A FACT LABORATORY

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 105, 27 January 1933, Page 9

A FACT LABORATORY

“Technocracy,” America’s New Word AUTHORS’ EXPLANATION A group of engineers using the facilities of Columbia University to further the alms of "technocracy” are resentful of a blunt criticism made by Mr. Roger W. Babson in an address in New York. Mr. Babson, statistician and business analyst, termed technocracy “bunk and nonsense,” and said its proposal of restricted production as a, cure for unemployment was a “crime against the American standard of living.” He added that “blaming the present business depression on machinery is a lie.” “Mr. Babson has not Informed himself on the data technocracy has gathered,” asserted Dr. Walter Rautenstrauch, professor of mechanical engineering and member of many scientific societies, “and he has never received an authoritative statement from technocracy concerning its findings or conclusions. Technocracy has never made the suggestions which Babson attributes to us of limiting production. “On the contrary,” said Dr. Rautenstrauch, “we believe that America is on the threshold of a new era of well-being, if it can organise itself to control adequately the social mechanism. Nothing to Sell. “We also recall,” the professor continued, “many statements made by Mr. Babson in times of our prosperity which have become matters of record in a little book called ‘Oh, Yeah?’ and we would suggest that the pseudo readers of economic thought in the halcyon days of jazz economics refer to their scrapbooks and refresh their memories on their wise sayings of that period. “Nor, I may say,” concluded Dr. Rautenstrauch, “is technocracy interested in promoting the sales of anything. We are a fact laboratory, with nothing to Sell.” Mr. Howard Scott, the tall, lean Virginian, who had the original idea of technocracy, agreed with these views. Mr. Scott, when questioned as to the meaning of the word technocracy, said that it was a compound of two Greek words: Techne, meaning technique, and the termination “craey,” meaning power or rule. Technocracy, therefore, might be defined as the rule of technique used as a method of arriving at a decision: a technical method of approach. In discussing technocracy, Dr. Rautenstrauch drew an analogy between the control of a highly integrated power station and a highly integrated social system. He pointed out that the modern power plant is a complex system,, where there are many machines which work together. These are coordinated by controls. Social System Out of Gear. As an illustration, he used an electric power plant where, in case of a storm, the load is automatically increased. He said that we have developed that sort of social system, supposed automatically to increase the load or take up the slack, as required. But, said Dr. Rautenstrauch. something has happened to our social system which has thrown it out of gear. Both he and Mr. Scott, who is also an engineer, maintain that technocracy is a fact laboratory. They say that they have not yet secured all the facts upon which conclusions must be based. It is not their purpose to propose a remedy, but they hope to have the facts available for those who must be guided by them. They make it clear that technocracy is engaged wholly with purely scientific research Into the matter of how the physical equipment of the North American Continent functions, and that it has no thought of any individual profit and no political association. Its findings are (o be impersonally accurate and coldly scientific.