The E’s Have It

Dr. Paton is Professor Emeritus of Account­ing and of Economics, University of Michigan, and is known throughout the world for his outstanding work in these fields. His current comments on American attitudes and behavior are worthy of everyone’s attention.

Individual man shows a persist­ent tendency to organize his think­ing and activity. Watch the small child eagerly observing his sur­roundings and you will soon note evidences of the desire to systema­tize the results of his observations. He starts sizing up, pondering, as well as accumulating information. And if he is not thwarted by the misdirected efforts of parents and teachers he will build up his store of savvy at an amazing rate.

This tendency to array, to clas­sify, is something for which to be thankful. Without the taxonomic inclination, indeed, it is hard to see how one could cope construc­tively with the complexities of life on this planet, especially if he is a member of a “civilized” community. If the individual is disor­ganized, lacking in understanding, the flow of phenomena encountered these days is likely to take on the appearance of a callithumpian pa­rade—with resulting bewilder­ment and inability to chart an orderly course.

At the best the life road traveled will have rough spots. Buffets from an unfriendly nature can be expected as well as difficulties and obstacles arising from association with the other humans who are making the trip.

General Standards Needed

It is a great help, in contending with both routine affairs and spe­cial problems, to have established guidelines, primary rules or stand­ards, to which reference can readily be made. We need stances, positions. These should be devel­oped early in life, and become so embedded in attitudes and be­havior, so firmly a part of the warp and woof of the personality, as to provide automatically for right answers and actions in deal­ing with the great mass of cir­cumstances and events met with in ordinary living. It would be a great nuisance, for example, if in­tensive study and research were required—every day—to settle questions of sleeping and waking hours, attire, mealtimes and menus, how and when to go to work, and so on. Those who spend a lot of time and energy on such matters rob themselves of the pos­sibility of giving serious attention to the more crucial—and interest­ing—concerns with which they are faced. (Of course, if the lady really enjoys taking a half-day or more to select a pair of shoes, and has no more pressing or attractive alternatives, a defense can be made for dillydallying at the store.)

A degree of flexibility, it need hardly be said, is required as the individual steers his way through varying, changing conditions, and deals with the complications and cruxes that are bound to arise. The chap who becomes rigidly “set in his ways” will often vex his associates, and stand in his own light as well.

An endowment of basic stand­ards, it should be understood, will not automatically solve complex problems. Such standards provide nothing more than a broad back­ground on which to keep an eye during the process of doing the research and pondering required in coming to reasonable conclu­sions, forming sound judgments.

The Twin E’s as Possible Guidelines

There are numerous underlying concepts and points of view that may serve as building blocks for character and conduct. Some are rooted in ethics, some stress tech­nology, some show special concern for man’s physical well-being, some are heavily loaded with po­litical considerations—and the reader can readily lengthen the list. The twin E’s, efficiency and equity, have been roughly useful to me, particularly in dealing with issues in business operation and economics generally. I’m a long­time admirer of high-level per­formance, top-flight workmanship, in all lines of endeavor, including the most lowly pursuits. And in company with practically every­body I am also devoted to the ideal of being fair, acting justly, in all transactions and relation­ships. These benchmarks of be­havior are not unduly obscure, and are widely acceptable in general terms. They are nevertheless in need of a bit of examination, in part because there is considerable misunderstanding associated with their meanings and applications.

Efficiency—E One

Regarded from an economic point of view efficiency is pecu­liarly an aspect of the process of production; it represents produc­tivity raised to a higher power. In relation to the individual, effi­ciency refers to both quality and quantity of personal accomplish­ment. In a broader sense efficiency means overall utilization of man­power and other resources in a superior manner, with the goal of maximizing the flow of goods from the economic pipeline.

The level of efficiency, perform­ance, is accordingly a crucial fac­tor in connection with all efforts to maintain or increase the vol­ume of output. Thus those who are genuinely devoted to bettering standards of living, abolishing poverty, and making more gener­ous handouts abroad should be earnest—if not ardent—advocates of efficient industrial operation. They cannot reasonably condone carelessness and indifference in economic activity, anywhere along the line, to say nothing of outright loafing and soldiering. They must support good organization and ad­ministration. They must be on the alert to oppose interferences by either governmental or private agencies with new methods and techniques designed to reduce waste, promote better operating performance, and spur product im­provement and development of new products.

In the area of commonplace manual activities, such as laying shingles or trimming hedges, it is usually fairly easy to select the star operatives, and measure mar­gins of superiority. Even here, however, there are questions to settle in making comparisons and forming judgments. When the boys go out to the swamp to pick wild raspberries no one expects 8-year-old Tom to equal the ac­complishment of his 12-year-old brother Dick, and 16-year-old Harry may well do still better. Likewise in appraising mature workers, in any field, muscular strength, eyesight, native intelli­gence, and other inherent qualities must be taken into account in rat­ing performances (which doesn’t mean that the handicapped person, even if his effort is 100 per cent, should be rated above or be paid more than a superior workman whose effort falls short of the best of which he is capable).

In the area of those providing professional and quasiprofessional services, including inventors, re­searchers, explorers, and other highly specialized workers in the economic vineyard, it is more dif­ficult to array individuals in terms of level of performance. In the field of business management, for example, who constitute the out­standing performers, who make up the second flight, the third-placers, and so on? In appraising execu­tives, breakdowns are of course necessary in terms of years of ex­perience, levels of responsibility, and other factors. The familiar tests of the rung of the financial ladder attained by the manager personally, or by the organization he heads, are not free from objec­tion as measures of essential talent and accomplishment.

Among rank-and-file staff, and laymen generally, as we all know, the supervisors and bosses, includ­ing the top brass, often don’t rank very high on any scale. Opinions and judgments from such quar­ters, as we also know, are likely to be uninformed and arbitrary. The widespread bias against business, which will probably always be with us, stands in the way of good measurement of either people or enterprises by popular polls. Even among students of economics the key functions of the entrepreneur, and the savers and investors who provide the necessary funds, are often not clearly seen, and con­vincing anyone that speculators may be rendering an important service in the market economy is next to impossible. The confirmed socialist, of course, insists on clas­sifying all capitalists as parasitic, if not as full-fledged jaegers.

One other phase of the problem of defining and measuring level of performance should be mentioned. In an economy dominated by ma­chine methods, and with produc­tion largely in the hands of busi­ness enterprises commanding a complex of tools and employing a substantial number of people, fur­nishing a wide range of services, the individual participant is a part of a package of productive factors and his particular contribution may not be readily determinable. Moreover, the performance of the particular human agent is bound to vary with the nature of the package of which he is a part. The individual’s productivity, in other words, will vary with his tech­nological endowment, and the over­all setting in which he is working. To use a very simple example from farm operation, the man plowing with an old-model tractor, not in first-class condition, cannot be ex­pected to match the showing of the man operating a fast, modern ma­chine.

Increasing attention is being given nowadays, quite properly, to ways and means of motivating the members of the enterprise staff, and of judging capability and achievement. But there are no easy solutions, no convincing and infallible measurement techniques, conveniently at hand. Where two or more factors contribute to a common end there is literally no valid physical method of assigning the value of the result to the con­tributing factors. The only signifi­cant solution available is the im­putation furnished automatically by the mechanism of the market.

Efficiency—Conditions Conducive and Contrary

In the above comments on E One are some suggestions and implica­tions as to conditions encouraging or discouraging to high-level effort and achievement in the economic realm, but this important subject needs further attention—at least to the extent of outlining major factors. In extending the discus­sion, briefly, no attempt will be made to distinguish sharply be­tween efficiency in the sense of personal, individual accomplish­ment and the level of performance—productivity—for the economy as a whole. The two aspects are of course closely related.

The basic requirement is the institution of the market, referred to above. In the absence of a market economy there is no sub­stantial foundation for top-flight workmanship and high productiv­ity. Without a market there can be no exchange (beyond clumsy bar­ter), without exchange there is no opportunity to specialize, and without specialization there is little or no incentive to become an expert, a master, in any line. Even the potential jack-of-all-trades has small chance in a non-market environment, lacking an array of trades at which he can bestir himself.

The term “miracle” has often been used to characterize the amazing accomplishment of the free competitive market as the director of economic activity—both production and distribution—and this characterization scarce­ly goes too far. Reflecting the con­tinuing interplay of the attitudes and desires of the host of partici­pants, the market gives the signals that channel resources into an in­tricate array of enterprises, turn­ing out a still more elaborate pat­tern of products, and at the same time determines the shares in the output—makes the awards to all contributors and claimants. The market, in other words, provides an impersonal and automatic ther­mostat for the entire economic process.

The institution of the market has proved to be tough, but it is not indestructible. If laden with a maze of governmental restric­tions and interferences the mar­ket’s ability to translate promptly into prices the ever-changing flow of impulses from buyers and sell­ers, can be impaired to the point of malfunction, and if the process of piling on regulations is contin­ued the end result will be some form of central planning or social­ist dictatorship. It is beyond the scope of this small piece to pre­sent an indictment of collectiv­ism, of any variety, but both the historical and current scenes pre­sent an abundance of evidence of the inefficiencies and tyrannies that flow from governmental oper­ation of the economy. If the reader has any doubts on this point let him take a careful look at the ex­perience of the U.S. post office—or any other business run by a political apparatus of any kind. Or let him read the devastating account of “The Rise and Fall of the National Plan”, in Great Britain, by the Honorable J. Enoch Powell,¹ and follow this with Dr. G. Warren Nutter’s The Strange World of Ivan Ivanov.²

Other Wasteful Interventions

Government action is not the only source of interference with the free market which threatens the survival of that institution. The restraints and arbitrary rules imposed by labor unions constitute a substantial roadblock to the functioning of the market, espe­cially in certain sections of the mechanism, and undoubtedly re­sult in inefficient use of available resources and serious limitation of output. I still wince when I read about the 20-25-hour work week. What in the world will a guy do with the remaining 140 or more hours? And I can’t overlook the soldiering tendencies, lack of discipline, seniority rules, required featherbedding, and other features of present-day labor practice standing in the way of greater productivity.

Inefficient use of human re­sources wouldn’t be so bad if we could keep the machines going without the men. Driving past a construction job on the highway, and seeing the equipment stand­ing idle, in broad daylight and good weather as well as when working conditions are unfavora­ble, continues to be a painful ex­perience for us worrywarts. The spectacle is then made infuriating by a big sign with the legend “Your Tax Dollars at Work”.

But we can’t blame all our eco­nomic troubles and losses on gov­ernment and the unions—or on the weather. There is a widespread infection amongst us of bad habits and practices. Vandalism is ram­pant, and we are becoming so callous that the smashing of a score of plate-glass windows, coupled with a bit of looting, or the wrecking of a schoolroom, are hardly worth noticing in the news. Major criminal action, organized and disorganized, and increasing at a frightening pace, is surely man-made, and can only be curbed by concerted human effort. Fire does a fantastic amount of damage across the country, and few com­munities of substantial size escape serious conflagrations for long periods. There are undoubtedly many cases of arson and sabotage, and lightning does strike occasion­ally, but sheer carelessness by smokers and others remains the number-one cause. The carnage on the highways, resulting in 55,000 deaths and about 80 times that number of reported injuries an­nually, should perhaps be put at the top of the list. As every police officer and car repairman knows (and anyone willing to observe and think does too), traffic acci­dents are accounted for by the bad driving habits of a substantial fraction of the licensed operators, and the effort to shift the respon­sibility to the cars—remarkably well-built and efficient vehicles—is one of the silliest nonsense campaigns to which we have been subjected. The universal method adopted by the newspapers in re­porting accidents, describing the car capers that bring disaster to the driver, is truly exasperation reading.

If anyone were to stand on the street corner and poll passers-by with the simple question: “Do you favor waste, inefficiency, and low productivity?” it is safe to say that he would receive negative answers from almost all of those whose attention he could attract to his question. But if he could follow this up by studies of the habits and conduct of a sample of the people polled he would find condoning of bad present-day prac­tices and conditions, and active participation therein, in many cases. Again, unfortunately, we don’t practice what we preach.

We Have Still Fared Well

With all our frailties and troubles the performance of the American economy to date has been almost incredibly good, by all comparative tests. Favored by the stimulus of a substantial de­gree of laissez faire, in our politi­cal and economic environment, the economic output of the United States, in both volume and variety of products, has been the world’s wonder—and envy. The basic sta­tistics of our affluence, and margin of superiority, have been widely publicized, and will not be quoted here. Instead I’ll tell a short story of personal experience. About fifteen years back I was pinned down by bad weather at the “Soo”, in Michigan, and was trying to do a bit of writing while waiting at the hotel. My ball-point suddenly gave out—as they still do. Down town I went to get a couple of new cartridges. In the department store I wandered into I caught sight of a small barrel filled with plastic, retractable ball-point pens, attractive in appearance and priced—you won’t believe it—at 50 each! I tried one or two and ended up buying a dozen, the total cost being less than the price of a refill cartridge for my old pen. As I recall there was only one lemon in the bunch. This episode im­pressed me then and has continued to impress me as token evidence of the tremendous surge of Amer­ican technology and the marvels afforded by our operating methods and the mechanism of the free market. I would wager, and give odds, if there were any way of deciding, that if a government bureau or board had been estab­lished when the Pilgrim Fathers came ashore from the Mayflower, about 350 years ago, with instruc­tions to produce a workable ball­point pen to retail for a nickel, the result to date would be the complete failure of the undertak­ing. They would probably still not have a pen of any kind.

The problem now, in a nutshell, is how to retain the essential fea­tures and blessings of the system.

Equity—E Two

The other side of the coin is equity, fairness, and this is a more elusive concept, and hence more widely misinterpreted, than the standard of efficiency, superior performance. About all that can be attempted here is to throw some light on major misunderstandings, and indicate the linkage of E-Two with E-One.

The fatal weakness in the popu­lar view of the meaning of equity results from loading the concept heavily with sentimentality—turning it into an emotional lode­star. According to this slant on the subject, fairness in human conduct means giving primary at­tention to the needs and desires of the “disadvantaged”, the “under­privileged”, coupled at times with actual restraint and discourage­ment of the more talented and productive amongst us. This view is grounded in part on the famil­iar tendency in family life to de­vote especial care to the sick or ailing member, or the crippled child. No one in today’s society objects to this, even where there is no possibility of cure or im­provement. But is it reasonable to extend this policy generally, throughout the economy? I be­lieve that a negative answer is justified. If the individual, on a strictly voluntary basis, devotes a part of his energy and resources to helping his fellowmen, nearby or far away, who have unsatisfied wants or are in distress, such action should be acceptable in a free society. But this is a far cry from using the powers of govern­ment, plus private pressures from fund drives and other organized appeals, to take by force—or other form of coercion—the fruits of the labor of the more capable and successful, and ladle out the re­sources so seized, through the agency of costly boards and bu­reaus, in welfare programs often clearly unwise and wasteful. I see no good reason for considering such action as falling within the zone of fair or equitable policy.

Here, today, is our number-one problem. We are suffering from a sustained surge of catering to the underdog, including proposals that approach complete irrationality. Especially hard to take, by those who still respect common sense and objective thinking, are the suggestions and demands pouring out from the current swarm of psychologists, sociologists, welfare workers, and other “social science” groups infesting college campuses. These “experts” don’t hesitate to push programs that are bound to intensify and perpetuate the prob­lems they are ostensibly trying to solve—which is folly compounded.

Equity is not softness. Good management often requires hard-boiled decisions and actions and these need not be at odds with justice. Trying to fit square pegs into round holes, it is universally agreed, is not practical procedure. There is also wide acceptance of the view that it is bad policy to substitute inferior materials for those called for in the job specifi­cations, or to employ unsafe or substandard methods and equip­ment. Why can’t it also be recog­nized that displacing the more efficient and productive employees to make room for inferior person­nel is no way to run the shop, in any field? It should be plain, too, that heavy concentration of avail­able funds on training the back­ward, the unpromising, to the neglect of selecting and develop­ing the talented, the individuals with high potential, will eventu­ally saw off the limb of advancing technology and high output we are sitting on. We can’t afford, in short, to misuse the pegs.

But those objecting to proposals they regard as stupid and danger­ous should not be too eager to suppress the agitators and nuts, in professorial ranks and else­where, who are leading the parade. A free society must provide elbow­room for diverse points of view and varying procedures. Miss Folly is riding hard today and effective resistance is badly needed, but let’s not call on government to unhorse her if this can possibly be avoided. On the other hand, it would be quite proper if the gov­erning boards of our colleges and universities, and the taxpayers who are putting up the money, were to insist on revision of cur­rent employment and tenure prac­tices.

A Place for Kindness

Before commenting further on the economic side of the picture it should be noted that there is no intention here of attacking or disparaging the exercise of kind­ness in human relations. Patting little Tommy on the head, or even giving him a Roosevelt dime on occasion, is a personal right against which there is no need to tilt. Befriending a neighbor, even when his difficulty or condition is of his own making, and similar acts, likewise may pass muster as unobjectionable conduct. Two warning notes should be sounded. First, don’t indulge your friendly spirit to the point of being a nuisance, a busybody, or a person who leaves the sink at home full of dirty dishes while out helping others to tidy up. Second, look at the secondary as well as the im­mediate effects of your generous impulses, and if the object of your solicitude will be damaged, for the long pull, rather than benefited, try substituting good advice for other interferences; or, even bet­ter, try tending faithfully to your affairs and letting the other fel­low have a go at solving his own problems.

There is likewise no intention of suggesting that courtesy, friendliness, humane treatment, are not compatible with efficient operation in business enterprise. For ten years Mrs. Paton and I, with our granddaughter Victoria on occasion, have been regular patrons of a restaurant (a small chain) which we have decided is the best that can be found for our needs. And the major factor which attracts us, in addition to the superb soups, is the quality of the service. The “girls” are care­fully selected and rigorously trained and they are conspicu­ously considerate as well as capa­ble. We have traveled about quite a bit and have never found their equal elsewhere—regarding the staff as a whole.

I suspect that careful investi­gation would show that usually one will find efficiency where he encounters courtesy.

Fair Prices and Fair Profits

This is the area in which effi­ciency and equity must be con­fronted. What is a “fair” price?

What is a “fair” profit? These terms have been bandied on the economic scene for a long time, and they have finally become so entrenched and commonplace that everyone assumes they have set­tled, significant meanings. The fact is, however, that it would be difficult to find anything else in the everyday economic lexicon with less substance—or with more potential for mischief—than these popular expressions. Here is a spot where there is a real need for dis­sipation of the fog.

With regard to price adjust­ments and profit levels, “fairness” is widely considered to be identical with “reasonableness”, and this view has been encouraged by sev­eral prominent business tycoons. “We only want a fair profit”. “We are only entitled to reasonable prices and earnings”. This is the kind of talk that has become very familiar and is widely applauded. Actually such remarks are twad­dle, and it is painful to see them taken seriously. A proper price is the resultant of the array of at­titudes and impulses from buyers and sellers in a free, competitive market. In such a market the pro­ducer is entitled—to put it bluntly—to get all he can, to sell at the highest price obtainable under the prevailing conditions of demand and supply. It is sheer nonsense to prate about any other standard than that furnished by the market, the director and arbiter of our economic affairs and a stern disci­plinarian to boot.

And substantially the same test must be applied in passing judg­ment on the level of the net earn­ings, Profits. The contractual, hired, layer of funds is of course entitled to the price agreed upon, as long as it is financially feasible to make the payments as agreed. Those who provide the layer of exposed, high-risk capital, as stockholders or proprietors, on the other hand, have no contract with the business entity or with cus­tomers assuring them of a par­ticular rate of return, or any re­turn. Their investments are cast upon the waters of the conditions of the particular business, with the state of the economy as a whole as background, and they face the possibility of loss as well as gain. Nevertheless the layer of risk or venture money is essen­tial, crucial, in private business operation; and a continuing ac­cumulation and flow of such funds into the economy cannot be ex­pected unless the overall economic climate provides at least the pros­pect of an income sufficient to justify the responsibilities and hazards undertaken. It’s a bit like fishing; not many would indulge in this activity if there were no hope of catching anything. The greater the hazard, moreover, the more necessary the possibility of hitting the jackpot, making an un­usually high rate of income. In other words, there must be a lure appropriate to the risks assumed. Those who are forever advocating the restriction of profits to some nominal “fair” rate are in effect proposing a barrier to capital ac­cumulation and investment and—for the long pull—a barrier to the continuation of a system of private enterprise. One of the sure ways to destroy capitalism, with­out firing a shot, is to take away the incentive of the stockholder class. Risk is inherent in economic activity, and the only alternative to the shouldering of this risk by private capital is use of the tax power of the state—which means some form of socialism.

“Profiteering” should be men­tioned. This is a term that ought to be banished from our vocabu­lary. I doubt if there can be found, either in popular discussion or in the technical literature, a clear-cut, understandable definition of “profiteering”. But everybody uses the expression freely, to describe those nasty people who charge “too much” for their products and make “excessive” profits. One of my professor friends—whom I won’t name—recently wrote about how the ancient Greeks “discour­aged profiteering in the construc­tion of public buildings”. The building contractors, so the story goes, were required to carve the amounts of their receipts and ex­penses “on stone tablets which were set in the walls”.

Once more: prices and profits are not excessive or improper if the levels are set by the forces of the free, competitive market.

Significance of Competition

In the above comments there have been several references to the market, as the basic economic institution, and in these refer­ences the qualifying adjective “competitive” has been attached. Here is another spot where mis­understanding is rampant and an attempt to make a brief clarifying statement is in order.

Popular concepts of economic competition are generally hazy and unrealistic, and most of the treat­ments in the textbooks are far re­moved from the actual processes of price-making. The courts and regulatory commissions, too, have often been off the track in their theories and determinations. The common opinion seems to be that competition is a harsh and chaotic process. Fairness is often regard­ed as unattainable in a competitive climate. There is misunderstand­ing as to long-run versus short-run impacts; there is inadequate appreciation of the varying forms and modes which market competi­tion may take. Above all, both casual and close observers have trouble appraising the evidence that price levels and movements yield as to the existence and po­tency of a state of competition. Thus we see legal determinations that find lack of competition in a continuing similarity of product prices, and others that scent mo­nopoly in varying prices in a par­ticular market area.

Competition, it must be insisted, is not a cruel or baneful influence; it is rigorous, but neither unfair nor destructive. Competition should not be equated with mis­representation, fraud, or any form of predatory conduct. The essence of competition is pressure on the producer to reduce costs and im­prove products to attract and keep customers. This pressure, stem­ming from other producers, may take a number of forms. It may result from improvement in prod­uct quality, better packaging, more prompt delivery, superior repair service, and so on—as well as from a lower price. Strictly speak­ing, the product is the entire set of physical elements and related con­ditions furnished to the customer. In practice there is a tendency to look only at the price factor in judging the presence and degree of competition, which is clearly a mistake. We should be thankful for producers who are efficient, aggressive, innovative. These hus­tlers force the rest of us to grab at their fast-moving coattails and try to keep up with the technolog­ical and administrative advance. Here is the feature of the market which provides protection for the interests of the customers. Com­petition represents the pressure needed to keep all producers dis­ciplined and on their toes.

Imperfect and Effective

An important aspect of the com­petitive process, usually over­looked, lies in the fact that com­petition must be imperfect in or­der to be effective. The hustlers and innovators just referred to are of course trying to gain an ad­vantage by getting the jump on competitors with the new package or other improvement. If the im­pact of every new development were instantaneous and complete throughout the market, so that no advantage whatever could be re­alized by the producer whose re­sourcefulness is responsible for the change, there would be a seri­ous dampening of the urge to make improvements in methods and products.

Competitive pressure is the pri­mary roadblock to the growth of monopolistic situations. Potential competition—the possible entry of new producers into the field—is also an important antimonopoly factor. In addition there are well-known obstacles to monopolistic overpricing in the form of elastic­ity of demand and possible use of substitute products.

Producers undoubtedly worry a great deal about competitors, and don’t particularly enjoy seeing new heads appearing on the horizon. There is nevertheless a bright side to meeting competition, aside from the great benefit to customers. Pressures that require us to get busy are a good antidote for the inevitable dull periods. Falling in­to a rut is easy, but a long stay there is neither enjoyable nor con­ducive to effort to climb out. For a dozen years or so I was on the board of directors of a company that had begun to go slack, fall behind the procession, especially in product quality. Old customers were complaining and the situation was becoming critical. At this point a new president came on the scene and started cracking the whip. Junior executives, jarred out of a state of complacency, did a lot of growling at first. But shortly—and here’s the point—they began to take part vigorously, with obvious improvement in spir­its, in the campaign to catch up with competitors. Without much doubt, for most of us, an atmos­phere of hustle is preferable to a continuing state of humdrum.

It’s time to wind up these ob­servations about the E twins. Two points, pertaining to individual conduct, may be stressed in con­clusion. First, the most satisfying feature of a lifetime on Mother Earth is a sense of accomplish­ment. This becomes very plain as we grow older. And although most of us never achieve pinnacle per­formance in anything it’s fun to keep trying. Second, looking back on the journey provides an espe­cially good feeling if one can re­call few if any times when he be­haved unfairly. The best way to run the race, for sure, is to rely on one’s own power and speed, and not get in another runner’s way, in the drive to hit the tape first.

The E’s, like the “ayes”, still have it.

 

—FOOTNOTES—

¹ Chapter 3 of Freedom and Reality, a brilliant book by Powell. B. T. Bats-ford, LTD., London, 1969.

² World Publishing Co., Cleveland, 1969. Professor Nutter, currently an im­portant official of the U.S. Department of Defense, is an outstanding authority on Russian economics.