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# THE CULTIVATION AND UTILIZATION OF HUMAN RESOURCES

## INTRODUCTION

The greatness of a nation may be manifested in many ways -- in its
courage, its moral responsibility, its cultural or scientific eminence, its
tenor of daily life. Yet ultimately the source of its greatness is always the
same: national achievement, no matter in what it consists, springs from the
capacities of the individuals who constitute the living substance of a nation.

If this is no more than a tautology, it is well to remind ourselves of
its truth. For we live in an age in which it is easy to lose sight of the ulti-
mate private origin of all social accomplishment and national action. Depen-
dent for our very survival on the technological triumphs of our society, we
look for their continuance to "science." Caught up in momentous historic
developments, we speak of the responsibility for their control by "govern-
ment." Eager to quicken the slow evolution of social progress, we pin our
faith on "education." It comes as something of a shock to remind ourselves
that none of these things exist -- that there is no such entity as "govern-
ment," but only men and women who are carrying on the individual tasks of
governing; that "science" has no reality except as the scientists who indi-
vidually receive and add to the body of human knowledge; that "education"
is nothing but an army of schoolteachers.

And it is not only in terms of its great accomplishments that a nation
is bounded by the reach of its constitutent individuals. The common

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denominator of achievement is also nothing but the quality of the striving
which characterizes a nation's people as a whole. National courage, stead-
fastness, tolerance; national intelligence, adaptability, skill; the national
climate of culture -- none of these exist other than as the prevailing values
and capacities of the separate human beings whom we collectively call a
national community. It is to the individual, both as an anonymous and as
an exceptional member of his society, that we look for the measure of the
achievements of which his society will be capable.

Thus a nation which aspires to greatness must cultivate individual
excellence, and this fundamental reflection serves as a necessary introduc-
tion to the task of Subpanel V. For our assignment is, in a sense, an inquiry
into the foundations of national greatness -- that is to say, into the identi-
fication, encouragement, and utilization of the creative abilities of the
American people. In its broadest terms, our objective is an examination of
the means by which both our common level of effort and our exceptional peaks
of performance may be raised to the highest degree of attainment of which
they are susceptible.

But it is not only in terms of national objectives that our task acquires
its significance. The cultivation of excellence also accords in a still more
fundamental sense with the philosophic values of our society. If we seek to
raise levels of performance and to inspire creative effort, our aim is as import-
antly that of widening and deepening the life purpose of the performers and

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the creators themselves as it is to add to the success of our national effort.
In a basic sense our aim is to inquire into the conditions of the good life as
well as those of the well-functioning nation.

It is hardly necessary to point out the difficulties -- not to say the impossibility of completely fulfilling this assignment. Not only is the scope of our inquiry of staggering magnitude, but if pursued beyond modest lengths, it could become both presumptuous and improper: there is a risk, in dealing with large-scale problems of human values and objectives, of "simplifying" matters by reducing the individuals who are the problem to the level of manipulable things. There is a delicate line to be drawn between the legitimate need to assess our creative resources and to offer suggestions for their development, and the illegitimate temptation to decide for other people how they should devote their life careers.

This is particularly true of an attempt to influence human striving and aspiration in an open society such as ours. For while we may speak of the human resources available to us, but we cannot -- as can some authoritarian societies -- talk of the human resources "at our command." Insofar as we may see the need for new directions of individual effort, or for new patterns of the utilization of human effort, we cannot as a rule legislate that effort or those patterns of use into existence. Certainly we can plan ahead, but our plans must take the shape of an attempt to create conditions in which individuals of their own volition will change their life goals in accordance with social

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preferences. That this is a handicap to efficiency is undeniable, but it is a handicap whose disadvantages are more than outweighed by other considerations. A society which depends primarily on voluntarism and on self-directed change may conform to new patterns more slowly than a society which can command change, but the adjustment will be deeper and more enduring in the end. And even were it not, we would still prefer our voluntaristic methods because they are the only means fundamentally in accord with the priority we give to the individual himself.

Hence we have tried to define the proper boundaries of our task with clarity and to approach it with diffidence. Our discussions have concerned themselves as importantly with the profound dilemmas of the problem of human excellence itself as with concrete recommendations for dealing with some of the more critical immediate issues it presents.

Therefore our report is presented in two sections. In the first we address ourselves to certain of the basic questions: What are the forces shaping achievement in our society? What are our patterns of motivation and aspiration? How compatible are the institutions of contemporary life with the vigorous development of talent and great striving? How may potential achievement be found, how nurtured, how rewarded? To questions such as these there are often no simple or satisfying answers, but any consideration of the problem of cultivating and utilizing our human resources which did not take them into account would necessarily be superficial.

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The second section of our report comes to grips with the problem at a level of action rather than analysis. Here we have isolated those areas of the human resource problem which seem to be both practically and morally appropriate to purposeful change. Specifically, we shall deal with neglected areas of manpower utilization and with the pressing central problem of education itself.

A final word concerns the Report itself. It is quite impossible in a paper of such short scope to do full justice to the variety, much less the depth, of the contributions of all our Panel members and of the contributing scholars and experts who gave so generously of their assistance. Some divergences of opinion must necessarily be given less than their full scope in what follows. Yet considering the ramifications of the problem itself, a remarkable consensus about central matters prevailed, and it is hoped that this central body of opinion will be forcefully and accurately represented here.

# I

## THE SETTING OF THE PROBLEM

### 1. The Historical Perspective

Every society depends on its collective achievements, on the capabilities of its individual members, but not every society seeks the same kind of achievement. Thus the qualities which a society seeks to encourage and reward in its people will depend importantly on the tasks it sets for itself and the challenges it faces.

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Nothing could illustrate this more clearly than the evolution of our own American society. Originally faced with a wild and hostile natural environment requiring immense labors to subjugate and tame, early American life stressed the qualities of independence, initiative, ingenuity. The pioneer spirit, the Yankee resourcefulness, the forceful optimism of our forefathers were not merely traits of character which developed in isolation or which were evidence of their moral superiority. They were essential character traits for a nation in which existence was individually sustained to a far greater degree than in more settled countries.

But the American people were not merely conditioned by their environment. They brought to it as well their own ethic -- an amalgam of political, social, and religious ideas concerning individual worthiness which powerfully reinforced the demands made upon them by their habitat. Thus it is not surprising that the ideal and the actuality of the self-sufficient, self-directed individual should have flourished in colonial and early republican America. Internal motivation and external stimulus combined to produce the qualities needed for an undeveloped nation struggling to attain its own self-sufficiency and self-direction.

But by the end of the nineteenth century the texture of American life had irrevocably altered. America was now an industrial nation and the initial impact of industrilization on the national character was akin to that of a steamroller. The credo was still largely that of pioneer America, but the

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reality was different. For as the background of social organization changed, so did the framework into which human aspiration and achievement had to adjust itself. The emphasis on the generalized and versatile individual gave way to that of the unskilled "unit" of a mass labor force; the self-sufficiency of the New England farmer to the social dependency of the New England mill operative. The ideal of the "rugged" individual ill-accorded with the first leveling blows of mass production, Taylorism, and standardization. Indeed where industrilization exerted its most powerful thrust -- in the new phenom-enom of mass work -- the very qualities of stubborn independence and non-conformity so necessary for and characteristic of a frontier society became as much a hindrance as an asset. One need only compare the skills and the life goals of the population of Detroit in 1915 with those of a century before to visualize the change at its most drastic.

It was not, of course, a total break with the past. Despite the power-ful pressures of industrialism, America retained many of its older values and traits of character, especially among its entrepreneurial class. Yet of the overall change there can be no doubt. As the social setting of American life drastically altered its form, so did the human qualities which it fostered in its people.

This process of change -- of the adaptation of our protean capacities to the strictures of social environment -- continues to our present day. Indeed it is precisely this process of adaptation which gives special point to a study

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of our human resources at midcentury. For while we do not believe that the
social framework mechanically conditions the nature of human activity, it is
unquestionably true that creativity and effort must adapt themselves to the
social environment in which they grow and which they in turn will adapt to
their own needs. The cultivation of human abilities is a matter of give and
take, between "individuals" and "society" of influence and counter-influence
between the human beings as actors and their own selves as audience. And
in this process of mutual influence, the conditions of society -- its techno-
logy, its social organization, its institutional form -- necessarily play a
vitally important role.

We see the social environment of the present and the future as radi-
cally different from that of the past. Already the nature of the world in which
people work, and strive to better themselves, and adjust to the realities of
life is significantly different from that of late nineteenth century America. In
another twenty years it will be as different from that point of past reference
as nineteenth century America in turn differed from its pioneer antecedents.
Hence an appreciation of the social environment of the present and future is
indispensible to a consideration of our human resources, and it is to this that
we now direct our attention.

## 2. The Changing Demands of Society

What is the most influential characteristic of contemporary life from
the point of view of our human development? One factor seems clearly

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indicated. It is ever-growing complexity of the tasks on which our social
organization depends. This is a phenomenon observable from the top to the
bottom of the social structure. It is dramatically apparent in the critical
fields of scientific research, but no less a reality at nearly every level of
social endeavor.

It can be seen not only in the skills demanded of the government
administrator or the business executive, but in the constantly expanding
knowledge required of the schoolteacher, the doctor, the pilot, the foot-
soldier.

Indeed, if we look back to 1910 and compare the distribution of selec-
ted skills and occupations with those of today, the changing demands of our
society become vividly clear:

Occupational Distribution of Labor Force *

<table><thead><tr><th></th><th>1910</th><th>1955</th></tr><tr><th></th><th></th><th>percent</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Professional & technical workers</td><td>4.4</td><td>9.8</td></tr><tr><td>Proprietors, managers and officials, excluding farm</td><td>6.5</td><td>11.1</td></tr><tr><td>Clerical workers</td><td>10.2</td><td>14.2</td></tr><tr><td>Skilled workers and foremen</td><td>11.7</td><td>14.1</td></tr><tr><td>Total</td><td>32.8</td><td>49.2</td></tr></tbody></table>

* Statistics for 1910 from America's Needs and Resources, Twentieth Century Fund, N.Y. 1947, p 549. 1955 from Statistical Abstract of the U.S. 1956, p 209. Note: 1955 figure for white labor force only. The tables are not strictly comparable, but accurately reflect orders of magnitude.

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Perhaps the primary significance of such a tableau lies in its refutation of the threatened polarization of our society into an undifferentiated proletariat and a highly concentrated group of capitalists, for the statistics bear clear witness to the rapid rise of the middle strata of occupation and status. But there is a second implication which concerns us more directly. This is the overall elevation of the degree of preparation and training demanded of our labor force. If we take the occupational categories of the table as having in common considerable prerequisites of skill or education, then we must note that whereas in 1910 these requirements were demanded of less than a third of our work force, by 1955 they were necessary for almost half our jobs.

This trend toward the increase of skill and training needed by our labor force can be expected to accelerate powerfully over the near future under the impact of several factors.

Not least of these is the automation "revolution" whose first substantial effects will probably be felt in the next decade. The exact degree to which self-regulating machinery will replace human labor, and the ultimate economic consequences of this replacement, are still matters for debate. There is no debate however over the immediate impact of automation on the level of occupational skills. The consensus of all engineers and economists who have considered the problem is that automation will eliminate the *routine* jobs of production and will offset them by far more technically demanding tasks of machine supervision, maintenance, regulation, etc. Thus we can anticipate

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an acceleration of the trend away from unskilled labor and toward skilled and semi-skilled employments in those very areas where the level of work is now least challenging -- in the factory and large office. Hence one important influence of our social setting is the gradual elimination of the condition in which great armies of unskilled labor constitute our major human resource. In a society dependent on ever more delicately adjusted jobs, socially as well as mechanically more complex and demanding, the raw and untrained labor pools of the past become not only an anomaly but a grave social handicap.

However, automation is not the only factor which will exercise an upward pressure on the level of ability demanded of our human resources. There are equally powerful social factors which will add their influence to that provided by technology.

Primary among these is the increasing high-level specialization of our environment. It is perhaps only a commonplace to note that specialization has now reached the point at which no scientist today can hope to encompass more than a rather small sector of his own subdivision of scientific knowledge. But an identical refinement and fragmentation of function and skill has taken place in other fields as well. Military strategy is no longer a matter of generalized knowledge but rests importantly on the advice of scholars and technical experts in matters far removed from military operations as such. The conduct of government depends heavily on the talents of the

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economist, the agronomist, the public health expert and similar highly specialized experts in the most diverse fields. Even the operation of business is no longer possible without recourse to specialized assistance. Industrial psychologists, market research specialists, tax lawyers, highly trained accountants, personnel officers are indispensable to the successful operation of a large corporate enterprise.

Whether this atomization of knowledge is conducive to the development of intellectual breadth and to the emotional range of a rich life is another and by no means reassuring question. But this is somewhat aside from the point: -- whatever its complementary problems, there can be no doubt of the increased pressure on our level of skills and capacities which the rapid rise of specialization is bringing about.

To this must now be added the effect of yet another contemporary trend: the recognized urgency of discovery. Discovery is no longer considered a matter of mere good fortune or an occasion for surprised congratu-lations. It has become a matter of necessity and its steady and successful pursuit a matter of professional application. Hence in every field of endeavor -- business, pure or applied science, medicine, military affairs -- the process of discovery is no longer left to the chance findings of the individual investigator, (although these may continue to bring the richest results). Discovery is now conducted by organized and systematic research on a large-scale basis.

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Two quite distinct pressures have led to this high estimation of research. The first is the awareness that we stand at the threshold of breakthrough progress in a dozen fields and from the consciousness of the immense gains to be won by each new step beyond the frontiers of knowledge. It is to "research" -- which is to say, to the efforts of the men and women who are probing the boundaries of thought and technical experience -- that we look for the significant improvements in life which we have come to take almost for granted.

But a second reason is even more compelling. This is the necessity of meeting the Soviet threat of military superiority. It is very simply a fact that the chances for national survival hinge on the outcome of projects of research and investigation -- a national reliance on intellectual effort which is without parallel in history.

Yet we must not use the critical importance of scientific endeavor to overestimate its value in a larger context. On the contrary, it is in the nature of a complex society that it depends simultaneously on the imaginative fulfillment of a hundred tasks. If a relative handful of scientists seem to bear a disproportionate share of the burden today, a handful of diplomats may be called upon to do so tomorrow, and the next day an equally small number of doctors, teachers, political leaders. A nation cannot set its value standards by the demands of crisis alone. It must also cultivate its arts and its intellectual pursuits, its civic virtues and its physical well-being

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and not least its capacity to meet the daily flux of events. Thus society depends on a full quota of personal achievement at every level of national endeavor.

And these general reflections are given special emphasis by the nature of our particular dependence on certain kinds of talent and imaginative thinking today. It is literally true that we look to the abilities of our scientific talents not only for survival but for the continuation of our forward progress. And yet this is only a dramatic concentration of a dependence which is in fact characteristic of every level of national life. Whether it is the general capabilities needed to man our industrial apparatus or the more highly trained abilities required to staff the specialized functions of our social, economic or political institutions or the supremely important achievements of creative thought, the need is for an unprecedented degree of individual effort and accomplishment. Never before have the cultivation and utilization of creative ability been matters of such urgent national concern.

### 3. The Problems of the New Social Environment

Will we be able to meet the higher standards of achievement demanded by our new social environment?

At one level this question asks us to consider what practical action we should take to fill the requirements of our times. It asks us to consider

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how we may recognize talent and how, having identified it, we may best
nurture it. It asks how we should educate our youth and how we should
utilize our present working personnel. Such questions, which are of the
utmost importance, we reserve for the second section of this report.

For at this juncture where we are considering the cultivation of
ability in its broadest context, we must first face questions of a more
subtle, but no less perplexing kind. These are the inherent difficulties
posed by the social environment itself. Let us consider two of the most
important.

This first is the fact that the skills which our society most critical-
ly needs are not those which it most highly rewards. Our scale of rewards
still reflects an age when the encouragement of business enterprise and the
attraction of talent into economic activity were rightly accorded the highest
priority of society. If businessmen today are more highly paid than school
teachers it is at least in part because past society has esteemed the eco-
nomic function more highly than the educational. Placing its emphasis on
economic growth, society left the staffing of the "service" tasks of society
to those who had no taste for or less success in a race which was essentially
run for business prizes.

This priority of business rewards still characterizes our system but
the priority of social tasks is now considerably different. For the relative
importance of economic activity is losing its place vis-a-vis that of non-

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economic functions. It is not to business skills as a generality that we now look for the most critically important achievements of society, but to the scientist, the government administrator, the diplomat, the military planner, perhaps even the educator. Business is becoming the service function rather than the be-all and end-all of national existence.

But while this gradual trend is taking place, the existence of an older scale of rewards results in deflecting talent away from its positions of highest yield. The would-be pure scientist is tempted to the commercial laboratory; the would-be commercial scientist to the field of sales engineering; the engineer himself to the sales office. The bright young man hesitating between teaching and business must sacrifice both present and future income to choose the former; the government administrator who succeeds in his post is promptly lured away by a private corporation. The result is that the natural gravitation of talent does not always accord with the social need for talent.

This is a serious problem because it cannot be entirely alleviated by the increase of scientific, governmental, or educational pay. Without any question the scale of rewards of these nationally crucial tasks should be improved, but in a free-enterprise economy, it is impossible for the non-profit sector of the nation to outbid business. Hence if the optimal distribution of our talents is to be approximated, we may have to depend on a new estimation of certain kinds of work and on far higher rewards of esteem and

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prestige in "service functions" than now exists. The stereotype of the dowdy and fussy schoolteacher or the government petty bureaucrat may be as serious impediments to our proper development and allocation of talent as the differences in pay which -- because they are now severely out of line -- serve to reinforce and perpetuate the stereotypes themselves.

But there is a second problem which complicates the optimal utilization and cultivation of our human resources at perhaps an even deeper level. This is the problem of the level of aspiration and effort which our environment encourages.

For the complexity which so importantly characterizes modern life has its necessary counterpart in another aspect of society -- its organization. In every area of activity -- government, business, science, education, military affairs -- activity is typically more formally structured, more bureaucratic, than in the past. The administration of activity has come to assume an importance almost equal to that of the activity administered.

That such a bureaucratization of activity should accompany a technically and socially complex social system is neither surprising nor in itself harmful. Delicately interdependent social mechanisms cannot exist without synchronization and order and it is the purpose of bureaucratic practice to inject continuity, dependability and orderliness into what would otherwise be an unmanageable chaos. It is as inconceivable that General Motors should be run without standard operating procedures as that the Veterans Administration

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should attempt to dispense with rules and categories and conduct its opera-
tions on a purely ad hoc basis.

But whereas the bureaucratic nature of modern society has its very
necessary functions, it also poses severe and sometimes crippling obstacles
to a society's vitality. At the higher levels of policy decision, it is the
typical and perhaps endemic nature of organizational life that it rejects the
untried and the bold in favor of the routine and safe -- a procedure which,
while useful in ninety-nine ordinary cases, may be disastrous in the
hundredth.

And within the organized social machine as well, the environment
of bureaucracy presents a stifling atmosphere for the exercise of personal
audacity. In this atmosphere of regularity and order, the temptation is to
conform to the habits of thought and behavior of the group, and therefore,
to gear one's personal abilities to an acceptable common denominator of
slow advance. As a number of observers have commented, even in the
large business organization the emphasis is not on excelling, but on
"getting along" with people, becoming a member of a "team," working
one's way slowly up the hierarchical ladder by the exercise of "sound
judgment" and "good personality." There may be considerable benefits
in terms of the smoothness of life from this organizational attitude, but
it is hardly conducive to the kind of "breakthrough thinking" on which so-
ciety now so importantly depends. Indeed it is particularly at the upper

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levels of social tasks, where the need for originality and independence of effort is most required, that the influence of organizational life is apt to exert its most dampening effects. It is not the competent talent which it threatens, but the creative talent, not the good average performance which it inhibits but the superior and extraordinary performance.

Thus the complexity of our social organization presents a problem equally as much as an opportunity for the cultivation of human capabilities. It tends to encourage effort -- but often in the wrong direction, and then only up to a level of average acceptability. It opens avenues of advance, but these avenues converge on the citadels of routine where the individual pace must conform to fixed traffic patterns. It stimulates self-development but it threatens to define its goal as mere competence. Meanwhile the very quality which a bureaucratic society most requires -- creative, original, out-of-the-ordinary thought and effort -- are precisely those which it unconsciously discourages.

* * *

What we have discussed thus far are the complicated influences of our present social structure on the need for and the encouragement to individual achievement. We have found those influences to point in contradictory directions. On the one hand, our complex civilization has enormously increased in the number of challenging and difficult tasks it offers. On the other hand it has made the fulfillment of its demands more difficult, not only because of an incongruity of its structure of rewards with its scale of social

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priorities, but also by the dampening effect of its own organizational structure on the full exercise of creativity and total personal effort.

Thus the setting of the problem of human resource cultivation and utilization is marked both by inherent opportunity and by inherent obstacles. If it can truthfully be said that our society depends crucially upon creative thought, it is also the case that it is not a society which is altogether conducive to original thinking and, if our social structure clearly requires the most careful allocation of its human abilities to the social posts of most importance, it is also true that the talent-distributing mechanism of our system of rewards may fail to produce the results we need.

Yet these dilemmas of our social environment are not a full assessment of the setting of the human resource problem. For human effort is not merely a passive response to external stimulus. It displays its own inner thrust. It is not the mere existence of social avenues of progress or of social obstacles to progress which will determine the ultimate level of personal achievement in our society but the determination with which individuals meet those obstacles and traverse those avenues. Hence we must now turn from the social environment to the actors within that environment, by inquiring into the problem of human motivation itself.

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## 4. The Climate of Aspiration

### Why do men work?

If we look back over the panorama of history, three broad answers suggest themselves. One is the pressure of want. For what else has driven men to the pits and the forge, persuaded them to endure the rigors of the assembly line and the boredom of office routine, except the necessitous pressures of need itself? Even in this richest of all societies, it is still the fact that one has to work to eat which provides the great recruiting mechanism of the economy. That it is a voluntary mechanism -- that one can choose one's work within the limits of one's capabilities, or that one can choose not to work, at least temporarily -- does not obviate the per-vasiveness and power of economic necessity as an ultimate driving force.

But want alone has not powered the social mechanism. Equally important has been the desire for prestige and preeminence. Indeed what is characteristic of capitalism is that it has channeled the quest for prestige toward the drive for wealth, with the result that motivations which in other societies have led toward mere personal aggrandizement or toward political, military, or religious eminence, have in our society been channeled toward the accumulation of social capital. This harnessing of ambition to the pursuit of material goods has provided a powerful incentive for the performance of social tasks. Together with a Protestant ethic which sanctified work and which gave the blessings of righteousness to its economic rewards,

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the economic orientation of prestige has resulted in prodigies of effort.
It was indeed characteristic of it that there was no ceiling to endeavor,
no diminishing urge to build, amass wealth, extend the sway of economic
power and prestige. That the system often resulted in grotesque displays
of personal ambition does not undo its enormous motive power.

What can we say about the efficacy of these motives in bringing
about the personal achievement our society demands? Certainly at one
end of the scale, the pressure of want has steadily diminished: simply
because they do not have to, people (particularly in the less creative
social tasks) simply do not work so hard as once they did. It is not only
that the twelve-hour day and the six-day week are no longer necessary to
the winning of a reasonable income. It seems also to be the fact that
leisure has gained in importance relative to economic goals. Given a
choice between an additional week's vacation to a proportional increase
in pay, the preference of our work force -- and this extends far up into
the managerial echelon -- is increasingly for leisure. It may well be
that this shift in values is all for the good -- provided that leisure is
something more than just "time off work" -- but it unquestionably reflects
a significant change in the climate of aspiration and the driving force of
contemporary motivation.

Perhaps even more importantly, from the point of view of encouraging
talent and high creativity, there are signs of a significant change in the

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importance of economic prestige and the ardor of its pursuit. The Puritan
drives of our forefathers, with the self-d discipline and unflagging effort which
they tended to produce, seems to be giving way to less intense, less self-
demanding goals. Such intangibles are difficult to measure or demonstrate,
but it is doubtful if many would disagree that the aspirations of young
people are more temporate and security-orientated, less grandiose and
ambitious then a few generations ago. To a certain extent this change in
the nature of aspirations may reflect a reaction from the excessive cult of
individualism which marked the twenties. Undoubtedly it has been reinforced
by social institutions, such as higher taxation and an increased emphasis on
retirement income, which lower economic incentives and highlight the virtues
of association with a big organization. To some extent our tempered aspira-
tions may reflect the narrowing of the gap between desires and achievement
brought about by our rising level of social well-being. However many the
causes and contributing factors, the reality seems to be a somewhat tempered
zealousness of economic effort, a circumspection in the choice of career, and
a certain self-imposed limitation of economic horizons. It is significant that
the non-aggressive aspects of business -- such as personnel work -- have
greater prestige among our college youth than selling; that conspicuous
standards of consumption are regarded as *infra dig*; and that the general
feeling among many young people is that there is somehow more prestige
associated with being the ninth vice president of a nationally-known company

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than the owner of a small business -- even though one may make more money
as the latter.

Thus the quality of our motivational patterns as well as that of our
social environment operates to bring forward a quality of individual striving
which is significantly different from that engendered by the harsher but more
stimulating motive pattern and environment of the past. It encourages a
general aspiration, not for the top, but for the comfortable upper-middle;
just as in effect it tends to reward not the exceptional talent but the run of
the mill good average ability. The new climate of aspiration may be an
improvement over the old in terms of its lessoned stress and inner tension,
but it is highly unlikely that it will adduce the economic zest and vigor of
the past.

## 5. The Pursuit of Excellence

There is however a third incentive to work which we have not yet
considered. It is one which probably has never applied in more than a
minority of society, but with that minority it has resulted in a greater
dedication to work -- a greater self-realization -- than either the pressure
of want or the pull of economic ambition. This third motive is the pursuit
of excellence itself. It is the satisfaction which has preeminently marked
the work of the professional person -- the artist and the scientist, the
doctor and the teacher, the civil servant and the craftsman. It is

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characterized neither by an inordinate desire for prestige and wealth (although these are not necessarily disdained), nor by the pressure of external circumstances. Rather the rewards of the pursuit of excellence have been internal -- they have been what has enabled the fortunate few to write about "the joy of work."

What would the pursuit of excellence mean in terms of the cultivation and utilization of human resources?

In effect it would mean a keener recognition of differences in the native talents and abilities of men, and an allocation of tasks in accordance with those differences. Conversely it would mean a greater awareness of one's own talents and abilities and a choice of career which accorded with them, rather than a choice motivated by need, or financial inducement, or false criteria of social prestige. It would mean a self-involvement in work which would transcend fixed quotas of output. It would imply rewards in terms of self-esteem and the pleasures of performance which would tend to outweigh differences in pay. Thus the cultivation of excellence would make possible the resolution of some of our more difficult social paradoxes.

The striving for achievement for its own sake would come as a valuable counterforce to our bureaucratic inertia. The estimation of work in terms of its inner satisfactions would offset the distorting effect of economic stimuli.

The dedication to self-realization would serve to give a new meaning and impetus to the ideal of individualism in a world of growing collectivist complexion.

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Is such a motivation a realistic possibility?

We need not envision it as the total abandonment of the older motives of work. In one form or another, want and economic ambition will continue to play their traditional roles; and over the near future we cannot expect nor would we desire to supplant these older motives of society, although we may wish them modified. Rather, the most we can hope for is that these motives will be importantly supplemented by a growing awareness of excellence itself as a motive for work.

For there is no doubt but that the pursuit of achievement for its own sake is a latent force in any society. In primitive cultures it reveals itself in the painstaking and loving work of the craftsman; in complex cultures such as our own, in voluntary and other arduous undertakings such as civic and charitable work, amateur political participation, hobbies and home construction, adult education. These are activities in which sheer love of achievement is the common motivating factor, and if this motive does not ordinarily mark our usual work, this is more of a commentary on the nature of our industrial civilization than on our motivations. We might, were we given the opportunity, all wish to be artists or at least craftsmen; we must, given the nature of contemporary life, be office clerks and assembly line workers. There are inescapable limits to the free exercise of human ability which are imposed by the structures of an industrial society and its demands constitute an inescapable frustration for the majority of individuals.

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This frustration still exists, and exists importantly, in our society: we must still provide for the regular performance of social tasks which are far too cramping for the exercise of self-expression. Yet the changing nature of the social demands which are presently imposed upon us contribute meaningfully to the alleviation of this conflict. For what we have described as the proliferation of new professions, skills, and needs is nothing less than an upgrading of the creative level of social work as a whole. The routine chore, the hard and dull toil of society, is slowly giving way to a new, more exacting, and imaginative level of work. The demands of society and the desires of the individual are more mutually compatible in a society urgently in need of skill and talent, than has ever been the case before. The cultivation of excellence, the pursuit of achievement for its own sake, is given a new degree of potential reality in our emergent society.

* * *

Whether in the end the aspirations of excellence can assert themselves over the undertow of bureaucracy and diminished economic incentives must remain an unanswered question. For perhaps in the final analysis its outcome will depend not on the conflict between these social forces, but on the conflict concerning the ideal of excellence itself.

This conflict derives from the fact that our society is one of the very few in which performance is the primary determinant of status. It has always been one of our distinguishing characteristics as a nation that we have judged the value of a man by what he does rather than by "who" he is. Against the

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degree of wealth, power or prestige which any man may gain, we have erected no barriers of social origin. And we have buttressed this decisive power of performance by insuring that the contest of performers takes place between equals. Not only is no one to be disadvantaged by unfortunate birth, but no one is to be unfairly advantaged in any way in the race for achievement.

This is the democratic commitment to the ideal of equality -- an ideal which is not, needless to say, fully realized, but which remains a vital ethical principle underlying our social structure.

But the stress on performance and on the contest of equals has not been without its price. In a society stratified by birth and blood, where performance plays a smaller role in determining one's status in life, the individual is relieved of much of the responsibility for his final achievement.

Hence he is less concerned about his native ability: if he fails, it is not his fault, but the fault of a system where the opportunity to succeed was never fairly tendered to him. On the contrary, in our society, an individual feels directly responsible for his social fate, and while there is still the "system" to blame, even when the system is in fact at fault, an element of personal guilt easily attaches to the feelings of the individual who fails. Thus while the individual in a democratic society is spurred on to win, he is also made acutely aware of the penalty for losing.

The result is a paradoxical one. Democracy becomes the system in which the race is explicitly to the swift and in which all are encouraged to run.

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On the other hand, it is also the system in which the rules of the contest
are written by the slow. This paradoxical contest is effected by insuring
that no one shall win the race on any terms which abrogate the ideal of
equality--and by equality is meant not merely a common starting point,
but a common pace. It is as if democratic society said that races were a
violation of equality since some men naturally run faster than others, and
that therefore its races would be run at a walk.

In practice a democratic society does not object to achievement so
long as no suspicion of "inequality" attaches to that achievement. Thus
a democracy does not object to the rewards which accrue to hard work, or
even to luck or character, for these are attributes of success which are
presumably open on equal terms to all. Rather the form of achievement to
which democracy particularly objects is that which is directly the result
of excellence itself: it is the achievement of the gifted and brilliant who
attain to a success which is not to be had on equal terms by everyone.
Thus the values of a democratic society distrust "genius" in favor of average
ability; undervalue the "precocious" pupil and laud the merely diligent one;
are uneasy in the presence of the intellectual or artist, and at home with
the practical mind. The trouble is not that democracy trusts averageness
for this is a political strength; the trouble is that it trusts averageness
beyond the bounds where it can be effective. The typical misconception of
a democracy is not that "anyone" could be President, but that "anyone", if
he became President could discharge its duties effectively. Democracy first

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denies, then scoffs at, and finally denigrates differences in capacity, insisting that if all men are not equal, they should at least be treated as if they were.

This emphasis on equal treatment need not conflict with excellence. Indeed it should not insofar as the deal of equality reveal itself in an insistence that the facilities of the nation be available to rich and poor, to black and white on equal terms; that the opportunities for careers should be open to all of equal ability on equal terms, in short that a man's excellence should determine his ultimate scope and status, there is no incompatibility between the ideal and the cultivation of excellence. It is only when the notion of equality is interpreted to mean that the gifted shall be held to the pace of the slow; that the talented shall be put into the same mould as the inept or the untalented; in a word that the average man shall be deemed as capable as the exceptional, that the two come into serious conflict.

This confusion of excellence with inequality is a pressing consideration for a society in which the idea of excellence comes as a desirable and perhaps necessary motivational goal. For the result of a fuller pursuit of excellence is a sure disruption of that superficial measure of equality which is provided by a society of average minds, abilities, and performance. The cultivation of excellence means that individuals will tend to seek tasks for which they are natively fitted -- and that they will therefore tend to excel in those tasks beyond the level to which just hard work or good average ability would permit. The conscious search for and utilization of giftedness in indi-

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viduals implies levels of achievement which will transcend the ordinary.

That such levels of achievement would be salutary for the gifted
individuals themselves and for the social performance of the nation as a
whole is unquestionable. But whether the opinion of society at large will be
at ease with the cultivation of excellence is another question. Brilliance
is always disconcerting to the unbrilliant. The achievements of excellence
call for an admission that some have gifts and abilities which others do not --
an admission that is hard to make if one has no special talents, or is unaware
of them. Excellence thus threatens the security of the egalitarian mind.

There is no simple solution to the confounding of excellence and equality. The
solution on the contrary, is complex, for it calls upon a democratic society to
make fine distinctions. One is that excellence does not imply "superiority"
another is that the exercise of giftedness or unusual talent is not a contra-
diction of the moral notion of equality but a consequence of it. Yet another
is that differences of abilities are not judgments as to differences of worthiness.
These are admittedly difficult distinctions to make, however valid. But a
society which cannot learn to make them, which persists in the belief that
excellence is an enemy of equality, will in the end succeed in achieving its
beliefs. It will produce a common level of excellence for all. We would call
such a uniformity of excellence mediocrity.

Whether the American nation can learn to cultivate the ideal of excel-
lence while retaining the moral values of equality is perhaps the fundamental

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question which will determine the use it makes of its human resources. On the answer to that question - an answer which only history will supply - will rest the tone of the American society of the future.

* * *

With these remarks, necessarily inconclusive and tentative we bring our discussion of the setting of the human resources problem to a close, and turn to a consideration of the immediate measures available to us in dealing with it.

Yet before we take up these matters, a last word may be helpful. It should be clear from our discussion that we see grave questions facing the United States over the next twenty years and perhaps for much longer -- questions which primarily concern the motives which will direct and stimulate talent in our society. Two final comments concerning these questions may be in order. First it should be noted that all of our foreseeable problems are a consequence of our past success rather than of past failure. These are the problems of a high - consumption, high - production, high - technology society - not of a society which has failed to master these "first" problems of industrial cultures. It is perhaps an irony that the result of our successful passage beyond the harsh but essentially stimulating environment of the 19th century should be a subjection to the new and yet more severe trials of a milder but still more demanding social setting. Nevertheless the trials are not only a reality -- they are also an opportunity. It is a challenging and not a depressing social era which we are entering and if its problems are great, so are the rewards of successfully coping with them.

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Second, we must gain some perspective on our basic problem of
equality and excellence by noting that it is not one which is new to -- although
it may well be intensified in -- our times. In its essence the problem of
equality and excellence was first brilliantly expounded by de Tocqueville and
has never failed to interest political philosophers since. In the century and
more since de Tocqueville wrote, his somewhat pessimistic predictions as to
the outcome of that conflict have been fulfilled in part -- but only in part.
Undoubtedly the future will also see a mixture of failure and success -- a
growth of bureaucratic atmosphere but not to the point of suffication; a mis-
direction of talent but not a fatal misdirection; a continued democratic uneasi-
ness before excellence but not a dangerous intolerance of it.

If we succeed in hewing to this middle road we shall probably manage
to survive and prosper at least so far as our cultivation and use of human
ability can contribute to this result. But if we succumb to the temptations of
complacency, neglecting our demands for creativity, content in the stately
organizational march, neglectful of the misdirection, and worse the atrophy
of creativity, then we may realize the fears expressed by de Tocqueville and
others. We may become a society of mediocrity. And in the contemporary
world, the cost of mediocrity is extinction.

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II

# THE IMMEDIATE PROBLEMS

Our discussion thus far has been concerned with the problem of the larger social setting of our human resources, and of the motivations which activate our supply of talents. With this section we ask a much more direct, but perhaps no simpler question: What can we do now to utilize our human abilities more productively and to cultivate new human achievement?

Clearly these questions too will ultimately take us toward problems of motivation, but our emphasis now will be on the practical and immediate problem we face and on the measures we can take to alleviate them.

Hence we begin by turning to our human resources themselves: our population and some of its pertinent characteristics. For here is our supply of talent as it exists as a "resource," and we must have a basic familiarity with that resource before we proceed further.

## 1. The Supply of Human Resources

Let us begin to examine our supply of human ability by a brief examination of its most single important characteristic: its numbers. The population of the United States is today over 170 millions - a figure which assumes its importance mainly as the base of our future growth. For we are rapidly increasing in numbers. On an average day there is a net rise of 7,400 in the population of the United States; over the year, a rise of some 2-1/2 millions. This will very likely give us a population of not quite 225,000,000 by 1975.

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We do not know with certainty what will be the trend of birth rates in the future. However, for the time span of our report, the basic datum of human resources is already in existence. Everyone who will be twenty years old or older in 1975 has already been born. Therefore we can predict with very great accuracy the age composition of the older portion of our population in 1975, and by extending present birth rates can estimate with fair certainty what will be our younger age groups. Here is what our supply of human talent will be at that date:

Population of the U.S. by Age: 1955 and Projected for 1975*

<table><thead><tr><th></th><th>1975</th><th>1955</th><th>1955-1975<br>Percent Change</th></tr><tr><th></th><th colspan="3" style="text-align: center;">(millions)</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><th scope="row">All ages</th><td>222.3</td><td>166.0</td><td>34</td></tr><tr><th scope="row">0-4 years</th><td>25.4</td><td>19.1</td><td>33</td></tr><tr><th scope="row">5-14 years</th><td>41.9</td><td>30.5</td><td>37</td></tr><tr><th scope="row">15-19 years</th><td>18.7</td><td>11.2</td><td>67</td></tr><tr><th scope="row">20-24 years</th><td>19.3</td><td>10.8</td><td>79</td></tr><tr><th scope="row">25-44 years</th><td>53.2</td><td>46.9</td><td>13</td></tr><tr><th scope="row">45-64 years</th><td>43.1</td><td>33.4</td><td>29</td></tr><tr><th scope="row">65 years and over</th><td>20.7</td><td>14.1</td><td>46</td></tr></tbody></table>

*Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports, p. 25, No. 123, "A" Projections.

It should be noted how differently from that of the present will be our age composition by 1975. Today, as a consequence of the low birth rates of the 20s, we are short on young adults, while our high birth rates in recent years make us relatively strong on children. Twenty years hence the situation will be radically changed. The baby boom of recent years will have resulted.

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in an enormous increase in the age groups 15 to 24; and as our present middle
ages attain the later brackets, there will be a large increase in the age group
65 and over.

This pattern of our future population already points up two of the prob-
lems of the future. One concerns the flood of young people who will place an
immense pressure on our educational institutions within the next twenty years.
The other involves the manpower utilization problem posed by the rapidly ex-
panding older group for whom we now have very little national "use." Both
these certain eventualities for the future come as challenges to the utilization
of our human resources and we shall revert to them shortly. But we must also
see the population rise in its broadest meaning. This is the important expan-
sion of the supply of abilities available to us. The "problem" of our school-
age bulge is also an opportunity to find and develop a great fresh addition to
our talents for the future. And whereas the increase of our older population
does not give us the same opportunity for the creation of new abilities, it
too can be thought of as a pool of valuable capacities whose contribution can
be all the greater for the fact that it is now almost totally wasted.

In addition to these changes in age composition, the American popu-
lation will also change in other ways which bear on the quality of skills and
talents it contains. For one thing, it will be a more homogeneous population.
One main homogenizing influence is migration. We are a moving people -- 20
percent of us change our address each year, and there are great slow currents,
northward and westward, which describe the drift of our people. Twenty years

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hence California will in all probability be the most populous state and Nevada no longer the least populous. Hence regional differences will tend to diminish; twenty years hence for example, the Negro will have shed, to a greater extent than he has already, his southern regional character, as a consequence of his steady migration to northern and midwestern cities. Meanwhile the farmer is disappearing as a distinct group: not only are successful farms increasingly "businesslike" in their operation, but a million of our less successful rural population leaves the farms each year. As a consequence of all this social movement we are becoming an ever more _national_ community in which regional loyalties and sharp regional differences are year by year diminishing.

Another homogenizing trend of American society manifests itself as a change in the _kind_, as well as the locale, of our habitat. In a word, we are becoming metropolitanized. In 1900, the average American lived in the countryside; by 1930, he lived in a small town of from five to ten thousand population. Today, he lives in a big city or its satellites; by 1975, he will live in its suburban outgrowths. Four-fifths of the nation's growth between 1950 and 1955 was concentrated in the urban fringe that rings each of great cities and extends far in the countryside. Thus in a sense the typical American is again on his way back to the country town. With this difference, however, he is no longer a rural person. The tempo of his life and his work typically centers on the great metropolitan areas to which he commutes and toward which he is culturally orientated.

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Hence, we may expect for 1975, a more uniform America -- that is to say, a nation both less regionally diverse and more alike as to living environment. If this suggests a loss of some of the richness of variety which a culturally more diverse people may possess, it should also bring into being, by virtue of the possibilities for a more uniformly good education, a higher common denominator of capacities from which to draw.

What of the quality of our human resources? The progress of science in combatting diseases needs little documentation. It is an astonishing fact, for example, that our death rate from natural causes between age one week and age forty years, is approaching -- although it can of course never reach -- statistical zero. We may expect that within 20 years, our life expectancy will be lifted from its present 70 years to 75 or 80. It is certainly reasonable to assume that the number of work-days which illness costs the nation should show a per capita decline, and to assume that our national physical energies will be at least as robust as today. In this connection the needed and probably soon forthcoming provision of national health legislation and the growth of group medical facilities should do much to increase our physical well-being. Whether our mental health will show a similar improvement is a graver question. There is at least the possibility that an older and more urbanized society will be increasingly vulnerable to emotional disorders. The importance of psychiatric counseling and guidance, for youths at the commencement of career-choices as well as for older people at the termination of life careers, will be correspondingly enhanced.

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Let us briefly summarize what we can say about the physical shape
of our human resources over the foreseeable future.

* Our total numbers will in all likelihood have reached 225
million.

* We shall face an unusually large concentration of population in the age groups 15 to 24 and 65 and over.

* We shall present a more uniform national profile with suburban
environment as our typical habitat.

* We shall be less subject to early mortality and to physical illness
but perhaps somewhat more afflicted by the emotional stress of age and
urbanization.

## 2. The Use of Human Resources

With this brief review of the salient features of our population growth
and its physical and geographical characteristics we turn now to the first of
our immediate problems: manpower utilization. At first sight the manpower
utilization question threatens to overwhelm us by its sheer magnitude: there
is hardly a sector of the economy, nor an important service of society, which
is not handicapped by a shortage of talent and which could not benefit from
the recruitment of new talent and the better utilization of the talents it has
attracted. The basic demand for talent of a complex society which we dis-
cussed in the abstract in our first section, now takes on the dimensions of
reality. We are running "behind" on our supply of scientists, engineers,

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educators, doctors, top-flight government career people, skilled craftsmen -- to mention only some of the most pressing needs. And by running behind we refer not only to our need to keep abreast of the Soviet Union particularly as regards scientific and military progress, but also -- and in the end more importantly -- our need to keep up our own optimal rate of economic and social advance.

Yet clearly we cannot investigate, bit by bit the employment demands of our society. Hence we propose to approach the overall problem by posing two questions which seem to us to lie at the heart of the matter. The questions are these:

A - How can we better use the basic labor force of the nation?

B - How can we significantly improve manpower practices for high-talent personnel?

A - How Can We Better Use the Basic Labor Force of the Nation?

Efficient manpower utilization can be a matter involving delicate matters of motivation or the adjudication among many closely similar social needs. In its more complex aspects it touches on profound philosophic and ethical issues. Yet there is no doubt that most elementary considerations of efficient manpower use are incompatible with the wholesale disregard, casual discarding, or callous degrading of human talents. This is however, precisely what we are doing in four major areas, where basic improvements in manpower utilization are essential.

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The first major opportunity for improving the quality of our labor force
lies in the fuller use of our underprivileged minorities.

Primary among these groups is, of course, the Negro. It is hardly
necessary to point out that the Negro has been systematically disadvantaged
economically as well as politically and socially in the United States. Yet
what has until recently been thought of solely in terms of an abrogation of a
moral principle of national life now takes on a second meaning in an economy
in need of talent. This disadvantaging of the Negro -- and to a lesser extent
of the Spanish-American, the Chinese or Japanese-American and other such
groups -- results in the loss of a wealth of creative and skillful talent. It
is tantamount to a ten percent crippling of our nation.

The fact that so few Negroes are given adequate scope for their talents
is frequently blamed upon a difference in "native capacity" -- despite the dis-
proofs to this assertion which all recognized ethnological and anthropoligical
evidence has to offer. Rather the difference in "capacity" is itself a telling
indictment of our failure to develop the latent abilities of racial minorities
themselves. For example, despite the overall progress which characterizes
Negro education, it is doubtful whether the gap between Negroes and whites
has been greatly closed. It was recently reported, for example, that only 5%
of seniors in Negro state supported teacher training colleges, attained the
minimum achievement level of 95% of the seniors of white supported colleges
in the same states. It was also revealed that the achievement record of these
Negro seniors roughly approximated the achievement records of high school

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juniors of middle class districts of certain New England cities.

The disregard for the potential of the Negro has today become a problem which critically affects all Americans. The end of segregation, with all the difficult adjustments it imposes, is of course the first necessary step in this direction. The migration trends which will diffuse the Negro population throughout the nation will undoubtedly contribute to the alleviation of present patterns of Negro manpower misuse. Legislation such as fair employment practices acts will add a necessary stimulus to private reorientation of attitudes. The impact of the Negro sportsmen, teachers, airline hostesses, diplomats, government officials who symbolize the breaking of old patterns will help to accelerate the trend. Yet all these are only first steps. Until the Negro has been offered an absolutely equal opportunity with the non-Negro to develop and use his individual talents to the utmost, we shall have failed in a critical area to achieve our moral and material goals.

**The second opportunity for improving our utilization of talent concerns wasted woman power.** As a recent report of the National Manpower Council made clear, women are playing an increasingly important role in the American economy: one out of every three workers in our regular labor force of nearly 70 millions is a woman. To this already large contribution of woman power, we can expect a substantial potential increase over the next decades due to the age composition of our population. The average American woman is today married before she reaches voting age and has her third and typically last child at age 26. Thus by her early to mid-thirties her children are in school and she is free for part or even full time work. This availability represents a considerable

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addition to our supply of talent, and may be particularly useful in augmenting
our educational staffs.

However the availability will go to naught -- despite the eagerness of
many young mothers to work -- if we do not take active steps to utilize this
"new" resource. In the educational field, for example, an insistence upon
rigid teaching "requirements" of a formal nature may deprive us of excellent
teaching material, which can be used as a supplement to the fully trained
teacher. Outside the teaching profession the woman is faced with other handi-
caps of a less formal but more prejudicial nature. Aside from nursing, there
is virtually no field in which women are commonly regarded as professionals.
Many firms still hesitate to use women in executive capacities or to include
in training programs even those who expect to remain in employment, despite
the repeated and growing evidence that women executives can match men at
their best.

Finally, it is still true that women are typically less well prepared for
careers than men, at every school level, through the university itself. To a
degree this reflects the continuance of 19th century preconceptions about
women; to a degree it reflects a still ambivalent attitude about "work" on the
part of women themselves. What is certain however is that it is difficult for
the gifted and work-orientated woman to find a niche suitable to her capaci-
ties. This is a situation which must be remedied if we are not to lose a
valuable source of creative effort.

The third major opportunity lies in the alleviation of economic disad-
vantagement. When President Eisenhower asked Congress for legislation to

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assist the depressed areas of the country, he stressed the need for action on
grounds of equity: why should a child born in the backwoods of Tennessee be
deprived of opportunities available to children whose parents are fortunate
enough to be living in more prosperous regions? But there are additional
reasons for Congress to act.

For the nation is paying a high price for its depressed areas in terms
of the wastage of its human abilities. During the first year of the Korean
conflict, for example, the national failure rate on the Armed Forces Qualifica-
tion Test was 19.2%, but the failure rate for Selective Service registrants
from nine states where incomes and educational expenditures are relatively
low ranged from 34 to 58%. This type of evidence underscores the fact that
poor education in any one area of the nation becomes the serious concern of
the whole nation. Evidence of the high mobility and population from one part
of the country to another further underscores the same point.

But the problem is larger than a regional one. At its core is the
question of equality in its true and dynamic sense: to what extent shall the
abilities of a youth be left fallow because he lacks the money to go to school?
It is true that the rapid growth of tax-supported higher educational institutions
has greatly reduced the economic barriers that formerly prevented a majority of
qualified young people from getting a college education, but important economic
barriers still remain. It is estimated that each year 100,000 of the brightest
high school students fail to continue their education into college, largely for
economic reasons. Probably a far larger number who do continue are discouraged

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on economic grounds from selecting a college most appropriate to their abilities.

The situation seems to call for action at two levels. One concerns the young people growing up in depressed areas. They must be aided in relocating themselves, if they so desire. There is here a close relation to the problem of agricultural distress and the recommendation for relocation assistance advanced by Subpanel IV. Without doubt the problem could be tackled jointly. It should be noted however, that the disadvantaging of certain groups is frequently a problem calling not for relocation but for reintegration into the American mainstream itself. A good example of this -- and of a remedial step to counteract it -- is the Puerto Rican minority in New York City where a pilot project is being undertaken by the Board of Education to help Puerto Rican young people to overcome language and cultural barriers that hinder their access to education and employment.

The second remedial step calls for an enlargement of our scholarship programs. The National Merit Scholarship Program, recently established by private foundations and business corporations, is addressed to this problem, but the scale of its effort is still far too small in relation to the need, and therefore makes urgent a consideration of Federal aid for merit scholarships, perhaps through the existing National Merit Scholarship Program, and for loan programs, by which a student may finance his education at very low or no interest rates and repay the principal over an extended period -- perhaps ten years -- after his education has formally terminated.

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The final area of wasted manpower is our older worker.

This is a problem which our changing population age-grouping brings to sudden national prominence, but it has a claim on our attention for other reasons as well. For the fact is that our society is not orientated toward the older person. The role of the grandparent is not that of the center of family life and authority as in some cultures, but rather that of an impotent figure relegated to the periphery of familial life. Neither our houses nor our values are built to accommodate the old. They must fend for themselves, in Florida or California, or at worst in a "home."

This spectre of dependent old age has surely been a powerful influence in the development of and the stress on pensioned retirement as a goal of American life. Yet among these considerations, a contrary trend was not taken into account: the fact that the concept of age itself would change. It was not foreseen in the thirties when our retirement ideas were formulated that the retired man of 65 would find himself not leisured but bored, or that the enterprise, public or private, which had lost his services, would find itself not rid of a burden but deprived of a still active personality.

The result is that retirement has frequently become not a much desired goal but a dreaded terminus: a sudden break in the tempo of life, leading to personal dissatisfaction on the one hand, and to wasted ability on the other.

To a certain extent this is an unavoidable problem: in a highly organized society there must be compulsory retirement, not only to provide security

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for the individual, but to assure a steady turnover of opportunity at the top.
Yet the clear wastage of human talent in the premature pasturage of still
vigorous people of 65 clearly calls for remedial action.

This action may take many forms. A number of companies have begun
to pioneer in pre-retirement re-orientation of older personnel with a view to
easing their readjustment to a new but still active life. The Whitney Founda-
tion has led the way in enabling distinguished retired professors to continue
active teaching for a year or two at smaller institutions which could otherwise
never have attracted them. Government and non-profit organizations have
also begun to make excellent use of persons of high ability who have retired
from industry or from academic life. Occasionally a man who has earned full
retirement benefits will move, in his late fifties or early sixties, from an
employer who enforces a fixed retirement age to another who is willing to
keep him at work longer.

Note must also be taken of personal practices which militate against
the hiring of older persons. The age limit for new employees is frequently
set as low as 35 for secretarial work, 40 for manangement positions, and 45
for skilled workers or operatives. These policies reflect inflexibilities in
insurance and pension schemes as well as prejudices which have no rational
basis. More efficient utilization of the nation's manpower resources requires
that major efforts be made to adjust the realities of the employment market to
the ever larger number of older workers. New York and Massachusetts have
been tackling the problem for some time, and the U.S. Department of Labor is

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now pushing ahead with a major program. But much more needs to be done
before effective solutions are developed. Research, publicity, and legis-
lative encouragement can all contribute.

## B - How Can We Improve Manpower Practices for High Talent Personnel?

We have thus far discussed the manpower utilization problem in terms
of tapping our presently unused sources of talent. We turn now to a differ-
ent problem: that of utilizing to best advantage the high talent personnel we
have available.

A complete review of the high talent manpower problem would involve
us in a consideration of employment practices in a dozen professions and
would clearly exceed the manageable scope of this paper. Hence we propose
here merely to call attention to a few general problems pertaining to the
overall use or misuse of highly talented personnel.

### The first of these is the under-utilization of creative ability.

This is a failing which characterizes every sector of our society. In
our section on education we shall discuss the problem in relation to the
teacher, but the matter is by no means confined to the educational sphere
alone. It manifests itself, for example, in the lack of national draft policy
which clearly recognizes that the national interest may be injured rather
than enhanced by the induction of outstanding students into the armed forces.
It shows up in private business as the assignment of first rate creative talent
to second rate jobs -- not only in the commercial laboratory but in the

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executive tasks of business as well. It is evidenced in the often careless promotion of research projects by foundations or by government research-supporting agencies -- projects which absorb too many individuals for too small potential benefits. In this connection, it should also be noted that the present vogue for "team" research, while it ensures a certain aura of respectability for the final product, may very well produce less incisive and stimulating results, particularly in the field of the social sciences, than the freer work of a single individual.

## The second problem is that of hoarding high talent manpower

It is perhaps a natural consequence of the scarcity of professional skills that a tendency exists to hoard them. This is visible in government, business, and academic life. A frequent result is the duplication of pools of talent, no one of which is fully utilized to its best advantage. Every government department now has its "own" staff of economists. Scientific personnel is jealously sought by different branches of the Armed Forces and the results of scientific research are not properly shared. Corporations bid indiscriminately for high talent on the campus without careful consideration as to the long term prospects which they can offer to those talents. Universities, often within the same community, vie with one another for personnel to build up carbon copies of one another's catalogues.

One method of lessening this misuse of high talent is to broaden the mechanism for sharing of personnel. Certainly there is no excuse for the parochialism of our government agencies' use of their own talents. It is

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possible that the coordinated use of government high talent manpower may require an advisory office attached to the President's Executive Office.
Corporations may understandably feel a reluctance to share their scientific or technical personnel with one another, but an increased dovetailing of career opportunities between government and business may be a helpful step towards increasing the efficacy of talent. Tours of duty of several years duration in the government might well be recognized by some corporations as a regular stage in a man's career development, and the same experience in private business would enhance the value of a career civil servant. In academic life the sharing of intellectual talents, along lines already begun by a number of smaller colleges, and an attempt to dovetail rather than duplicate one anothers' catalogues may yield important benefits. Here is an excellent field for further exploration and application, perhaps under the aegis of a foundation grant for an inter-collegiate coordinating body.

We must candidly face up to the fact that a voluntaristic society, in which change tends to be self-generated rather than externally directed, has difficulties in coping with a problem such as the optimal use of scarce and valuable human talents. To a very large extent we must necessarily rely on the sense of responsibility of talent-using institutions, and hence, what is needed at the moment is widespread publicity about the problem itself. However we can also expect the pressures of self-interest to add to those of self-discipline. As the talent pinch begins to hurt, it will be necessary to devise new methods of sharing, since no institution, public or private can possibly

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attract all the talent it needs. If we begin now to encourage all efforts to work out the cooperative and effective use of high-talent, we may avoid the consequences of a belated awakening to our talent wastage, and obviate the possible need for more drastic measures in dealing with it.

### 3. The Cultivation of Human Resources

The fact that the utilization of talent is so closely connected with the cultivation of human ability leads us naturally to a consideration of how we may best shape and nurture the capacities of our people.

Perhaps the most basic problem here is one before which we must admit to very little knowledge. This is the problem of identifying talent at an early age. For despite the fact that great progress has been made in the use of objective tests to measure scholastic aptitude and accomplishment, and to establish general indications of emotional stability, we still lack the means to evaluate such characteristics as will power, potential leadership, or motivation itself.

The fact is that at the moment we know very little about such critical issues as why many young people with high potential are not motivated to pursue a college education; why about half of all who enter engineering schools fail to graduate; why only a few of the high talented students are willing to proceed with graduate studies; why some able people are attracted to and remain in teaching or the armed services or other areas of public service at relatively low salaries, and why others move out of their chosen

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careers for minor differentials in earnings. More effective cultivation and utilization of the nation's human resources depends on the expansion of our basic knowledge of such human behavior. This is a challenge alike to universities, foundations, business and government.

In point of actual fact, our present talent-identifying and talent cult-
tivating mechanism is the educational system itself. To make a broad but
tenable generalization, it can be said that the cultivation and direction of
our national human potential is more importantly affected by its educational
experience than by any other <u>controllable</u> influence. Our educational appa-
ratus is the primary mould in which the American talent is shaped. Not only
what our young people are taught, but how they are taught, what attitudes
towards self-education are implanted in them, what conscious and uncon-
scious estimations of learning and of excellence they acquire are all matters
for which our school system must assume a basic social responsibility.

A - <u>The Educational Structure</u>

What is our school system? American education is a vast and varied
enterprise. Forty million Americans -- nearly one out of every four people in
the nation -- go to school -- or rather to one of the hundred and sixty eight
thousand schools which receive them: schools for children and adults, for
handicapped and for gifted, for technical training and for general education.
Two million Americans educate them, a huge professional body, which carries
out over 250 different kinds of tasks from that of nursery school teacher
through college comptroller.