It is a dreadful thing to have a suspicious mind.   During the past few weeks perhaps the main feature in the Press of the United States and Great Britain has been the discovery of the findings of an American organisation operating under the name of “Technocracy.”

The subject has been featured in every London daily of large circulation not excluding The Times while the press of the United States has with a rapidity of apprehension and decision, and unanimity of expression, which can only be described as remarkable announced that the problem of the depression has now been solved and that by a curious coincidence the defeat of Mr Hoover will be practically contemporaneous with the return of prosperity. We have not yet had a series of addresses by the BBC on the subject but they will come

Unfortunately I seem to remember the same unanimity when that friend of the people, Vincent Snowden, put up his marvellous fight to save this country a problematic £2,400,000, or 1/400th of the American debt, at the expense of France while under cover of the noise which was thereby created, the bank of international settlements was founded and endowed with powers which might easily determine the future of civilisation. It is true that the plan seem to have miscarried a little, but you can see the idea. 

Now stripped of what is locally called in the Land of the Free, “Ballyhoo,” what does  Technocracy amount to in regards to fact, as distinct from policy? It has put forward in a dramatic form a number of statistics tending to prove that the rate of production per man-hour is a function of the mechanical power which is employed in production and that this factor, combined with mechanical invention, organisation and other factors, has now enabled a small and diminishing portion of the available labour to produce everything required for a high standard of living, not only for the actual workers, but for the increasingly unemployed section of the population. The data which it has put forward interesting, useful, and, I should imagine, in the main, incontrovertible, but they do not tell us anything which has not been a common place both to the engineer and to, in particular, the readers of this review. Over and above this the technocrat are pointed out also in a dramatic form that this immensely accelerated production has not been bought by the general population, but has resulted, on the contrary, in the piling up of a debt in the United States alone, of approximately 218,000,000,000 dollars, representing unpaid-for production.

Now sound and incontrovertible as these facts are, they are not new, and they are by no means either novel or, in the main, attractive to those financial interests who control the Press of Europe and America. How is it then that they have suddenly become “popular” and have obviously not only be passed for publication, but have been included in high policies which regards publicity as one of his tools.

In the first place, we have to remember that the knowledge of the increasing productivity of industry and the recognition that the world is starving in the mist of plenty has become in spite of effort to conceal and distort the fact, very widely recognised. To attempt for much longer to deny the facts of the situation would be still further to discredit those in control of policy, and it is increasingly recognised that those in control of policy, are in the main, financiers. The problem therefore, is to use these facts to obtain an organisation which will still leave the present controllers of policy in the position which they regard as being vital. It is not the money system as such which is regarded as essential it is the power and control which has been given to those financial dictators which is regarded as essential. 

Now at distinct from the facts, it is clear enough that the policy of technocracy is syndicalist, and in essence does not differ very widely and its ultimate meaning from the policy associated associated with Fascism the centralised industry of Russia, or the rationalisation which is the Bank of England’s particular brand of industry reorganisation in Great Britain. 

It is to be noted that it is more or less sponsored by Columbia University, the home of Dr Nicholas Murray  Butler the financiers and more particularly the Jewish financiers’ University, of New York. The wide publicity given to its findings coincides with the success of Colonel House in electing a democratic president Mr Roosevelt, who is surrounded and whose policy is beyond question dictated by the group which surrounded President Wilson, notably Mr Bernard Baruch, Mr Newton D. Baker, Colonel House himself, and Mr. Al Smith now editor of the “New Outlook” in whose November issue Mr. Wayne Parrish writes on Technocracy. Mr Al Smith writes on the “New Outlook” and Me. Newton Baker writes on “human factors in a depression” when our own Mr Winston Churchill unfortunately met with an accident in New York, it was on his way to visit Mr Bernard Baruch who it will be remembered, remarked under cross-examination at a Senate official enquiry, “I suppose I was the most powerful man in the United States during the war.” Mr Winston Churchill a few months ago, gave a dinner in Mr. Baruch’s honour, At which most of our financiers and elder statesmen were present, including, if my memory serves me rightly, Mr. Montagu Norman, who is ex-officio on Board of Control of The Times Who is finance is mainly supplied by the Astor family.

Under these conditions, while accepting gratefully the data both in regard to production and in regards to finance, which has been provided by this organisation, with whose progenitors I was already in touch in 1919 in New York , I think great caution is required in accepting the deductions which appear to be being put forward in their name as to the form of organisation which is indicated by this data. We have already had a technocracy in this country and in the U.S.A. between the years 1916 is and 1918. It is the best organisation for war. And you will remember that Mr Bernard Baruch was the most powerful and important man in the United States during the war.