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Show DISCUSSING TECHNOCRACY An editor's desk in the course of a week's time becomes a clearing house for many subjects, some blase and common-place; others, strange and little understood. This week over our desk (which incidentally is but and arm's reach from a rather ungainly appearing but nevertheless substantial waste-basket) conies a 20-page 20-page booklet telling us just what Technocracy is in the manner its promulgators would have it understood. We read its pages and it seems to us that such might have been the type of literature circulated in Russia before the Czars were displaced and Bolshevism took their place, altho the advocates advo-cates of technocracy claim the usurping of the present order of government in our courty will be done peacefully. We quote: "You shall be the great, new Techno party ! Without violence and within the law but unyielding and implacable the Technos, 30 million worker and farmer families strong, shall wrest the machine ma-chine from their 350 masters" This booklet says our nation is controlled by 350 owner-families; it refers to our soldiers as dogs who fought for their masters, mas-ters, returned home torn and mangled and then were permitted to starve, bleed and die. It criticizes our machine age and the so-called 350 masters as being responsible for our present distress and holds dangling before be-fore the eye a promise of a life of comparative ease (four hours work a day) for the "masses if they adopt technocracy's new idea. And thus were the peasants of Puissia invegiled. Overthrow the Czars and all would be well, v But the public must have its leaders. The only thing techno cracy holds out is promise, promise of things which it may and may not be able to deliver. Idleness breeds mischief and too much would not be good for our nation. The advocates of technocracy would take the machines now in use, continue their operation, but take the profits from the few and distribute them among the many. This smirks of socialism. In times as the present, the public lends a willing ear to any scheme or plan which holds out the Utopian idea of socialism, equality for all. The itinerant worker who cannot write his own name placed on an equal basis with the mental genius of Einstein. For those who believe they now are downtrodden, a whirl at technocracy would be an interesting experience. Workers would become automatons; they would punch the clock at 8 o'clock in the morning when they went to work, they would punch it again at noon Mhen the shops closed down for the day. I' very thing would be conducted on a scientific and methodical basis; individuality individu-ality would be destroyed; ours would truly become a mechanical era with equal wages for all and no premium for mential ability or effort. Those who sponsor technocracy merely would supplant those "350 master families" and we would carry on. Technocracy might be the solution to our present ills and distress, but it is a little hard to see. Our government of the people, for the people and by the people would be the finest type of government possible to design if the public only took enough, interest in it to make it their government. But we, thru carelessness at polls and on other occasions, permit per-mit our public servants to become masters; we allow them to spend money to a point where taxes are exhorbitant and property is seized, and blame these so-called masters. And when a new type of master comes along with a glim-ring and untried idea we cry: "Here at last is the solution to our troubles!" What this country needs (and the only thing we believe it needs) is a revolution at the polls, where cheap politicians can be placed in the background and honest, conscientious citizens elected elect-ed to conduct the affairs of our state and nation on a businesslike basis, keeping expenditures within budgets, and drafting budgets that are safely within the ability of the public to pay. If the people of our nation are unable to conduct their own government, then we can see little relief in sight for them by turning it over to the advocates of technocracy. It would be but a further admission that we are unable to rule. Helper Journal. . r |
