Book Reviews

A REVIEWER'S NOTEBOOK J 0 H N C HAM B E RLA IN The Existential Pleasures Of Engineering} I SAMUEL C. FLORMAN, author of the enigmatically titled The Exis tential Pleasures of Engineering CSt. Martin's Press, $7.95), is a construction engineer who hap pens to hold an M.A. in English literature from Columbia Univer si ty. The possessor of a most pleasing style, he moves comfort ably in two worlds of the imagina tion - or in the "two cultures," as the British novelist C. P. Sno,v would put it. Like any person of common sense he knows that the creative personality is the same whatever the means of expression the crea tor may use. As critic Lewis Mum ford once noted (before he went. off on his anti-technological ram page), the esthetic impulse in our so-called Gilded Age flowered just as importantly and effectively in the great suspension bridges de signed and built by Roebling as it did in the poems of Walt Whit man or the paintings of Whistler.

The good engineer works in a hu man dimension, to make life more civilized, more bearable, more 183 184 THE FREEMAN March pleasurable and, incidentally, bet ter able to yield the leisure for lit erature, sculpture or just plain fun and games. The engineer, in short, is just another artist. The trouble with the artist engineer, however, is that he has never bothered to explain himself. During the Golden Age of Engi neering, which lasted a full cen tury from 1850 to 1950, he didn't have to justify his existence. Peo ple took it for granted that it was good to rid the world of household drudgery by engineering every thing from washing machines to air conditioning. There was no question about the value of such things as the automobile, the air plane and the Panama Canal they speeded life and, simultane ously, left more time for living. The builders of the St. Gotthard Tunnel were eulogized in fiction by no less a person than the tor tured dramatist August Strind berg. In Kipling's verse "romance brought in the 5: 15," and Carl Sandburg lamented the loss of a discarded steel rail as "straight strength pitched into the slime of the ditch."

But even as engineers were placing men on the moon and un locking the secret of the atom, the tide turned against the engineer. A whole group of sociologists Jacques Ellul, Lewis Mumford, Charles Reich,. Theodore Roszakbegan to think of technology as a Frankenstein monster that had, somehow, taken over and was ruh ning the show by itself. The means had become an end. The environ mentalists and the ecologists, see ing only that cars have exhausts and that atomic fuel leaves a poi sonous waste, headed for the ex its. There was nothing left to do, they said, but return to a pre technological Nature. America must be "greened again." Our Debt to Technology With his knowledge of the past, Mr. Florman takes extensive issue with Ellul, Mumford, Reich and the rest of the anti-technologists. Mumford salutes the Middle Ages, when men presumably had com mon aims and built to the glory of God. But if the Middle Ages had anything over the Dark Ages, it was because technology had turned up such prosaic wonders as the horse collar, which enabled people to move goods from place to place over the rough roads between seas and rivers. Diets were sparse un til technology, in the form of the compass, enabled mariners to bring New World vegetables to Europe along with Aztec gold.

There should be no need to be labor the point: modern popula tions, brought into existence by the very fecundity of science and engineering, could not live with1976 THE EXISTENTIAL PLEASURES OF ENGINEERING 185 out fertilizers, new energy sources, and great ships to carry raw ma terials to points where they can be transformed into the means of sustenance for the millions. It is obvious that man sets his own ends, and uses technology to get where he wants to go. It is not the fault of the engineer when men move perversely to hurt each other, or to pursue power for the sake of domination. World War I came before the invention of the tank; World War II preceded the harnessing of the atom to destruc tive ends. It is the politician and the warrior who make wars. that require the jet engine and jungle defoliants, not the engineer, whose discoveries can be switched from use to use, depending on the mo tives and purposes of nontechnical men who often do not know the existential pleasures of building for the sake of enjoyment and peaceful trade.

Gloomy Forecasts So mixed up have we become that a Stanford University semi nar for freshmen in California can feature a speaker, anthropologist George Collier, who expatiates for the students on the losses atten dant upon modern technology, in cluding the loss of many tools and skills and "even the loss of hun dreds of species of cultivated plants." This remark about plant loss was apparently made with a perfectly straight face not far from the town of Santa Rosa, where Luther Burbank created new plant hybrids by the dozen, and in the very state that had turned a single navel orange branch, a mutation, into a great industry within the lifetime. of the navel's discoverer. At the same seminar a Professor James Gibbons .of the Stanford Department of Electrical Engi neering downgrades technology by saying that the most it can do for "us in solving the imminent catastrophe of world overpopula tion and insufficient resources is to delay that catastrophe by a few years." Professor Gibbons thinks we must all accept a reduction in the standard of living if we are to have any hope for the future.

Well, so· we must if our anti technologists, for the fancied sake of a few caribou who couldn't care less about the loss of a sliver of Arctic land, insist on holding up the building of a needed oil pipe line for seven years. So we must if the Sierra Club activists keep virtually uninhabited wastes in the Powder River area of Wyom ing and Montana from becoming the center of a coal mining indus try capable of giving us power that now comes at great expense from the Middle East. We fail not because our engi186 THE FREEMAN March neers have lost their skill but be cause the aims of men have sud denly become much smaller than they were in the Golden Fifties. The -engineer is perfectly capable of winning through to new vistas of plenty, and if there is pollution to be fought as a by-product, the engineer can take care of that in his stride once he gets the signal from the people. Maybe the intellectual climate is about to take a turn for the better.

Last year an English economist, Wilfred Beckerman, wrote his witty Two Oheers for the Affluent Society in which he proved the "ecosystem" could do little for man and beast unless there was an economic surplus to turn into wa ter purification and so forth. Now we have Mr. Florman's defense of the artist-engineer, a fit compan ion book to Two Cheers. Inciden tally, St. Martin's Press has pub lished both books, a sign of true sanity. ~ RACE AND ECONOMICS by Thomas Sowell (New York: David McKay and Company, 1975) 276 pp., $9.95. Reviewed by Allan C. Brownfeld IF ONE WERE TO SURVEY what has been written in the U.S. about the racial question during the past quarter century, he would be hard pressed to find a more eloquent and honest presentation than this book by professor Thomas Sowell, a black economist now on the fac ulty of the University of Califor nia at Los Angeles. It deserves wide readership - among mem bers of all races.

Dr. Sowell, a firm advocate of the free market, declares that "Race makes a difference in eco nomic transactions as in all other areas of life," but he denies that the black experience in America is radically different from that of other groups. Although blacks - arrived here during the colonial period, groups whic1h came later - such as the Irish and the Italians - have moved ahead faster. Some have identified race as the retarding factor, but this is a mistaken view, Dr. Sowell argues. It "is not the time . . . of arrival in America, but (1) the time of being freed from slavery, and (2) the time of movement from the rural south 1976 OTHER BOOKS 187 into a modern, industrial and com mercialeconomy . . . " Blacks "had to undergo two ma jor drastic transformations with in two or three generations. They had first to adjust to freedom and individual responsibility for feed ing, clothing and housing them selves. This adjustment had to be made in an economy and society devastated by war .... The sec ond great adjustment was to ur ban living - an experience which had proved shattering to E uro pean immigrants from similar ru ral backgrounds before them.

Most of today's black urban pop ulation has been in the city only two generations, and many of the poorest and most problem-ridden, less than that." The experiences of the Irish im migrant in the 19th century and the black urban dweller of the 20th are, argues Dr. Sowell, very similar. In 1888, William Dean Howells noted that "the settlement of an Irish family in one of our suburban neighborhoods" strikes a "mortal pang" in the old resi dents. Henry George applied the phrase "human garbage" to the immigrants of the 1800's and H. G. Wells doubted that they could be absorbed into society. Dr. Sowell writes that, "The Irish were prominent among the immigrant groups exhibiting the usual symptoms of social pathology among people at the bottom. They had very high rates of death from tuberculosis . . . as well as high rates of insanity, a disproportion ate number of widows and orphans and inmates of poor-houses, as well as very large overrepresenta tion among those arrested and im prisoned."

Of the several 19th century im migrant groups, the Jews ad vanced most quickly. The reason dates hack to their distant past - as did the corresponding failure of other groups to advance more quickly. He writes that, "In one important respect, medieval Jews were very fortunate in the partic ular form of occupational discrimi nation practiced against them. They were forbidden to engage in those occupations which were cen tral to feudalism - those involv ing the land . . . and were there fore forced into urban, commer cial and financial occupations, which would of course later turn out to be central to the modern cap italist economy." Thus, argues the author, blacks, Poles, Irish, Italians and other groups came from a rural and il literate past which had to be over come. Prejudice and discrimina tion was not, in reality, blind ha tred, but represented an aversion to the vast differences between these groups and the urban Amer ican population. As they acclimat188 THE FREEMAN March ed and succeeded, the prejudice largely ended.

The most successful non-white group was the Japanese. They met discrimination, and during World War II were interned by the U.S. Government. Yet, their economic advance continued. Neither they nor the even more successful Jews looked for government aid or as sistance. They simply educated themselves, acquired the skills nec essary to succeed, and made dra matic economic progress. Contrast ing the Japanese approach to that of today's liberal desire for gov ernmental intervention in the eco nomy, Dr. Sowell notes that, "Le gally, Japanese-Americans never received full restitution for their wartime losses .... The actual set tlement payments amounted to no more than ten cents on the dollar. The Japanese-Americans, however, did not put their emphasis on try ing to get justice, but rather on trying to get ahead. This they did." It is Dr. Sowell's conclusion that, "political power is not a necessary condition for economic advance. . . . The Irish were the most politically successful of American minorities. They domi natedpolitical life in a number of American cities by the middle of the 19th century. Yet . . . the bulk of Irish-Americans was still pre dominantly in unskilled and menial occupations in the last decade of the century.. .. Emphasis on promoting economic advancement has produced far more progress than attempts to redress past wrongs."

It is the author's .belief that liberal and interventionist pro grams - minimum wage laws, rent control, school busing - do more harm than good in assisting black Americans to advance economi... cally. Concerning the minimum wage he writes: ·"minimum wage laws are not passed for the pur pose of racial exclusion, but the actual economic--effects do not de pend upon the intentions of those who establish a situation. The net effect of any arrangement which sets the rate of pay above that required to attract the num ber of qualified workers needed is to make it cheaper to discriminate in deciding who not to hire." Sim ilarly, he writes, "Rent control re duces the cost of discrimination in housing, and enables ethnic bound aries to be maintained longer than otherwise." Welfare, in particular, has made many blacks wards of the state and has deadened the in centive needed to progress.

Of the so-called "experts" who have produced programs such as urban renewal - meant to help the poor, but proving counter-produc tive-Dr. Sowell asks for a healthy skepticism: "Everyone understands 1976 OTHER BOOKS 189 that when a representative of a soup company tells us that his product makes the best lunch, a healthy skepticism is in order.· But when a housing 'expert' unveils the latest plan to 'save the cities' or a member of the education lob by asks for expanded 'opportuni ties' for youth to consume his product at taxpayer expense, there is a tendency to regard them as wise men promoting the public interest." Every negative situation faced by blacks today, argues Dr. Sowell, was faced at an earlier time by other immigrant groups. The fu ture success of blacks, he believes, is to look carefully at the qualities which other groups developed to improve their condition: "Among the characteristics associated with success is a future orientation a belief in a pattern of behavior that sacrifices present comforts and enjoyments while preparing for future success."

Today's minorities, Dr. Sowell believes, are not really far behind the 19th century immigrant groups at similar stages of devel opment. The answer, he believes, lies within the groups themselves - not with the larger society. If government would simply stop meddling in such affairs and throwing up roadblocks - such as union shops which have notori ously kept blacks out of skilled crafts and license laws which re strict entry into many jobs-prog ress would be more rapid. Preju dice, the author argues, is not eliminated by carrying placards against it but by removing its causes. The small degree of blind racism which remained would be of little consequence. This book, hopefully, will be come a landmark in the literature of race relations and its relation ship to economic success. It is an eloquent plea for freedom and free enterprise from a black intellec tual about whom we will be hear ing a great deal in the future.

~ FAITH AND FREEDOM: A Bio graphical Sketch of a Great Ameri can, John Howard Pew compiled by Mary Sennholz. (Grove City, Pa., Grove City College, 1975) 179 pp. Avail able at $6.00 from The Foun dation for Economic Education, Irvington-on-Hudson, N. Y. 10533. Reviewed by Mark B. Spangler "We never plan anything. I think there's got to be more cen tral planning. . . . People may think badly of the idea simply be cause anything that smells of government and planning stinks. To me it makes sense."l Those are 1 Time, February 10, 1975, pp. 70-71.

190 THE FREEMAN March the words of Henry Ford II, and they express adequately the most significant change American so ciety has undergone over the course of this century. Govern ment has been sanctioned solver of all problems, particularly in the realm of economics. Today the popular search for economic well being is by way of special privi leges or money transfers from the government. Instructors and students enjoy the use of federal and state aid at schools. Urban renewal officials use federal grants to reconstruct communities. Failing industries petition for federal subsidies as do bankrupt cities. "Charity" has come to mean distributing food stamps, unemployment relief, old age care, health aid, and so on. If the government is not called upon to subsidize, then it is ex pected to control certain actions of individuals. The federal govern ment controls prices that are too high or too low; it regulates com petition that is too much or too little. By issuing licenses and per mits, the state decides who can enter an occupation and who can build what and where. Employers are told whom they can employ and under what conditions; new workers can be told to join a un ion. And so it goes today - utiliz ing government for the benefit of one at the expense of another's liberty or income. Unfortunately, the play does not end happily. His tory has seen such performances time and again and knows the out come.

Consider the following, in direct contrast to the present picture: To J. Howard Pew, every wanton restraint to individual liberty whether practiced by a dictator or a popular government, was a degree of tyranny. He opposed every form of government intervention with the creative activ ity of man. With heavy heart he watched the growth of government in Washington and saw its bureauc racy encroach upon the traditional freedoms of Americans. To him cen tral planning and control meant de nial of individual freedom to plan and control. Therefore in countless speeches, he pleaded the case for in dividual freedom and the private property order, which to him was "the great American Heritage." Who was .T. Howard Pew? He was an industrialist, researcher, developer, manager, and corporate president; he was an entrepre neur of the oil industry. His ca reer covered nearly three quar ters of this century and witnessed the transformation of a free so ciety into a highly controlled so ciety. He saw faith in free men discarded for faith in the state.

"A free economy is only possible when all people stand equal before the law. That is the principle laid 1976 OTHER BOOKS 191 down in our constitution .... But this principle has been violated time after time .... " was one way J. Howard Pew described the pres ent course of America. His actions and words endorsed freedom and free enterprise; he rejected the free society's only alternative, the centrally com manded society and economy. As an "economist" he saw the effi ciency of free markets; as a per son he saw the morality of indi vidual freedom. Mrs. Sennholz reports that Howard Pew was de fiant and recalcitrant to the au thorities of the world, but malle able to eternal principles. Faith and Freedom traces the applica tion of Mr. Pew's principles to the domains of education, economics, industry, charity, religion, the im portance of America's heritage, and the problems which America faces today.

How did Howard Pew approach the problem of serving consumer demands for higher education? He used the same cost-cutting, managerially-efficient approach that enables enterprises to bring all other goods and services to the masses. Certainly he never looked to government to subsidize his enterprise. Profitable enterprises plow the company's earnings back into the business to expand and to continue to serve consumers. Com prehending the economic importance of competition, Mr. Pew spoke against business using poli tics to restrict competitors: "We believe in competition for our selves .... We have never sought . . . a sheltered position. . . . If somebody else can serve the pub lic better in quality or price, he is entitled to the business." He wisely recognized that in a free market employers must com pete for labor's services; hence, he took a personal interest in his em ployees. Howard Pew initiated a stock purchase plan for his em ployees; and during the Great De pression he refused to make gen eral layoffs or wage reductions.

He understood how free market prices regulate an economy and direct its production; price con trols only restrain economic growth. Mrs. Sennholz has in cluded in the book one of his 1934 speeches relating the damaging repercussions that could have been brought upon the oil industry if at that time the government had imposed controls just on trans portation. He gives a clear de scription of the process by which federal controls snowball once ini· tiated. The major evil of our time is inflation, and Howard Pew knew that inflation is the expansion of the money supply by federal offi cials. It is such expansion which causes prices to rise in a general 192 THE FREEMAN March fashion, thus bringing instability to the economy and making calcu lation almost impossible. "War, pestilences, plagues, and catastro phes rarely bring about the fall of a nation; but inflation has been responsible for the downfall of many great empires of the past,"