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Show WHO'S NEWS THIS WEEK By LEMUEL F. PARTON NEW YORK. The other day, a brisk, dapper little old man stepped into a big Wall street investment in-vestment banking office and asked for the top boss, W.C.Durant with an alr 0f InScrimmage assurance. He Again at 77 had an audience and came out full of business and stepping high. A friend, who was doing business busi-ness there that day, reports to me that the peppy visitor was William G. Durant, twice kead of General Motors, once the master of $100,000,000, and that, at the age of 77, Mr. Durant was scouting new capital for another big tourney in motor finance. My friend couldn't learn whether wheth-er he got it, but said he had heard there was a deal on which might put Mr. Durant on the main line again. He said the little lit-tle Napoleon of early day auto finance looked as if he were about to merge all companies and skim the cream. It was in 1910 that the bankers crowded Mr. Durant out of the presidency pres-idency of General Motors. He was back in 1915 and out again in 1920, in the post-war crash, in which he jettisoned $90,000,000 of his own money, trying to stop the down-slide down-slide of the stock. He took his losses casually and was busy for years in daring market forays, but never quite converted any of his passes.' An acquaintance of this writer, who knew Mr. Durant well told me how he laughed off his second relinquishment re-linquishment of his motors kingdom. "I built the greatest automobile automo-bile building in the world, at Detroit," he said, according to my informant, "and when I did it, I fixed it so they won't soon forget me. Hidden somewhere in every column and every capital capi-tal and big stack of that building there is a deeply chiseled D. There wasn't anything anonymous anon-ymous about that job, and I took good care to leave my mark on it." So did the king in Kipling's poem, when he was pulled off his big palace pal-ace building job. when "They said thy use is fulfilled." He "Carved on every timber and cut on every stone." and the poem concludes, "After me cometh a builder; tell him I, too, have known." TOR several years, Dr. Karl T. Compton. president of Massachusetts Massachu-setts Institute of Technology and one of. the nation's greatest scientists, . has explored the For Science- no man's iand Government between an ex- Collaboration Pending govern-ment govern-ment and an expanding ex-panding technology. He thinks they ought to get together but he is no advocate of bureaucracy or extreme federalization. He doesn't like the idea of the government getting on anybody's neck. He thinks the government, gov-ernment, with its vast resources, might be an invaluable collaborator with science, and should be, in fact, but he advances this idea warily, as he finds creativeness and social progress in the old American free-for-all, without elaborate governmental govern-mental trimmings. He never claimed an ivory tower, and sees the problem in its simple social components of jobs, a rising standard of living, social progress and security. He notes the job-killing potentialities potentiali-ties of the machine, in certain Individual instances, and assesses as-sesses industrial management with finding a corrective. This qualified admission is In sharp contrast to the view of Dr. Robert Andrews Millikan. another distinguished scientist who has wrestled with the same problem. Doctor Millikan is for throwing the throttle wide open, with the certainty certain-ty that machines ultimately will make more jobs than they destroy. Both, however, prescribe as n cure for our technological ills more of the hair of the dog that bit us. The difference in view is that Dr. Compton urges certain collective rationalizations and judicious self-imposed self-imposed controls by industry and management. For many years Dr. Compton has been blasting at (tie inner citadel of the atom to seize there the hidden gulden key of umlim-Ited umlim-Ited power which has long been the "pie hi the sky" of th great physicists. Ho batters down ft rampart now and then, and, In the lonij view of the scientists, thinks (hut we tuny some d:iy tap reservoirs of energy so vast that nil our present Ills will b easily soluble therein, lie has headed M. I. T. since 1I':!0. Now rounding " was head of the department of physics at Princeton Prince-ton before I iKil). one of the most richly garlanded men of bis profession profes-sion in honors and records of achievement. & 'ensellil.ilril New FV;tuiCi. WNU SoivlfC. |