Chapter 5

Chapter 5: Vendettas and Morality

“Morals,” said Bernard Shaw, “is suspecting your neighbors of not being legally married.”

“Morals,” said an American teenager, “is a noble art practiced between two persons who know each other’s needs.”

The latter kind of morals has a lot to do with a nation’s economy and social stability. Another word for it is consideration. The consideration must also be shown by the community in not interfering with its members’ behavior when this behavior is tempered by, consideration to all sides. The community, should protect its members from attack and coercion but not prescribe behavior.

In the American community we are lucky to be able to practice monogamy, a deeply satisfying though challenging social custom which seems to suit our majority, and which could not be practiced in ancient Arabia where males died like flies in wars and vendettas and there was such a surplus of women that to make love and motherhood available to most, men had to marry many wives. Conversely, in modern Tibet the men are in a majority and women marry several men. Some women often marry all the brothers of one family.

In the present American society many consider the monogamistic family the basis of our social structure, its atom. Two units, man and woman, voluntarily unite into one. If substantial numbers of these voluntary units are broken, by divorce, for example, does not the entire social pattern face collapse?

Not if consideration has been shown or at least sincerely tried. But if a man writes–as one recently did-in a national magazine, “My wife became ill, could no longer satisfy me, so I had to leave her and seek my happiness elsewhere, doesn’t he suspect lie is doing his bit to dissolve our society as it is today? Whatever business security lie still enjoyed , whatever income he could carry safely home, whatever fruits of our civilization he still enjoyed- doesn’t he suspect all these things were due, not to himself any longer but to those others, who still field together the fine threads of which our communities are built, who wouldn’t just leave a sick mate? The man of conscience, the man who can see beyond his car, and the freeway, not merely obeys the law but adds other laws of his own making.

Why did this man write that article in the first place? No doubt to defend himself against neighbors who disagreed with him and, above all, against himself. And why did the editor print it? To air a most interesting and vital subject and to give the man a chance to plead his cause. This is the case with so many articles and books which are misinterpreted by outsiders as portraying a callous moral standard. The opposite is true. These things are read with interest because they are unusual, because the reader tests these aberrations against his own life and meaning, against a marriage, perhaps, that, aided and abetted by consideration and togetherness, developed beyond his wildest hopes.

From his mountain of happiness he may even doubt the validity of polls. Some teenage girls have told him about poll-takers from scientific study groups asking them about their sex lives and those who said they had none, that they were waiting for marriage, were just stricken off the list, considered liars.

In today’s discussions, including statistics, (“Statistics can be used to support anything, particularly statisticians.”) toughness is often preferred over truth and it is forgotten that a young girl, who has been permitted to grow like a flower, also belongs to the human race. At her first awakening of a liking, a fondness, she tries to cover her feelings, even to herself. To the civilized sexist, she is a square and he may shout it in her ear because her beautiful innocence makes her doubly desirable. He blames her unresponse on “the old morals”, not knowing that teenager’s definition or that no society ever had any old or new morals, but that this word means an art practiced between people who feel each other’s need. To such people statistics are flat. They do not look to the community for moral rules, although they may appreciate society’s protection against the inconsiderate. Though even this is dubious as long as society does not permit each man to satisfy his urges by offering him a valid chance to earn, each day, his and his family’s bread.

Oh? Since when did this become society’s duty?

Since about fifty years ago in the United States. This was when a haphazard association of people became welded into a technological dragon abundantly able to take care of any one willing to lend a hand or brain, however limited. Peter F. Drucker, teaching management at the New York University, thinks we are now about to realize this (“Harvard Business Review”, November-December ’69):

“Within another ten years we will become far less concerned with management development (that is, adapting the individual to the demands of the organization), and far more with organization development (that is, adapting the company to the needs, aspirations and potentials of individuals).”

Delaying this sound development are such current lamentations,

“A core of unemployables will always be with us since some cannot acquire the talents needed in our cybernetic working place.” Obviously these people do not know much about “our cybernetic working place”.

Americans who trained Hindu and Vietnam peasants to become efficient plumbers and mechanics already applied Peter Drucker’s second principle, adapting their task to the needs, aspirations and potentials of their charges. Lockheed Aircraft Company did it here at home; gambled on two efforts at once (Harvard Business Review September-October 1968). Near Atlanta, Georgia, a group was employed of which sixty-three percent had records; seventy-three percent were of racial or national minority groups; sixty percent bad previously been )n welfare; only fifteen percent had ever been industrially employed before; medium age was twenty-six; thirty percent were married. The other group was at Sunnyvale, California; seventy-six percent of these people had been on welfare; forty percent had police records; only twenty percent had ever been industrially employed, medium age was twenty- six; eighty -two percent were heads of house – holds. They had on an average ten years’ education.

Length of training was twelve weeks for the first group (sheet metal) and four weeks for the second group (odd jobs, though some became key-punch operators, electrical assemblers). Seventy-eight entered training in the first group and forty-three worked. In the second group one hundred eleven entered training and one hundred eight worked.

The turnover record was better for these hard-core “unemployables” than for the company’s average, and one supervisor commented, “Best trained and most productive men I’ve ever received!” Another comment, “These men (and women) really want to work; they work hard and the quality of their work is very good.”

The training was based on continuous demonstrations and repetitions. The instructors concluded that all training ought to be conducted in this fashion. The requirements during training were aimed slightly higher than strictly necessary for the jobs to be performed. This increased confidence and improved performance and this, too, was considered a hint. for future training in general.

These people had definite jobs to look forward to all through their training. which was specifically tailored to these jobs-a far safer and better procedure than general training which may or may not result in a job not yet defined.

These trainees appeared more eager to succeed, more dedicated than the average influx of employees, thus spiking the contention that “unemployables” would be improperly motivated.

The two Lockheed groups were small but they started a trend. Not all following efforts were as successful as Lockheed’s, though one more recent try was even more successful. The Bell System Companies of New Jersey hired 173 “hard-core unemployables”. A June 1970 report quotes the drop-out rate for this category at four percent while the rate for regular male employees hired during the same period was forty-three percent. Some had uncorrectable visual defects, some asthma, some had had hearing problems and some atrophied limbs. Several were suspected of using narcotics. Every one flunked the group test that Bell gives to all applicants. They were nevertheless employed–as truck drivers, coin box collectors, even as business machine operators or at crafts or technical work. It was concluded that the company’s aptitude tests had unnecessarily screened out acceptable candidates. G.P. Bisgeier, Medical Director of the New Jersey Bell Telephone Company, reported, “The Group Record is surprisingly good.”

In THE CHOICES WE FACE, Lyndon Baines Johnson’s compact overview of his Presidential period, he reports his talks with Henry Ford II about a pilot project of private firms hiring “unemployables” in our fifty largest cities. At the end of 1968 he estimated that twenty-two million Americans were still “very poor”. So we haven’t come far. The miniscule successes are still important. They pinpoint the potentials.

A Foreign Aid veteran commented, “We, who trained Hindus and Vietnamese to become plumbers and mechanics, knew the principles of thorough demonstrations and repetitions that also secured Lockheed’s and Bell’s successes. Much sooner than we expected, our trainees turned around and helped us. And, like Bell, we ignored the usual tests and educational requirements. Lockheed first set a fifth grade reading ability as condition for employment, then found this unnecessary and lowered the entrance condition to second grade reading. In India and Vietnam there were no entrance requirements at all. This, I hope, shall eventually apply everywhere.”

More important than employment in existing enterprises is search for and development of entrepreneurial talents, so more people may establish and run their own firms. In the May-June 1970 Harvard Business Review Michael Brower and Doyle Little extensively review “Black Capitalism”. This is defined as Negro ownership, management and control of productive profit- seeking organizations. Since Negro participation along such has been relatively low, the search for more black capitalism has become a national goal and is overwhelmingly endorsed within the largest corporations. What is sought are not small, marginal businesses, or exploitation of poor black workers by a few rich black capitalists, but sizeable businesses owned widely by workers and residents of a community, or a broadly controlled community development corporation. A growing number of large companies have established programs to develop such minority businesses, with investments ranging from $10,000 to $300,000. More companies are making a point of buying from black businesses.

There is a prospect of much larger involvement when the art of finding and developing competent black management will have become better understood. With few exceptions, corporations have not been too successful in choosing either black managers or temporary white managers for new black businesses. Better management has been selected when white sponsoring corporations worked with black community development organizations that (lid the search, screening and selection Of management Good results were also obtained when black entrepreneurs sought out, the white corporations, rather than waiting for the initiative to come from the latter. Generally, people with previous managerial experience, either in large industries or in their own small enterprises, did better than, for example, teachers or government workers without managerial experience.

While concrete results are, so far, few and far between, there is determination from both sides to make this work. It is a real and coming thing, particularly when the multisurveys planned by the Kennedy people will be resumed and followed by economic expansion with ample means available for what we want to do. In the same May-June number of Harvard Business Review, Dean S. Ammer writes about THE SIDE EFFECTS OF PLANNING, showing how the increasingly frequent “three-year plans” and “five-year plans” of private businesses influence the entire national economy. Some may wonder whether we are copying socialist planning when we speak of three or five-year plans. There is a crucial difference. The five-year plans of American firms keep strictly to the well-known area of each particular firm and do not build bureaucratic fantasy structures upon insufficient information.

The effects of these five-year plans in the community in general is to stabilize the economy while at the same time keeping tuned to technological changes-the same effect that the Kennedy surveys would have. Additionally, these five, and- three -year plans would form an excellent preparation and foundation for the larger survey planned by the Kennedy group and explained in the last chapter.

We have displayed the tantalizing prospective goodies — for whose benefit? The monogamistic couple, community’s atom, at their mountain of happiness? Or the henpecked and the nagging? Fools laugh at Abraham Lincoln and Socrates and their wife trouble, forgetting that these great men gave their mates what nobody else could. Apart from that, with more ample incomes the nagging might recede. Or the child, in whom the couple and parent merge, isn’t it a worthy receiver? For what can all the love in the world and all religions do for a mother who doesn’t have money to feed her child? But through our surveys and efforts, the community may be given the, means to feed all mothers and their children, which will prove cheaper in the end.

Here religion enters again, or seems to enter, through the back door of statistics, which indicates that divorce rates are lower — in one count as low as one to one hundred and twenty five — among people deeply devoted to a religious ideal, as compared to one to five for others. Additionally, community spirit and distribution of food and necessities are smoother, avoiding crisis, in religious groups.

However, religion alone is not enough to provide a sound and efficient economic structure. There must also be knowledge — for example, knowledge of how money is created or destroyed in our modern community. A community’s daily activities create and destroy money. When a business man borrows from a bank, a myriad of new deposits are developed through accounting and banking practices, more so if business in general is booming. Also, when the Government borrows money through a bond issue, and cannot sell all of these bonds to the public, it offers the rest. to certain banks. As a result. new deposits are created in the books of the nation. We have more money in our hands are funding more businesses, more jobs — until, eventually, the banks may sell these bonds or some of them to their clients. That may, or may not reduce the money in circulation, depending on what these clients do with their bonds.

Ouch! Now some think we may just as well create as much money as we seem to need in this manner. Creating too much may be as dangerous as strangling the supply. Two things must be considered before a businessman will ask for a loan and before a bank will grant it: Will the loan serve to produce goods that can be sold for a pro profit? 9 And, are there workers and equipment available to produce those goods or services?

The first question may be answered by a survey. So far a market analysis has been sufficient. Now we have come to a point where a more sophisticated, more comprehensive national survey of the whole field of science, technology, manpower and desires is required. Before such a survey has been undertaken, no bank and no government truly knows what we can afford. Such a comprehensive survey was planned during the Kennedy Administration and shall be briefly described in the concluding chapter.

The question of available labor is controversial, as a previous discussion hinted. The solution to this problem was one of the purposes of the survey planned during the Kennedy Administration.

Now my burglarious mind is invading a convoy leader’s mind, as it was in World War II. It wants to tell about an innovation, eagerly, proudly. The general rule, it says, was to tell the convoy drivers to keep in touch With the vehicle ahead. They did — and lost the ones behind, who often had to wait for crossing traffic. Large chunks of the convoys were cut off for hours, days, sometimes were never found.

Our American society, be says, is like these convoy drivers looking obediently ahead, not back or to the sides. So we are losing not only the marginals, the “unemployables”, the millions we misjudged “unfit”, but in addition our balance, or sense, and our organization.

One day, our friend had his turn as a convoy leader. He reversed the order of the day: Drivers, look back. Look ahead too, but be sure to keep in touch with the vehicle behind you. From then on, all vehicles arrived together. Order, sanity, cohesion were restored.

Lastly, I venture a jump to that Yogi haven, the Himalayas. On my way to Badrinath, that holiest of shrines, I arrived with the pilgrim crowd at Bela Kushi. We were told our car would take us all the way to Joshimath. How could that be? Before us was the foaming, frothing Aknanda River crossed by nothing better than a fragile, swaying footbridge.

What did these local drivers do? Without a moment’s hesitation, they jumped from their seats, ripped their tool kits from the trunks, took the cars apart, ran across the swaying footbridge with the parts in their rucksack, assembled the cars on the other bank. No sooner was the last nut tight than the drivers jumped into their seats again and drove confidently on to Joshimath. They could not write their names in a single language. They didn’t know one word of English. Yet, in a few weeks, Americans had taught them to be assemblers as good as the best in Detroit.

Reading and writing are two of the most overrated qualifications. And what about enthusiasm? Perhaps these Hindu auto assemblers had more of it than some Americans who have lost their hope through generations of mismanagement.

This means it may take a little longer here. That is all.