Evening star., 1932-12-27
BY THOMAS r. HENRY.

Seldom has anything purely intellec-
tual aroused such wide interest as
"Technocracy." or government Of en-
gineers." The magazines and newspa-
pers are full of it. 1t is topic of
argumentative conversation everywhere.
But howsoever revolutionary in its i'm
plications, this engineer -autocracy" at
present Is nothing more than an idea
in the brains of a few men. 1t has no
physical substance and no authority. It
has not even the fragile actuality OF a
clear presentation on the printed page.
Nobody-not even some of the foremost
authorities in Washington who have
followed its developments as closely as
possible-haS very clear idea Of what
1t proposes. Yet everybody talks about
it. Some enthusiastically indorse it.
Others-the majority-question it. 1t
at least can claim the merit OF having
stimulated thought as thought on eco
nomic questions seldom has been stim-
ulated before
What will Uncle Sam find when he
opens the package? Some say Boil
shevik bomb ready to explode. Some
say q solution Of all his economic ills.
Washington economists know what
"technocracy" Is only BY what they have
read in the papers and these have lett
the most important questions unan-
Swered.
Lack Facts About It.
"We'd like to know ourselves an
swer learned economists Of the Brook
ings Institution. one Of the headquar-
tiers of economic research in the United
States. At the Office of the American
in the dark At the Brookings 1nstitu-
ton 1t is believed to be revival or re-
discovery Of some ideas promulgated
about Is years ago by college pro-
fessor Of economics named Thorstetn
Veblen, by many regarded as one of
the supreme intellects yet to emerge
in the United States.
Back of Veblen are Carlyle and Rus
kin in England and in America one
who may. yet be destined to place
in the shrine of major prophets,
Thoreau. The technocrats, apparently.
have no mortgage on the philosophical
basis of their ideas They have ampli-
fed them in the light Of modern scien-
tific discovery, not created them. The
whole movement appears essentially q
demand for return to real, as opposed
to symbolic, values.
Is any object worth q dollar? Only
in the sense that the purchaser had
rather have 1t than the dollar. Value
is very largely subjective. There is no
readily available objective scale by
which q dollar can be made to repre-
sent anything basic in q purchased
object.
The basis Of technocracy, as it is
understood here, is resymbolization Of
values.
Resymbolization Sought.
Basically, the price paid for pair
Of shoes represents all the expenditure
of energy involved in producing them.
ed by the farmer in raising cow, part
of the energy expended by the tanner
in turning that cows hide into leather,
the energy Of transportation. the en-
ergy Of the shoemaker, part of the
energy of the man who stokes the fur
mace of the shoe store, part OF the
energy Of the bookkeeper who keeps the
accounts-and so on.
The shoe merchant asks IS for the
shoes. How is the purchaser to know
whether they are intrinsically worth So?
They are worth it only in SO far as the
energy expended in producing them is
properly symbolized by that sum OF
nt there Is the mo- snaet corre
Spondence between any unit OF energy
and any unit Of money. The idea OF
units of energy hardly enters the head
of anybody except the engineer.
The technocrat would express all
human effort, in so far as practicable,
in terms of energy units. Energy can
be measured with extreme exactness.
It Is ] physical entity. The physicist
can measure, to few parts In a mil
lion, the energy expended by steam
engine The psychologist can measure,
although not with the same exactness,
the energy expended by man or a
horse at any particular task. Together
they could measure the average amount
of energy, animal and machine, that
enters into the production of pair OF
shoes. They could measure 1t in terms
of energy units-ergs, British thermal
units, horsepowers, etc. They could do
the same thing for suit Of clothes, for
q house, for safety pin. Such meas
urements might well be completely OBJ
say the production OF any particular
pair of shoes. from the pasture to the
shoe store. involved an expenditure OF
production of any particular suit of
clothes involves an expenditure Of two
horsepowers. Then the suit Of clothes
I, is worth two pairs Of the shoes. II the
shoemaker must pay the equivalent Of
three pairs Of the shoes he Is being
| cheated. But this happens. and Is
| bound to happen, under the dinuse
mo1ey symbolization Of values.
Wants Exact Units.
The technocrat would make exactly
measurable energy units his basis. He
might even require by law that every
article be stamped with the amount
Of energy units expended In its pro.
| -duction. Articles which involve III