Montana labor news., 1937-10-07
.CHISELLERS OR
SUCKERS, Says
HOWARD SCOTT
Chief TechnOcrat Doesn't Like
Politicians.

In an address at the Butte High
School auditorium before about 200
persons September 10Th, Howard
Scott, New York, director in chief
of %Technocracy, Inc, pictured for
them a new world, a world in which
work was practically unknown and
everything was to be had in "the
power age" under, of course, tech
nocracy.
Mr.. Scott has a style all his own.
He insults his listeners, taunts them
with lack Of common Intelligence
and he makes them like it. This
world, he told them, was I'll on a
system that was founded on scarcity
and starvation, a system no longer
suited to present day needs, a day
in which the engineer and scientist
had outstripped the social economist.
The present day system, he found,
had divided the world into exactly
two classes, the chiseller and the
sucker and every sucker had a secret
ambition to become a chiseller. Even
the educational system is framed
to make the child student a success
full chiseller. Extremely efficient
machinery was making what is gen
orally termed work or toll by hui
man beings, and humans were
classed below mules in intelligence,
quite unnecessary. The %glassblow-
ers were gone; there were no more
cigar-makers; machines had taken
their place.
He took scores of examples of a
world under democracy and they
were good. One, perhaps, is typical.
Under a new system a soft-boiled
egg could be produced in a few
seconds and a potato could be baked
in less than a minute. In fact the
hostess served the cocktails; pushed
a button and an entire seven-course
meal would be cooked and served
before the cocktail period ended.
In the new world no person
worked before reaching the age Of
Is and no person worked after the
age of As. Even in those years Of
toll they never could work more
than four days at a stretch, no more
than four hours in any one day and
there were the usual holidays and
ten full weeks Of special ones for all.
The price system, of course,
dropped out with the new system
coming in. Someone ventured to
ask when all this would be brought
about. The answer was typical: 1T
may pin your ears back and slap
you down in six years"
A COckeyed Liar
Mr.. Scott had no use for politi-
clans and said so at least a score of
times. Engineers, he declared, knew
how to make good roads but the
trouble was the politicians would not
let them. More than 80 per cent of
traffic accidents were caused by bad
roads, the balance by carelessness,
drunkenness and SO on. ''The poll
tician who says otherwise is a cock
eyed liar" he declared.
Those who listened heard a de-
tailed history of the birth and
growth of democracy. It all start
ed, apparently, when some engineers
declared it was foolish to make more
than a million saddles for $4,000
horses the Americans expected to
use in the great war. Engineers then
began to look around and do a bit
Of investigating. Technocracy start
ed right then and, according to Mr..
Scott, growth has been tremendous.
Enlarging on the subject of poll
ticians, and Mr.. Scott spent consid-
cradle of his time in so enlarging, he
said that -four years in any political
office, regardless of personal integri-
ty, will make a louise out of any
man."