government or return their deposits to their customers and go out of business. So, just be sorry and tell the banker not to worry -- it won't be long now. His troubles will soon be over. No longer can he create sufficient debt each year to validate the outstanding debt; and when we can no longer provide investment opportunities for the creation of new debt, then we cannot validate the outstanding debt. The price system rests upon that foundation. The only way we can save it for a little while longer is by government-created debt. Even that will not save it long. Most of you still have that cockeyed idea that there is some moral virtue in laboring for everything you get. You have a suspicion that it is not quite respectable to get a living without perspiring -- that living on cash relief, for instance, is not nearly so noble as chasing leaves for the W.P.A. Well, maybe some of you painters will choose to work up a sweat painting cupies on the walls of a kindergarten for the W.P.A. when you can no longer get legitimate employment. 103 TECHNOLOGY AND LABOR HOWARD SCOTT — FEDERATION NEWS 5-20-36 All labor organizations are formed to fight for the right of their members to wear overalls. You have to come together and fight to protect what you do; yet, in the long run, the trend is totally wrong. You should never try to wear the overalls yourself; rather, you should organize to put the overalls on the machine where they belong. Each year in the future there is going to be more machinery and less human work; but the machines must be kept busy. Their output in goods and services must be made available to the whole consuming public. There must be a system of social administration of the output of our technological equipment. We cannot distribute sufficient purchasing power in the form of wages to provide adequate consumption to keep our equipment going at mass production. A price system is any system that uses any commodity as a medium of exchange with which to distribute goods and services; and any system using such a medium of exchange, regardless of whether it is collectively owned or privately owned, is a price system. Russia still has a commodity valuation system under a corporate scheme of financing by means of external bonds which bear interest. This is debt creation. The buyer of the bond invests his capital, draws interest on its and someday he will get back his dough. That is the same old system used in other countries and they have not changed it one iota. A different set of people are running it, that's all. A 1936 Ford would not be any different no matter who runs it. Technocracy is proposing a functional administration -- one administration of balanced production and distribution, from Hawaii to Bermuda and from Panama to the North Pole. We will donate the Philippines to anybody. The possible income per individual to be expected under such an administration of the productive resources of this country would be from 15 to 18 times the 1929 rate. That means that the income that would be available to each adult citizen would be equivalent to a $20,000 income. Of course, such an income would not be instantly available. It would take from 10 to 15 years to build up to a full balanced load, but you would achieve most of it in six years. The distribution of the social income would not be a game of exchange -- not a matter of negotiation between human beings; and when you get it, you cannot hoard it, mortgage it, assign it or give it away. There is only one thing you can do 104 TECHNOLOGY AND LABOR HOWARD SCOTT — FEDERATION NEWS 5-20-36 with it, and that is spend it. Each and every one of you would get the same amount. Citizens will not be awarded different incomes according to what they are worth. We couldn't afford to discriminate between persons -- not because of any theory of equality but because it would make too much work to administer a graduated income system. And why should we? When you have enough for everybody on a high income basis, why hang onto a scarcity philosophy for the sake of keeping some on a lower income? So, you will have to dump a lot of your old ideas about nobody getting any more than he is worth. Under an accurately balanced system of technically administered production and distribution, each and every citizen will be assured of real and substantial economic security from birth to the grave, and the end of life will be somewhat deferred under such a system. But when you do go, you will not have anything to leave to your children except your name. Housing under such a system would rapidly do away with the rat-traps we have today, and in their place erect the finest homes on earth. Anything less would cost too much to maintain and operate. From this viewpoint, the present $20,000 home is just as lousy as the "rat traps." These houses will be designed with a view to minimum labor, maximum comfort, conservation of non- replaceable resources and minimum cost of maintenance. There are only two homes in the United States of this kind today, and we have the good fortune to own both of them. The type of house I am speaking of can be built in quantities of 56 million, and with that number, everybody can be adequately housed. These homes will be soundproof and heatproof. Being thoroughly insulated against sound, you might beat hell out of your wife and nobody would ever know. They would be heated and lighted and air-conditioned from a central plant and automatically controlled. The walls might be subjected to a heat of 750 degrees Centigrade for 24 hours without damage or even noticeable change of temperature on the other side. That kind of a home when built in big quantities, on a continuous straight-line plan, could be erected with no other tools than a screwdriver and a socket wrench, and once up they would last 1,000 years. There would be no carpenters, no painters, no plumbers, no brick masons or any other tradesmen. They all will be out of a job; and why not? A lot of you are out of work now, and we want to put the rest of you out of work. 105 TECHNOLOGY AND LABOR HOWARD SCOTT — FEDERATION NEWS 5-20-36 Now in this house we have projected another development which will be of interest to the women. Instead of using the same old process of cooking, they will follow an entirely different process. It will inaugurate the first real improvement in the method of cooking in the history of man. Instead of using ordinary fire heat applied from the outside in, we will use electrical heat applied from the inside out. By this method we do not use any water to boil an egg, and we cook it in 2-1/2 seconds by the process called diathermy. A giant Idaho potato is cooked in less than a minute -- in the time it takes you to drink your tomato juice, or a martini if you are lucky. And the women will have to find some other way to occupy their time than in cooking. It grieves us to see either a woman or a man slaving over a cookstove. Can't you see where all these things are leading? There will not be enough labor left, in a few years, to justify the organization of a union. Under the price system, you wouldn't have enough income to eat, much less pay dues to a union. And what are you going to do about it? Organize a farmer-labor party and vote for a new list of candidates? In other words, demonstrate your moronity? If you do go out and vote and do not get $5.00 for it, you are a sucker. No voting you could possibly do would be of the least benefit under the circumstances, unless you could use your vote toward the authorization of a technological army to take over and run the economic resources of the country to the end of instituting a better social order. You know, we don't have to have Technocracy. We can have chaos, and without preparations for an orderly change, that is what we will have. We can have civil war in this country -- get that through your head. But a change of regime through revolution in the European sense, we could not have. The country is too highly industrialized; it could not hang together under stress. The big cities like Chicago would be imperiled first by interference with the public services. Why, if your water service here were tampered with, it is 5-1/2 hours to the deadline. If the forces of order were interfered with, it would only be a matter of hours until the lights would go out, gas supply would stop, and transportation of foodstuffs would be at a standstill. And God help the fat man, for he will go first. You are up against a proposition of continuation of technological services during an orderly transition -- either that or chaos. If there is any unintelligent interference in the operation of your equipment, you will not have a chance. 106 TECHNOLOGY AND LABOR HOWARD SCOTT — FEDERATION NEWS 5-20-36 The other day when the power went off in New York, officialdom nearly threw a hemorrhage. You could see panic in people's faces. Thousands were trapped in basements five stories underground, as well as forty stories up. Nothing worked. The greatest hindrance to decisive action we have in the United States today is liberalism. The intellectual liberal is the man who has acquired so much erudition that he is only capable of deliberating endlessly. In a time when decision and bold action are necessary, the most he can do is to "decide to decide not to decide." The effect of his attitude is not greatly different from that of the uneducated man cursed with the hamburger psychology. He persistently refuses to let us face the actual physical facts that are in front of us on this continent. We Technocrats do not run candidates. We believe in organizing the intelligent people along functional lines. We have organized Sections all the way across this continent, from New York to Mexico and from Miami, Florida, to Vancouver, B.C. We are not democratic in our methods. We do not believe in counting noses. We do not believe there is any sense in it. We are looking for those who can take orders or give orders, or both. We are looking for functional people who can contribute effectively toward a continuation of the orderly operation of our equipment when the present price system, interference control, comes to the end of the road. This is our country, isn't it? Well, let's organize it. There are only 37, 000 families in the United States now whose children are worth kidnapping. These families received $10 billion a year, while it required 12 million other families to equal another $10 billion. Is America the richest country in the world? It depends upon whose America you are talking about. If you want an America of scarcity, go right on like you are doing, voting for this political party or that, and you will have it. If you are not certain -- if you can't make up your minds -- wait a little while longer and your minds will be made up for you under a fascist regime. You know it and everybody else knows it, if you don't want that, then get out and organize your functional capacity. But you can't do it except by vertical alignment. With anything less than that, you will not "go to town." You will only 107 TECHNOLOGY AND LABOR HOWARD SCOTT — FEDERATION NEWS 5-20-36 land down in the sewer. 108 RADIO ADDRESS OVER STATION WCFL, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS By Howard Scott 1937 Technocracy wishes to present to the radio audience of this station some of the salient features in this critical stage of the Price System. The Lincoln administration, in making the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, paved the way for American corporate enterprise. A century ago, with ninety-odd percent of Americans deriving their livelihood directly from the soil under the dominance of man-driven tools, 95 percent of the tokens of monetary wealth were in hard money and commodities. The debt claims of modern enterprise were practically unknown, and the overwhelming majority of things produced was consumed in direct subsistence -- only a small portion of the total volume of goods produced going into the exchange markets of that time in exchange for the tokens of hard money. A century ago, the oxcart was the chief freight transport vehicle, and the spade, the hoe, the crude drag and the plow, along with the sickle and the scythe, were the chief agricultural implements of that day. Man, with the crude implements of that time, took 96 man-hours to spade an acre, a year to produce 800 tons of iron ore, and a year to produce 25 tons of pig iron. The application of technological procedures to the means whereby we live has finally solved for man the age-long problem of producing sufficient for his needs and more than enough for his wants. Today, 95 percent of the tokens of monetary wealth are represented by the debt claims against the future and only 5 percent are in currency. The transition from the primitive hard money stage to the advance maturity of a debt-claim Price System was rendered possible by the increasing technological development of modern physical science. The steady growth of the physical equipment of this country since the Civil War, and more especially the rapid acceleration since 1890, has altered the order of magnitude of our social problems from want in the midst of need to want in the midst of plenty. The growth of physical equipment and the increasing use of more efficient technological procedures made it possible for the entrepreneur to increase the tokens of monetary wealth in ever- 109 RADIO ADDRESS FROM CHICAGO STATION WCFL 1937 increasing amounts. As long as there was a continuum of growth of the physical equipment, the entrepreneur could mortgage the future deeper and deeper. The continuum of physical growth over the last fifty years has enabled the debt merchant to cover the mistakes of the current year with the yearly increment of the next. This progression of mortgaging the future of America proceeded in spite of temporary depressions to ever-greater amounts of debt claims until today it is estimated that there is outstanding against the physical equipment of this country and its future operation $238 billion of long- and short-term public and private debt claims. At the same time that the entrepreneur was creating this Himalaya of debt, the technologist was continuously improving the technological procedures of operation. Each succeeding decade witnessed a further decline in the man-hours per unit produced, technologically lowered the physical cost of operation by more efficient machinery and processes at higher speeds, substituted extraneous energy for man-hours and increased the total energy consumed by the industrial system. The increasing consumption of extraneous energy and the increasing declination of man-hours per unit produced was not obvious or apparent in the American industrial picture as long as there was an annual increment of growth in the physical equipment. When the growth curve of the physical equipment of this area began leveling off in the last eight years, the energy curves and total man-hours were even more accelerated in their drop than hitherto. Total purchasing power in a Price System is directly dependent on the total man-hours involved in the operation of the physical equipment. Wages and salaries are paid on the basis of man-hour participation of the individual. It therefore follows that, as the rate of production and rate of man-hours per unit produced increases, apparent purchasing power can only be maintained by an ever-expanding growth of the physical equipment. When this ceases, purchasing power falls, inventories pile up, plants close down, unemployment becomes general, and breadlines are a common spectacle. It must be borne firmly in mind that the prosperity of a Price System such as ours can only be maintained as long as it can create debt claims in huge volumes each year, American corporate enterprise has arrived at that position where it can no 110 RADIO ADDRESS FROM CHICAGO STATION WCFL 1937 longer create debt claims in a sufficiently large volume per annum to validate the outstanding debt claims in existence. It therefore willingly surrenders its prerogative of debt creation to the federal government of these United States in order that the government, through the power of the federal state, can for a short time create debt claims fast enough to save American corporate enterprise for the benefit of those few Americans, the majority holders of our debt certificates. It is a policy of spending our way out of the so-called depression back to the halcyon days of prosperity -- a last desperate expedient of the Price System to prolong the agony of its passing. In President Jackson's day, the commodity valuation currency had some relationship to the rate of production. Today, with the human effort supplying only 2 percent of the total energy consumed in our industrial system, any and all commodity currencies are unrelated to our rate of operation. No modification of this Price System methodology of debt creation will have more than a passing temporary effect. No revaluation of our dollar on a gold, silver, or any other base; no revamping of our fiscal credit system; no rearrangement of our banking system will do more than act as a temporary soporific. No juggling whatsoever of these instruments of the interference control of the Price System is capable of providing a solution to the problem of providing mass purchasing power sufficient to buy the output of American mass production. The old line political organizations have induced the American public to support them in the past through their propaganda slogans and their party machine organizations. Every political party is a great racket just so long as it can muscle in sufficiently on the general operations of the area to maintain the payoff for its machine henchmen, in a social crisis, all political parties realize that the old time racket is washed up and therefore seek a new bandwagon more attractive than the former for the sole purpose of inducing the voter to come aboard. Racketeering, political or otherwise, is a component part of a Price System of production. Technocracy is under no illusions that any political racket can abolish the Price System, and that until a technological control is substituted on this continent, all political maneuvers, whether made by republicans, democrats, communists, or fascists are but racketeering four-flushing in the face of the progression of American technology. Ill RADIO ADDRESS FROM CHICAGO STATION WCFL 1937 The social problem of administration of production and distribution on this continental area is a technological one. Just as technology has solved the problem of production, so, too, will the problem of distribution and operation be found in the technological field. A Price System, whether privately owned or collectively owned, is still a Price System irrespective of whether it is in the United States or the Soviet Union. A Price System, with its pricing of goods and services for the creation of exchange value debt claims, no longer possesses sufficient accuracy of control to arrive at the physical costs necessary to be known in the technological operation of America's physical equipment . Technology has written "Mene, Mene, Tekel Upharsin" across the face of the Price System, and all the political subterfuges and financial legerdemain evolved in the ages of scarcity can only momentarily delay its going. America is at the crossroads, and no foreign importation of any social theory or philosophy such as communism, socialism or fascism will avail her in the slightest. Here in the soil, in the equipment and structures of this continent are to be found the technology of the new social order -- a social technique for the operation of the era of plenty wherein for the first time a purposeful design can be projected of the complete functional administration of an American Technate, a technological administration of this continent wherein economic security and equality of income is guaranteed to all with a maximum of leisure. American labor has formed unions, societies, and associations for the right to wear overalls. Technocracy points out that the time has arrived when the people of this continent must organize to put overalls on the machine. 112 The following letter was written by Howard Scott to correct gross errors in an article published in THE NEW YORKER of October 31, 1936: The New Yorker 25 West 43rd Street New York City Attention: Harold Ross, Editor-in-Chief Gentlemen : May I extend my compliments for the altogether amusing resume of Technocracy and myself that you presented on pages 20 and 21 of your issue dated October 31, 1936, under the ubiquitous title, "The Erg Man." The New Yorker's description characterizes me so delightfully mysterious and at the same time some kind of a near "bogeyman" and big bad wolf of the economic technological world that it appears as if you were attempting to do an Allen Raymond a la Herald Tribune. May I be permitted to suggest that if your publication and others of the press persist in endeavoring to present me in this intriguing manner to your public, you will succeed in creating a Howard Scott legend that will place me on a par with Franklin Delano Roosevelt of being all things to all people. In view of this possibility, while I do not object to what you infer or imply, or how you qualify my reputation, may I correct as follows certain statements made in the issue of your magazine mentioned above . 1. My automobile license carries my height at six feet five and not at six feet two, a mere matter of three inches you'll say. Of course, even in a pinch we could let that pass, but, after all, this is a correction to the record and no doubt you would like to have your record straight. 2 . Further to keeping your record straight you state that I was not an engineer in charge of Muscle Shoals No. 2 plant during the war but "merely a worker in a concrete gang." May I state that I was employed as equipment engineer by the Air Nitrates Corporation, a semi-government 113 The New Yorker 25 West 43rd Street New York City corporation, at U.S. Nitrate Plant No. 2 at Muscle Shoals, Alabama, in charge of installing the equipment of the cyanamid, calcium-carbide, and liquid-air divisions of that plant. Furthermore, I was promoted to designing technologist of the Air Nitrates Corporation in their offices in the Postal Life Building, 511 Fifth Avenue, New York City, and resigned in order to go into private engineering practice. 3. Apropos your statement of my being suspected of being a spy -- that is also a funny one for the book, since spies are never six feet five, and I have never been guilty of the great honor you confer, having never been employed in the intelligence service of any government or any organization . Have never been a member of the I.W.W., the Communist party, the Republican, the Democratic, or the Socialist parties -- in fact, to put it mildly, have never been a member of any political party, or labor union, or liberal, or reform organization of any kind, not even a college fraternity. Nor have I at any time been in sympathy with any of these organizations. Neither nave I at any time organized or been a member of any association or "bureau to teach workers to run industry after they took it over." 6. If you can produce a copy of the Congressional Record that bears any inquiry of my activity at Muscle Shoals such as has been brought out in your magazine, I assure you that the Division of Publications of Technocracy Inc. will gladly make you a present of an annual subscription to each of ten different magazines now published by our organization. In the files of Technocracy Inc., there is a record of the senate investigation of Muscle Shoals by Senator Graham's committees which no doubt is the inquiry to which you erroneously refer. While I am mentioned in 114 The New Yorker 25 West 43rd Street New York City that investigation, you will find that it is only because I had several secretaries and a car, and seemingly possessed the power to issue oil and gas books on the Standard Oil, which I will admit is just a little too much swank for a concrete mixer. 7. You state that a banquet for 500 technologists at the Hotel Morrison in Chicago, June, 1933, was called off upon my announcement "that Technocracy would use bayonets if necessary." You no doubt refer to the convention held under the joint sponsorship of Technocracy Inc., the All American Technological Society, the National Technological Congress, and the Continental Committee on Technocracy, in the Hotel Morrison of Chicago, on June 27, 28, 29, and 30, 1933. The entire proceedings of this convention were stenographically reported, and you are entirely incorrect in your quoted statement in that no such statement was made at that meeting or at any other time by Technocracy Inc. or myself. The convention was called off because of the heat after four days of convention fighting, in which Technocracy Inc. absorbed all of the other attending Technocratic organizations except the Continental Committee of Technocracy, which has since passed into the great beyond. 8 . You state that the Duron Chemical Products Company was established by me three or four years ago in Pompton Lakes, New Jersey. The Duron Chemical Products Company was incorporated in Delaware in the early part of 1923 and operated as a going concern until 1933, when it was liquidated. Its products were used over that time by the Medical Center, the Gresham Realties, Neurological Institute, New York Floor finishing Co., Brooklyn Edison, et cetera. I have gone to this trouble in making these corrections for your record because I am certain that you do not care to be in the hazardous position of making libelous statements. As one publisher to another, I know that you will accept this 115 The New Yorker 25 West 43rd Street New York City communication in your own humorous spirit. More power to you, and a happy landing! Howard Scott Di re ctor-in- Chief TECHNOCRACY INC. 116 EXCERPTS FROM A HOWARD SCOTT ADDRESS IN CLEVELAND, OHIO on March 8, 1937 ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN 8141 MAGAZINE IN MAY, 1957 § Four years ago the New Deal was brought in with the promise of something to relieve our plight. Last fall the New deal was renewed on the promise of more gains. It wasn't the Democrats who elected this new administration. It was a majority of the people of the United States. That fact in itself was quite an innovation. Last fall they buried the Elephant; soon they will have to move him over to make room for the Jackass. § We Americans have more wealth, more goods, and more technical ability than anyone else. Yet when it comes to social institutions, we are economic illiterates. We have never had time to bother with social problems up to now. We were too busy getting money. The need to consider social trends was not pressing. § We are still a funny combination here in America. We enjoy the best food and the best equipment and want both. We have everything possible that human beings want -- but with millions of our fellow Americans on Relief. Technocracy takes the stand that anyone who administers relief as it is now being administered should live the same way. If you want to know how that is, go to our relief flophouses. Would you Christians treat Christ that way? Remember you throw your bread upon the waters. It will come back. § In 1919, there were 10,800,000 people in the manufacturing industries of the United States working an average of 54 hours per week. In that year, the total number of man-hours was 29 billion. In 1929, there were 8,800,000 people working an average work week of 48 hours. The total man-hours were 20 billion. In 1939, there were 7,600,000 people in these same industries and the total man-hours were 11 billion. If you would observe this on a chart, it would look like that old sign -- "Going, going, gone." In 1936, we had a work week of 38 hours. In 1939, with the same relative employment in the manufacturing industries, you will have to reduce the work week to 22 hours. But to keep up the purchasing power, you will have to pay three times as much for one-half the 117 EXCERPTS FROM A HOWARD SCOTT ADDRESS IN CLEVELAND, OH 3/8/37 man-hours of 1929. Do you think this will be so? Dumb as you are, you are not that dumb! § We are not worried here with any class warfare. We haven't a permanent peasant class or working caste in America. There is really only one class of people: consumers. And those are divided into two groups -- chiselers and suckers, with the suckers all trying to be chiselers. That is why you went to school. There was a time when parents and grandparents learned about the "honor of industrious labor." They were brought up with the idea that to be a reputable citizen, you must work hard to achieve success. Now the graduates will look at you and say, "So what?" They know it is a lot of hooey. Nobody ever got rich by work. § Right now, 400,000 miners are fighting for a 200-day year and a $6.-a-day minimum. Fighting for a living of $1,200 a year! Mr. Lewis is putting up a pretty fair battle, but there will be 120, 000 less coal miners on the date of the next contract than today. We are mining coal today not with pick and shovel; we are using coal cutters, power loaders, etc. A mine in Illinois is averaging 10,000 tons in 8 hours with 600 men. We are fast on the way to eliminating the coal miner. Why not? There never was any sense in mining coal by hand. No one ever acquired social prestige in a coal mine. The miners know this. The era of the coal miner goes by and he appears on relief. § Two years ago, Technocracy Inc. publicized these new developments in raining, along with the strip mill, the cotton picker, etc, FORTUNE MAGAZINE said Technocrats were using the cotton picker to frighten people with. Five years ago, Technocracy talked about sodium lamps. I remember when General Electric questioned us about it. They said it was still in the laboratory; but Holland at that time had a lighting system of one and one-half kilometers of sodium lamps . § The steel industry is also "bowing to progress." Giving a 40-hour week to common labor appears as a great victory. What does it mean? Of the 500, 000 or 600, 000 workers, how many are common laborers? Seven percent or 35,000, with a 40-hour week, they will have to stagger crews in the mills. 118 EXCERPTS FROM A HOWARD SCOTT ADDRESS IN CLEVELAND, OH 3/8/37 Now there will have to be two divisions, neither working more than 20 days per month, for $862.50 per year. Life on this continent does not begin until after $50 a week; and on $75 per month, you can't even live in sin in this country! § Many of you don't want labor eliminated. Some people still want to work. Lord knows why. Probably it's a hangover. Back in 1842, the first bathtub was made for $1,200. Five states passed laws that they were unsanitary and ungodly. Three states still have these laws. So you may readily understand why it takes so long to get over this idea of work. Each of you wants a good job. Here's an idea: If everybody in Cleveland took a bath every day and washed their faces and hands three times a day, the amount of domestic water used would be 2-1/2 times the amount that is now used. Somebody is not coming clean. § The small farmer may as well go, also. There is no social prestige to be gained by following a plow. Just the scrubs stayed on the farm in the 1920s. The smart boys went to California; but the crash came and they lost everything. California is the home of the "Escrow Indians." If the boom had kept up in 1929, they would have Los Angeles sold out to Denver. They may or may not start up again. Now, due to the Faraday Fluid Feeding Process of raising food, the commercial farmer is running his product to market in competition with the regular farmer. Even the thrifty Jap farmer cannot compete and is being run out of business. Of course, this is one way to make America safe for Americans. § There is much propaganda today against auto accidents. We have great safety campaigns, yet accidents increase. Why? Not because drivers do not know how to drive. With split highways, one-way traffic, raised or sunk crossings, poles and trees moved back 15 feet from the road, with 4 degrees horizontal and 4 degrees vertical curves only, and with the highways lighted by sodium lamps, accidents would be reduced by more than 90 percent. § Look in the public libraries. Libraries carry books on new social trends and Technocracy on the same shelf. The Cleveland Library now has an outside panel window display at one end on "How to Maintain Democracy" and one at the other 119 EXCERPTS FROM A HOWARD SCOTT ADDRESS IN CLEVELAND, OH 3/8/37 end on "Social Engineering and Technocracy." Even your library admits that our imported democracy cannot be maintained . § Technocracy never tries to convince you against your will. Technocracy Inc. is looking for those who must and are compelled to do something. There is plenty of room for all, provided you are an American citizen. Technocracy was originated on and is limited to this continent. Its objective is a New America far ahead of anything we have ever known. Functional operation of all equipment and facilities would result in a balanced load economy, where there would be an abundance for all. You could not create debt and could not chisel fellow Americans. Remember, we Technocrats are not intending to do all this. The people are going to do it and because they will be forced to do it -- not from any will of ours, but because conditions will compel them to do so, we will tell you what to do, how to do it, and when. If you want an orderly transition, get going and find out what it is all about. § There won't be any revolution in the United States. It will either be an orderly change or chaos. Make up your mind. No barricades as in Russia, Italy, and Spain. Our larger cities are too technical to permit a revolution. In New York, if power and water were cut off, it would be 5 hours and 18 minutes to the deadline; therefore, there can be no revolution under these conditions. Either orderly transition or chaos. Merely voting gives no hope. Sometime within this next decade, this country must make a major decision. We did not do so in 1776 nor in the Civil War. § This organization will be three years old next month. It started out without any literature, never has been endowed with money, and the officers receive no salary. Most of the officers would feel they were in luxury if on relief. It is a curious organization. It receives no help from any other group. It did not borrow its writers or speakers; it developed its own. It publishes eleven monthly publications, three in Canada and eight in the United States. We are strongest where the percentage of illiteracy is the lowest. This is true in both the United States and Canada. 120 EXCERPTS FROM A HOWARD SCOTT ADDRESS IN CLEVELAND, OH 3/8/37 § Technocracy Inc. has offices in every city in Canada from Victoria to Winnipeg. In another year, at the present rate of growth, the Technocrats in Canada will be the dominant group. We are now down south, on the Pacific Coast, in Arizona, Utah, Montana, Kansas, Ohio, and many other parts, including Massachusetts for the first time. We have a lot of allies among those that fight against us as they tell what a wonderful America this is via the billboards; and these same billboards stand next to the relief lines, telling what the machine is doing. Technocracy is very grateful for the help of those fighting against it. If this keeps up for a few years, we will be bigger than any organization ever seen. § Technocracy Inc. is not a political party, nor are we a labor union. Our approach is quite different. We must have a social engineering blueprint. It is rather difficult to realize this. Every other approach has been on the basis of conversion; that is, if you could convert quantities of human beings, it was right. Politics is the natural approach of morons to something they do not understand. Our problems of today cannot be solved that way. The mass of human beings are important as consumers, but not as deciding factors on how to operate our high energy technology. § Conditions cannot be tolerated much longer. This continent will have to make the next gift to the civilization of man. It will be the civilization of tomorrow; and it is in your hands. Whether you like it or not, you have to have it. You will have to make the New America, where there is no toil, poverty, disease or mental defectives; but we cannot change a system without your help. Nobody can do it for you. It is up to you to find out where you stand. 121 EXCERPTS FROM A PUBLIC LECTURE GIVEN BY HOWARD SCOTT, DIRECTOR- IN-CHIEF, TECHNOCRACY INC. CONWAY HOTEL, APPLETON, WISCONSIN AUGUST 27, 1937 I am glad to be here and see all the faces of people promoting the growth of Technocracy. Permit me to say that there are similar organizations of Technocracy gathering in many places from the Panama Canal to the very far north in Canada. We have members in all of these places. It is an American organization, and it is composed of 99.9% of what is called the American type. We have gone a long way from where we were five years ago or even three years ago -- a very long way! Today, on this tour, we are using the largest seating capacity building in every city from the Great Lakes to the Coast. We have the trolley car advertising sewed up in every city for days in advance. We have the wireless working and thousands of posters placarded on poles all over the country. We want this continent to know that an organization is on the move. We are not a political organization. We do not permit any political party to gain membership in Technocracy. In other words, to be a member of Technocracy, you must resign from any political party. You must be a citizen, and that is all we ask. This is a new kind of nationalism, because it is nationalism on a continental scale. When I first entered Canada three years ago, it was 20 below zero, the snow was falling, and there was one man -- just one Technocrat -- standing in the falling snow. Today in the same city, there are thousands. There are Technocracy Sections in every city in Alberta, Canada. This organization has moved up to its present position without political backing. We owe nothing to anyone except to our own members. We have no funds, except the membership dues of members and contributions from those who join. It is the only organization that makes you pay for the privilege of working as a Technocrat. There are no immediate benefits for the simple reason that any organization on this continent that attempts to do this is bound to go down. The labor unions are all playing up to the immediate demand. They are all trying to satisfy something now, and the moment that you design an organization, or build a structure of an organization, for such a purpose, it is bound to go down, as it 123 PUBLIC LECTURE, HOWARD SCOTT APPLETON, WISCONSIN 8-27-37 will not be able to satisfy all its members. We have not made this mistake. The first organization that sprung up in 1932 was followed by several hundred Technocracy groups in this country and Canada. We had to go through the groups and eliminate some of them. You had the racketeers in Green Bay attempting to run on a Technocracy ticket. We had to rub out Technocracy in Green Bay because it got off to a bad start. This was repeated in a few places in this country, but today there are no organizations trying to horn in on the game. Today Technocracy is stronger and growing larger. It did not skyrocket as others have but has continued a steady growth because we did not fool ourselves that we were going to get anything through a political racket. A new organization was needed, one different in design. Different in structure, and different from anything that happened before, and Technocracy has achieved this as an organization. While we are on this subject, I would like to point out that our growth in Canada is an example and also our growth on the Pacific Coast. We will continue in Canada and will be the dominant organization there. We will have more than any political organization in the Western Provinces. In the last election a few months ago in the Provinces of British Columbia and Vancouver, the vote was reduced 50%. We do not have to reduce the vote another 50%. No political power on earth would dare hold power with 30% of the electoral votes for it. Remember, a racketeer is smart because he never likes to stay where the heat is turned on and is wise enough to get out. The Province of Alberta cannot pay salaries anymore. Thousands in Saskatchewa n are on emergency relief. The drought wiped out these people. The wheat crop in Saskatchewan used to be 321 million bushels; now it is 140 million bushels. There are only 1-1/4 bushels per acre in the planted area. There are 800,000 people in Canada liquidated by the drought. With a continued relief load, the situation in Canada is going to be sweet. It is so sweet that Technocracy is making great headway. We have a cotton crop in the United States in excess of 15,400,000 bales, and the government holds 1,700,000 bales. In 1930, the United States produced 15,000,000 bales and the rest of 124 PUBLIC LECTURE, HOWARD SCOTT APPLETON, WISCONSIN 8-27-37 the world 10, 000, 000 bales of cotton, and this year the rest of the world produced 19,000,000 bales. The consumption is only 16, 000.000 bales if we run at the consumption of this year and last. We have practically a three-year supply of cotton on hand. While we had less than a million acres of cotton this year in the United States, we may ask what is Washington going to do when it has to consider the abandonment of 16% of the cotton acreage of the United States. The foreign countries are enlarging their industries, and the market for the United States cotton has practically disappeared abroad. Unless we have a drought, we can expect to have a lot on hand -- unless we change our policy. We will have to plow up four out of five acres instead of every other one. What are we going to do if we have to eliminate 20,000,000 acres in our cotton area? This year we will have 950, 000, 000 bushels of wheat and 2,000,000,000 bushels of corn. We made these estimates in the month of February, and they were estimated by Technocracy on acreage basis of March 1937. We have had an uncanny way of being accurate on crops for quite some years. It would be better for the government if they just took our figures, because as it is they correct theirs to meet ours. The trend of events in the last 5 or 6 years has changed greatly. I remember the time when we publicized the sodium lamp some 6 years ago. The General Electric Company at that time claimed our statements unfair, stating that it was only a laboratory experiment; but we begged to differ with them. Today we are lighting our highways with sodium lamps. We publicized the first cotton picker and the first stripping mill. Going back further, frosted foods were devised by two Technocrats over 12 years ago, and frozen foods are sweeping the country today -- a revelation in the handling of foods. There is another particular process which Technocracy is publishing all over, and that, of course, has to do with the method of raising food. For thousands of years, the only way man knew was to grow food in the soil, and we have had the man hoe, the man behind the plow, idealized for centuries. That day is not going to be long, because there is no sense in raising food in soil, because soil is only about 4% efficient, whereas water is 98-99% efficient. There are five farms in California working on this scale, and Dr. Gericke is supervising them. It has produced 125 PUBLIC LECTURE, HOWARD SCOTT APPLETON, WISCONSIN 8-27-37 at the rate of 3,000 bushels of potatoes and 213 tons of tomatoes per acre. Production is raised faster and better. Potatoes are raised so fast the bugs haven't even got a chance. Very shortly the housewife and the restaurants are going to have another development, and that is the cooking and serving by another method. The method employed in cooking the meal served this evening is the same as was used 6,000 years ago. There is a slight improvement, but the process is the same. Technocracy is really going to give us something. We will have the food cooked and kept in glass containers, and all we will have to do is dial it in and the food will come in cooked in a few seconds. A soft- boiled egg, which takes 3 minutes now, will be cooked in 2-1/2 seconds. The food will be served mechanically so that there will be no employees in the kitchen, and the only employee in a restaurant will be the cashier. The food containers will be stacked up each day and hauled away. We never heard of a female acquiring social prestige over a cookstove. The moment that you can organize as one single bargaining organization, the cooperation of that organization will eliminate many minor difficulties. If the CIO were to succeed 100% in this country, you would have the establishment of a corporate labor dealing with corporate industry. Washington would be holding the balance of power. Putting it mildly, you would have fascism under a cockeyed democracy. In General Motors, seven weeks ago, you had a strike which should have paid at least $5,000,000, cause production was running ahead of sales. The strike slowed down production. Five million dollars would be just a fair commission. Put the blame on the strike. General Motors sold less cars in 1937 than in 1936. The automobile industry is worried, but there are a lot more besides them getting worried. Eighty-one percent of the orders of this country are war orders. We are supposed to be the best country, yet our expenditures for war equipment exceed the expenditures of any country in the world. The war would be a very easy way out. If F.D. Roosevelt leaves a cruiser down there in Shanghai -- and perhaps that cruiser will get a few holes in it, then we might have a way. Then it would be worse than if we had Hoover. Not that it's Roosevelt's fault, but we must remember that we have peculiar characteristics. We didn't defeat Hoover at the polls because we wanted Roosevelt. We always put somebody out 126 PUBLIC LECTURE, HOWARD SCOTT APPLETON, WISCONSIN 8-27-37 because we have something against them. You know what happens when you promise your child or your wife something and you don't come across. You are in a tough spot! Stop and think of what happens when you promise 128 million human persons something, and then you can't come across. It is going to be tough. No one who leads a political party can come across. No matter who is in the White House, they are helpless to do anything except by compromise and promise. In order to get in on a political program, you must be something to all and nothing to everybody. Lewis and the CIO were smart enough to know that they had better get out before the United Mine Workers fell in on them. There was $460,000,000 worth of machinery going into the coal mines of the U.S. The mines in Illinois were mining 10, 000 tons of coal in 8 hours with 600 men. Twenty-five of the giant 50-ton shovels, of which 8 have been ordered since the publication, could dig all the coal needed for the U.S. on 8-hour shifts. Underground mining is moving up. We can dispense with most of the men underground, and it is possible to mine 30, 000 tons of coal with less than 100 men. These men will be merely machine tenders. You know that no person ever acquired social prestige mining coal . The same trend is on in distribution stores. One of the newest thing in stores is where you come in and there are no goods on open shelves at all. All goods are behind glass, and you are given a key. You walk around and insert the key in the lock for each type of goods you want, and each time you insert the key, a package comes out all wrapped. You come back to the desk, turn in the key, and when the key is inserted in its slot, you get your slip. Well, why not? You have to put that store clerk out of business anyway, and there are too many of them anyhow. You have read about the continuous run stripping mills for steel in your newspapers. This is only a start. In Baltimore, a plant is being erected for the continuous rolling of strip steel. The steel comes out put into one continuous strip steel. The glassblower saw Samuel Gompers rise to the head. The blowers are no more, and now the plain steel roller is on its way out. And why not? Many instances could be cited where manufacturing will go on in a larger scale with fewer men. Paper is one of the chief products of Wisconsin, and the new 127 PUBLIC LECTURE, HOWARD SCOTT APPLETON, WISCONSIN 8-27-37 plants run 1, 800 miles of paper a day; and they are automatic more so than any paper plant they ever had. It employs less men and does more work. The industrial plants in the south are greater than they have been in the last 40 years. There are enough rayon plants at the present time that if we expect to keep them running to full capacity, women will have to wear two pairs of stockings and two dresses at the same time. On this continent, with more brains, more ability, with our elevation and climate, with a fortuitous setup better than on any other continent, more trained human beings than anywhere else, and with the best and greatest machinery known to man, with all this staring at us, we had to create $17 billion worth of government debt since 1932. There are 8 million unemployed in this country today. Industry in the U.S. today is overemployed . There are 4, 300 employees in the Bell Telephone service in this country who are not needed today. We would fire them because we don't need them. The United States Steel has too many employees. Upon completion of the new steel plant, there will be 70,000 full-time employees who will not work in the steel industry again. There will be 160.000 coal miners who will not be required to mine coal on the next contract date. How are we going to solve this? There are 5, 600 counties in the United States, and there are 175,000 political bodies employing 4,400,000 political parties in the 5,600 counties. Can you imagine any political party saying that they will have to commit suicide? The only time they become extinct is when they are washed out and there is no payoff. When there is no payoff, it is a national washout. That is what we are headed for. There was a time when the local communities could meet over cracker barrels in the general store, and with the slow means of communication and transportation they had, Washington could do mostly anything and their lives would not be changed. Today, they hardly get started in Washington before we know all about it. Did you ever hear of an engineer trying to improve his paper plant by counting noses of employees? If you did, you'd lock him up. When we get a pain down here on the right side, we go to a doctor to find out what is the matter. We don't vote on it first, because if we do, we die. You can't vote on your blood count. Just remember that. You can't vote on any problem that affects 170,000,000 people on this continent. 128 PUBLIC LECTURE, HOWARD SCOTT APPLETON, WISCONSIN 8-27-37 The last time I was in Alberta, I was invited to a dinner by a certain politician with the hope that he could persuade the Technocrats to support his party. "Mr. Scott," he said, "Why don't you and Technocracy come in and stand back of the Social Credit Party and show us what to do?" I said. "Show you what?" The Premier was unable to answer because he didn't know, and no politician does know. Do not think that after the United States goes off the Price System that we would not be compelled to assume operating responsibility for the rest of the continent. Canada would be taken over in less than a year, and Mexico in two years. The moment the Price System is abandoned, it means an economic responsibility for the continent. The Old Age Benefit Law is probably one of the biggest jokes on the citizens of this country. There is a maximum of $85 per month that you could receive, and in order to get this $85, you would have to receive $4, 300 per year for 43 years. How many adults in the United States are earning that amount? The Social Security Act is another racket. It is a process of building a fund in order for the government to purchase bonds, which, in reality, are only pieces of paper. It enables the political administration to have huge revolving funds to manipulate. In the endeavor to arrive at a technological solution to all our problems, we dare not consider anything of a political nature or structure. Technology is moving up all over the continent, and as every manufacturer and businessman seeks to lower his operating cost, he will put in faster and more automatic machinery, and as this happens, more energy will be converted and conformed. The only way we can attain abundance is by having humans work less. In all the human history, we have fought and died for the right to wear overalls, and now modern technology comes along and shows us just how stupid we have been. Let's put the overalls on the machines where they belong. We can obtain the leisure and security we desire on a basis never before dreamed of -- not by any political force, but by building a disciplined and trained organization. You can have it orderly or disorderly. The only proposition is whether your organization will have an orderly 129 PUBLIC LECTURE, HOWARD SCOTT APPLETON, WISCONSIN 8-27-37 disciplined social change or whether you have chaos. You cannot have a revolution. The choice is yours. There are enough people in this room to go out and organize the State of Wisconsin in no time. Remember, I can't do it alone as an individual. It is your organization. We do not make any money on it. All we get is our meals and clothes and $10 per week. I get the same as everyone else. No matter how large it grows, the proposition will never be different. We are asking every American to get going and go out and really set up an organization, because it is your organization and nobody else's. It is not bought and paid for by any organization on earth. Let's see what you can do. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Q. What would happen to a man who committed a crime and tried to hide out and escape the authorities? A. A man wouldn't be able to go very far because we could follow him by his purchases. Provided you are an identical twin, working at the same occupation, then you might have a chance in four billion of beating us. We don't have to worry about counterfeiting, because there are no checks. The certificates are non- negotiable. You can't save it and you can't give it away. You are not compelled to spend it, but if you don't, the load is cancelled out. The moment a man tries to hide out and buys anything on this continent, we would have him. The moment that any one individual bought, say, 30 pairs of shoes in a month, the wards would have him for examination. We would have a check on venereal diseases and any other diseases, also, Q. Would we have the privilege to travel to a foreign country, and what would be our purchasing power? A. You could go to the Bureau of Foreign Exchange and exchange your certificate for the amount of foreign money desired. You could enjoy yourself, but you could only return and go on an American ship carrying an American flag. There would be no company building ships abroad for this country. You could spend your 130 PUBLIC LECTURE, HOWARD SCOTT APPLETON, WISCONSIN 8-27-37 certificate abroad. Q. You state that there are 8, 000, 000 men unemployed in this country. We were under the impression that there was no accurate figures dealing with unemployment. We were wondering if your organization conducted a survey of this or if you have it how they went about it? A. It is rather difficult to check the unemployment records of this country. The population is increasing at 800,000 per year, and the manufacturing agencies are not employing the men they did in 1929. In 1919 and 1920, there were 27 billion man-hours in industry. There are around 53 and 54 million people working. Our figures run around 9 million. We can't say they are accurate because they are taken from other records . We don't take a census. Q. What about the young people? A. There is never any inducement required for the youth if you can show him the way. There are some 34, 000 radio stations on this continent. You don't have to worry about the youth entering into football, baseball, etc. Once you offer an opportunity, the youth will do the rest. Anybody who doesn't wear a necktie today is the only one who has integrity. There is no law on this continent that compels a man to wear a necktie. The only thing is that he is afraid of the consequences, social disapproval, and the system under which he lives. The moment that you change the conditions of the human beings, you do not have to worry about the youth. Q. Why do you use the Monad as your symbol? A. The Monad is one of the oldest symbols known, and it was chosen because of its simplicity of design. The two parts are named "yin" and "yang". It is of striking simplicity, and Technocracy is the only organization that uses it in vermillion and silver. Q. Is the certificate issued at the time of birth or at the age of 25? 131 PUBLIC LECTURE, HOWARD SCOTT APPLETON, WISCONSIN 8-27-37 A. It is issued at the age of 25, but there is a separate maintenance set up for the child previous to the age of 25. Education as we now know it would be abolished, because it is, as we know it now, administered by a bunch of chiselers. Under Technocracy, when the child is born, there is subsistence for every child apart from the income of every parent, so that if the child doesn't want to live with you, they won't have to. Most parents ruin their children. In most cases, the women bring the children into the world for penance mostly because of a mental disease, according to a private survey by the New York Hospital; therefore, the child will have a budget and an allotment for it. The checkup by the distribution system shows whether that budget is over and above the estimate. Q. If there are to be no deeds, how would the property be distributed or taken care of? A. Under Technocracy, you will have a purchasing power, and with this power goes transportation, housing, etc. If you want additional housing or houses, you would have to surrender purchasing power. Houses as we know them now are not houses but just a place you call home. When Technocracy comes, there will be homes constructed as follows: The walls will have to withstand a temperature of 700 degrees without showing more than 10 degrees rise on the other side. It will be soundproof, heatproof, waterproof, and will not require any paint, plaster, lath, wood doors, hinges, and will not have doorknobs. For the first time, you can have real privacy, because most of the people in modern apartment houses are scared to death to live for fear their neighbor will hear them. Now you will be able to knock on the door and no one will hear you. It has a beveled edge, including a photoelectric cell, airtight and watertight. It will be a steel structure with rods running through, and all you will need to put it together is a socket wrench and an electric drill. It is built on a mass-production basis 150 miles per day in 20-foot sections. It is fabricated steel with wool, and it is faced on the outside with the colors 132 PUBLIC LECTURE, HOWARD SCOTT APPLETON, WISCONSIN 8-27-37 magnetized. The floors and walls will be the same material. It is not heated with radiators. The human body will take care of that. Of course, this will bother us a lot. The women are going to like this, because they will be economically independent of every male. The woman has her own income until she dies, for the first time in history, the male will really have to be good -- and how ! Q. Why aren't these put in use? A. When I first announced it in 1932, it was photographed, and the National Bricklayers Association and some 100 other different organizations all protested against it, because we don't intend to use the present-day material and workers. You will have no need to use the present- day material and workers. You will have no need to carry insurance, and if you don't want the house in the present location, you can take it apart and move it to another location. There are also some blueprints out on the automobiles to be used. They are streamlined, tear-drop design, 6 cylinders and 2 pistons in each, diesel, flat in the rear, with no mechanical brakes. The wheels turn 180 revolutions at a top speed of 120 miles an hour; 6 '4" wide inside measurement; seats 4 people side-by-side. The automobile is built to run 350.000 miles. Q. What about the new leisure we will have? A. Life has been up to now a preparation for death. Hitherto, your country has asked you to die for it. Technocracy asks you to live for it. As for leisure, when you change conditions, you are changing the entire conditions of 170,000,000 people. It is impossible to change the biological structure, but you can change the conditions. Today, we have a great competition, the desire to acguire decorations. We do a lot of funny things and courageous things in trying to acguire these. We will change the condition so that people will 133 PUBLIC LECTURE, HOWARD SCOTT APPLETON, WISCONSIN 8-27-37 spend more thought in getting rid of decorations. We simply will confer on children of a certain age certain decorations. Every child will have to wear them, and, as they grow into adults, any time they achieve anything of note, one is removed. We will design the cities with parks and boulevards and pass the regulation that those who are decorated must ride and those without any decorations will be permitted to walk. There will be the most intense competition to get rid of the decorations; therefore, there will be plenty to do in your leisure time. Technocracy is asking you to live, not to die. Of course, some people probably will be so affected by so much purchasing power and leisure, they will kill themselves off. But that will be a small percentage. At 45 now, you are all worked out. There will be thousands and millions of things to do if you are not burned out. It is up to you to use it. If you want to kill yourself, that's your business. Q. Will we ever experience a corporate state, and, if so, how long will it last? A. I doubt whether it would last 18 weeks. The City of New York has 1,535,000 telephones alone. The problem of operating New York is a greater problem than operating one-half of the world. The U.S. could take over New Jersey as a policing job for only about 72 hours. Twenty-four hours after that, they would have to take over the other states, too. The United States is not big enough to have a fascist suppression in this country. Chances of fascism in the U.S. is just as remote as a celluloid cat catching an asbestos dog in hell. 134 SOME SALIENT POINTS MADE DURING HOWARD SCOTT NATIONAL TOUR August 22 through September 1, 1937 HOOVER, THE ENGINEER He never was an engineer. The country turned on him with the greatest animosity I have seen in years, and I venture to predict that in two years you will see the people turn on Franklin D. Roosevelt with the same animosity. He is no better and no worse. He is merely a politician attempting to pull up this Price System of ours by legislative means. CONGRESS Every time those 600 individuals that we send down there start to deliberate on a problem, before they get half way through with it, the problem is entirely changed. So you see, it is rather difficult for any representatives of the people, so called, to really do anything about it. You cannot blame them. They are representatives of a system, and while it worked very well when our forefathers opened this continent, it no longer serves the people today. VOTING The people in Vancouver frankly admit that Technocracy has caused such a decrease in voting that only 50 percent of the people vote. There are only 70 percent eligible to vote, and we have reduced that figure. How much farther will we have to reduce it before the political party will quit? When 66 percent is against any political office, who wants to take office? In Arizona, we reduced the vote 37 percent. It will probably take us a couple of years to move east. THE STEEL INDUSTRY You know, the United States Steel Corporation was in a very great hurry to sign with the CIO, and there was a very good reason for that. U.S. Steel had contracts with Great Britain for armaments, and J. Pierpont Morgan & Company advised them to sign so the armaments could be delivered on time. Don't think for a moment that the CIO gained a victory. Mr. Morgan gained the victory. There are a hundred independent steel mills that likely will go out of business in the next 18 months. That will 135 HOWARD SCOTT TOUR 8/22 - 9/1/37 naturally release between 70,000 and 80,000 men. Those 70,000 or 80, 000 will never have a job in the steel industry again. Where are they going to work? That is hard to say. Washington has an idea that this can be remedied by giving relief, and the faster it gives relief the faster business in this country will take a slump . AUTOMOBILE STRIKE IN THE SPRING OF 193 6 The CIO should have been paid $5 million cash because General Motors was oversold, and the strike saved them $5 million. Had it not been for the strike, there would have been 200,000 more cars on their hands than were produced last year. There are so many rayon plants in the U.S. that each woman will have to wear two dresses and two pairs of hose at the same time in order to absorb the output. Where is all this leading to? The poor workers in these industries are suckers. They like to think that if they organize on the basis of a union they can get somewhere. And where do they get? The cigarmakers were well organized and had built a fairly sound labor organization. Where are the cigarmakers today? There are only about 8,000 left in the country. The machine ran the hand cigarmaker out of business. Even if we organized the entire country, it wouldn't help. There are 52 million human beings, at least, capable of being employed. CANADIAN RELIEF ROLLS In Saskatchewan, the sand is blowing across the railroad tracks today. Their great wheat yield in 1928 was 40 million bushels. This year their yield is 1-1/4 bushels to the acre. Millions are affected by the drought in Western Canada, 936,000 were on the relief rolls in Canada the first of July this year. Canada has a much higher per capita debt than the United States. NEW ORGANIZATION NEEDED IN NORTH AMERICA Life on this continent now requires a new type of organization, not a labor organization and not a political organization. We have a technology and a mass production that is so far ahead of anything else on earth that that organization has to be developed here. Technocracy and the application of physical 136 HOWARD SCOTT TOUR 8/22 - 9/1/37 science can solve our problem, and they are the only things that can solve it. We have the ability. We have more trained people than all the rest of the world, and yet we are so childish. We have to organize on an entirely different basis and not protest by street demonstrations. You go on strike. What do you go on strike for? To get a raise in wages, and you get a miserly raise in wages. The easiest way out is the best, we think. Just so we can send our children to school. We want our children to be able to get by without working. We have more potential chiselers in the U.S. than there are in the whole world. There is no class struggle here. There are only two classes -- suckers and chiselers . Society will progress in the future, not by working human beings more in an economy of scarcity, but by working them less in an economy of abundance. Under engineering management, 3, 300, 000 men -- even now -- could do all the necessary work on this continent. Work was never intended for human beings anyway, and we engineers know it better than anybody else. The only way you can beat technology on this continent is to throw all the machines into the sea and shoot all the technologists; but if you are going to keep this technological civilization and push it to even greater heights, you have to keep the machines and technologists and put them into a position of dominance, eliminating the interference control of politicians and businessmen . STATUS OF TECHNOCRACY, THE ORGANIZATION Technocracy is now operating in over 30 states. We are also in Canada and Mexico. Technocracy will be the dominant organization in Canada in the next 18 months. It has been said, "God is on the side of Technocracy, and it is very peculiar, but He seems to be so." In other words, God has to be on the winning side. In Napoleon's time, God was on the side of the heaviest artillery. 137 ''CHALLENGE TO COMPLACENCY" Extracts from 1937 Lectures by Howard Scott From THE TECHNOCRAT MAGAZINE Published January 1938 ON PRESENT CONDITIONS § The greatest struggle in history is now going on. It is a struggle between two methods of doing work: one by a maximum of human labor, the other by the maximum application of technology, with a minimum of human effort. § While preaching the inherent right of every citizen to work, the government is financing industry toward more technology, thus actually reducing the opportunities for work. Washington and Ottawa are both in possession of the facts, but they practice misrepresentation with misinformation. § By underwriting the boys at the top and providing a dole for those at the bottom, government is liquidating the Great American Middle. § There has been more damage done in this country by sincere damn fools than by unscrupulous crooks. § As the financial institutions approach 100 percent liquidity, the interest rate approaches zero. § The faster debt is created, the shorter will be the time for the life of the Price System. § Every businessman is just as much on relief as the reliefer -- but the man on relief knows it. § While a hue and cry is being raised over the 19 million or so venereal cases, less is said of some 48 million citizens who will carry the effects of malnutrition on to the second and third generations . PREDICTIONS § That "Banks would close in April 1933," was predicted by Technocracy in July 1932, (They went us two months better and 139 QUOTES FROM THE 1937 HOWARD SCOTT TOUR Jan. 1938 closed in February. The relief measures, which later constituted the New Deal, were also pointed out during the Hoover administration. ) § Fifteen major predictions have been made by Technocracy; 14 of them have proven correct. The 15th is not yet due. § In 1933 at the American Association of Arts and Sciences in New York City, with a continental radio hookup, Howard Scott made the following statement: "The day will come when the banker, politician, radical, working man, and businessman will all be in the last ditch, all fighting to preserve the values of the Price System, " (Note the recent proposal of Lammot du Pont to spend $25 billion to stimulate industry and therefore prop up the values so necessary for the existence of his kind. Note also the struggle of the labor unions for the right of the laboring man to struggle . ) OPINION § Only when there is zero opinion in the arrivation of social decisions in the operation of a technological totality will there be a maximum of personal selectivity, choice, and opportunity. § There could be one time -- under this system -- when we might make a decision by voting. That would be by a referendum to vote the existing political system OUT and the Technate IN. POLITICS § Our present political mechanism is as much of a useless heritage as the habit of an apartment-bred dog imitating his wild ancestors by circling before lying down on a terrazzo floor to trample grass which isn't there. § Politics is the natural approach of collective moronity to something it does not understand. § No one but an idiot would attempt to be logical about an illogical problem. § Democracy is an institution wherein we permit the citizens to believe that they are free and that they are participating in 140 QUOTES FROM THE 1937 HOWARD SCOTT TOUR Jan. 1938 the national decisions. This is our greatest blockade to social progress . § Just because Democracy is on the way out does not mean we must necessarily substitute any other European philosophy of government . § Society cannot pull itself up by its philosophic bootstraps. § Every time you vote for any political party today, you are voting your approval of the status guo . § A party platform is made to ride in on, not to stand on. § Communism is a moral philosophy proposing a more eguitable distribution of a scarcity. § You can only have a fascism when you have more than 65 percent of the people on the soil. We are 80 percent urban. § The nominal government consists of the officials elected to office; the de facto government consists of the major holders of debt claims; the nominal government is just the office boy for the de facto government. APPROACH TO A TECHNATE § Contempt for the status guo has never yet occurred at the top of society -- only at the bottom. (It is now occurring in every social stratum.) § If Jefferson, Jackson, Napoleon, Plato, and Socrates could all dine together, they would understand each other perfectly; they lived in the same kind of world. They would be lost now and total strangers to this modern world of technology. Population has increased ten times since Jackson's time while power production has increased 353 times -- mostly since 1903. § When the scalar guantities are changed, that is, when there is a change in magnitude, the problem is entirely changed. This is true of our social mechanism. We are now operating on a scale of such magnitude that our social mechanism has become a technical -- not a philosophical -- problem. 141 QUOTES FROM THE 1937 HOWARD SCOTT TOUR Jan. 1938 § When the Wright Brothers made the first human flight in a powered heavier-than-air craft, the Western Union refused to transmit the news -- it wasn't so. The NEW YORK TIMES refused to print it -- it wasn't so. Our present condition has never had any precedent; therefore, to the minds of Price System apologists, Technocracy's correct analysis of it "isn't so." § The conduct of human affairs on this continent will have to conform to the technique of operating our energy-consuming devices . § The proposal of Lammot du Pont that industry spend $25 billion to put three million men to work is the first demonstration in history of the dominant social group financing itself out of the picture. Twenty-five billion spent for new technological equipment will just about do the job. CONDITIONS UNDER A TECHNATE § The Technate will be the first government in history to guarantee the livelihood of man from birth to death. § For the first time, you would have the governance of man by the physical operations. § Decisions in a Technate will be the closest approximation of the existing data. § In a static society, it is almost impossible for real functional ability to rise. § In a pile of potatoes in the field (static state) , the big potatoes will be found outside near the bottom. After a transcontinental trip in a freight car (dynamic state) , the big potatoes will be found on top. It is not the desire of the big potatoes to be on top that puts them there; it is the tendency of the small ones to gravitate to the bottom, the position of least action . § The human being as a source of energy is not so important as he used to be. He will be more important in the future but in a different way -- not as a contributor of effort; for example, 142 QUOTES FROM THE 1937 HOWARD SCOTT TOUR Jan. 1938 Peoria, Illinois, and several other cities are generating power from city sewage. A 5 percent addition of cornmeal to breadstuff s will increase by 150 percent the extraction of methane gas. In the Technate, a citizen will be more valuable for his excreta than for his physical labor. § Transportation by water, being one-tenth as costly as by railroad, will be used on a continental scale after the development of a Continental Hydrology supplying water routes from border to border. § Houses will be designed as "machines for living" and will be provided on a continental scale. Present concepts of professional architects as to housing will have to be scrapped. The majority of people are now living in unhygienic rat houses. 143 DINNER SPEECH Valhalla Restaurant, Chicago August 26, 1937 Published in FEDERATION NEWS, September 6, 1937 Howard Scott, Chief of the Technocrats, stopped off in Chicago August 26. Accompanied by Harold Fezer, his tour manager, who had driven through from New York, he was on his way to begin what he calls his annual continental tour of more than 200 organized Sections in western United States and Canada. No formal lecture was scheduled for Chicago, where the number of Technocrats is comparatively small, but local adherents had arranged a dinner in his honor at Valhalla Restaurant, 5250 North Clark Street. There was a total attendance of about 100 members and friends, among whom were many members of local labor unions. In a short speech, followed by guestions and answers, Scott explained how advancing technology and machinery spelled the doom of labor and its organizations, bringing in their place abundance and leisure "whether we like it or not." "Increased use of power," he said, "is synonymous with unemployment. It is only a matter of time until machines and technological processes will put most of us out of work for good. If a lot of you live another 10 years, you won't be doing any work. Enforced leisure is going to be hard for you to take, because you have been accustomed to think that if you can only get a job, you will really be going places. But you will not -- you will only be going to work! For 6, 000 years you have had preached to you the morality of work, which is a myth. Nor did anybody ever build up any social prestige by working. Nobody ever got rich by work; if he got rich at all, it was by getting other suckers to work for him. That would give him economic advantage. Without that, he would have no economic power. Society will progress in the future, not by working human beings more, in an economy of scarcity, but by working them less, in an economy of abundance. Under engineering management, 3,300,000 men, even now, could do all the necessary work on this continent. Work never was intended for human beings anyway, and we engineers know it better than anybody else. The only way you can beat technology on this continent is to throw all the machines into the sea and shoot all the technologists; but if you are going to keep this technological civilization and push it to even greater heights, you have got to keep the machines and technologists and put them into a position of dominance, eliminating the 145 HOWARD SCOTT, DINNER SPEECH ALHAMBRA RESTAURANT, CHICAGO 8-26-37 interference control of politicians and businessmen." "Modern technology has already wiped out a good many things formerly dear to us. It has seen the passing of such institutions as the glass blower union and the cigarmakers union, in which Samuel Gompers got his start toward bigger things. The Washington machine now makes the cigars. You can make a million cigars a year by a machine photoelectrically controlled." "John L. Lewis goes out and starts the C.I.O. because he foresees that his base in the United Mine Workers is going to pass out soon. He was smart enough to know that coal mining is on the way out; $460 million worth of labor-saving coal mining machinery is being put into use. And why not? Did anybody ever acquire either wealth or social standing working in a coal mine? The same process is going on in the steel industry. One after another, the intermediary jobs between the smelter and the mill are being eliminated. Direct rolling of steel is almost here now. The direct rolling of metals is not merely a dream. The time is not far off when they will be forged in one process from the electric furnace to the mill, without ingots, billets or slabs, the molten metal going directly to the mills through a tube. Where will all your open-hearth workers be then? They were the skilled and indispensable workers who drew the big wages. Soon their jobs will be no more -- and why not? There never was any sense in running an open hearth or even a blast furnace if a better way could be found." "We organized Technocrats are responsible for popularizing a new process in the growing of foods. It is known as the Farady Process of soilless plant culture. Soil only serves as a vehicle for containing the food for plant life; and as a vehicle, soil is very inefficient. On the other hand, water is 99 percent efficient as a vehicle for plant food. The tank method of raising vegetables is now in commercial production, not only in the west but also in the east. Dr. Gerricke, who is the foremost sponsor for the system in this country, has gone from California, where he lives, to New Jersey to supervise the installation and operation of several units there. These will be in regular operation by next spring and may be expected to outdo the old methods in every way, including economy of production. All the process requires is a tank with 6 inches of water in it, covered with a chicken wire screen holding up a layer of wet excelsior, 146 HOWARD SCOTT, DINNER SPEECH ALHAMBRA RESTAURANT, CHICAGO 8-26-37 straw or other fiber. Seeds or plants are set into this, liquid chemical fertilizers are squirted into the water, and an electric heatinq unit installed to maintain a favorable temperature. This method will produce 3,000 bushels of potatoes to the acre, 217 tons of tomatoes to the acre, and tobacco 14 feet hiqh. In other words, we are qoinq to put the farmer out of a job. Why not? Nobody ever acquired any social prestiqe followinq a plow. The only way a farmer has ever been able to get rich was by employing other suckers to follow the plow for him." "Some years ago, somebody discovered a new and better process of preserving perishable foods -- the quick frostinq process. It catches and holds all the crispness and flavor and attractive appearance of fruits and veqetables fresh from the qarden, without the deterioration caused by ordinary freezinq and thawinq. The process can handle anythinq from cabbaqe or spinach to fish. The preservation of quality is so perfect that experts declare foods put up by this process are the only ones worth eatinq. And simple? Why, the housewife merely buys them at the chain store, takes the wrapper off, and they are all ready to eat or cook as the case may be. This, aqain, is qoinq to throw a lot of men out of work." "Durinq the recent depression, many businessmen, in despair at results of the impact of oncominq abundance upon the price system (which must depend on maintenance of scarcity) , jumped out of 20th story windows and landed on the sidewalk. Durinq the next depression, they will jump out of 40th story windows and crash riqht throuqh to the sewer! But you won't have any revolution in the United States. It is impossible. You can have revolution in an aqrarian society like Russia. It is comparatively easy to carry on a revolution, over lonq periods of time, where 90 percent of the people can qo riqht on livinq their lives without beinq aware of it. In this country as a whole today, 76 percent of our people do not derive their livinq from the soil. They derive it from technical equipment; and in the biq cities, the situation is even more appallinq. In New York, we are all dependent, every day of our lives, upon the continuous operation and smooth functioninq of our technical equipment. The deadline for water supply and electric power in New York is 5 hours and 15 minutes. Neither the Marxian proletarians not any outfit of fascists could succeed with a coup d'etat there. There would not be sufficient time before chaos would ensue, frustratinq all 147 HOWARD SCOTT, DINNER SPEECH ALHAMBRA RESTAURANT, CHICAGO 8-26-37 their plans. They couldn't take and hold onto the State of New Jersey, much less the U.S. All this talk of a railway strike at present is sheer stupidity. You can't have a railway strike anymore in the United States. No interruption of the railway service in this day could be tolerated for a moment. You would probably be mobilized into the United States Army. Such tactics on the part of labor belong to yesterday. Today they would be suicidal . " Clad, like his tour manager, in a striking plain gray suit with shirt of darker solid gray, black tie and shoes of tan, he explained that this is soon to be the regulation dress for all Technocrats everywhere. Asked if such uniform style of dress would not savor of fascist methods, he adjured his questioner to look to his definitions. "Fascism," he said, "is defined by us to mean all the minor rackets welded into a major monopoly for the preservation of the Price System." He explained that Technocracy would abolish the Price System, including business, politics and the wage system of distribution. The government would handle all the production on a balanced, engineering basis and distribute the products according to need. Money, not being wealth in itself, but only debt certificates, would be no more, and the entire resources of the continent would be devoted to providing every man, woman and child with an independent income in goods and services, with assurance of security from cradle to grave. Asked upon what he based his prediction of imminent collapse of the Price System, he cited the mounting debt, governmental and private; the ever-increasing utilization of natural power, and the resulting unemployment of men. Consumption of extraneous energy (non-human power) , he said, is increasing by leaps and bounds. "We are now converting 153,000 kilogram calories of energy per person per day, and the rate of growth of energy consumption shows a probable increase of 30 percent or more from now until 1940 or 1942. If 153,000 or less were sufficient to so upset the social structure as it recently did, consider what 200,000 per person is going to do. Not a single social institution will be out of the dump heap. All labor will be in the ashcan . " 148 PUBLIC LECTURE HOWARD SCOTT CIVIC AUDITORIUM WINNIPEG, MANITOBA SEPTEMBER 1, 1937 QUESTION PERIOD WHAT DO YOU THINK OF SOCIAL CREDIT; ALSO ABERHART? Social Credit in the Province of Alberta is a cumulative approach to dementia praecox. It is a fine way of messing things up, but you cannot produce abundance under the Price System. Social Credit proposes to have a dividend. All credit is debt, and you have to have it and scarcity. You cannot produce abundance with any form of credit. You have to eliminate debt and credit . As for Aberhart, we have sympathy with him. He promised $25 a month and didn't deliver; but he isn't on half the spot that Franklin Delano Roosevelt is on. You know what spot you are on when you promise your kids or sweethearts something. Well, Roosevelt promised 120 million people something. Aberhart can't deliver -- couldn't if he wanted to. SOMEBODY IS TRYING TO BE FUNNY. WHO WILL SELECT THE MASTERMINDS UNDER TECHNOCRACY? The Technate will be composed of all those who function, wherever they function; therefore, all the technically proficient -- whatever field they are in -- will form the Technate. It is a new design, construction, and operation of the processes necessary for your social system. DO YOU THINK SOCIAL CREDIT COULD BE USED AS A STEPPING-STONE TO TECHNOCRACY? IF NOT, WHY NOT? I think that is perfectly obvious. Any such approach is only used to maintain the Price System by modifying it. HOW WOULD YOU KEEP SOMEONE PRESSING THE BUTTON WHILE SO MANY TECHNOCRATS SIT AND BASK IN THE SUN? Under a Technate, the contract of each member requires -- to 149 PUBLIC LECTURE BY HOWARD SCOTT WINNIPEG, MANITOBA 9-1-37 maintain your citizenship -- that you put in the years from 25 to 45 of your life. At 45, you have completed your social service of citizenship, and you are free to spend your income wherever you want -- making mudpies with the Eskimos or playing tiddlelywinks on the Gulf of Mexico. You cannot be compelled to work, although you may offer your services. You cannot be compelled to work after age 45. That is guite different than today. WHAT PROPORTION OF THE PEOPLE IN ANY COMMUNITY WOULD BE WORKERS OR NON-WORKERS? Under Technocracy, your calendar is divided into 364 working days and one zero day. There is no sense in the New Year (as is) . That was only to have it close to Christmas and have a buying proposition in cold weather. The new year would be the first day the sun passes the eguator -- the 22nd of March. Your calendars would never have to be reprinted. They would be eternal. There would be 3/7 of the population working at any time in any center; the other 4/7 would be off. There would be no rush, as the same proportion would be working each day of the year. You would have a balanced load. WILL HOWARD SCOTT PLEASE TELL US: HOW IS THE TRANSITION TO BE ACCOMPLISHED WITHOUT A BREAKDOWN IF THE POLITICAL MACHINE IS NOT USED? Transition can be done fairly easily, provided you have the organization. Unfortunately, you have not the organization -- not large enough in spite of its enormous growth -- to say it could be responsible for a social transition. Now, what the man had in mind in asking the guestion -- if you want to know the tactics, frankly, what do you want to know for? For the same purpose as to know the exact time, so you can sell everything short. IN TECHNOCRACY, WOULD PRAIRIE CITIES EXIST OR WOULD PEOPLE TEND TO MOVE TO MORE ATTRACTIVE LOCALITIES? That is a good guestion. Why not? The wheat farmer, aided by Morgan, fell down on the job for a very simple reason. He only used 58 days of the year. If he had five such areas, he could have cut down his overhead in Montana. Businessmen aren't smart -- they are penny ante chiselers. If that were the case, why should you live in places it is not agreeable to live in or not 150 PUBLIC LECTURE BY HOWARD SCOTT WINNIPEG, MANITOBA 9-1-37 necessary to live in? Your housing here in the Red River Valley -- you have similar in the Black Mississippi. Some of you will say it is better, but down there it isn't cold. You can have openings in the wall. It doesn't matter. You wonder how they live in them in either place. There is no reason, under Technocracy, for having individual farms. You will move the cities to where there is water, climate, and enough energy to maintain them. Cities under Technocracy will have no postmen, garbage men, package delivery, no traffic men. That is all taken care of automatically. It is an entirely different design. COULD A TYPEWRITER BE INVENTED TO DISPLACE A STENOGRAPHER? That isn't what a businessman wants a stenographer for; and considering the way he is treated in a lot of homes, you can't blame him. HOW WOULD YOU MAKE THOSE WHO CONTROL WEALTH LET GO OF IT? You don't have to let go of it. The interest rate approaches zero. Financial institutions have more money than places to lend it. As each government unbalances its budget further, they have to borrow more, and as they borrow more, it makes more borrowing easier. Get some banker to explain that to you. A banker is a merchandiser of debt. As the interest rate approaches zero, it becomes harder and harder, and the banks carry more and more government securities. Over 400 banks in the United States have gone into voluntary liquidation. They didn't fail; they were just smart. The State Bank of Oklahoma had to get a writ to compel the depositors to come and get their money. The rate of growth of insurance companies is 7.78 percent per annum. Another 35 years at that rate, and the life insurance companies of the U.S. and Canada will own 95 percent of all that is ownable on the North American Continent. If the life insurance companies don't get you, Technocracy will. Not only does technology produce more goods, it also enables 151 PUBLIC LECTURE BY HOWARD SCOTT WINNIPEG, MANITOBA 9-1-37 you to amortize at the highest rate known. So the life insurance companies, who have been responsible for financing the installation of equipment, will find themselves with not one billion but four to five billion they won't be able to invest. As money becomes plentiful, it also becomes valueless. If money has no value, you won't bother to hang onto your money. WILL YOU PLEASE EXPLAIN THE TEACHING SYSTEM UNDER TECHNOCRACY? You have what is known as an educational system. Each father or parent has earnestly sought the best education for their children. It is just that that sort of inheritance should be passed on. It is not the fault of people but of school boards. Our educational system is not for training the children to be functionally-competent but for the indoctrination of chiseling so they may acquire sufficient astuteness to avoid toil. Macy's requires salesgirls to be college graduates in order to sell lingerie or toilet paper. Standard Oil is going to require it next. WHAT WOULD BE DONE ABOUT HUMAN INSTINCTS LIKE GREED, ETC.? WOULD SOME NOT TRY TO WRECK THE SYSTEM? Instincts are a very interesting proposition. An instinct does not necessarily have to be of any use. An instinct is an habituated action pattern. You have noticed the dog. Of course, out here they have more chance to get out in the open. Still, in the cities dogs that have never been out in the bush, yet on a marble floor they turn several times to trample down the grass. Once upon a time that was the instinct to make a bed and it was necessary; but when used on a terra-cotta floor, it is an example of stupidity in dogs. People say you can't change human nature. We of the engineering profession approach it in another way. The only method of regulating has been to prohibit. You have noticed the sign, "Passengers are prohibited from standing on platforms, " in railway cars. Engineers came along and designed a train without platforms and said, "Stand on them if you can." Go into a modern plant and you will see signs: "Employees who do so-and-so will be subject to immediate dismissal." It doesn't stop an employee from 152 PUBLIC LECTURE BY HOWARD SCOTT WINNIPEG, MANITOBA 9-1-37 being hurt. (Illustration re accident-proof presses) You cannot be hurt by any operation of the machines. Put your hand in, and it won't work. Even cigarette smoke will stop it. The product can be made responsible. The creator is only responsable occasionally . WHEN MAY WE EXPECT TECHNOCRACY TO TAKE CONTROL? YOU SAID 18 MONTHS . I am sorry. We made no such statement. I don't like to deceive you. Somebody must be in a hell of a hurry. We hope it doesn't come that fast, because you aren't ready for it, and you know you aren't ready for it. Yes, if we had the personnel, we could issue that entire distribution system -- all interlocking file numbers -- tomorrow morning at 7:00. There are some 30,000 commodity and service numbers out. That takes an organization of all the continent. We don't expect to have that in a few months. As to when it will occur, that is something we don't know. It is a choice, and it depends on the choice of the people. Frankly, we don't give a damn . HOW DO YOU PROPOSE TO EFFECT THE TRANSITION FROM THE PRESENT TO TECHNOCRACY? Somebody here with the Marxian theory of the assumption of power. Communism is too bourgeois for this continent. We have to have a real organization. You don't run a system on Marxian any more than laissez-faire values. WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY "DO SOMETHING?" Technocracy wants those with functional ability. We want those who can give orders and those who can take orders, or both. If you want to know what to do, get into the organization and make it something. HOW WILL THE MANAGERS BE ELECTED? In every functional sequence they come up automatically by training. At present, you can elect a paperhanger to be president of a railway. I believe the last two Ministers of Railways in 153 PUBLIC LECTURE BY HOWARD SCOTT WINNIPEG, MANITOBA 9-1-37 Canada have been paperhangers . They plastered you with enough paper . In the sequence of public health or hospitalization, all plants and equipment for the maintenance of health, doctors, dentists, ambulance drivers, are in one organization. They are responsible for the execution of any health program. They have authority, but they also have to execute their own proposals. That is kind of tough. So you couldn't have a paperhanger rising to be chief of the public health or a real estate operator running the coal raining organization. They are trained in their field, and as they demonstrate their competence, they move up. IS IT TRUE THAT THE U.S. GOVERNMENT HAS PURCHASED 57 INVENTIONS? It is doubtful whether the U.S. has to purchase any inventions. Corporate business and finance does all the invention buying. Government in the U.S. is like Canadian government. It does what it is told. Roosevelt is just an office boy for the holders of debt. Fifty-nine or two hundred fifty-nine people in Canada -- what is the number? -- get all the gravy. WHAT IS YOUR OPINION OF ABERHART ' S ATTEMPT TO HELP THE UNDERDOG? These people -- Upton Sinclair, Long -- are quite sincere. The majority of the members are quite sincere. They want more, but the generalship of all of them is cockeyed and lousy. You can't get abundance under the Price System no matter how you kid yourself or juggle. We don't wish Aberhart any trouble, but if he stays in another four years, he may be the last Premier of Alberta -- if he lives that long. IS THE AIM BEHIND TECHNOCRACY TO REACH THE STANDARD GIVEN BY JESUS? May we point out that regardless of what you believe, there is only one way of raising the standard of living of any social system. That is by increasing the consumption of energy per capita. The conversion in the U.S. this year will be somewhere between 154,000 and 160,000 kilogram calories. 154 PUBLIC LECTURE BY HOWARD SCOTT WINNIPEG, MANITOBA 9-1-37 The doctrine preached by Christ was one of the greatest doctrines ever preached, but had there been 100 percent conversion to Christianity in the Mediterranean area, it would not have greatly increased the standard of living. All that could be done was to convert people to the idea at the time he was on earth . While I am on this subject, may I say that the technological application of physical science is the only approach that makes it possible for you to be a Christian. Today you are only a Christian one day in seven. The other six days you are out making a sucker of your fellowman, and you know it. All right, for the first time in history, you can be a Christian and be proud of it. Try it today and you will land on relief. We are not attempting to malign anybody's belief, but we are being frank, and we dispute anybody's talk of being a practicing Christian unless he is a Technocrat, because you don't mean what you say; because you are tolerating scarcity and poverty, and when you tolerate it, you accept it. May I ask you, did Christ tolerate it? Go down and look at the relief lines in any city. Would you permit Jesus Christ to get his food on the relief stations of this country? If you have guts enough to answer that question, you have guts enough to do something about it. HOW WILL YOU BRING TECHNOCRACY IN? Those of you who were in the army -- did you ever ask your commander what the tactics were? If you did, you got no answer (except perhaps a "posteriore" ) except an "as you were." If he was dumb enough to tell you, he would be removed. WITHOUT POLITICAL CONTROL, HOW WOULD YOU EFFECT THE CHANGE? I may tell you this: If Technocracy were offered the support of all large corporations, it would refuse, just as it would refuse unanimous election on the part of the people of Canada and the U.S.; because it would be an emotional act in one case and a financial subsidy in the other. If it reached that stage, we would give specifications of this state and of the new. If there is 66-2/3 percent support, you can put in the new system. Make your decision on specifications and not on personalities. 155 PUBLIC LECTURE BY HOWARD SCOTT WINNIPEG, MANITOBA 9-1-37 HAS RUSSIA A BETTER DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM THAN WE HAVE? It is the same system. It is not better and a little worse. We still have a higher standard of living. When you go off the Price System, it will be the first great social change. HOW WOULD PEOPLE BE SELECTED? By competence. HOW WOULD TRAVEL BE FINANCED UNDER TECHNOCRACY? Your energy medium of exchange you take to the Bureau of Foreign Travel, and you are then permitted to purchase foreign currency; of course, as import licenses are not granted, you could bring back only trinkets. You could only travel in bottoms of this continent flying the flag of this continent. RE NUMBERS ENGAGED IN DISTRIBUTION. 1,700,000 stores. Retail stores are open a small part of the time and have customers part of the time. We can design a store with only one person, just as there only has to be one person in a modern restaurant -- no cooks, waiters, busboys -- only a cashier. Same thing with a store. There is in existence in the U.S. today a couple of them. When you walk in, you are given a key. The goods are all behind glass. You turn the key for a package of this or that. You walk through to a desk and turn in your key, and all the time packages you have turned on have been packaged and the account slip comes to you and you pay the cashier -- in Chattanooga, Tennessee. DID YOU READ EDWARD BELLAMY'S, "LOOKING BACKWARD"? I didn't read it until a few years ago. It is ideal, imaginative, projected in much the same sense as Jules Verne's "Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea." It is a sincere attempt and worth reading, but you couldn't design a submarine from Jules Verne's "Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea," nor a modern technological control from "Looking Backward." There is no 156 PUBLIC LECTURE BY HOWARD SCOTT WINNIPEG, MANITOBA 9-1-37 precedent for this condition, and the solution cannot be on precedent. All the social theories ever written aren't worth a damn except to make Kleenex and such. Those who create a civilization will eventually dominate it. The engineer and mechanic created this civilization and will eventually dominate it. WILL TECHNOCRACY TAKE CONTROL OF THE BANKING SYSTEM? There will be no banks under Technocracy. DO YOU KNOW OUR CITY WATER IS DANGEROUS? Algae does bother boiler tubes and other tubes. I think there are a lot more dangerous things. As one explorer said, "It is much safer with tigers." HOW WOULD YOU TREAT THE BLIND? Under Technocracy, there is complete public health and hospitalization, isolation and necessary treatment for those injured or disabled through accident or inheritance. These are taken care of with no charge on the relatives -- just as the children receive sustenance apart from their parents. So, you have a new system and attitudes. Today, with the drudgery, fatigue, and tension, it is almost impossible to give children a break. Most parents ruin their children. They can't do anything about it. Just as gastric ulcers are from tension -- doctors cure them, but they come back under the same tension. IF YOU HAVE AN INCOME OF $10,000 A YEAR, WOULD THERE BE ANY INCENTIVE TO IMPROVE THE MACHINE? What do you think we technologists do things for -- to earn money? Because we are fundamentally lazy. These people with talent mix things up. The people who carved the beautiful doors of Italy, they also want to go in for proprietary rights, without change. This reached the greatest height in India, when you had to be born into the occupation of gravedigger. We technologists have open season on talent all the time. As far as $10,000 a year stopping competition -- no, no. That would only increase the game. Do you really want machinery to do everything for you? 157 PUBLIC LECTURE BY HOWARD SCOTT WINNIPEG, MANITOBA 9-1-37 Because we can design them for you, but I hope you don't. Now I think I have done my best with these. 158 EXCERPTS FROM HOWARD SCOTT TOUR IN SOUTHERN ALBERTA, CANADA QUOTED FROM "THE FOOTHILLS TECHNOCRAT" CALGARY, ALBERTA Issue A-7, September, 1937 IN SYLVAN LAKE, September 18 The Price System is predicated upon scarcity. The continuance of the operation of this continent under a Price System depends completely upon the maintenance of scarcity; yet, under the inflexible rules of the Price System, in which every man must increase society's debt to him -- his claims upon the commodities of the system -- faster than society can create debt claims against him, we must all produce more, sell more, save more and more. So it is that the Price System must work wholeheartedly at the creation of its own annihilation. The Price System must inevitably create abundance wherever abundance is physically possible, and abundance must inevitably break down a Price System. Price or value is, in general, the inverse function of available quantity and can be maintained only by scarcity. In a state of abundance, price tends toward zero. The march of technology, with its increasing abundance, will destroy every value of the Price System. It is a clash between obsolescence and modernity, between technology and value, between science and chaos . Technocracy is a double-barrel organization. It is devising ways and means of cutting down human toil as the only possible way of making human beings into a technological army to direct the orderly transition of this continent from the era of scarcity into the era of abundance. IN RED DEER, September 18 The values that were created by scarcity have brought about a conditioning of human beings that certain things have always been so and are likeable and desirable. We all have our pecuniary hangovers from the Price System -- the sins of scarcity. We are sinful people, we humans, and how our sins stick! We believe in the morality of work. We have always believed that if we were industrious, honest, thrifty, and so on, we would be able to 159 HOWARD SCOTT TOUR IN SOUTHERN ALBERTA Sept. and Oct . , 1937 obtain some security in our old age. Yet look at the people of Saskatchewan. We passed them on the road -- moving out. It is true, you are better off than they are in Saskatchewan, yet your problem is not any different than it is anywhere else on the continents. Don't think you can get rich by work. Nobody but a sucker every tried. You have been led to believe that you could, because political governments -- no matter what kind -- have had a fine time riding high, wide, and handsome on this continent for a long time. They won't last much longer. By the "long-wall" process, we will mine 30,000 tons of coal in 24 hours with less than 100 men, and they won't be coal miners. They will be machine operators. We won't have to use explosives. We use 5,000 pounds pressure of compressed air, delivered through a steel-enforced rubber tube now being developed by the Goodyear Tire Co. We load the coal on conveyor belts at the rate of eight tons a minute. John L. Lewis saw the handwriting on the wall and organized the United Mine Workers of America. The U.M.W.A. will see the handwriting on the wall -- when they run into the wall. That's the way we get the miners out of the mine and why not? It's easier the other way. Nobody ever got social prestige raining coal. People get social prestige by hiring some other sucker to do the work. In Estavan, Saskatchewan, they have an eight-cubic-yard steam shovel. That shovel today is only a teaspoon. They thought it was a great big shovel, but in open-pit mining today, under modern methods, we are using a 40-cubic-yard shovel, 125-foot boom, and 90-foot stick. It lifts 50 tons to the height of an eight-story building every 50 seconds. It operates by push-button control . We don't like to see a machine operator doing a lot of work pushing and pulling levers around; we want our technicians to give their attention to the niceties of machine operation. The controls of that machine look like the keyboard of a typewriter. An engineer is basically lazy. That's why he devises machinery, so that he'll never have to do it again. 160 HOWARD SCOTT TOUR IN SOUTHERN ALBERTA Sept. and Oct . , 1937 The cigarmakers ' union was strong enough once to elect a president of the A.F. of L. Today there is no more cigarmakers' union. What happened to it? Was it suppressed by the idle rich? Were the leaders bought over or put in jail? No. Present modern methods of machine manufacture of cigars in huge guantities, from leaf to finished package, use four girls to operate some phases of the process. The next installment of eguipment will multiply production and eliminate the four girls. Plot your cigarette production and you will find that the production curve rises as the employment curve falls. Why not? No sense in working if you can do it by scientific procedure. It is time you realized that. The glassblowers ' union was so strong, the only way you could get into it was to be born into it. It was the first union to wear silk shirts. You couldn't buy your way in. Today, the glassblowers' union and the glassblowers are almost as extinct as the dodo. We don't need glassblowers except for a little special fancy work. Today, we run plate glass in an endless strip by a continuous straight-line process that cuts it, packs it in cases, and piles it in counted lots. The work usually killed the glassblower at the age of 45. Now they're all well, happy, and on relief . We puddled wrought iron for 1,600 years, right up to yesterday. Production per man was limited by the size of the ball a man could swing. Today, we produce 1 million pounds of wrought iron without any human beings. The wrought iron puddler has gone to join the glassblower. The steel roller was one of the highest paid men in the industrial world. Where is he today? Non est. The new Republic steel plant in Hio runs steel in a continuous strip at the rate of 2,100 feet per minute and is operated from a control bridge by a dozen men watching instruments. We'll get around to agriculture in a minute: so hold your breath . British manufacturers sguawked when Japanese shoes were dumped in England at two shillings and sixpence a pair. They were righteously indignant about the low wages Japanese labor was 161 HOWARD SCOTT TOUR IN SOUTHERN ALBERTA Sept. and Oct . , 1937 getting. We had to explain that when a sawed-off Nipponese slams his foot down just once on a control pedal of a machine and 240 pairs of shoes are soled, it doesn't matter a bit whether you pay him a dollar, fifty cents or ten dollars a day. The labor fraction is so small that it would hardly pay to add it up. Great Britain was one of the largest cotton producers in the world. Today Japanese competition has chased Britain right out of the markets of the Far East. American Venus pencils were dumped in New York from Japanese factories at 22 cents per gross. Technology is no respecter of person, race or color. The only question is: can you run it? The boasted superiority of any group comes down like a house of cards if someone else has the machinery. In the Ford plant, human beings used to watch gauges. We now use the photoelectric cell and the cathode ray to test pieces for size, weight, or what-have-you . Why wear out human eyes? Let's have the machine. Women have cooked the meals of the world from the beginning of history. You cook them now by the same means and in the same way in your nice, shiny stoves that the savage used 20,000 years ago. You cook them from the outside in. We technologists decided that there is really no use having a woman cook her life out over a stove. No woman ever acquired social prestige that way. If you want to boil eggs, you have to build a fire, boil the water, then cook the eggs for at least 3- 1/2 minutes. We cook eggs now in 2-1/2 seconds without the boiling water. We cook from the inside out. Bacon cooks so fast, it sounds like somebody tearing a sheet. The woman of tomorrow will cook her five or seven course dinner while her guests are drinking a cocktail. Individual farms were all right in the handtool days, but you can't have decent houses on individual farms. Your homes are only fit for rabbit warrens. What use are individual barns for raising cattle? The Rotolactor washes and milks fifty cows in 12- 1/2 minutes and measures the milk from each cow. 162 HOWARD SCOTT TOUR IN SOUTHERN ALBERTA Sept. and Oct . , 1937 We have chicken farms with half a million chickens now in operation. The U.S. Government has 500,000 million pounds of tobacco from last year's crop. It has 17 million bales of cotton. We only consume 6 million bales a year. Our cotton situation is worse than your wheat. You can use it for feed or burn it for fuel; but you can't eat cotton, and it won't burn. Over 4 million will go on relief this year from the cotton belt. Soil as a medium of plant culture is only 4 percent efficient. Water is 90 percent efficient. We have a process called the Faraday fluid feeding process. You can raise five tons of tomatoes to an acre of soil under favorable conditions. We can raise them in tanks at 217 tons per acre. Potatoes will yield 115 bushels to the acre of average soil. Sometimes you can force about 300 bushels. The Faraday process raises 3,000 bushels to the acre of surface. We use excelsior, water, chemicals, and light and heat for forcing. It gets underway so fast the bugs kill themselves trying to keep up. You don't dig the harvest; you just roll back the blanket of excelsior and there they are -- all the same size. You don't have to brush and manicure them. If you're worried now, you'd better leave for you have a lot more worrying to do yet. Wheat is grown on endless belts. The wheat is sown on endless belts, and the harvest is taken off the other. The crop grows from seed to finished stock in ten days flat. One battery of these trays in a wheat factory will grow as much as 17,000 acres of land capable of yielding 170 bushels to the acre. Technocracy is the world's largest experimenter in this field. We have 200 tanks in operation. Why not? You have no crop here anyway. Even without fluid feeding processes, all the requirements of this continent could be grown on one-fifth the present acreage. Foods produced in tanks have several times the vitamin content of soil-grown foods. We'd just have to put in about ten of these wheat-growing plants and we'd run all you farmers onto relief . 163 HOWARD SCOTT TOUR IN SOUTHERN ALBERTA Sept. and Oct . , 1937 You see what all this is headed for. In 1919, the manufacturing industries employed 11 million on a 58-hour week. In 1929, the employment had failed to 8.8 million with a work week of 48 to 54 hours. Thus, the total man-hours for the year 1919 were about 29 billion. By 1929, these had dropped to 21 billion. In 1935, that total had decreased to 11 billion. In 1944, it will be one awful job to work 20 hours per week; yet, we will be producing 45 percent more. Now I suppose you think we're going to promise you some dividends. Don't fool yourselves. Neither we nor anyone else can deliver on that or any other wild promise under a Price System. In 1929, you took an awful flop into the worst depression in all history so far. Speaking metaphorically, you fell from the 20th story and landed on the sidewalk. The shock you received at the lower extreme of your spine may have been transmitted to the upper and knocked some sense into your heads. It is really a shame that education can only be accomplished by such a posterior method, but you asked for it; and I suppose you'll have to get it that way. Before very long, you're going to run into another depression. This time you'll fall all the way from the 40th story, and when you hit the pavement, you won't stop there. You'll go right through into the sewer. This Price System civilization is characterized by various social diseases. In the United States, we have 12 million cases of syphilis at large. Medicine will cure that if we can get around to it; but poverty -- the 60 million cases of bad housing, underclothed, and malnutrition -- is a disease that not all medicine men of the 175,000 political governments of the United States can cure. It requires a much more drastic treatment. The worst of all social diseases is one called "intellectual liberalism." It occurs among people who are well educated. They usually have the best of all in that line that can be provided, and all they use their erudition for is to decide not to decide. You must decide. There are several ways of meeting the situation. 164 HOWARD SCOTT TOUR IN SOUTHERN ALBERTA Sept. and Oct . , 1937 You can have a swift, orderly transition into an era of abundance or you can have chaos. If you continue to do what you are doing now, you will get chaos and get it decidedly messy. You cannot have, either, a communist revolution or a fascist coup d'etat. In Petrograd, they could smash up rail, telegraph, and telephone communications and put barricades across the streets and keep them there for sixty years. Nobody in particular would be affected by it. The population is largely agrarian and self- supporting. But if you tried that in New York City, 9 million people would be at the deadline in just five hours and eighteen minutes . If the armed forces of the State of New Jersey were to take over the state and operate it, within 72 hours they would have to take over and operate 38 states. Our system here is tenuous and interdependent. If 130 million people in the United States want to abandon the Price System, the balance of the continent would have to follow within a year. What would happen if rail transportation were tied up on the western prairies for ten days in a blizzard? It is a long way to wood or coal. You'd have a lot of frozen meat. Technocracy does not have any "assumption of power" theory. Such a theory is European, philosophical and has no bearing on the situation here. Over there, all a government can do is assume power. When it has it, it's through. No European government can by that or any other means raise the standard of living one iota. Over here a technological control would raise the present load factor of all industrial equipment from .05 to .90. This would mean an immediate increase in the standard of living by 18 times . Another way you could meet the situation is by shooting all your technicians and dumping all your plants and equipment into the sea. That would suit us perfectly, for then our troubles would be over; but yours would only begin. In 30 days you would be eating each other -- and they'll eat the fat men first. We don't develop any feeling of anger against those who would like to shoot us. What we resent is those who 165 HOWARD SCOTT TOUR IN SOUTHERN ALBERTA Sept. and Oct . , 1937 make us live this way. You women have the power control. You have all heard about your children to your country in that you can no longer take care year-old babies and give them to care of your children, it is government should do it for you. to bring about a functional what a fine thing it is to give the time of need. When you find of your children, just take your your country. If you cannot take only just and meet that your The children would not suffer. Not a single one would die. Within 24 hours, every doctor, dentist, and nurse would be conscripted to care for them. They would be working for their country. They would be all through with the lucrative chisels called private practice. A load like that would wreck any political government overnight. The transition to a functional control would take place immediately. Your children belong to your country. Then give your children to your king! IN DRUMHELLER, September 19 Everyone who is cognizant at all or who has any powers of observation is aware that something is basically wrong. Technocracy alone finds itself in a position to explain the situation that exists. People need not develop an inferiority complex because of that, because Technocracy, previous to becoming incorporated as a continental organization in 1933, had functioned since 1919 as a research organization. The really regrettable thing is the widespread belief that if something is voted into existence, we can find a way out. Alberta is no different from California with its half-dozen movements that came and went. People want security, purchasing power, and a world in which their future and their children's future will be assured. The equipment is here; the resources are here; the personnel is here; the need is here -- yet here we have more want in the midst of greater abundance than the world has ever seen. We have voted in one organization after another in the hope 166 HOWARD SCOTT TOUR IN SOUTHERN ALBERTA Sept. and Oct . , 1937 that the law of averages would somehow produce the "right man". Our political ideas came to us from Europe and Asia, but they have always been dominated by and motivated by scarcity. Abundance is something without precedent. The problem becomes entirely technical in nature. Technocracy does not question the sincerity of purpose of any of these movements -- the Utopians of California, the Epic Democrats, the several million Townsendites , the Share-the-Wealth movement. Republicans, Liberals, Conservatives, Communists, C.C.F. or Social Credit; but we have voted them in, one after the other and today we are no further ahead than we were five years ago because of them. The bull that charges the C.P.R. locomotive has sincerity of purpose no doubts but when he meets a dynamic converter of energy, there is bull all over the place. Any group constitutionally elected is by nature pledged to the maintenance of the Price System of values and scarcity. When any group promises security and purchasing power, it does it on a basis of mass deception, whether intentional or otherwise. Their promises are only air because they cannot come through. Long ago, we realized that social change is not brought about by legislation or education. We Technocrats have done more in the installation of labor- saving equipment than any other group. Devising means of raising more money, profits, dividends for corporate enterprise is enlarging the possibility. The way to teach people not to work is to literally shove them off the job. The way to bring a Price System to its logical conclusion is to give it enough rope and let it hang itself. We don't want the politician thrown out, we want him to stay there as long as he can run it. Let the politicians run the system right into the ground -- then take the rap for it. Let them run until human intolerance cries, "Stop! This is enough!" Technocracy is out with the specifications for technological control. It does not care who runs it, provided the specifications are adhered to. We are scared to death we will have to do the job by the way things are going. A mandate must be created by 66-2/3 of the people of this continent to install the 167 HOWARD SCOTT TOUR IN SOUTHERN ALBERTA Sept. and Oct . , 1937 control according to specifications. That will be Technocracy's first election and your last. We will refuse to have anything to do with "power" or "office". By running for political office, we would be pledging ourselves for maintenance of the status quo. Nobody but a louse would do a thing like that. Technocrats are trained never to interfere. We won't interfere with your politicians; but politicians are such that they can do nothing else except interfere. All politicians are lice. If you insist on operating as a louse, sooner or later you become one. Four years in political office are enough to make anyone a louse. It all goes back to your chiselry document. Here it is the B.N. A. Act. In the U.S., it is the Constititution . Voting is only an attempt to reduce all the individual differences of opinion to a common consensus, and the .304 percent of intelligence that is in Canada and the United States is thereby reduced to the general level of moronity. By voting you have only counted noses. It doesn't matter whether the noses are red, white or blue, the result is the same. All political parties are the same -- they contribute only to the anarchic confusion of the political entities of the Price System. Marx's "Value, Price and Profit" was a Jewish moral philosophy. Fascism is an Italian moral philosophy. Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations", the bible of the Price System, was a Scottish moral philosophy. They all deal in price and think in terms of value. Science has no values -- it has systems of mensuration in any field which it invades. Today it is invading the social field for the first time under the name of Technocracy . Technocracy is in favor of Social Credit. We would like to see Aberhart reelected. Social Credit is sufficient of an innovation to increase on a large scale the social anarchy of Western Canada. It has been touted on the party presses that if the people of China were 100 percent Communist -- or Social Credit -- the 168 HOWARD SCOTT TOUR IN SOUTHERN ALBERTA Sept. and Oct . , 1937 continent would immediately be transformed into a land of abundance. Such people either don't know the facts or they are deranged . A status of plenty on a par with that of North America could only be attained in China by importing 4 million barrels of oil and 27 million tons of coal per annum, not to mention the astronomical figures of gas. Chinese to the number of 270 million will have to be eaten by the Japanese before the rest will have a chance to live. So it is with Britain. Great Britain squandered her resources on the harpies of world trade. It got the world trade. Trade followed the flag. Then Japan chased Britain from the seas in the Far East. Now trade is following the flag home. They are mining ore of 27 percent Fe content. To us, that is just rust. They are buying up old bedsteads as scrap iron. If Britain used the same number of automobiles as the United States, they would have to have 9 million cars and an equivalent number of buses and trucks . Without bothering about the problem of where to run them, where would you park them? They'd have to hang them up with sky hooks! In Britain, an army examination showed 42 percent of the young men to be suffering from malnutrition. They have rest camps where they feed four meals a day to bring the cannon fodder up to size . A political body may propose, but it is never responsible for the execution of its proposals. Under a Technate, those who propose would be placed under full responsibility for the efficient execution of their proposals. Your government is bound to do nothing but protect you suckers from mythical enemies and protect all the chiselers so that you suckers can be easily and properly trimmed. Under the Technate, we will be responsible for the health and well-being of every human being. That is more than any political government ever did. We wouldn't double-cross you, but don't ever try to double-cross us. Our political system was not designed. It is the haphazard increment of growth. In the U.S., we have 5,600 counties and 169 HOWARD SCOTT TOUR IN SOUTHERN ALBERTA Sept. and Oct . , 1937 175,000 political governments. In Canada, you have nine provinces and relatively few governments. You certainly are intelligent in Canada. There are fewer morons in Canada than in United States. That is because there are fewer people in Canada. The Vancouver Province this year credits Technocracy with having reduced the registered vote by 50 percent. In Vancouver, they have compulsory voting. No political party will ever attempt to run an administration on only 30 percent of the vote. The politician knows that if this keeps up, he will have to get out. If he waits much longer, he will have to use burnt cork so you won't know him when he passes you in a cloud of dust. Nobody ever got rich by working. Nobody ever acquired social prestige by mining coal or following a plow. Not until he got some sucker to work for him, or he went into politics, or into the mortgage or banking business, was he able to pile up enough debt claims to buy social prestige. We have no aristocracy, no hereditary landed or professional class to stand in our way. Yet we kid ourselves. There is no class struggle. There are only two groups: the chiselers and the suckers. The sucker doesn't hate the chiseler; he admires and emulates him. It is his secret ambition to graduate into the chiseler class. All your social institutions are institutions of scarcity and your culture stinks. There is not an institution that is not fit for the garbage can. If you want to maintain your institutions, your chiselers, your orchids of culture, just remember that social orchids grow only in social manure piles. When you abolish them, you abolish your orchids; you only have a race of human beings. Do you want to bring yourselves to the level of those 42 percent of Britishers? Just keep on doing what you are doing. A Price System is any system of commodity valuation based on any one commodity as a standard. That commodity may be gold, silver, salt, humming birds' eyebrows, or anything. To keep up price, you must maintain scarcity. Where there is abundance, there is neither price nor values. There is one thing that is absolutely essential to every one of you. You couldn't live five minutes without it; yet you do not 170 HOWARD SCOTT TOUR IN SOUTHERN ALBERTA Sept. and Oct . , 1937 value it -- it has no price. It has never been cornered or monopolized; no mortgages have ever been issued against it; it has never been the subject of dispute in a court of law; no government ever voted on it or passed legislation about it -- and that thing is AIR. You never hated the man with bigger lung capacity than you because he took more air than you did. No chiseler ever got any money out of it. All anybody ever got from air was health. Your method of Price System control is antiquated and obsolete. Your system is based on the capitalization of waste. You burn up enough straw on these western prairies to make the automobile bodies of the world. They make better bodies than steel and look like glass. Could you make them under this system? No. The material would never rust and that would not do. The cars are like a teardrop, with no outside projections, everything flush, streamlined aerodynamically . Steering wheel turns through 180 degrees. Turn them on a dime or drive sidewise. Can't be skidded or turned over. The only way you can turn it over is by driving it up to the edge of something and running it over . The car is driven by a six-cylinder opposed piston type diesel, 2,000 r.p.m. Four-wheel drive, six foot four inches wide, inside measurement, with a maximum speed of 116 m.p.h., so far. Has an estimated life of 350, 000 miles. But you won't get it under a Price System. Your requirements would all be filled in four years; then there would be plant shutdown for the next 55 years . Stage after stage, the same thing is true. The Bell Telephone Company is holding 3,400 inventions out of use. In another year, most of the people of Saskatchewan will move into Alberta if you have the same desertization again. Do you think your British North American Act will place you in a position to withstand that? In two years, you will have 40 million more unemployed in the United States. Do you think the constitution is going to withstand that? No, you are going to throw them in the garbage can and say, "Boy, yo ' was a good ole organ but yo ' done played yo ' last tune." 171 HOWARD SCOTT TOUR IN SOUTHERN ALBERTA Sept. and Oct . , 1937 IN CALGARY, September 2 0 I'm glad to see you Calgarians have a sense of humor. After what I told you last time, I didn't think you were going to like me, well, hang on to that humor. You are going to need it all. The first major battle of the Price System in Canada was fought on the Plains of Abraham. It looks as if the next one will be fought out west on the Prairies of Aberhart; but after the battle, what are you going to have? Just what you have now -- only more of it! Your bonanza farming has made Saskatchewan a desert. I told you, God doesn't like it. You thought Bill (Aberhart) was on the "in" with God; but God's on our side, not on Bill's. In Napoleon's day, God was on the side of the heavy artillery. Today He's on the side of the march of power. If you haven't seen that yet, you'd better get right with God. What a lot of fiction is perpetrated in the name of belief. Here you believe in the British North American Act. Legally, there is no Province of Alberta or Saskatchewan. Have you ever seen a copy of the B.N. A. Act? Your judiciary organization across the sea that corresponds to our "Senility house" hasn't got a copy of it either. It isn't law. It didn't pass the third reading. Our nine prostatic old gentlemen of the Supreme Court at least live on this continent. And you want to solve your problems by amendments to an act that isn't here, by people who aren't here and who aren't sure that such an act even exists. Don't you know that an amendment to a contract abrogates the contract? When certain sovereign powers called provinces and states agree to perpetuate the channelization of the resources and wealth of this continent, they are really usurping God's prerogative. No wonder God is getting sore. In the United States, we have confederate government emphasis on the "con." It is the world's biggest "con" game. The finest chiseling racket that has ever been devised for the perpetuation of the fleecing of a race of suckers. It provides 172 HOWARD SCOTT TOUR IN SOUTHERN ALBERTA Sept. and Oct . , 1937 that chiseling shall be conducted only in the constitutional manner. The same applies to your B.N. A. Act. Whose country is this anyway? You don't own it and you don't run it. In this province, you have portfolios. You elect men to those portfolios who resign or are fired from their positions; then you consolidate your portfolios. You believe in gold. You break your necks trying to exchange the resources of this country with other countries for gold or paper. Gold is the world's most useless metal. If an inhabitant of another planet came to this country and saw you digging for gold, he would ask you what you use it for. "We dig it up and take it east," you would reply, "Why do you take it east?" "We take it east and bury it again. That's what we use it for." Wouldn't he think you were crazy? He'd ask for a one-way ticket back to his own planet. One of the lowest social diseases is the belief in the morality of work. If you want to know what work has done for you, go home and look in the mirror and see what a mess you are. Carry an electric iron across Europe and see how many sockets the plug will fit. There they believe in rugged individualism. All our political philosophies from laissez-fare to communism are imported from Europe. Most of the European philosophies brought over here from Europe and transplanted have died. The rest have turned into pigweed. So we have politicians. They say there were no rats in this country until they came over on the boats. Political government in all history has been superimposed upon the actual physical operations of mining, farming, production, distribution. Stalin doesn't occupy any official position in the Russian government; so there you have a Russian tyranny superimposed upon the Russian government -- a parasite upon a parasite -- a double racket. No government in all history for the livelihood of individual never would -- because it daren't. has ever assumed responsibility citizens. It never has -- and Technocracy demonstrates that you need a new form of 173 HOWARD SCOTT TOUR IN SOUTHERN ALBERTA Sept. and Oct . , 1937 control, endemic to social operations. The constitutions were sufficient for the cracker-barrel democracy of the country store, but they are incompetent and incapable of operating the present technology of the continent. They have simply outlived their usefulness, that's all. You need a different method of control as your scale of quantities change. When we moved out of the hand-tool age, it didn't matter what decisions we made; but now we have to have a method of control that conforms to the needs of this civilization. Those who create a civilization must ultimately control it. It must be administered by the same methods that created it. In the last analysis, the governments of this continent are those who operate it. There are several thousand ways of controlling the water running out of a spring -- a bundle of rags or anything. Step the water up to the size of a city supply running through the mains at 5,000 pounds pressure to the square inch and you need a motor- operated gate valve. But power is now being developed from a waterfall so high that a wineglass of water falling from the top develops one horsepower. If you attempted to control that by a gate valve, the force of water would whip the penstock across the mountainside like a piece of macaroni across a plate. Same water each time. It is the magnitude of the force that varies. A hundred and fifty years ago, 98 percent of energy consumed was human energy. It is the same in China today. Today in North America, only 2 percent of energy consumed is human energy; the rest is the energy of coal, oil, gas and hydroelectric power. Our present consumption is 156,000 kilogram calories per capita per day, as against China's 4,000 kilogram calories . In Canada you started this year with 960,000 registered relief recipients. This winter you will have several hundred thousand more. What you believe does not matter. If a man goes out of a 20th story window and hits the pavement, it doesn't matter whether he wanted to go out, whether he just fell out, whether he wanted to commit suicide, or got thrown out, whether he believed he could fly or could never die. The result is always the same when you come under the law of gravitation or any other natural law. 174 HOWARD SCOTT TOUR IN SOUTHERN ALBERTA Sept. and Oct . , 1937 In the past fifty years, your system has undergone a series of changes, oscillations, which have been coming closer together and increasingly violent. It is similar to the voltage in the arcing grounds of a high-tension transmission line. The oscillations increase with time in frequency and amplitude between zero and infinity but never reaching the latter. The equipment breaks down first. The mathematics of this situation are the same. If some Communist tells you that a certain pants presser, or something like that, is going to run all the power plants in the country, you know he needs his head opened. A good pants presser is a good pants presser, but he doesn't know a thing about powerhouses . You could collectivize all your equipment and all your land but that wouldn't change the thermodynamic laws, the rate of conversion, load factors, or any of the physical fundamentals a particle . Members of the defense forces of Canada and the United States are welcome as members of Technocracy. They are welcome even if only on a visit of investigation of our aims and methods. Technocracy guarantees to keep any police investigator busy for the duration of his visit and return him to his superiors a better and more proficient officer. The abolition of rent, interest and profit is only a legal fiction. On the other hand, when you talk about nationalization of banks and debt moratoriums, you're only stalling. Anyone who promises the people of this continent abundance, security, leisure, health, wealth, happiness, and the Price System all at once is a liar. Here your government forms a partnership with God, and you expect the corporation to pay dividends. They won't be paid this side of heaven. You'll have to die to collect them. Technocracy doesn't ask you to die for it; it asks you to live for it. The only difference between Liberals and Conservatives on the one hand, and Communists and Fascists on the other, is that some of the standpatters are washed better. Frankly, we prefer 175 HOWARD SCOTT TOUR IN SOUTHERN ALBERTA Sept. and Oct . , 1937 too little soap to too much. You have an irrigation and rehabilitation scheme at Moose Jaw. It is a scheme for the construction of 12, 500 homes, the clearing of governmental responsibility for 12,500 families, the creation of 12,500 farm loans, 12,500 mortgages, 12,500 suckers. You businessmen call yourselves Christians. You like to believe it, because for two hours on the seventh day of the week you make certain professions. You go home with a holy feeling, reinforced by the knowledge that you have a few mortgages or bonds, a few debt claims in the old tin box; but just go out on the streets of Calgary and see the sad state you're in. You can't tell a Christian from a liberal. Go down to the relief kitchens, then ask yourselves if you could tolerate seeing Jesus Christ on that relief line. Then you're getting somewhere. The reason you want these people to go up to the Peace River is that when they go up there and get stuck in the mud, the rest of Canada won't be able to hear them. Your governments are not on the level and you know it. No government that would do a thing like that is entitled to the respect or even the toleration of any one of you. You think you'll hold on to those debt claims in the hope that we're wrong. Mister, get rid of them quick. If you don't, they'll slap you down. With 40 million on relief on this continent, they'll go over you with a fine-tooth comb. Relief is the only growing enterprise on this continent. That is because it is the only one that pays its customers to loaf. It won't be safe not to be on relief. All of you will either be on relief or employed by the government. Do you have to wade into it right up to your necks before you will say it? Does any businessman believe that prosperity is really here and headed for the infinite blue? There are a few who are collecting a little more profits and dividends, of course. That's fine. Go ahead and trim them. We don't blame you; we blame the suckers . 176 HOWARD SCOTT TOUR IN SOUTHERN ALBERTA Sept. and Oct . , 1937 These businessmen, these small-time pikers, don't think they'll ever be on relief. What the dumb clucks don't know is that they are on relief right now. If the Dominion Government stopped creating debt, corporate enterprise would collapse like a house of cards. They have to keep it up. If they did stop, taxes would rise so fast the businessman would be better off on relief. Now all you smart, sensible businessmen who are sitting on the lid, don't you know that it's dangerous sitting on a safety valve? Technocrats need not worry about opposition or interference from business. The way will be cleared of politicians and businessmen . I want to tell you now that your educated man in Canada or the United States is yellow. He is shirking his duty. You have all that your country, your civilization can given you. You know that with your superior education, your knowledge, you should be out in front leading the people; but the first thing you try to do is get into a political party and ride into office or get into some other lucrative chisel. Just keep up your chiseling rackets if you like. The march of events will catch up with you, and it won't be nice -- it won't be pretty. If you want to go on believing that you can solve functional problems, continental problems, by the inflation of your own ego, take the consequences . Don't get the idea that Technocracy is going to do the job. You are going to do it. Here's the greatest thing that ever offered itself in all history. Don't think you are going to sit back and say, "All right, we'll take it. You do it." You ask if Technocracy will mean regimentation. Did you ever ask what you have now? You get up when the whistle blows, you knock off when the whistle blows -- and there are a whole lot more things you do when the whistle blows. You are so regimented, you can't do anything unless the whistle blows. Technocracy is not a political organization. We were not born of the depression or any political psychosis. We became 177 HOWARD SCOTT TOUR IN SOUTHERN ALBERTA Sept. and Oct . , 1937 organized on a continental basis in 1933. Prior to that time, we had been a research organization since 1919. Technocracy is building a technological army of the functionally competent. Your educated man is not competent. He has only been taught to chisel. Until he becomes a Technocrat, he can't function -- he doesn't know how. Large meetings of Technocracy are not conducted to explain in an hour-and-a-half the details of a construction it will take you at least an hour-and-a-half to understand. Technocracy is stronger than all the veterans' organizations or any possible Fascist army. Don't get a burr under your tail and try to join this organization at the last minute. To tell you the truth, you won't be any use. Just now we are bucked on the one side by the Chase National Bank and on the other by the Communists. All we need now is Mr. William Randolph Hearst to buck us, and we'd kiss him . Technocracy would rather be recommended by its enemies than damned by its friends. If you cannot make up your minds, we cannot make it up for you. Only God can do that in the march of events. Salute and Happy Landings. 178 A RADIO ADDRESS by Howard Scott STATION KOMO, SEATTLE, WASHINGTON November 2, 1937 Technocracy salutes the radio audience of KOMO! Technocracy presents to the radio audience of KOMO some of the national highlights of the dilemma of the continent. The United States and the North American Continent are involved in the greatest dilemma of history. The dilemma, stated simply, is the attempt of political government and the Price System of production to raise prices, to raise wages, to guarantee increased dividends, to insure the value of all outstanding private and public debt, to subsidize the capital goods industry, to stimulate all business, big and little, to provide work for the worker and markets for the farmer -- all by unbalancing the national budget and by further inflation of national credit. Each time the government inflates the national credit and unbalances the national budget, it creates more federal debt and more taxation. The capital goods industry installs faster and better machinery with each injection of governmental salvation and each increase in national credit inflation. Only our larger corporations are enabled to install better machinery to lower their operating costs and to reduce their payrolls, thereby liquidating the smaller units. It is obvious in the United States that the New Deal process of the salvation of the Price System is, in plain language, for the majority of Americans, what may be summed up as the underwriting of the higher income groups and the larger corporations by the federal government simultaneously with the maintenance of a federal distribution of subsistence to the 40 million underprivileged Americans at the bottom, resulting in the liquidation of the great middle. The results of this national policy are a long way from the abundant life that was held forth to the citizens of this "land of the free and the home of the brave." The present policy of the Democratic administration of these United States is resulting in the reclamation of poverty on a national scale. 179 RADIO ADDRESS BY HOWARD SCOTT, KOMO SEATTLE 11/2/37 Our political government in Washington is turning out a greater flood of propaganda than any previous administration. This propaganda is centered around the theme song of being all things to all people and nothing to anyone, except the prospective party vote. It busies itself with proclaiming the need for a more abundant life for our fellow citizens. This propaganda announces that 30 to 40 million citizens of these United States of America have practically no purchasing power and that the government in Washington intends to do something about having the purchasing power of these millions increased. How little or how much is never stated. Never expect any political statement to be quantitatively accurate in its definition! Technocracy asks the question: Is it possible for any political administration of the Price System on the North American Continent to produce and distribute abundance to its citizens? The answer is only too obvious when one realizes that for each inflation of the national credit, more technological equipment will be installed, and, in turn, more energy converted nationally from coal, oil, gas, and hydroelectric power; which means in simple terms that each time technology takes a step forward, toil takes a step backward, with the result that human beings in the United States will work less and less to produce more and more. How can the values of this Price System and its structure of debt be maintained when the overwhelming percentage of national purchasing power, namely, the purchasing power of wages and salaries, faces a declining future of less and less man-hours for more and more production? The political governments of North America are preaching the morality of work of the oxcart era in the midst of this Power Age of today. The "morality of work" is evident in every WPA program and in every governmental stimulation of business. In their preachments of this morality of work, the political governments of this continent acknowledge their incompetence and inability to deal with the technological problem of the American Age of Power. Their doctrine is but a thinly disguised national charity and a temporary insurance against social revolution. The morality of work in the Power Age of America is but the persuasive palliative of the chiseler's sucker bait to the 40 million underprivileged Americans. It is at the same time a national soothing syrup to the American businessman; but the 180 RADIO ADDRESS BY HOWARD SCOTT, KOMO SEATTLE 11/2/37 morality of work is not working out so well, for each time that the political administrations in Washington and Ottawa save business with a fresh inflation of national credits and more government debts, the larger corporations avail themselves of greater funds of cheaper money for the installation of more productive technological equipment of lower operating costs. The morality of work is the Lord in these United States, a contained in every preachment of radio, and our screen, that the should make their livelihood government on a national scale corporations to finance the elimi refore, in the year 1937 of our national hypocrisy, for it is our government, our press, our citizens of the United States by honorable toil, when our is financing and assisting the nation of toil. Which policy of our political government are the people of the United States to believe? The policy of honorable toil and of a job for every American citizen as preached to the public or the opposite policy -- the elimination of toil and jobs for our citizens by the further installation of technological equipment for the production of more goods and services with less wage cost per unit produced, as practiced by our federal government and our larger corporations? The technological application of physical science to the means whereby people live has set the date for this continent's rendezvous with destiny. This country and this continent cannot avoid this rendezvous with destiny. This country and this continent will meet this rendezvous within the next five years. It is imperative that on our national and continental way to this rendezvous the people of this country and this continent recognize quite clearly that the social conflict of this continental area is the conflict between the 7,000-year-old method of producing physical wealth with a maximum of human effort and the recent technological production of physical wealth with a minimum of human effort. Any national economy depending chiefly on human effort for the product ion of its physical wealth dooms the majority of its people to starvation and the arduous toil of scarcity. Any national economy producing the major portion of its physical 181 RADIO ADDRESS BY HOWARD SCOTT, KOMO SEATTLE 11/2/37 wealth by human effort is compelled to justify its social futility by preaching the morality of work. Scarcity and human toil are the twin social resultants of any civilization depending upon human effort for the production of its physical wealth. The low energy civilizations of the rest of the world are therefore compelled to propagandize their citizens to make them clamor for the right of every individual to wear overalls; in fact, it might be said that overalls should be the national uniform of all low energy civilizations. But here in this country and continent, the morality of work and the right to wear overalls ought to be relegated to the Smithsonian Institution along with all the other anachronisms of the hand tool age. Technocracy contends that the conduct of human affairs in the United States of America must, in the light of modern technology, be redesigned and reorganized so as to conform to the precision technique of operating our national technological equipment. Technocracy contends that only by a further application of technology in our means of production and distribution can abundance and security be rendered available to all. It must be realized that abundance cannot be produced by a maximum of human efforts that abundance can be produced and distributed only by a minimum of human effort. Technocracy flatly states that abundance and security cannot be produced and distributed nationally and continentally under any political administration and under a Price System. Technocracy contends that only under a technological administration can the rate of production be increased sufficiently to produce and distribute abundance, security, and the higher standard of living to all. The social well-being of abundance cannot be initiated by national preaching of the morality of work and the forcing of our citizenry to wear the badge of toil, the overalls. Only through the installation of more and better machinery under the direction of technological planning, operated under technological control, can a high standard of living be provided for the citizens of this country and this continent. Technocracy contends that advancing technology will ultimately compel the consolidation of the North American 182 RADIO ADDRESS BY HOWARD SCOTT, KOMO SEATTLE 11/2/37 Continent from Panama to the North Pole, and Hawaii to Bermuda, into one self-contained economic organism for the distribution of abundance to all -- a blue-printed New America of Plenty -- this continent's rendezvous with destiny! This continent's rendezvous with destiny will permit of no direction from Rome, Berlin, London, Moscow, or Tokyo. For the technological problems of America's Power Age are solvable only by the American solution of more technology and less human toil. Communism is too bourgeois and fascism too antigue for the Continent of North America. Democracy in this continent's Age of Power is but the national debris of our national chiselers. So let us Americans of this continent face the physical fact that we must organize nationally and continentally, not for the right to work and the right to wear overalls but to take the overalls off the human being and to place them on the machine where they belong. Let us organize to put the machinery of this country and this continent into overalls for the benefit of the human being and for the production of social well-being to all. Technocracy salutes the audience of radio station KOMO and wishes them a happy landing in the New America. 183 A RADIO ADDRESS by Howard Scott STATION WGAR, CLEVELAND, OHIO April 17, 1938 Technocracy salutes the radio audience of WGAR! Technocracy presents to the radio audience of WGAR the dilemma of this country and this continent. The United States and the continent are endowed with natural resources sufficient to meet the raw material needs of our citizens for centuries to come. The United States and Canada possess more installed horsepower and more machinery than all the rest of the world. The United States and Canada have more trained men and women capable of efficient operation of the technological equipment for the production and distribution of the social needs of their people than any like area on earth. Restated simply, this country has the men, the materials, and the machines. It has the brains to devise greater technology for greater social needs; and yet the United States and Canada today, while possessing all the necessary elements for social well-being, are stymied by our antiquated political and economic structures . The social institutions that sufficed in the United States in the days of the ox cart and the horse and buggy are today simply junk, blocking the road to American progress. The recession has deepened into a depression. Our government admits that 18 million Americans are on the various relief rolls of the country. It admits further that the United States Employment Service has over 6 million applications for employment in its files; and at the same time it is generally admitted that unemployment is approaching the precarious total of 14 millions. Technocracy asks, "Where is the prosperity of yesteryear, and what has happened to our promised 'abundant life'?"; and in answer to these questions comes the magnanimous declaration of our federal government that it is going to spend its way out of this depression with the slight sum of $4,512,000,000 -- merely a sweetening of the national jackpot! 185 RADIO ADDRESS BY HOWARD SCOTT, WGAR CLEVELAND 4-17-38 The federal administration in Washington and the Dominion administration in Ottawa both proclaim that the national policies which they have formulated are the best and only possible methods of procuring national well-being under the existing conditions. The national governments of both the United States and Canada promise many things. They promise higher prices for the farmer, more business for the businessman, higher wages for the worker, better banking for the banker, and a higher national income for everyone. Their promises are so many that they are all things to all people and nothing to anyone. Technocracy states frankly that in view of the technological factors of this country today, such a policy on the part of our national administration is the rankest hypocrisy that could possibly be perpetrated upon a sorely suffering people. Technocracy points out that national business supports our national administration in this great hypocrisy; that both are guilty of collusion and misrepresentation of the facts of our national operations. Such hypocrisy in these times is as deadly and dangerous -- and even despicable -- as that of distributing chocolate-covered arsenic to high school students. BUSINESS AND GOVERWENT FUTILITY National business and national government contend that they both, singly or together, can rectify the national dilemma facing this country and this continent today. National business contends that it can solve the dilemma of unemployment, insufficient purchasing power, and want in the midst of plenty, if it is permitted to indulge in more business with less government interference. National government contends that it could obtain the solution if it were permitted to have more government and more business. These claims on the part of both government and business are the rankest of barefaced assertions. Neither government nor business, regardless of what they do, can possibly rectify the critical situation in which the United States finds itself today, for the United States and Canada are engaged in the greatest social conflict in human history, and a conflict which, at this time, does not exist anywhere else. It is the conflict between two systems of producing physical wealth. For 7,000 years of social history, man has produced his physical wealth by human 186 RADIO ADDRESS BY HOWARD SCOTT, WGAR CLEVELAND 4-17-38 toil, and now in the country and on this continent, the technological process of producing physical wealth is shoving the old process onto the scrap heap. Business and government are shrieking loudly for North Americans to obtain a higher standard of living. We must increase our national production of physical wealth, we are told. This statement sounds fine to the uninformed public, but the facts of the case are these: the technological production of physical wealth in the United States requires an ever-smaller total of man-hours per year to produce an even-greater volume of physical goods and services. When greater physical wealth is produced, America will produce it; but the more physical wealth America produces, the less human effort we will consume in its production . These facts are obvious to any student of our national situation; and yet our national leaders have the barefaced effrontery to claim that more wages and salaries will be distributed when America produces more physical wealth. From now on, the United States and Canada will produce more and more with less and less human effort. And why not? Toil is the morality of slaves. Gears never tire, machines never sit down, and technological machinery will do the work of America's tomorrow . LESS PURCHASING POWER, MORE RELIEF In the face of this, Technocracy states that it is physically impossible to pay out sufficient purchasing power in salaries and wages to the American public to buy back the increasing productivity of our national machinery; and if an ever-smaller number of Americans are going to work fewer hours per year, can you possibly conceive how either government or business can raise the purchasing power of our citizens to where relief and unemployment will be totally eliminated? Technocracy wishes to make clear that the national problems of the United States and Canada are technological problems, and that they therefore cannot be solved by any process of political democracy or chicanery of financial economics. 187 RADIO ADDRESS BY HOWARD SCOTT, WGAR CLEVELAND 4-17-38 As relief lines lengthen, foreclosures increase, and retail sales fall, business begins to scream at Washington for its own salvation. Business and government are sick; they are sick from obsolescence and antiguity of 7,000 years of scarcity; but their cure will cost more than their demise, for in this conflict there can be no compromise. Either the people of this country and continent must destroy their technological eguipment and expurgate their science and return to the human toil of hand tools, with its accompanying shibboleths of democracy, or they must face the stark realization that there is more and greater technology to come than America has ever known; and Technocracy asks again, "Why not?" Why should this country and this continent be condemned by the political machinations of democracy and the ineptitude of national business to the national anarchy of more relief, more unemployment, and more crime? If national business and our political government cannot solve the dilemma of America, then it is high time that they step aside and make way for that which can . A NEW LEADERSHIP COMING As the millions of Americans who have been liguidated by the oscillations of the Price System are increased by more millions in the greater oscillations that will occur in the near future, there will arise a mass demand, Continent-wide, for a new leadership capable of directing America to her rendezvous with destiny. National business is going to insist on its pound of flesh and Technocracy predicts that America will be compelled to liguidate national business once and for all. National politics is going to insist on the privilege of continuing its national bungling, and it will join national business in the coming liguidation. It is high time that the citizens of the United States and Canada realize that politics and business stand in the road, blocking the pathway to North America's future. This country and this continent have the men, the machines, and the materials to provide every American with the decency of the highest standard of living in the world, from birth to death, with the minimum of human effort and the maximum of leisure. It is high time that we Americans enroll in the Technological Army which will make America safe for Americans! 188 RADIO ADDRESS BY HOWARD SCOTT, WGAR CLEVELAND 4-17-38 America has no war off this continent. Americans have nothing to gain and everything to lose by participating in any warfare abroad. America has only one war: a war to be fought here and now, on this continent, alone. It is the war of plenty versus poverty, of leisure versus toil, of abundance versus scarcity. It is a cause not to die for but one to live for. Technocracy contends that it is high time we enlisted in this greatest of all wars, for this war will have to be fought and won within the next five years if civilization on this continent is going to avert the chaos of national anarchy. Enlist now, before you are conscripted by the march of events. -- Originally Published in 8141 MAGAZINE, July, 1938 189 PUBLIC ADDRESS by Howard Scott WINNIPEG AUDITORIUM October 25, 1938 With your kind assistance, I would like to conduct a little census of this audience. How many people in this audience are economically and monetarily better off than a year ago? Will you kindly put up your hands? I see about half a dozen or more in this entire audience. Well, how many in this audience this evening are absolutely satisfied with the existing economic structure, the existing political structure, and feel that it requires no modification and no redesign whatsoever? No answer to that one at all. Don't think it is strange, because what we have seen here happens in every audience from coast to coast and from Peace River to the Rio Grande. We are all in the same economic muddle, and it is a wonder it isn't a great deal worse; because the press of the U.S. and Canada, the radio, screen, and pulpit are indulging in the greatest run of misrepresentation ever foisted on the people of this continent. They play up every item of foreign news, capitalize every murder and scandal. If some foreigner stubs his toe on a doormat, he gets headlines; yet the most important events in history are not dug up at all. Why not? The people of this continent are the most intelligent, capable, and highly trained of any people in the world individually. They have more knowledge of facts, and they could take more facts and data; but our press, radio, and screen are withholding the facts of our physical situation and are doing it deliberately. You know; I don't have to drive it home to you. You will read what some politician says about nothing -- half a page. If a banker has a sore toe and decides to comment on foreign affairs, they print it. I don't know why. A banker today is non compos mentis anyhow. After nine years of the greatest debacle this continent has ever known, the situation of the U.S. and Canada today is more dangerous than ever, because we are feeding the public the pap that it is going to be all right if we can only pump in enough bug juice. MacKenzie King plays the same kind of tit-for-tat as F.D. Roosevelt does in Washington. The only difference is that 191 PUBLIC ADDRESS IN WINNIPEG AUDITORIUM, HOWARD SCOTT 10-25-38 one is in Washington and the other is in Ottawa. That may be a distinction but is certainly no difference. The National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are telling the nonsense that government and business and labor ought to cooperate so as to kid the sucker public along a little longer. They ask you to vote. In the U.S., it is on whether to keep the old bunch of racketeers or put in another bunch; of course, up here in Canada, you have your rackets a little more tightly cornered. You have the Senate of 96 appointed for life. The only way you remove them is when they die. They get $8,000 a term, and 43 of the Canadian Senators hold directorships representing $8,500,000,000 of Canadian investments, or over 53 percent of the total investments in Canada. The Canadian Senate is in a very interesting position. In the U.S., they are only penny ante chiselers -- in Canada, they are tops; of course, you haven't any Supreme Court in Canada in the same sense as in the U.S. The Supreme Court of the U.S. is the national referee of chiseling. You get appointed there when you demonstrate your ability to referee in chiseling. You arrive at such an appointment when you have reached a certain stage of mental prostatitis. Here it is quite different. Canada is larger in area than the U.S.; in fact, the unoccupied portion of Canada -- 3,400,000 square miles -- is greater than that of the U.S. Your population -- most of it -- is within 100 miles of the boundary; 90 percent is within 200 miles. The great Canadian Shield, from Labrador across and splitting the lakes on the way north, will never be inhabited, except for pulpwood, mining, and power. We know that; yet you are kidded that there are great open spaces that the escrow Indians can palm off. The escrow Indians are the greatest tribe of North America. Their home habitat is southern California. Generally they are known as real estate agents. In the U.S., the people consume 96 percent internally of what is produced, exporting 4 percent. In Canada, export runs up high in a lot of fields. If Canada were to consume its products, you would be floating in physical wealth; but you export it so as to give to the chiseler and keep the Canadian close to relief. You have another export. From 1901 to 1931, Canada admitted 5,200,000 immigrants; and in the same years, it exported 4,200,000 Canadians. That is a hell of an indictment, ladies and 192 PUBLIC ADDRESS IN WINNIPEG AUDITORIUM, HOWARD SCOTT 10-25-38 gentlemen. They didn't want to go; they had to go. Only 96 Canadians can be Senators. We are up against a situation in this country and this continent that has no parallel in history. It is not analogous to the situation in Great Britain, France, Italy, Russia or Japan. It is unigue in social history. There is no precedent for it. There are physical factors that do not exist elsewhere. Try to realize the vast difference. What is the difference? The difference is that in all other human societies they produced the physical wealth of their time through human toil, and the only way physical wealth could be increased was by working longer hours or increasing the population. Here in U.S. and Canada, we have a different proposition. It has come in the last 40 years. Over in Europe, they are still glorifying the morality of toil. Hitler has them marching around with shovels. What a country! That is all right for a European. He hasn't anything else to look forward to. Here, the only place you have a shovel is on the WPA. We give them to workers to lean on. Canada is no different. Your politicians and businessmen are the same. They haven't the guts to give the relief workers engineering eguipment and direction, because they would rebuild Canada. They are still fooling with the Trans- Canada Highway. We didn't do that with shovels. You can keep people busy with shovels, but you can't get the job done. You can't build a modern highway with shovels. We are up against an entirely different proposition. Looking back a few years -- a century ago in U.S. -- 94 to 96 percent of the population were deriving their livelihood from the soil directly. They made a living with hand tools: a spade, hoe, axe, and covered wagon. Today it is all changed. Seventy-six percent of the population of the U.S., no longer derive their livelihood from the soil. Of the remaining 34 percent, 64 percent only produce 35 percent of agricultural wealth; the remaining 36 percent of the agricultural population produce 65 percent of agricultural production and earn $2,278 per year. Ninety-seven percent of the population is dependent on the productive and distributive eguipment and not on direct application to the soil. Germany and Italy are still preponderantly agrarian. They are not industrialized. Travel across Italy and Germany with a flat iron and try to plug it in. You can't unless you have a dozen 193 PUBLIC ADDRESS IN WINNIPEG AUDITORIUM, HOWARD SCOTT 10-25-38 fixtures. They are still delivering milk in Italy inside the cow. Here it is quite different. In Great Britain, they are mining coal at the rate of .8 of a ton per man per day. That is also the rate in the Ruhr and Saar. The average in the U.S. is 5 tons per man per day -- 25 tons bituminous coal per man per day. There is $380,000,000 of coal mining machinery on order. When mechanization is completed, 4/5 of the United Mine Workers -- and John L. Lewis -- will be on relief. Why not? There never was any sense in working anyway. All you have to do is look at yourself in a glass. Work has been noble. Look at yourself and see what the hell it did to you. Nothing to be proud of as I look over any audience. Why? Because on this continent we know today we are not worshipping the morality of work. We are a smart people. We dumped that over with the Model-T Ford and the outdoor privy -- they are gone. The concept is overboard. We are not up against the same ideologies and concepts and purpose as in Europe and Asia. We do not take 190 years to build a cathedral. We build a better building in six months. Something has happened, it hasn't happened in Europe and Asia. There is the only place it could happen. That is what is baffling our businessmen and politicians, bankers and labor unions. Where there are technological processes for production of physical wealth, as and when we produce more, we produce it with less human beings working less. Yet our trade association has the idiocy to proclaim that the way to produce more is to work more. The way to produce more is to put in more machinery and put more people at leisure. Why not? Last year in the chief cotton-producing counties in Texas and Oklahoma, the number of tractors rose about 45 percent and mules declined correspondingly. Rural population declined 17 percent -- tenant farms wiped out. Population declined 17 percent in 1937. Where did they go? On relief or north looking for a job. They tell me that the Province of Manitoba has bought more tractors than in any year in history. You are going to get it, too. There never was any sense in following the plow, competing with horses. 194 PUBLIC ADDRESS IN WINNIPEG AUDITORIUM, HOWARD SCOTT 10-25-38 We are peculiar. You never heard of a mule working overtime or dying from overeating or overwork. It is only the human jackass that does those things. Yet we are being told by political governments that all you have to do is be tolerant until Bennett gets enough shots into the national arm. Where is all this leading to? What kind of situation is it? Let's have some comparisons. In Germany, they had monetary inflation. That is quite different from credit inflation. Inflation in Germany was introduced to abolish the external debt and reduce the internal debt. It accomplished that in the main. <