Technocracy -> Pamphlets -> History and Purpose -> The Scourge Of Politics In The Land Of Manna

Search

The Scourge Of Politics In The Land Of Manna

Howard Scott

1920

Published in:

• One Big Union Monthly, September, 1920
• The Northwest Technocrat, July 1965, No. 220
• History and Purpose of Technocracy pamphlet.

Through the missed of the fourteen points, the clamor of the League of Nations, and the speed of the ``may I knots,'' shrieks the siren of the newspapers proclaiming the efficacy of some one political programme as a panacea for the immediate ills. We have with us today as many breeds of political parties as we have religious sects, all advocating greater or lesser reforms, varying in their demands according to the strata of society they represent, all antithetical to each other, but all possessing one common factor, their belief in the efficacy of political action.

Color, music, religion, morals and politics are subjective realities. For the color-blind, as, for instance, those who fail to perceive the greens, light of this color does not exist, although it may for others. Those of normal vision may have the sensation which they call green light, which means, not that the green light is real, but only that the impression is real to them. By the defective in hearing, certain sounds may not be heard at all, although another man may hear them clearly. Sound does not exist for one who is totally deaf.

Religions, morals, and politics, being beliefs, create impressions which are real to some people, to others are totally different, varying in accordance with race, geographical location and economic conditions, and to others, do not exist at all.

Political power is centered in the emotional expression of the mass, and its adherence to the political party in power depends on the amount of belief in each individual member. Written on the flyleaf of the book of rules of every able politician and statesman is that sentence of Macchiavelli's, ``The appearance of belief in any popular faith is as necessary as the belief in it is harmful;'' followed by the addenda of Bismark, ``Religion, patriotism, and politics are the primary weapons for controlling the mob.'' The political leaders of the past and present have, through the inculcation of beliefs or subjective realities into the minds of the mass, achieved for themselves a goal which lies on a separate and distinct plane, and does not concern itself with the objective realities of the mass. It is the fervour of faith, the fanaticism of belief, the reaction of all primal instincts and personal impressions that sweeps a candidate or party into political power.If there existed that queer paradox, a political party,based, not upon theory but upon actual facts, the situation would not be such a hopeless one.

The structure of our present legislative bodies is composed of representatives elected on the basis of geographical divisions, the qualification of an electee consisting in the possession of a definite amount of capital vested in real estate, bond, or other holdings. He is not required to be involved in the production of any of the essentials of life for his district, nor even to possess a knowledge of the methods of production. We therefore have that queer anomaly of a man being elected from a division, the important function of which, for the country as a whole, is the production of coal, who is a lawyer, and whose knowledge is limited to law and litigation; or we have a doctor of medicine representing a steel district, or a banker a farming district. Thus are made possible the debates which frequently occur in Congress on the subject of operating railroads in which lawyer, doctor, banker and professional politician participate with equal ignorance, arguing away the nation's legislative time and money. And though such an unrepresentative group may legislate, it becomes still more innocuous through the fact that it does carry its legislation into execution.

There are before the public at the present moment a number of political expedients through which they are attempting to solve one of our primary industrial problems, namely railroads. But the railroads are only one unit of the industry of transportation and cannot be dealt with separately and obtain efficient service in our common carriers. Of all the plans presented not one has taken into consideration the technique of this industry, or has apparently realized that under scientific administration of our carrier system, railroads must be secondary to that more efficient method of hauling bulk cargoes, namely waterways -- depending, of course on the geographical conformation of the country. Nor do they realize that the motor trucks on our highways are relieving the railroads of an ever increasing portion of their bulk freight. Still again! Nor do they realize that our transmission lines and our pipelines provide a better method of transporting power and fuel than do our railroad coal-cars and tank-cars.

The inadequacy of any plan, that proposes to allow the workers to share in the profits of an industry, is that it places the basis of efficiency not on scientific grounds, but on methods of management that will obtain greater profits for all parties involved. If such a plan were imposed on the transportation system of this country, it would induce a condition so static that all other forms of transportation would be discriminated against in order that the railroad workers and railroad capitalists be enabled to maintain their established earnings. The railroad interests in the past, by devious financial and financially induced legal means, have killed every form of water transportation in the United States excepting those required by the railroad interests for their own ends. Our railroad interests have chased the river steamer and the canal boat out of existence, leaving them and their docks to disintegrate under the ravages of time. In the majority of cases, the rivers and waterways of our country are today paralleled, not only on one, but on both sides by railroads. Under scientifically operated transportation, the waterways, with feeder highways or short haul feeder railroads, would relieve the present trunk line railroads of the United States of over one-half of their freight load. So it is that any political solution to the railroad workers' problem endangers the transportation problem of the entire nation. Efficient transportation is not only a matter of carrying goods, but also of eliminating the unnecessary carrying.

In view of the complexity of the industrial situation in this country, and the fact that the industries are so closely interrelated, any fundamental change in the methods of operation of any one ;Industrial unit would involve a corresponding change in every unit that is correlated to it; and any method of scientific operation which might be introduced in any separate unit would be immediately sabotaged by the financial control, which is equally interlocked and correlated, and thereby strangle at birth. The absurdity of any plan for the operation of railroads (whether it be the Plumb plan, or it's adversary, the Cummins bill) is immediately apparent when one is brought into cognizance of the fact that the present group of railroad interests own and control the sources of supply of power and fuel in coal, oil, and water, and that they own and control the manufacturing of railroad equipment, and in the further knowledge that the earnings of the railroad groups are accentuated by the carrying of products which they own and control in preference to transporting them by a more efficient method, but one in which they have no vested interest. The introduction of a scientific system of operation would carry with it the scientific use of material inter-related with the railroads, and the scientific use of one of these materials alone, namely bituminous coal, which is one-third of all the freight moved on common carriers would render it impossible for the railroads of this country to earn dividends on their present capitalization.

We are living today in an industrial age which concerns itself with the production and use of energy and matter in the forms of electricity, steam, steel,lumber, cotton, etc. The amount of energy or work required to produce a given amount of a certain material under a given condition can be accurately calculated. The machine necessary for the production of so many units of power can be accurately designed. The resultant of a chemical reaction can be determined before the reaction takes place. The candle power of a given amount of electricity is a known factor. The food content of a bushel of wheat of standard grade is an established fact. The production factor of the worker can be determined under all conditions.

Political legislation cannot decide the question of the number of hours a worker shall work in a given industry under a given condition, or what materials, quantity and quality, shall be used, or the methods of production, unless politics can correlate all industry. Why be carried away by the momentum of our multiple verbiage in the discussion of the high cost of living? Why not consider the fact that only one in ten of our population is engaged in actual production?

Why allow a million petty stores to muddle up the problem of retail distribution with their inefficiencies? Why not eliminate 75 percent of the inefficiency and the individuals engaged in this trading, by consolidation into scientific distribution depots on a large scale, putting the 75 percent of the men no longer needed into essential production?

Why insist upon the different agricultural industries being personally operated by any method that the individual farmer cares to adopt? Why not industrialize agriculture by operating large areas as industrial units, vesting the personal rights of the farmer, not in possession, but in an equity of productive effort?

Why mine bituminous coal for the production of power? Why waste fifteen-sixteenths of its multiple content by burning it under boilers? Why not develop the remaining 97 percent of our water-power resources in this country?

Why operate manufacturing establishments 2,000 miles from their source of supply? Why not have manufacturing establishments located in the center of their source of supply, or as nearly so as possible?

Why have the ill-health of a citizen be an incentive to profiteer on the part of our medical profession? Why not have public health and hygiene nationally operated on the basis of service?

Why have the security of the individual from starvation be the income provider for the insurance companies? Why not have it that the individuals social service contract with the state provides him with a livelihood until death?

Why involve ourselves in the discussion of the laws and the inefficiencies of our law courts? Why not eliminate the major number of inefficiencies by cancelling all causes of litigation?

Why indulge our national vanity in wasting effort, time, and materials in the production of gold as a ballast for international treasuries, necessary with a gold basis currency? Why not have a currency that one cannot store up to rust, and that thieves cannot steal, of purchasing value only to the individual to whom it is issued in exchange for his productive effort?

Why tolerate the throttling of our industrial life by politicians and political action? Why not eliminate all politics and political action by instituting an industrial organization composed of men who, by their training and experience, have the knowledge of operation and direction?

Why the demand for higher wages? Why the higher prices? Why not a system of industrial operation wherein one would obtain, not a wage that is in the ratio of 8 percent to his productive effort, as exists today, but 69.3 percent, the remaining 30.7 percent being no tribute to capital, but the normal contribution of each citizen to the requirements of replacement and depreciation and the maintenance and operation of the administration and it's indirect industries, such as education, sanitation, etc.

These questions are not of a destructive character; individually they may seem so, but as components of a sequence they partially reveal the possibilities that would develop in a plan, nation-wide, that was not political, but industrial, wherein production would be for use, not for price.

It is possible under a system of scientific administration to increase the present standard of living over 800 percent. The day is pregnant with the need of just such a readjustment. There can be no cessation to industrial unrest so long as the conditions heretofore mentioned persist. They are blocking the wheels of the industrial mechanism. Given a plan or design of industrial administration the movement of the mass can be directed into constructive channels,but, without such, the country shall be plunged into a maelstrom beside which the Russian revolution is but a tempest in a tea-pot; no, not a maelstrom, but an eruption of mud.