SPAN: August 1979

FRONTIERS OF INDIAN AIR SAFETY ·HILOSOPHY GOODS IN IMPERATIVE AMERICA

A LEITER FROM THE PUBLISHER "A victory for all in the battle for peace," is what President Jimmy Carter called the signing of the second Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT II) by the United States and the Soviet Union in Vienna recently.

Ratifying SALT II may be as difficult a process as the seven years of its negotiation have been. In the United States critics have not hesitated to question the treaty's adequacy.

The U.S. Senate must concur with the treaty before it can come into effect; some Senators want it renegotiated, others suggest amendments. An exhaustive national debate on SALT II is in progress. The U.S. Administration hopes and expects the treaty to be ratified by the end of 1979 and regards it as clearly in the interest of world peace.

But is SALT II really so significant a step?P.R. Chari, of the Indian Institute of Defence Studies and Analysis, politely posed this· question in a recent interview with Ambassador Martin Hillenbrand, formerly a high official of the U.S. State Department, currently head of the· Atlantic Institute. India, Mr. Chari said, paraphrasing Prime Minister Morarji Desai, might accept the full-scope nuclear safeguards if the nuclear weapons powers took positive action to stop the accumulation of nuclear weapons and ultimately saw to it that there were no nuclear arsenals left. Ambassador Hillenbrand replied that SALT II is just such a positive action. He agrees with the urgent need for long-range arms control. He goes even further. No country, he notes, would gain through the possession or proliferation of nuclear weapons. On the contrary, the insecurity of all countries is heightened. All nations must ask themselves whether nuclear capability ultimately contributes to their security or whether it will actually increase world tension.

The SALT II treaty was one important example of international cooperation. A second attempt at the same goal, the fifth session of the United Nations Conference for Trade and Development (UNCTAD V) held at Manila, has evoked ambivalent reactions of satisfaction on the one hand, disappointment on the other. Professor J.N. Bhagwati, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, argues that UNCT AD V was not the forum in which to push commodity schemes- nor, for that matter, does he believe that commodity policy is a good way to accomplish the income redistribution that social as well as economic equity demands. Instead, Professor Bhagwati suggests that developing countries adopt development strategies based on export growth.

Recent statistics ofindian exports to the United States cited in this issue indicate that the United States has in fact opened up its market even more to Indian exports- especially nontraditional ones such as rubber tires, electrical machinery, gems and jewelry. India has benefited considerably from the Generalized System of Preferences. India's exports to the United States are $32 million more than American exports to India- and there is potential for still more Indian export growth, considering the size of the American market.

The United States remains firmly committed to international cooperation - on social and humanitarian grounds, as well as economic ones. America has granted asylum to 70 per cent of the refugees in Southeast Asia, and is currently anxious to involve all the countries of the world in an effort to provide havens for refugees from Vietnam. World problems require world solutions. Human rights must be universally safeguarded, if they are to have any meaning anywhere.

-J.W.G.

SPAN

August.J979

VOLUME XX NUMBER 8

2 To Make the World a Safer Place 4A What Skylab Achieved 5 Extending the Frontiers of Philosophy 10 Vanessa Goes to College 13 Indian Goods in America 17 The How and Why of Senior Centers

by Presidenl Jimmy Olrrer

20 The Air Safety Imperative

by Taylor Branch

by Donald Ken;

by Gary Pergl

26 Desert Zoo 30 Land for the Landless 34 Fifty Years of the HoUywood Musical 39 Whither Nudear Proliferation?

by John Blackmore

by Arana Va.rudel'

A Dialogue Berween Martin Hillenbrand and P.R. Chari

42 Amory Lovins: Energy Planner 44 On the Lighter Side 45 John Wayne

by Clay ron Jones

by Sanjeev Prakash

The Road to Development: An Interview

46 With Jagdisb Bbagwati 49 New Look for Baltimore

Front cover: The maje!>tic moun tam lion, one of the inhabitams of the Arizona-sonora Desert Museum Wilh an imaginative re-creation of natural desert habitat. the museum is part zoo, part botanical garden, and part aquarium. See pages 26-29.

B•ck co~er: This aerial vtew of downtown Baltimore shows some oft he new construction office butldtng;.. shopping complexes, hotels, theaters - that has given this once-dying city a new lease of life. Seeal!.o page49.

JACOB SLOAN, Editor; JAY W. GILDNER, Publisher.

Man•&in& Editor: Chidananda Das Gupta. Assistant Managing Editor: S.R. Madhu.

Editorial Stall': Krtshan Gabrani, Aruoa Dasgupta, Nirmal Shanna, Murari Saba, Rocque Fernandes. Art Director: Nand Katyal. Art StaB: Gopi Gajwani, B. Roy Choudhury, Kanti Roy. Chief of Production: Awtar S. Marwaba. Pboto Editor: A vi nash Pasricha. Pbotoarapblc Services: ICA Photo Lab. Publlsbed by the International Communication Agency, American Center, 24 Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi II 000 I, on behalf of the American Embassy, New Delhi. The opinions expressed in this magazine do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the United States Government. Printed

by H.K. Mehta a1 Thomson Press (India) Limited, Faridabad, Haryana. l'toototP'a,U: Fro nt cover-Christopher Springmann. Inside front pover- Bruce Dale, CNational Geographic Society. 11-12 lfope Aleunder. IJ.IS Avinuh Pasricba. 21 top-courtesy Raytheon Corporallon ; bottomllruce Dale, CNational Geographic Society. 22·23- James P. iilair, CNational Geographic Socoety. 26-29Chrittopher Springmann. lS 1en courtesy Columbia Pictures; bottom- Warner Bros. 39-41 - R.N. Khanna.

42-43 - llel>)' Frompton 48 Fahlan Buhrach Use or SPAN articles in other public:atoons u encouraged. except wbeo copyrighted. Fo r permission, wrote to the lldotor. Price ormapnne: one ycu•s subtenption (12onues). 21 rupees : Single copy. 2 rupecs 7S paose. For chll\ae or addresa.seod an old addrus from a recent SPAN envdopcalong v.1th new addl"e$$to A. K Mitra. C'oreulation Maoa,er.

SPAN Mapzone. 24 Kasturba G•ndht MarJ, N....- DclhoiiOOOI .( ~cllaogeofaddressrormon pege48.)

PRESIDENT CARTER ON SALT II

TOIIAIITBI WORLD ASAFIB PLACI On June 18, 1979, President Jimmy Carter addressed a joint session of the U.S. Congress, soon after his return from the U .S.-Soviet summit meeting in Vienna, where he signed the SALT II agreement. He described SALT II as "the most detailed, far-reaching, comprehensive treaty in the history of arms control." Excerpts from the speech follow.

2

The truth of the nuclear age is that the these past three days, we have moved United States and the Soviet Union must closer to the goal of stability and security live in peace- or we may not live at all. in Soviet-American relations.

From the beginning of history the That has been the purpose of American fortunes of men and nations have been policy ever since the rivalry between the made and unmade in unending cycles of United States and the Soviet Union bewar and peace. Combat has been the came a central fact of international relameasure of human courage. Willingness tions a generation ago. to risk war has been the mark of statecraft.

With the support of the Congress and My fellow Americans, that pattern of our people, every President throughout war must now be broken forever. this period has sought to reduce the Between nations armed with thousands most dangerous elements of the Sovietof thermonuclear weapons each capable American competition. of causing unimaginable destruction When the United States still had a there can be no more cycles of war and nuclear monopoly, President Harry S. peace. There can only be peace.

Truman sought to place the atomic bomb About two. hours ago, I returned from under international authority. President three days of intensive talks with President Dwight D. Eisenhower made the first Leonid Brezhnev of the Soviet Union. proposals to control nuclear testing.

I come in a spirit of patience, of hope, President John F. Kennedy negotiated and of reason and responsibility. the atmospheric nuclear test ban treaty.

Patience - because the way is long and President Lyndon B. Johnson broadened hard, and the obstacles ahead are at least the area of negotiation to include strategic as great as those which have been over- arms. President Richard M. Nixon concome in the last 30 years of diligent and cluded the historic first Strategic Am1s dedicated work.

Limitation Treaty. President Gerald R. Hope- because I am able to report to Ford negotiated the Vladivostok accords. you tonight that real progress has been This is a vital and continuing process. made.

This week I will deliver to the Senate Reason and responsibility because of the United States the complete a_nd both will be needed in full measure if the signed text of the second Strategic Arms promise awakened in Vienna is to be Limitation Agreement-SALT II. fulfilled, and the way opened for the next This treaty is the product of seven phase in the struggle for a safe and sane years of tough, painstaking negotiation world. under three Presidents. When ratified, Nothing will more strongly affect the it will be a truly national achievement an outcome of that struggle than the relation- achievement of the Executive and the ship between the two predominant mili- Congress, of civilians and the military, tary powers of this earth, the United of liberals and conservatives alike, of States and the Soviet Union.

Democrats and Republicans.

The talks in Vienna were important in SALT II will not end the competition themselves. But their truest significance between the United States and the Soviet was as part of a process- a process that Union. began long before I became President.

That competition is based on fundaThis is the tenth time since the end of mentally different visions of human society World War II that American and Soviet and human destiny. So long as that basic leaders have met at a summit. During difference persist~. there will always be

some degree of tension in the relationship between us. The United States has no fear of such rivalry. But we want it to be peaceful.

In any age, such rivalry risks degenerating into war, but our age is umque, for the terrible power of nuclear weapons has created an incentive for avoiding war that transcends even very deep differences of politics and philosophy. In the age of the hydrogen bomb, there is no longer any meaningful distinction between global war and global suicide.

Our shared understanding of these realities has given the world an interval of peace-a strange peace, marked by tension and danger and sometimes even regional conflict, but a kind of peace nonetheless.

In the 27 years before Hiroshima, the leading powers of the world were twice engulfed in total war. In the 34 years since Hiroshima, humanity has by no means been free of armed conflict; but there has been no world war.

Yet this twilight peace carries the everpresent possibility of a catastrophic nuclear war, a war that in horror and destruction and death would dwarf all the combined wars of man's long and bloody history.

We must prevent such a war.

To keep the peace, we must have strong military forces, strong alliances and a strong national resolve- so strong that no potential adversary could be tempted to attack us. We have that strength - and the strength of the United States is growing, not diminishing.

Yet for the same reason - to keep the peace-we must prevent an uncontrolled and pointless nuclear arms race that would damage the security of all countries, including our own, by exposing the world to a greater risk of war through instability, tension and uncertainty.

That is why the new Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty is so important.

SALT II will become the most exhaustively discussed treaty of our time. The Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and others who have hammered out this treaty will testify for it before the Senate, in detail and in public. I will explain it throughout our nation. This treaty will withstand the most severe scrutiny, because it is so clearly in the interest of U.S. security and world peace.

SALT II is the most detailed, farreaching. comprehensive treaty in tbe history of arms control. Its provisions are interwoven by the give and take of the negotiating process. Neither side obtained everything it sought. But the package that emerged is a carefully balanced whole, and it will make the world a safer place for both sides.

The restrictions on strategic weapons are complex, for these weapons represent the highest development of the technical skills of two great nations.

But the basic realities underlying the treaty- and the thrust of the treaty itselfare not so complex. When all is said and done, SALT ll is a matter of common sense.

The SALT II treaty reduces the danger of nuclear war. For the first time. it places equal ceilings on the strategic arsenals of both sides, ending a previous numerical imbalance in favor of the Soviet Union.

SALT ll preserves the U.S. options to build the forces we need to maintain the strategic balance. The treaty enhances our ability to monitor Soviet actions.

And it leads directly to the next step in controlling nuclear weapons.

SALT II does not end the arms com petition. It does make that competition safer and more predictable, with clear rules and verifiable limits where otherwise there would be no rules, no limits.

With SALT TI, the numbers of warheads on missiles, their throw weight, and the qualitative development of new missiles

will be ltmited.

With SALT II, we can concentrate more effort on preserving the bounds in our conventional and NATO forces. Without the SALT treaty, we would be forced to spend extra billions each year in a dangerous nuclear arms race.

SALT TI is not based on trust. Compliance will be assured by our own nation's means of verification, including extremely sophisticated satellites, powerful electronic systems, and a vast intelligence network. Were the Soviet Union to take the enormous risk of trying to violate the treaty in any way that might affect the strategic balance, there is no doubt that we would discover it in time to respond fully and effectively.

It is the SALT II agreement itself which forbids concealment measures, interference with our monitoring, and the encryption or encoding of crucial missile-test information. A violation of this part of the agreement - which we would quickly detect -would be as serious as a violation of the limits on strategic weapons themselves.

Consider these prospects: Suppose the Soviet leaders build one thousand additional missiles, several of advanced and formidable design. This can happen only if the SALT II treaty is defeated.

Suppose the Soviet leaders double the number of warheads on their existing missiles, triple the annual production of the Backfire bomber and greatly increase its range and payload. These things can happen only if the SALT II treaty is defeated.

SALT II is very important, but it is more than a single arms control agreement. It is part of a long historical process of gradually reducing the danger of nuclear war-a process that we must not undermine.

The SALT II treaty must be judged on its own merits-and on its own merits it is a substantial gain for national security and international stability. But it would be the height of irresponsibility to ignore the possible ...._ ..., consequences of a failure to ratify the treaty.

These consequences would include: • greatly increased spending for strategic arms; • greateruncertainty about the strategic balance; • vastly increased dangers of nuclear proliferation among nations throughout New York News Synd1Ca1e. Inc.

____

Repnn1cd by perml»ion of Chtraxo Trlhun,-

the world; and • increased political tensions between East and West, with a greater likelihood that other inevitable problems could escalate into superpower confrontations.

Rejection would also be a damaging blow to the Western alliance. All of our European and other allies, including especially those most directly and courageously facing Soviet power, strongly support SALT II. If the Senate were to reject the treaty, America's leadership of the alliance would be compromised, and the alliance itself would be severely shaken.

SALT li is the absolutely indispensable precondition for moving on to much deeper and more significant cuts in strategic armaments in SALT ill.

Although we will not begin negotiations on SALT Ill until SALT II goes into effect, I discussed with President Brezhnev other nuclear control issues, such as deeper mutual reduction in nuclear weapon inventories, stricter limits on the production of weapons, enhanced survivability and stability of authorized missile systems, prenotification of missile tests or large strategic bomber exercises, and limits and controls on types of nuclear weapons not now covered by SALT agreements.

Though SALT is the most important part of the complex relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union, it is only a part.

The U.S.-Soviet relationship covers a broad range of issues, some of which bear directly upon our joint responsibility to reduce the possibility of war. President Brezhnev and I discussed these issues in Vienna.

I undertook these discussions with a firm confidence in the strength of America.

Militarily, our power is second to none.

I am determined that it will remain so.

We will continue to have the military power to deter aggression, maintain security, and permit the continuing search for peace and the control of arms.

Economically, despite serious problems of energy and inflation, we are by far the most productive nation on earth. With our allies, our economic strength is three times greater than that of the Soviet Union and its allies.

Diplomatically, we have strengthened our friendships with Western Europe and Japan, China and India, Israel and Egypt, and much of the Third World.

Our alliances are stronger, because they are based not on force but on common interests and most often on common values.

Politically, our . democratic system is an enormous advantage-not only to each of us as individuals, but to all of us

3

PRESIDENT CARTER ON SALT ÂŁI continued

together as a nation. Our support of human rights, backed by the concrete example of our own American society, has aligned us with peoples everywhere who yearn for-freedom.

These strengths are such that we need fear no other country. This confidence in our nation helped me in Vienna as we discussed specific areas of potential direct or indirect confrontation around the world, including Southern Africa and the Middle East.

For instance, I made it clear to President Brezhnev that Cuban military activities in Africa, sponsored or supported by the Soviet Union, and the growing Cuban involvement in the problems of Ceptral America and the Caribbean, can only have a negative impact on U.S.Soviet relations.

Despite disagreements, our exchange was useful because it enabled us to clarify our positions directly to each other, face to face, and thus to reduce the chances of future miscalculations on both sides.

Finally, President Brezhnev and I developed a better sense of each other as leaders and as men. The responsibility for many decisions involving the future of the world rests on me as the leader of this great country, and it is vital that my judgments be based on as much firsthand knowledge and experience l\.S possible. In these conversations, I was careful to leave no doubt about either my desire for peace or my determination to defend the interests of the United States. I believe that together we laid a foundation on which we can build a more stable relationship between our two countries.

We will seek to broaden the areas of cooperation, and we will compete where and when we must. We know how determined the Soviet leaders are to secure their interests. We are equally determined to protect and to advance our own.

We look to the future with anticipation and confidence, not only because of the material power of our nation, but because of the power of our nation's ideas and principles. The ultimate future of the human race lies not with tyranny but with freedom, not with war but with peace.

With that vision to sustain us, we must now complete the work of ratifying this treaty, a major step in the limitation of nuclear arms. Then we may tum our energies not only to further progress on that path but more urgently to our own domestic agenda in the knowledge that we have strengthened the security of our 0 nation and the peace of the world.

4

SPAN AUGUST 1979

WORLD REACfiON TO SALT ll World leaders have welcomed the SALT 11 agreement and expressed the hope that it would spur further attempts to slow the international arms race.

Prime Minister MoraJji Desai wrote to President Jimmy Carter offering his "sincere felicitations" on the successful conclusion of SALT n.

He hoped that the agreement would widen the process of detente and lead to a progressive reduction of nuclear anns and their ultimate elimination. "This is indispensable to ensuring peace and prospenty of the world community."

Talking to newsmen in Belgrade (during a tour of Yugoslavia), Prime Minister Desai described the SALT II agreement as "a significant step" toward relaxation of tension in a tension-tom world. He added that it was "only a step."

West Germany, Japan and Britam hailed the agreement. Chinese Prime \.finister Hua Guofeng was critical: he said that the agreement would "in no way stop the anns race and much less offer a fundamental solution for securing peace." .

Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko described the Vienna agreement as a "foundation for further progress." He denied that it met the interests of the Soviet Union to a greater extent than those of the United States. "The treaty equally meets the interests of both countries.

It also meets the interests of the peoples of the whole world."

The United Nations Secretary General.

Dr. Kurt Waldheim, said that if the American Senate failed to ratify SALT II, it would have a negative impact on the process of detente.

Ratificat•on by the U.S. Senate may take a few months. The process involves hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which began m July and are likely ro end in September: debate on the Senate lloor, likely to take a few weeks: and a vote of the Senate. If 67 Senators approve of the treaty in its present form. it w1ll take effect without change. If 34 Senators favor amendments, the treaty will have to go back to the negotiating table.

At present, opinion within the Senate on the merits of the treaty is divergent. Senator Edward Kennedy (Democrat, Massachusetts) described the treaty as "a long-awaited step toward the goal of world pea~ and prevention of a nuclear war." He added: "History will judge us harshly if the Senate fails to ratify the treaty." But Senator Henry Jackson (Democrat, Washington) said: "The treaty contains so many loopholes

ITS 1lJQ END OF CMI.IZPJlON PS \\\ll\WN IT...

By Mike Pctcl'll for The Dayton Datly News

and ambiguities that it will take hours of hearings to begin to obtain a clear un.derstanding of what the Soviets can and cannot do to continue their military buildup under the tenns of the treaty."

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (Democrat, New York) said he would support the treaty though he believed the SALT talks would not hold back the "incredible rise in Soviet military strength." Senate Minority Leader Howard Baker (Republican, Tennessee) said in a television program that unless the Carter Administration renegotiated parts of the treaty, it was likely to be amended. U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance replied in another television program that the pact was a "very carefully drafted document," and that "to draft amendments to any part of the treaty risks killing it altogether."

Representative Thomas O'Neill, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, expressed confidence that the treaty would "diminish the possibility of nuclear war" without jeopardizing the security of America and its allies.

Senator Frank Church of Idaho, chainnan of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the Senate should assess whether the treaty was "evenhanded in preserving the U.S. strategic position" and whether it was "verifiable by our own means." If the treaty met these two tests, it would enhance the security of the United States ana should be ratified.

The Indian press welcomed the treaty with reservations. Washington correspondent H.R. Vohra .of Deccan Herald said SALT II "virtually assures peace under all rational circumstances. Only an inconceivable insane development can disturb it. SALT II puts nuclear locks on a nuclear war." Editorially, Deccan Herald said the treaty must be accepted "with a rather large lump of common salt," but applauded the two leaders for taking "at least the first step in the direction of curbing the nuclear anns race."

Striking a critical note, the Hindustan Times said that the Vienna accord placed no curb on nuclear testing, did not affect the military budgets of the superpowers, and completely ignored their conventional forces and arms.

It described the SALT treaty as "only a very small, hesitant and unsure step,'' and added: "But as part of the growing detente between the two superpowers, it is a significant move. It heralds a period when the superpowers, having achieved parity, are striving for mutual trust and confidence."

The Pioneer of Luck:now declared that the summit was "an outstanding success" and called for rejoicing "in a world intermittently plagued by the fear of a nuclear holocaust." The Bengali Jugamar hoped that peace-loving people "will not allow opponents to scuttle this U.S.-Soviet cflort toward peace."

The Malayala Manorama of Kottayam and Calicut described SALT 11 as "one of the great events of the present era," and said the Vienna summit had proved that the United States and the Soviet Union had "started thinking constructively" about the establishment of world peace.

0

ACHIEVED "It was like a train in the sky," said a man in Perth. "There was no sound-just long streaks of very bright lights." A woman in Esperance, 725 kilometers southeast of Perth, said: "I was standing outside home when someone shouted, 'Here it comes.' I looked up, and what seemed like a shower of sparkling lights passed overhead with no sound. After about half a minute or so there was this boom, and my husband said it was the sonic boom." A controller at Esperance airport saw 50 to 100 pieces of "glowing debris" coming from the Indian Ocean.

That's how Skylab returned to earth. The largest machine man has hurtled into space plummeted back like a flaming meteor six years later, dropping a large part of its mass into the Indian Ocean, some of it on to remote portions of Australia, mostly uninhabited. The Australian Government reported to the U .S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) that it had received no report of damage from the debris.

Skylab's safe return ended weeks of anxiety on the part of American leaders and space officials. President Jimmy Carter offered Australian Prime Minister J. Malcolm Fraser "any assistance you may need." Teams of U.S. space engineers flew to Australia to identify the remains of the spacecraft and to reconstruct the course of its return to earth.

Skylab was launched on May 14, 1973. The 85-ton space station, as big as a three-bedroom house, orbited the earth once every 93 minutes, or about 15 and a half times each day at an altitude of 435 kilometers. With lavishly instrumented laboratories, it was a modem research center in the sky. Three crews ofSkylab astronauts lived and worked in it in 1973, each setting successive space endurance records-of28 days, 59 days and 84 days. The wealth ofinformation

SPAN AUGUST 1979

4

WHAT SKYlU ACHIEVED

they gathered during the 171 days is still being processed and analyzed.

Sometimes working as long as 18 hours a day, the astronauts used 58 research instruments to conduct more than 250 experiments. Of these, 146 were aimed at the earth, 44 examined the sun, 26 involved medical and life science experiments.

There were experiments on solar astronomy, on the manufacture of alloys and other products in space. and on the effect of the space environment on the human body.

Robert A. Frosch, administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, testifying before a House of Representatives subcommittee in June of this year on the deorbiting of Skylab, described the project as "a particularly productive scientific program." "h demonstrated that such space activities can be of enormous practical value to life on earth," he said.

"All told," he said, "the three crews spent 740 hours observing the sun with telescopes and brought home more than 175,000 solar pictures. Such data are changing long-standing theories of solar physics and could lead to the practical use of the sun's vast energy.

"More than 46,000 photographs and 64 kilometers of data tape obtained by

48

SPAN AUOUST 1979

C'ontinued

Above: Floating upside down in the orbiting Skylab space station, astronaut Pete Conrad rmdergoes a physical examination, including a throat check. The examiner is asrronaur-cum-doctor Joseph Kerwin. Right, top : Skylab crf!'tl-men Pete Conrad, Paul Weitz and Joseph Kerwin perform the first foot race in space, sprinTing roiUid and roiUid arop rhe water ranks in their orbiting workshop. Srarring from a crouch, rhey gain enough speed to riUI in an erect position, keeping rheir Jeer firmly on the rrack cmd creaTing an arrificial sense ofgravity in the weightlessness ofspace. Right, below: Can a weighrless spider spin a web? Spider Arabella has done a creditable job. Two spiders were carried aboard Skylab by the second three-man crew, and their web-weaving activities were photographed by the astronauts. The "spider in space" idea was suggested by Judith Miles, a 17-year-o/d American high school studeht.

She was one of some 3,500 youths who submitted ideas for Skylab experiments.

Skylab's earth resources instruments have been used by government and industry for studies ranging from agriculture to zoology."

During its active life, Skylab was used for the most intensive study ever made of the sun, adding significantly to knowledge of whal is our most important celestial body. The telescopic photographs and electronic images of the sun were made in X-ray, ultraviolet and visible light. X-ray and ultraviolet images cannot be obtained from ground observatories because they are blocked by the atmosphere surrounding the earth. Water vapor and dust distort visible light.

But with the unimpeded view from space, the astronauts were able to conduct extensive studies including observations of the corona (the thin "atmosphere" surrounding the sun) which can only be seen

from earth during a total eclipse of the sun by the moon. The photographs indicated that the corona is more dynamic and complex than previously believed.

Also recorded was a medium-sized solar flare, which was traced from beginning to end. The processes that take place as the flare begins are particularly important because it is then that the puzzling energy transfer from magnetic field into thermal energy takes place.

The Skylab observations may also make it possible to predict more accurately solar flares and sunspots that produce the radiation that causes electrical properties to be altered in the earth's ionosphere (upper atmosphere). This, in turn, interrupts shortwave communication on earth.

These sudden increases in radiation could endanger the lives of future space travelers.

1 Continu£•cl 011 page 44A )

EXTENDING THE

FRONTIERS OF PHILOSOPHY

by TAYLOR BRANCH

At the age of 38, Saul Kripke is possibly the only living philosopher who may be able to rattle the world of philosophy with unorthodox work in such fields as time, materialism and the emotions.

When Saul Kripke was three years old, he walked into the kitchen of his home in Omaha, Nebraska, and asked his mother if God is truly everywhere. Dorothy Kripke said yes, whereupon the child asked if this meant he had squeezed part of God out of the kitchen by coming in and taking up some of His space. "I was startled that Saul already seemed to have an intuitive grasp of the notion that two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time," recalls Mrs. Kripke. " I found that a sharp question for a three-year-old."

The Kripke parents soon discovered signs that their son was more than sharp. He was, Reprinted wi1 h permis:aon from Tlrt• Nt.•w Ynrk Tim(,S ll'faxa:ine_ Copyright by the New YMk Time:-. Comp~my.

in fact, possessed of an awesome gift.

"It really began to dawn on me when Saul was in the fourth grade," says his father, Rabbi Myer Kripke. "He came in one day with some numbers he had been playing with.

He showed me two numbers. He had multiplied their sum by the difference between them, and he got the same answer as he did when he subtracted the square of the smaller one from the square of the larger one. He said that would be true of any two numbers.

For a long time I didn't unders4lnd what he was saying, but then I realized that he was expressing something I knew from algebra: that (a+ b) (a - b)= a 2 - b 2 . I was excited but also a little frightened. He had no concept of algebra at that time, and he knew

nothing of algebraic notation. He had just seen the idea. By the sixth or seventh grade he had gone through most of algebra that way." Says Mrs. Kripke: "Saul once told me he would have invented algebra if it hadn't already been invented, because he came upon it naturally."

Few people could make such an astonishing statement without seeming to boast, but Saul K.ripke was simply speaking in the manner of an explorer describing yesterday's terrain. For he has gone on to become, at the age of 37, one of the mont penetrating minds of our time. His achievements span the disciplines of philosophy, logic and mathematics. From his post at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey, where

Illustration hy Nand Katyal. wi1h apologies to Rembrandt:"Saul Kripke contemplating the bust of Bertrand Russell. "

FRONTIERS OF PHILOSOPHY co111inued

he is James McCosh Professor of Philosophy, and his previous post at Rockefeller University in New York City, Kripke has established a towering reputation as one of the two or three most eminent philosophers in the English-speaking world.

Kripke's contributions to philosophy thus far have extended the boundaries of the most unfamiliar and technical regions of modern analytic philosophy-where philosophical reasoning intermingles with abstract mathematic theory. He has worked in the field of modal logic, a branch of formal logic that has introduced ways to distinguish kinds of true statements- between statements that are "possibly" true and those that are "necessarily" true. The basic question is: If something is true, could it have been otherwise?

Before Kripke, modal logicians - including the inventor of modal logic, C.l. Lewis of the United States (1883-1964)- did not have the mathematical tools to analyze many of the most important kinds of

Kripke has been quite special from birth.

At the age of six, Kripke acquired a working knowledge of Hebrew and delivered a surprise recitation for his parents, who had not even known he was studying the language on his own. He read all of Shakespeare's works in the fourth grade. His voracious appetite for books gave pleasure to his parents, but it was always math that showed him to be more than just another precocious child. This is in the tradition of the prodigy.

Math - along with related fields, like chess and music- has a core of such pure intuition that a child of genius can display his powers quite early, not limited by experience like merely talented children. Instead of soaking up knowledge faster than their peers, prodigies seem almost disconnected from experience.

Kripke began teaching himself geometry and calculus in his last year of grammar school, and his teacher gave him some books on mathematical theory to occupy his time in the classroom. By the age of 15, Kripke became convinced that some of his ideas in mathematical logic had never appeared in the professional journals. It was more than a little But a/ be that he awkward for Rabbi Kripke to induce a wellwas a philosophre, known mathematician, Haskell B. Curry, to Yet hadde he but look at his son's work, but soon the young high school student from Omaha was on his lite/ gold in coji·e way to present his ideas to a convention - GEOFFREY CHAUCER of mathematics professors at Rochester, New York.

"We stayed up all night before Saul was English sentences. One of Kripke's major to leave for the convention," recalls Dorothy achievements has been the invention of Kripke. ··we had two friends over to help "possible world semantics," a form of modal us type the paper. Saul went to bed because logic that has shown to the satisfaction of we wanted him to be fresh, but we had to most philosophers that the common sense keep waking him up. We couldn't proofread understanding of the concepts "possibility" the paper without him. None of us underand "necessity" in true statements can be stood a word of it.·· mathematically proved.

Kripke's first published article, "A ln Kripke 's analysis, a statement is possibly Completeness Theorem in Modal Logic," true if and only if it is true in some possible grew out of this debut and appeared in world- for example, "The sky is blue" is a The Journal of Symbolic L ogic in 1959, when possible truth, because there is some world he was 18. By then, he was so well-known in which the sky could be red. A statement as a prodigy that the U.S. Air Force's Strateis necessarily true if it is true in all possible gic Air Command base near Omaha sent a worlds, as in "The bachelor is an unmarried troublesome math problem over to Central man."

High School and asked if Saul could solve It is a further measure of Kripke's enor- it. He did. The boy's genius in math set him mous potential that he is now moving into so far apart from ordinary people. and even new frontiers of philosophy that could change from his scholarly parents, that it placed that course itself. In the past three years, emotional obstacles between him and the Saul Kripke has used his fertile mathematical world. For years, the parents tried to check mind to address questions that previously their son's mind gently rather than to push it have been considered too sweeping and on. knowing that John Stuart Mill's father cumbersome by analytic philosophers. He is had pushed hin1 to emotional breakdown. beginning, with scholarly caution, to look at Philosophy helped. Whereas mathematics problems- such as the nature of human is ungrounded and can easily soar into emotions-that have been relegated to "un- foreign spaces, classical philosophy is welded fashionable" existentialists and phenomeno- to humanity by the very questions it asks : logists. Only the rarest of philosophical What is real? What is it possible to know? minds could hope to excel in either of these What is life? Kripke took up philosophy in pursuits, much less span them both, but grammar school. ''I remember first being

6

SPAN AUGUST 1979

struck by the problem of the external world,·· he says. ·•y asked my father how I know that rm not dreaming. He answered that it was a philosophical problem. a very difficult one, and that when I got older I could read a philosopher named Descartes who wrote about it. So I had to go to the library on my

For there l-vas never yet Philosopher Thai could endure the toothache patiently. ·· WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

own and search out the MediTaTions. I read there about the problem I was interested in , though I found it rather strange that Descartes proved the existence of God before he proved the existence of the external world."

Next, for Kripke, came David Hume. the great Scottish philosopher and skeptic (1711-1776). In the eighth grade. Kripke picked out Hume's name from a footnote in Mark Twain's Tlte Prince and The Pauper. " I loved Hume' s phrase that the self was 'a bundle of perceptions,' " says Kripke. " I used to go around all the time repeating to myself, ' Bundle of perceptions, bundle of perceptions.' One of my close friends liked the sound of the phrase, and he would repeat it, too." No other philosopher would strike Kripke with the force of Hume.

* * *

More than 200 years ago, David Hume destroyed the cherished connection between reason and the empirical world in his essay, "Treatise of Human Nature.'' Among other arguments, Hume claimed that it is folly to think any observed effect follows any cause by force of reason. lf a rock is dropped, said Hume, it is custom and experience that tell us the rock will fall , not reason. A scientist could do wonders with practical laws that describe the way a rock falls, but no philosopher could produce the pure reason why it had to be so and not otherwise.

Hume showed that the truths of reason are true by definition, like mathematical axioms, but that the truths of the world we live in are based on experience instead of logic.

Hume's essay marked a great divide in the history of philosophy. By cutting reason off from the world, he undermined the hope that a searing, rat ional mind could perfect an explanation of the entire universe. After Hume, notwithstanding the mighty labors of Immanuel Kant to rescue the philosophical force of pure reason from Hume's dilemma. philosophy has gone in two directions. One branch has maintained touch with the affairs of the heart by overlooking the limits of reason and by seeking the best possible

interpretation of the world as we know it.

This line includes the existentialists, political philosophers and phenomenologists- forever in dispute, going in and out of style.

Its most recent development on the Continent is France's "new philosophers." Most of the more popular philosophers of the last 100 years-such as Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche and Jean-Paul Sartre have come from this line, which holds that the only knowledge worth having is knowledge that bears directly upon the human experience.

The other branch of philosophy has come to restrict the scope of its inquiries to coincide with the limits of reason. It has tended toward logic and math, and it has intensified philosophy's concern with the meaning, structure and precision of language. This is analytic philosophy, which focuses on the tools of inquiry more intensely than on its objects, tending to eschew that which cannot be rigorously proved. Its seminal figures are Gottlob Frcge, Bertrand Ru:.sell and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Over the last 75 years, analytic philosophy has come to dominate Western philosophyfirst in England and now in the United States.

So. for the first time in history. American philosophy is at the forefront- certainly in the English-speaking countries.

• • •

Kripke's boyhood genius did not flicker out in the 1960s. when he studied at Harvard, Oxford University in England, Princeton and Rockefeller University- or, more accurately, when he worked on his own at these institutions and had occasional contact with

Nihil tam absurde dici potest, quod non dicatur ab aliquo philosophoruni There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it. ·· ~·!ARCUS

"I U LI.I US CICERO

his surroundings. His academic training was unique. H e ascended directly to full professorships without ever earning a doctorate. and he never earned a doctorate because no one could ever quite decide who would presume to teach him, or in what field. The universities let him alone and admitted him to their faculties when he said he was ready.

Kripke was usually off in his own tower, writing his own thoughts, oblivious to the myths growing up around him that would stretch his feats even farther than they went and would sometimes brand him as a little ~trange. He published exclusively in journals of logic and mathematics, creating new fields in mathematical set theory and modal logic

which will generate Ph.D. theses for years to come. But he considered himself a philosopher. and the profession happily concurred.

In this decade, entering his 30s, Kripke began allowing some of his lectures on philosophical topics to be published. These were important events in themselves as a kind of philosophical emergence. When someone with an awesome reputation in mathematics begins to address philosophical questions, it inevitably triggers memories of other great modern philosophers who were first mathematicians: Descartes, Leibniz, Mill, Russell.

And Kripke's emergence caused further stir within .the profession because he gave hints of heresy. At the very end of "Naming and Necessity," a landmark lecture on the theory of proper names, Kripkc posed a cha llenge to the materialism that is overwhelmingly predominant in current analytic philosophy- that anything we cannot see or sense simply does not exist. "Materialism, I think, must hold that a physical description of the world is a complete description of it, that any mental facts are ·ontologically dependent' on physical facts in the straightforward sense of following from them by necessity.

No identity theorist [materialist] seems to me to have made a convincing argument against the intuitive view that this is not the case."

In the past few years, Kripke not only has kept up his mathematical work and continued his philosophical investigations. but also has dabbled in relativity theory and other distant fields. These developments underscore his potential to become the kind of synthetic philosopher long considered extinct- the kind that causes people to see the whole world in a way they had not been able to imagine. Kripke himself ca lls that level of work a "big move,'' stresses its difficulty and uses Aristotle as an example.

Kripke's potential, his controversial views and his position as the budding genius in world analytic philosophy have combined to make him a man who inspires awe and excitement among philosophers. In fact, he already has become something of a cu lt figure in philosophical circles- gossiped about. studied, analyzed and claimed as a kindred mind. Some philosophers lose their reserve when speaking of him. The cult phenomenon is itself remarkable, for philosophers as a group have such large egos that they correct Aristotle as they would a schoolchild. and they have such a healthy sense of skepticism that they doubt whether such things as proper names exist. Even in groups of two or three. they lace their conversat ion with exit clauses and qualifiers to guard against having a trapdoor sprung under some private reality. They do not, in short, subordinate or let go of themselves easily, and yet Kripke has been known to bring to their brain-twisting conclaves the atmosphere of an early Beatles concert.

A herd of philosophers is an extraordinary sight - a vast sea of beards and preoccupied expressions, a concentration of physical eccentricities generally associated with the bird realm of the animal kingdom, a procession of highly individualistic heads passing beneath a thin haze of pipe smoke. Such a herd moved through the hallways of New York's Statler Hilton Hotel more than three years ago, when the presentation of Saul Kripke's "theory of truth'' was moved to the Grand Ballroom because of an overflow crowd. Even the ballroom was too small.

Philosophers sat in the aisles and stood around the edge of the balcony, several

How charming is divine philosophy !

Not harsh, and crabbed as dull fools suppose, .

But musical as is Apollo's lute.

And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets Where no crude sw:feit reigns.

'-··JOliN MILTON

thousand strong. They fell to a hush when Kripke took a seat on the stage, folded his hands on the bare table before him, and began.

"The question asked by Pilate in the Gospel was, ' What is truth?'" Kripke paused, rocking slowly in his chair and rubbing his hands lightly as though beneath an air dryer, and added with a shy smile: "Uh, he didn't get an adequate answer at that time." A chuckle passed through the audience, in special appreciation of one who could take on no less a subject than truth and yet retain his droll sense of humor. Kripkc went on to note that truth theory has long been bedeviled by certain snares, some of which also arise in the Bible. According to the epistle of Titus, even the Cretan prophet states that ·'the Cretans are always liars."

If this is true of all other Cretan statements, then the prophet's words are true if, and only if, they are false. Thus, the liar paradox.

Kripke outlined another example : Bertrand Russell once asked his eminent colleague G.E. Moore if Moore always told the truth.

When Moore said no, Russell replied that Moore's answer was the only lie he had ever told. This celebrated exchange between the philosophers can easily be paradoxical: If Moore's life had been an unbroken string or true statements, then his denial would be his first lie and his admission of the lie would simultaneously be another truth. His "no" would be true if, and only if, it were false.

Kripke toyed briefly with the implications

SPAN AUGUST 1979

7

FRONTIFRS OF PHILOSOPHY cominued

of the paradox and then showed that it is idea"). the ballroom hummed with internot merely a trivial loop in semantics. An pretive comments. " When I hear something unfavorable set of facts can generate paradox like that," said one philosopher, ''1 want and make it impossible to specify conditions to leave the profession and go out and for assessing the truth of almost any drive a cab."

David Kaplan, chairman of the philosophy sentence .... His mental gymnastics were spellbinding, as though he were waving department at the University of California at sparklers in the dark spots of the brain. Once. Los Angeles (UCLA), offered an equally when he could tell that his listeners were enthusiastic, but more professional, judggetting dizzy in the rush of his calculations, ment: "That new theory of truth is an imKripke paused, gestured to his blackboard portant event in the history of philosophy." and said, "Uh, you can check this out at * * * your leisure." There was relieved laughter The philosophical mode lives on, even in and scattered applause. the midst of hardship .... The intrepid All this- the crowd, excitement and philosopher offers assertions knowing that audience reaction- was unprecedented for a his colleagues arc lying in ambush, waiting to philosophical gathering in America. Kripkc make a pincushion of his ego. At a session was special, and he was bridging great gaps entitled "Can Statements Be Identified With in the field. His topic was a technical Sentences?" one scholar, working under the one. approaching truth as a problem of aegis of Kripkean semantics, sallied forth language instead of substance. . . . But with a hopeful yes by employing set theory Kripke captivated the nontechnical philos- as it might apply to possible worlds in which ophers, too. with his liveliness and passion. a model of all sentences might be constructed.

He darted about the stage like a nervous His critic then attacked at length, scoffing entertainer, jerky and somewhat awkward that the presentation was ' ' unfounded," ''not of body. His presence was a mixture of well motivated" and based on "arguments boyish enthusiasm and formidable con- which I find mysterious" (mysterious is the fidence. His beard showed sprouts of gray. unkindest cut of all). The original speaker, but his longish hair gave him the look of a wounded mortally, could barely manage a hippie prophet. He was dressed like a wistful reply: "I am happy to sec, by the way. schoolboy in slacks and open shirt with that I finally succeeded in making a mysteriheavy brcgans, in contrast to the more ous argument. It has always been my ambiformally attired elders who paid him homage. tion." He laughed nervously and fell si lent.

Kripkc kept losing his chalk, and he would Philosophical debates often resemble two continue the lecture while looking for it half- persons racing up ladders of air to reach the heartedly. The audience generously granted superior height, from which position the him such affectations, which. in Kripke's loser can be dismissed out of hand. The put-down, which is highly developed, is the principal jousting weapon along the way, and the most effective put-down is the dreaded Hang up philosophy! counterexample. At a rarefied seminar in Unless philosophy England, a philosopher of language once presented a formal lecture in which he can make a Juliet. announced that a double negative is known -- \VILLIAM SHAKESPEARE to mean a negative in some languages and a positive in others but that no natural language had yet been discovered in which a double case, carry the mark of something special positive means a negative. Whereupon Professor Sidney Morgenbesser is said to a runaway mind being chased by character.

He did not obscure the intuitive sense of have piped up from the back of the room with his argument behind a cloud of jargon and an instant, sarcastic, "Yeah. yeah.'' This Greek symbols. Kripke communicates with convulsed the audience in laughter and put large numbers of people without excluding a blot on the speaker's career. any of them unnecessarily. He was well into * * * his lecture before the untrained had to take Analytic philosophy is an adventure that things on faith and the technical philosophers promises to free the discipline from its got their due. Then he sketched his theory of nomadic wanderings and vast cosmological how to avoid paradox and "ungrounded- speculations, to give it a home of solid ness" in truth statements without resorting doctrine at last. From this perspective, the to a cumbersome hierarchy of languages. call of the "social'' philosophers to wrestle His goal was to preserve the words "true'' further with the old conundrums becomes a and "false" as they arc commonly used. siren song indeed. Even if some philosopher Kripke took the linguistic philosophers were to conjure up a magnificent new world through several mathematical somersaults, view, it would last only until the next counterto their joy, while the others could only example washed it away. Besides, social admire the grandeur of the venture. At the philosophy often seems incompatible with end of the lecture ("Well. that is the basic philosophical reason and dispassion.

8

SPAN AUGUST 1979

Analytic philosophers may have their own ethical views, but it seems wise to divorce them from the task of building a scientific foundation for the discipline. Such is the position of the establishment. and dissenters of many stripes inveigh against it.

* * *

Saul Kripke, from the apex of analytic philosophy. inspires those around him who are commilled to the partnership between philosophy and mathematics. Surprisingly, Kripkc himself thinks this partnership has been overblown. "Many people think that philosophers have become mathematicians,'' he says, "but most philosophers are far from being experts in the field.'' Only a handful of philosophers, including Kripke, attended a recent meeting of the Association for Symbolic Logic, and Kripke believes the inevitable has already come about: The mathematicians have taken over logic after the philosophers nurtured it for 75 years.

Once again philosophy is crowded out.

Kripkc is equally skeptical of any claim that analytic philosophy has thorough scientific objectivity- a claim that enables analytic philosophers to dismiss the desire for a more traditional philosophy as emotional and therefore unscientific. Kripke believes that philosophers do not escape their desires entirely; they only suppress them. "Take Quine [W.V.O. Quine of Harvard, the senior eminence of American logic]. I think parts of his views are a kind of materialism or physicalism in which everything IS physical and behavioristic-there arc only physical causes of behavior. And with that view comes the view that philosophy should be a scientific enterprise, continuous with science. And that 's a view in his work that's almost not even argued for, but assumed at the beginning. And I should think that's highly personal, in a way. The notion that philosophy should be continuous with science can itself be sort of a religion."

Kripke shies away from the scientific self-image, but this does not mean he is ready to minister to the world with incantations. He does not believe in ''consumer" philosophy. "Some people from outside philosophy want something that's emotionally gripping.·· he says. ·'with no corresponding thought to the analysis behind it. The mood has been strongly against that. And I've often thought that certain views got a lot of attention because people felt they were in some way exciting rather than because of the quality of the argument behind them."

* * *

In the past few years. two philosophers have attempted to apply new analytic techniques to general theories in political philosophy. John Rawls' A Theory of Justice and Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State a11d Utopia arc synthetic approaches that sparked attention both within philosophy and outside it.

Both men are highly respected in the pro-

fession. Rawls is almost universally admired for his personal qualities and also for his painstaking scholarship, and Nozick is respected for the analytic skills that took him to top positions at Princeton, Rockefeller and Harvard. Yet philosophers tend to be polite about these books. In both cases, the theory is hardly new and the analysis plays a secondary role. The analysis looks impressive and scientific. but it is nevertheless a kind of chrome plating over rather standard models of liberal and conservative philosophy.

* * *

Kripke spends almost all of his time at Princeton, where he tries to take daily walks along Lake Carnegie. They are hardly the leisurely philosophical stroll, for Kripke

GLOSSARY OF PHILOSOPHICAL TERMS EPISTEMOLOGY- The study of knowledge ; how people know, what they know and how much they can know.

MATERIALISM - The theory that the only things that are real are objects that can be experienced through the senses (seeing. hearing, feeling, touch¡ ing, smelling).

METAPHYSlCS- Many people wou ld use the word to refer to the most basic questionings about reality. Under that general heading, most philosophers could be included because they all ask questions about reality. But as a more specific concept. it has to do with the study of reality itself. independent of human knowledge of it, of the language we use to describe it and of the experience we have of it.

ONTOLOGY- The study of what it means for so met bing to exist.

PHENOMENOLOGY - Refers to a philosophical techn ique first introduced by Edmund Husser! in the beginning of this century. ll has to do with the examination of essences. Now it refers more generally to any philosophy that puts its primary emphasis on the detailed description of human experience, as opposed, for example, to description of language or culture.

takes off at breakneck speed and keeps it up for eight kilometers or more, arms flailing as though moving ski poles. Because of his velocity. he usually winds up by himself, but when he talks to someone it is in spurts. He can stop abruptly, gaze off intently at a family of ducks or at nothing, and then return a minute later to the exact point of the sentence he broke off earlier.

The person normally struggling to keep up is Kripke's wife, Margaret Gilbert, a British philosopher who has taught at Princeton, UCLA and Oxford. They married in 1976, and Gilbert shows no signs of difficulty adjusting to her position as spouse of the most outstanding member of her own profession. She specializes in philosophy of the social sciences, a subject that has less of a laboratory flavor than Kripke's modal logic.

Kripke and his wife tend to speak with a suppressed chuckle running beneath their voices. (Kripke lectures that way.) There is an undertone of amusement when discussing serious philosophy. The amusement vanishes only when they seem to take their minds out of gear temporarily, at which time they weave a perfunctory conversation about a tax form or some missing household item.

A sense of whimsy may have been instilled in Kripke quite early. Before he started kindergarten he was entertained around the house by his mother, who recited passages from Gilbert and Sullivan.

Kripke memorized the passages, and his imagination led him to try some storytelling

PHYSICALISM- The thesis, developed wit bin empiricism. that every descriptive term in the language of science (in the widest sense, including social science) is connected with terms designating observable properties of 1hings.

SET THEORY - A branch of mathematics that deals abstractly with the relations between sets and classes of objects. A set is any group or collection of objects such as numbers, planets, people.

Students of set theory investigate the logical consequences of certain assumptions (axioms) about sets.

SYMBOLIC LOGIC- A systematic study with the help of mathematical symbolism of the logical relations within a language.

of his own. He has written unpublished manuscripts of detective novels and a play, in Hebrew, that was performed at a summer camp in his youth. As a child, Kripke dreamed up an entire fantasy world inhabited by gremlins and kept up a running series of gremlin episodes for the benefit of his two younger sisters. Even the gremlin world contained philosophical puzzles. "It was an absolute monarchy, of course," smiles Kripke. "The king was infallible. He had every possible quality-like he was both the tallest and the shortest. Or so the gremlins thought."

His interests still roam. For example, in order to play with the concept of black holes- implosions of matter in space- he has intensified his sideline work in physics.

It is this same lively spirit that motivates Kripke to shake loose the technical confines of contemporary philosophy. " People used

to talk about concepts more, and now they talk about words more," he says, capsulizing the profession. "Sometimes I think it's better to talk about concepts. " Some of the new work has already been done and is lying ''in a drawer somewhere."

Kripke says it will flesh out earlier hints of his attack on materialism.

Kripke says he also plans to do some work on "time" and "on technical questions, like whether the future wilJ resemble the present."

For nonphilosophers who might be led to expect the definitive trip in the time machine, Kripke warns that his work "would be on some really special aspects of time."

Most surprising, Kripke takes a professional interest in the philosophy of human emotion - a topic that is so far removed from the mainstream of analytic work as to be a nonsubject. At a seminar not long ago, an analytic philosopher said in passing, "The emotions? There are no emotions, really.

Inclinations perhaps, but not emotions."

"What I think is important is whether the emotions have something like a felt quality," says Kripke. "Like feeling a tickle.

Like feeling a sensation. . . whether the emotions have a felt quality like that of a sensation-have introspectable qualities. An emotion isn't a pure sensation, but how the concepts are related intrigues me... . There is some stuff in the literature that' s materialist, you know, that fear is just the sensation you have when certain physical properties come into play- that only behavior is important. ... You can't imagine a tickle if you've never experienced one-that seems true- but I was wondering whether that property of sensations applies to emotions like hatred or fear. I would think that fear isn't just a belief that something is dangerous and a corresponding tendency to avoid it.

There's something more, and what is that?"

Saul Kripke is possibly the only living philosopher who may be able to rattle the world of philosophy with unorthodox work in such fields as time, materialism and the emotions. If these theories are to be supported by the same level of technical work that has led him to be ca11ed genius, they will embroil the whole profession in debate.

Many analysts find the very undertaking of such work offensive, and others would find the substance of the theories deplorable.

Still others would be inspired. Kripke could produce the kind of overall philosophy that would make philosophers butt heads again.

The noise might even draw the interest of those outsiders who could penetrate the jargon of debate, and to them philosophy would become more than a historical echo.

Beyond that, no one knows what might happen.

0 About the Author: Taylor Branch is a Fee-lance a•riter. His articles ojien appear in Esquire. Harper's and The New York Times Magazine.

SPAN AUGUST 1979

9

VIliSSA GOBS TOCOLLIGI PHOTOGRAPHS BY HOPE ALEXANDER

0

Vanessa Timmons is one among some 1 I million young men and 200 buildings. Its I 7 academic and professional colleges include women who are enrolled in American colleges and universities arts and science, agriculture, engineering, business and today. As the accompanying photographs follow Vanessa around economics, education, architecture, communications, fine arts, at the University of Kentucky, giving a glimpse of life in an law, medicine, dentistry. nursing and pharmacy.

American college, SPAN takes a look at the state and statistics of Yet Kentucky is not among the largest schools in the nation.

The Unjversity of Minnesota enrolls almost 67,000 full- and higher education in America today. part-time students; the University of California at Los Angeles American college enrollment, at an all-time hjgh, has in- has more than 60,000, Ohio State University 50,000 and Michigan creased 29 per cent since 1970. Vanessa Timmons' incoming State U niversity 48,000. class of 2,440,000 was not the largest in history-1975 was a peak As do almost 49 per cent of all college students, Vanessa year, with 2,515,000-but it was the first in which women out- lives in a college dormjtory on campus. Her room there and her numbered men: 1.07 million women, ages 18 to 21 , began attend- board, which entitles her to two meals a day, five days a week, ing college in the 1977-78 academic year, compared to 995,000 cost $ I ,300 a year. In addition, she pays $275 a semester in academic fees. Vanessa's $200-a-semester scholarsrup covers men in the same age group.

The age distribution of college students has been changing most cif these school fees, and her family pays the rest of her as well. Enrollment of persons under 25 years of age decreased living expenses.

Vanessa's financial arrangements are typical of those of many from 72 to 67 per cent of the total college enrollment population from the 1972-73 academic year to 1976-77. college students. About 40 per cent receive $1,000 or more a year Minority students have registered important gains in numbers from their parents, while another 40 per cent receive amounts of and percentages. In 1966, for example, black students numbered less than $ I,000. Only 20 per cent get no financial help from their 282,000, or about 4.6 per cent of total college enrollments. Those families. About 32 per cent of all students have full-time or parttime jobs that pay at least part of their education expenses. figures had jumped to I ,062,000 and 10 per cent by 1976.

Various types of scholarships, grants and student loans are Vanessa applied to several colleges and universities while she was a high school senior, but her first choice was the Univer- making hjgher education accessible to every segment of the sity of Kentucky. " Dad went there," she says, "and I liked the population. The Federal Government, for example, guarantees campus when I visited the school to look around." Kentucky low-cost student loans repayable over periods of 20 years liked her too: The university accepted her as a full-time student or more and provides direct educational grants to students at and, because of her excellent record, offered her a small scholar- certain family-income levels. States and colleges offer many ship of$ 200 a semester. kinds of scholarshjps and grants; colleges and universities also The choice of schools is not always so easy. One reason is the provide part-time employment to qualified students under diversity and number of institutions of higher learrung in the special work-study programs. One study shows that 53 per cent United States. A junior college, for example, usually offers only of incoming freshmen receive financial aid from the Federal the first two years of training at the college level. A university, Government, a state. a college or a private institution. on the other hand, offers undergraduate courses in the liberal But students, whatever their financial means. pay only a arts and sciences, graduate coursework leading to doctorates, portion of the costs of their education. A recent study by the and preparation for entrance into such professions as medicine, National Center for Education Statistics showed that private law and engineering. Between these two academic poles are colleges spent an average of $3,24 I for each full-tin1e student, while public colleges and universities averaged $2,362. colleges offering a variety of undergraduate programs.

Public and private schools differ dramatically in the sources Over a recent 20-year period, the number of institutions of higher education rose from I,849 to 2,765. This increase of 916 of their funds. Private colleges received 63.7 per cent of their schools included 426 four-year colleges and universities and money directly from students, according to the center's study.

490 two-year, or junior, colleges. The number of two-year (Private-college tuitions averaged $2,505 in 1977.) Gifts accountcolleges nearly doubled, while four-year colleges and universities ed for 12.8 per cent, endowment earnings 8.5 per cent, and the balance came from other sources. Public coiJeges and univerincreased by more than 3 I per cent.

The last 20 years also have seen an upsurge in the relative sities, on the other hand, received only 20.6 per cent of their importance of public higher education. In the mid-l950s, slightly funds from students. (The average public-college tuition in 1977 more than half of all college students attended pubuc colleges was $549.) Less than 2 percent came from gifts and endowments.

7.7 per cent from other sources-and 70.2 per cent from Federal. and universities. Today, 75 per cent attend public i11stitutions.

Another trend in higher education has been an increase in the state and local governments.

H owever all these numbers a re combined, they signify that size of American colleges and uruversities. Over a I 0-year period, schools with 5,000 or more students increased from Vanessa Timmons has joined a large, richly varied and changing 10 to 20 per cent of the total of all institutions of higher learning. segment of American society.

Vanessa's University of Kentucky, for example, enrolls more than 20,000 students on the main campus at Lexington. The Books in hand, Vanessa Timmons arrives at the University of campus spreads over some 250 hectares and includes more than Kentucky¡s main campus in Lexington to begin her college education.

VANESSA GOES

TO COLLEGE Vanessa Timmons' college days in the University of Kentucky are packed with fim and learning. There are outings with friends and serious guidance sessions with the director of studem relations, Mike Richey. Examination lime means some tension. relieved soon afterward as Vanessa and her friends chat in the dormitory room she shares. Later it's time to catch up on some extra reading in the library.

12

SPAN AUGUST 1979

What are the products India exports to the United States?

Many and varied. Indian textiles, cotton fabrics, garments, tea and leather goods are selling well in American stores. Diamonds, semiprecious stones and jewelry from lndia are much in demand. There are growing markets for manufactured industrial items such as iron castings, iron sheets, wire cables, bolts and nuts, pumps, machine tools. Small productshand tools, domestic utensils, lighting fixtures-are also making their presence felt in the United States.

Numerous other products bring the sights and scents of India to American homes- shellfish, nuts, coffee, tea, pepper, tobacco, spices, gums and resins, mica, castor oil.

Thus India's exports to the United States are diversified and broadbased.

India doesn't depend on just one or two products for its exports.

What is the value of Indian exports to the United States?

India exported products worth $980 million to the United States in 1978. This represented an increase of nearly $200 million over the 1977 figure.

By comparison, American exports to India in 1978 amounted to $948 million, $ 32 million less than Indian exports to America. Hence the bilateral trade flow in 1978 was essentially in balance. This is a reflection of India's growing self-suffi-

ciency. In previous decades, purchases of American wheat took up a big slice of India's import bill.

The United States is India's largest trade partner. Exports to America constitute 15 per cent of India's total exports ; the U.S. share of India's total imports is about 12 per cent. However, India accounts for only 0.53 per cent of all U.S. imports: this dramatizes both the size of the U.S. market and the potential for growth of India's exports.

What is the composition of Indian exports? How is it changing?

Traditional exports such as textiles. jute, handicrafts and cashew still constitute the bulk of India's exports to the United States. However, the fastest growth in recent years has been registered by the nontraditional goods. Between 1974 and 1977, India's exports of rubber tires and lubes (for vehicles and planes) jumped more than tenfold (from about $ 300,000 to about $ 3 million). There was a threefold rise in nuts and bolts (from $2.3 million to$ 7 million). Exports of electrical machinery leaped 250 times- from about $12,000 to $3 million! Precious and semiprecious stones now total $262 million, nearly 27 per cent of India's exports to the United States.

By way of contrast, carpets, a traditional export, showed little growth during the period- rising from $13.6 million to $17.6 million over the past few years.

What are the characteristics of the American market? What are the opportunities for India?

The United States is the largest singlecountry market in the world, an affluent, consumer-oriented society of some 2 J6 million people and of advanced, sophisticated, technology-oriented industries. The advantages of selling in the United States are that there are virtually no import restrictions, there are no import licensing arrangements and, for the most part, there are no quota restrictions on imports. The basic philosophy is that imports help keep prices down. For the exporter to the United States, this means that a product of good quality, at a competitive price, which arrives on schedule can compete effectively in the U.S. market.

Many sellers view the United States, particularly because of national advertising via television, as a single, homogeneous market. But American markets are determined by the type ofproduct that is being sold. Some items, such as fashion clothing, have diverse markets. Shirts and skirts that sell well in warm, easyliving California may not be popular in cooler, more conservative Connecticut.

A basic condition for being able to sell in the United States is that the Indian exporter must have some knowledge of the American markets, channels of distribution, and business practices, or he must associate with a distributor or agent in the United States who has the experience

1

Engineering Jl(J("HlS--.SI:Ifmra; ofthem displayed herenow form a significant pari of India's exports to the United States, complementing the traditional goods.

J4

SPAN AUGUST 19'19

and organization to market his product.

Choice of marketing methods will be dictated in part by the size and resources of the Indian seller. Small and mediumsize Indian companies will probably market in the United States through an established distributor or agent who knows the American market. A larger Indian exporter might establish his own distribution or sales office in the U.S. Other marketing approaches: · • The Indian seller may participat~ in a trade show of which there arc hundreds each year. The Trade Development Authority of India sponsors ''buyer-

seller" meets to bring Indian sellers into contact with U.S. buyers.

• The Indian firm may decide to market directly to large chain stores, such as Sears Roebuck, or Macy's, or J.C. Penney. or to U.S. manufacturers depending on the type of product. Another method of testing the market is to advertise in trade journals or other media.

• A virtually untapped market for India is the export of services. India has a competent, highly trained cadre of engineers, computer specialists, scientists, and other technically qualified personnel.

Computer software services. for example,

is an area which is being explored but has not been exploited to any degree.

Engineering and drafting services and design work are additional potential areas for exports of services.

What conditions must Indian products satisfy to succeed in the U.S. market?

To market successfully in the United States the product must be a quality item.

Even cottage industry handicrafts, which sell partly because of the label "Handmade in India," must be of good quality and appearance to attract buyers. Indian exporters and manufacturers must, in

INDIAN GOODS IN AMERICA continued

some instances, be willing to alter the design of their product to meet the requirements of U.S. markets.

L. Richard Jackson, Com mercial Attache to the American Embassy, cited (in a recent speech) a ceremony he attended at U.P. Ceramics and Potteries Ltd., Ghaziabad, to celebrate the very first shipment of ceramic products-beautiful bone china saucers, cups, and dinner platesfrom India to the United States. " The U.S. importer had worked closely with the Indian manufacturer on the design and colors of the ceramic products so that the product would sell in America.''

Special attention must be paid to delivery schedules, quality control, and other requirements of the U.S. buyer.

Late delivery can result in lost business for both U.S. and Indian companies. T he markets for many products in the U.S., e.g., wearing apparel, are tied to seasons and holidays such as Easter and Christmas. If the apparel items do not reach U.S. retail stores by specified dates, the market is lost for that year.

What is the G.S.P.? How bas it helped Indian exports?

The U.S. Generalized System of Preferences (G.S.P.) went into effect on January I, 1976. Under this scheme, some 2,700 products from developing countries, ranging from Angora goat hair to zirconium oxide, are permitted duty-free entry into the United States. India is already selling about 550 products in the United States that are eligible for dutyfree entry under the G.S.P. In I 978, the value of Indian products entering the United States under the G .S.P. was about $ 120 million, approximately 12 per cent of India's total exports of $980 million to the U.S. last year. Export of 32 G.S.P. items exceeded a million dollars each.

Indian exports to the United States under the G.S.P. registered an annual growth rate of 46.9 per cent between 1975 and 1978, as compared to 21.3 per cent for exports as a whole.

Indian experts would like the scope of the G .S.P. to be widened to include handloom and silk fabrics, jute and coir products, chemicals, bicycle tubes, certain steel products, gems and jewelry, leather footwear. They have also urged extension of the G.S.P. by 10 years beyond 1985, when it is due to expire.

16

How is India promoting exports to the United States?

The Government of India has set up export promotion councils for various products. T heTrade Development Authority (TDA) provides market intelligence and other services to exporters. It seeks

to establish "a bridge of business trust Merchandise Corporation (AMC), a between overseas buyers and competent consortium of more than 40 American Indian manufacturers and exporters." departmental stores, has an office in Says a TDA spokesman: "We have Delhi. AMC takes TDA 's help in identisome 650 member-clients. Nearly 70 per fying reliable buyers. Other TDA acticent of them have contacts with American vities: It has published a directory of buyers. We send out expert teams and Indian manufacturers, 4,000 copies of product samples to the United States, which have been mailed to potential Europe and other countries. They test- buyers of Indian goods abroad; it is now market products, guided by local experts, publishing attractive product catalogues and recommend product changes to Indian to give the world an idea of what Indian manufacturers. For example, they may industry can make. suggest that a particular automobile part should be hexagonal, not round. T hey Do any American organizations promote also bring product samples from the lndia?

United States to lndia, so that manuAmerican department stores that buy facturers here get an idea of what is used Indian goods frequently hold promotional in the United States." events. In 1978 Bloomingdale's, the faTDA's buyer-seller meets in the United mous American chain that has sold Indian States have been very successful, TDA goods for a decade, organized a $8 million spokesmen say. Four such fairs were six-week promotion drive in collaboration held in 1976 (in New York, Dallas, Los with Air-India called "' India: the Ultimate Angeles and again New York), two in Fantasy." The store's buyers made IOO 1977 (at Chicago and Los Angeles). They trips to India and bought millions of generated spot orders worth millions of dollars worth of goods. dollars and scores of inquiries. " More India Expo 1980, to be held in Sepimportant than actual orders are the tember 1980 at San Diego, California, exposure of lndian merchandise," says will be one of the largest fairs ever held in a IDA spokesman. " We wish to project North America. Besides the sale and exhithe capability of Indian industry abroad." bition of Indian consumer and industrial TDA also puts visiting American buyers goods, there will be fashion shows. Indian and buyer organizations in touch with artisans will demonstrate their skills; so Indian manufacturers. The Associated will experts in yoga, ayurveda and astrology. T here will be Indian foods, music and dance. T he fair is expected to provide INDIA'S EXPORTS TO THE a big boost to Indian exports.

UNITED STATES 1976

1977

1978

FIGURES IN $ THOUSANDS

708,200

781.100

979.452

PRECIOUS. SEMI· PRECIOUS STONES

78,187

145.101

26L.974

LEATHER

29.479

24.285

36,547

4.478

7,508

11.060

COFFEE

24.997

43.320

48.624

TEA

12.378

28.580

5.64!9

2.394

14.303

9,080

45.162

46,611

42.1!62

231

348

22.032

VEGETABLE MATERIALSCRUDE

39.057

50.803

54.844

COTTON FABRIC WOV EN

48,642

40.379

25.292

WOVEN FABRIC EXCLUDING COTTON

76, 103

86.515

78.93 1

FLOOR COVERTAPESTRIES

IS,008

23.705

35,401

TIRES .t TUBES

3,023

1,533

3,728

NlTTS .t BOLTS

3,124

7,01)

8.452

TOTAL

MAJOR SELECTED ITEMS

HAND TOOLS

SPICES FISH .t SHELLFISH FRUITS & NlTTS PREPARED

Any do's and don'ts for Indian exporters to America?

There are more do's than don'ts! The following checklist should be useful: • Do test and research the market. U.S. companies do extensive market testing for their products, and imported products require similar testing and research.

• Do pay strict attention to quality control. Failure to do so usually means the loss of repeat business.

• Do promise only what you can deliver and stick to the agreed delivery schedule.

• Do know your buyers. Obtain a credit report before you do business, and initially do business on a secured basis.

• Do follow exactly your buyer's instructions on documentation and packing.

• Do provide servicing and guarantees, if appropriate.

The U.S. market is open to imports, the opportunities exist for India, and India's exports to the United States over the past several years have been growing at a fairly impressive rate. Indian exporters and manufacturers are competing successfully in many American markets, and exports from India to the United States are expected to continue to grow.

0

SENIOR CENTERS cn111i11ued

hen Mrs. Hooper developed a sharp pain in her back last winter, the 77-year-old widow decided to see a doctor. Since she had no physician of her own, a young neighbor who worked as a volunteer in the local senior center suggested going there. Mrs. Hooper could have a general health screening at no cost at the center.

Mrs. Hooper had never been inside the center. although she had gone past it on a bus several times. Since its completion a few years before, it had become a city landmark.

The doctor who performed the screening (diabetes, hypertension, cancer, and other tests, including a careful examination of the painful back) found nothing seriously wrong. Mrs. Hooper's lower back problem would 'probably improve in a few sessions with the center's physiotherapist and some moderate exercise, the physician said. When Mrs. Hooper felt somewhat better, the therapist helped her enroll in a special physical fitness course.

Then one thing led to another. After morning exercise Mrs. Hooper looked into a needlework group. A staff "enabler'' got her interested in embroidery again and she tried her hand at crewel, which was new to her. Then other women in the sewing group suggested staying for lunch at the center. That not only solved Mrs. Hooper's noonday meal problem but kept her at the center for the main event in the afternoon program- the one o'clock concert, film, or lecture. That day the performer was a young Polis h-American folk dance group. On succeeding days there would be a pianist, guitarist, wildlife films, and a discussion with several city councilmen. On Mondays, a live combo played, and since there were never quite enough male partners to go round, some of the women danced together.

Mrs. H.ooper had grown less outgoing over the years and was never much of a dancer. She felt many of the center's programs were not for her, but she was reassured to see how much help she could find there if she needed it- a consumer counselor who might have solved her complaint against a television repairman last year; a dentist who did denture repairs or fillings almost immediately; an optometry service and podiatrist; a staff member who organized bus tours to parks, museums, and ball games; an insurance expert, legal counselor, representatives for social security programs, and - if she should ever need themmental health services and special assistance forthedeafand blind.

Mrs. Hooper's life became more active than it had been for many years, and her outlook was brighter. Her new perspective stimulated her long-dormant desire for organized study.

Although she had never finished high school and had not entered a classroom for 60 years, she had always enjoyed reading and learning about the way her city and country had grown and evolved since her childhood, and she loved contacts with nature. The courses at the center were varied enough to fit with her lifelong interests- local history, ¡'ecology and you," a program called "self-discovery through the humanities,'' weight control, poetry, several foreign languages, music appreciation, and creative skills courses, such as painting. ceramics, and jewelry making.

In the course of a few months, the senior center experience became a strong new influence in Mrs. Hooper's life. She found there what Joyce Leanse, director of the National Institute of Senior Centers, says centers are uniquely qualified to give .. the help older people need in continuing their personal growth and maintaining a viable lifestyle."

It happened to Mrs. Hooper at the Waxter Center for Senior Citizens in Baltimore, but for more than three decades older Americans have been finding the same type of stimulation at senior centers, large and small, across the country.

Jean Fisher, director of the Philadelphia Center for Older

18

People, one of America's first central-city, multiservice centers and a model for many of the centers developed during the past three decades, says, "I wish we could get anthropologists to write books about senior centers. We need people with Margaret Mead's social and community sensitivities to observe and understand the new communities being formed in the centers. " Members are using the senior centers as their community.

They come in when they know their friends will be there, to share conversation and meals. Then they call each other up at night on the phone. And when an emergency occurs, it's the friend from the center who is often the first to get to the home or hospital and provide the backup support, the undercurrent of communication which others may get from family and neighbors.

For many older people here their friends from the senior center have become family, neighbors, and community."

Such loyalty and support goes not only to each other but to the senior center itself. Mrs. Fisher says. Members raise funds to pay off the center's mortgage, contributing sums of $50 to $400 from sales, parties, and benefit activities.

Joyce Leanse has observed in her study of thousands of senior centers that "while data show that many older persons are attracted to a facility where services and activities are available, the fact of the facility itself and the opportunity it creates for bringing people together appear to be the most compelling."

Mrs. Leanse says, " Participants view the senior centers as a program of services and activities and also as a place to go, a place to gather for friend ship and fellowship, or a place to sir, observe, and just be near other people."

More than five million older Americans, from 60 to 95 years of age (about one-quarter are 75 or older), are members and participants in the country's more than 5,000 senior centers, according to the National Institute of Senior Centers.

More than half of the participants live alone compared with

One of the unexpected findings was that nearly half of the self-identified multipurpose centers provide health services.

Government officials concerned with aging programs assess the desirable and distinguishing characteristics of a multipurpose one-third of the general elderly population who live alone. They senior center in four main areas: group services and activities, come from aU economic backgrounds. Among those who attend- individual services, the accessibility of center sites both geoed, 47 per cent were blue-collar workers, 16 per cent white-collar graphically and in the sense of accommodating the handicapped workers, and 16 per cent professionals. and disabled, and relationships with other agencies.

Ever greater sums of money, energy, and community comWhile most senior centers welcome increased Federal funding, mitment are going into senior centers today. Yearly budgets for not all are pleased with the accompanying mandates which tend operation, expansion, and construction of senior centers may to emphasize greater attention to the most frail and vulnerable amount to over $300 million. elderly. Some feel that since resources are limited, those most in Until the decade of the sixties, local and state funds-private need should be served first. Others point out that if the 75 and public-provided for the bulk of building and operating per cent of older persons who are less vulnerable are neglected, expenses. With the Older Americans Act of 1965, the Federal centers will soon be used almost exclusively by those groups most Government began playing a constantly expanding role in urgently needing help, thus limiting the positive self-help aspects funding center services and facilities. of facilities, which can only operate when the physically or During more than three decades of existence, the concept of socially active elderly are mixed with the not-so-well and less what senior centers can be and should do has evolved. socially aware older person. 路路we want to include the frail but we do not want to lose the Until the first senior center was founded in New York City in 1943, the only special services directed to older people were people who leaven the lump and givejoie de l'ivre to everyone in homes for the aged and Old Age Assistance. What was to become the center," says one center director. the Hodson Community Center grew out of a clear need for a Each of the thousands of centers located across the country is center where people could meet and associate on a neighborhood unique and distinct, yet, as Leon Woolf, director of Baltimore's basis. Soon services for the elderly were introduced , especially Waxter Center says, "The joy of them is that almost everything those needed to maintain the elderly in the community. Over the we do in this new building can be done in a store-front operation years, this focus on multiple needs of older adults increased. or almost any other site."

Slightly more than half of the centers responding to a 1974 Jean Fisher. in Philadelphia, says, 路'we路ve accomplished so survey by the National Institute of Senior Centers under an much in senior centers. Now we should look at their roots. See Administration on Aging Grant rated themselves as "multi- what they have in common, see what new directions to take." 0 purpose centers." In most cases, this meant they provide t hrec or more types of services, such as transportation, education, About the Auth<lr: Donald JSell( is a free-lance writer who specializes in information and referral , counseling, medical help and others. medical and soda/ subjects.

Left: Older persons enjoy a boat ride on Senior Citizens Day at Hersheypark, PeniiSylvania. Right: For many older people their friends from the senior centers have become family and community.

19

by GARY PERG L

"There are two critical points in every aerial flight-its beginning and its end."

ALlXANOER G RAHAM BFLL. 1'106

At 9:01 a.m. on June 30, 1956, the sky was clear over Los Angeles I nternational Airport as a Trans World Airlines (TWA) Super Constellation lifted off the runway, carrying 70 persons bound for Kansas City, Missouri.

Three minutes later, a United Airlines DC-7, with 58 persons aboard, taxied onto the same runway, revved its four piston-driven propeller engines and took off for Chicago, Illinois. and Philadelphia , Pennsylvania. The two flights were routine in every way - except one: neither plane would reach its destination.

As they left Los Angeles, the airliners followed basically the same route. The DC-7, moving across Arizona, turned northeast in its flight toward Chicago. It was crusing at its assigned altitude of 6,400 meters.

TWA's Constellation had been assigned a flight altitude of 5,180 meters, but as the airplane approached the Grand Canyon in Arizona the air was rumbling with an electrical storm and the sky was blanketed in all directions with towering thunderheads.

The captain radioed Los Angeles and requested permission to climb to 6,400 meters to avoid the storm. His request was turned down; the controller informed him that the United plane was at 6,400. The captain then asked to fly 300 meters " above the weather," a normal request that was granted.

At II :31 a.m. , the two aircraft were scheduled to cross over Tuba City, Arizona, and to make further contact with the controllers. Neither made the scheduled contact.

Authorities assumed that the planes had crashed. The U .S. Air Force and Civil Air Patrol mounted a search, but found nothing.

Then, near nightfall, two brothers who operated a small sight-seeing airline spotted the wreckage in the Grand Canyon. The Civil Aeronautics Authority investigated the accident and came to a chilling conclusion: T he planes presumably collided in midair.

Not one of the 128 persons aboard the two airliners survived. It was the worst single aviation disaster of its era. The accident led to the organization of an office of air traffic control, the hiring of more than I ,000 additional controllers and the beginning of a five-year plan to blanket the United States airways with a long-range radar system. The

The United States is pursuing research on various fronts in an effort to achieve maximum safety for airplane passengers. tragic accident served as a catalyst for the development of the world's most modern system of air traffic control.

* * *

During the past quarter-century, despite peaks and valleys that appear in the statistics from year to year, fatal air accidents have declined dramatically in the United States, from a high of25 in 1951 to a lowof2 in 1977.

In view of the increase in passenger-miles traveled, the figures are far more significant: In 1951 , U.S. airlines Hew 16,800 million passenger-kilometers. In 1977, they flew more than 298,000 million kilometers. Of nearly five million domestic commercial flights in 1977, just two fatal accidents took place and 75 persons lost their lives. Thus, a passenger's statistical chances of being involved in a fatal accident on a scheduled U.S. flight in 1977 were 4 in a million. Webster Todd, who recently retired as chairman of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, says: "Simply stated, the U.S. air safety record is the best in the world."

A comprehensive system of air traffic control is necessarily at the heart of an air safety program that must accommodate an average of 175,000 flights every day. Controllers in the United States work in three different areas: local and ground control ; departure and arrival control; and air-route traffic control.

Local and ground controllers man the airport control tower. One person is in charge of the computerized flight data that a pilot files before departure. Another handles clearance for takeoff, while a third routes planes into departure position. The local controller then directs planes through takeoff. These same persons also handle all arriving planes and route them to disembarkation positions.

During takeoff or landing. the plane is handled by departure or arrival control. Once the plane is 32 kilometers from the airport ,

23 air-route traffic control centers use a long-range ground and satellite communications network to track planes on the main jet routes that crisscross the United States.

Air-route centers are separate facilities, often far away from airports, whose areas of jurisdiction encompass many thousands of kilometers of air space.

The workload of the controller has increased tremendously over the years, but so have the mechanical and electronic aids that help him keep track of hundreds of airplanes each day. The introduction of radar into civil aviation after World War II revolutionized the work of air controllers. Since then, the most important breakthrough in trafficcontrol technology has been the radar beacon system, which today is being adapted to perform increasingly sophisticated operations.

The radar beacon system, introduced in the mid-1950s, gives airplanes equipped with transponders the capability of automatically transmitting their identification numbers, air speed and altitude to ground controllers.

The transponder is a device that can sense the presence of a querying signal emitted from a ground-control station and respond automatically. The response is translated into small data blocks that appear next to an airplane's blip on a ground-radar scope.

A good deal has become possible through the radar beacon system. By punching up special code numbers, a pilot can communicate a radio failure, an emergency situation, even a hijacking. Potential ground hazards have been programmed into air-traffic control computers so that, with the help of an airplane's transponder, the controller is alerted if a plane is approaching the minimum safe altitude. The ground-based computer also can "look ahead" two minutes for potential collision threats based on the position, heading, velocity and altitude of all aircraft under surveillance. If the computer detects a threatening situation, it alerts the controller.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) officials now are hopeful that the Rig hT , abol'e : ln darkness relieved only hy the glol1' of radar screens . air traffic controllers g uide pilots through America's cr01rded skies. Righ t: In this time-lapse photograph, landing light:. ofs uccessive jetliners merge during their final approaches to N ational Airport, Washington. D.C.

In the past, airborne collision-avoidance systems generally have been incompatible radar beacon system may be the key to a with ground-control facilities. For example, partial solution of a problem they have been a pilot on a collision course could take struggling with for more than a decade. The evasive action based on the airborne system problems- human, economic and techni- in his cockpit, while the air traffic controller cal-in the past had seemed insurmountable. on the grouqd unwittingly instructed the To begin with, pilots, who keenly feel their pilot of the other airplane to make the same vulnerability flying through heavy clouds evasive maneuver.

In 1977, though, the FAA and all users of with no outside visual reference, have always favored an airborne collision-avoidance America's airways finally reached a consystem- something right there with them in sensus on a new approach that would rely the cockpit, totally independent of ground on a beacon (transponder)-based airborne control. "It's not that we don't trust the collision-avoidance system (BCAS). An airground," says a pilot. "But let's face it- plane carrying BCAS equipment would transthey're human. Mistakes are bound to be mit a query similar to that emitted by made, and some sort of airborne control is ground-control stations, and then listen for at least a logical backup to the ground replies from any transponder-equipped airsystem. Frankly, if a mistake is to be made, craft within a 48-kilometer radius. If it detected a collision threat, the system would I'd like the opportunity to make it myself."

Airborne systems were developed as early instruct the pilot on a cockpit display as to the as 1960, but they were unsatisfactory for appropriate evasive maneuver. Although various reasons. One major disadvantage BCAS is considerably more expensive to was common to them all: They guarded install than other airborne systems, it has two only against other aircraft similarly equipped. distinct advantages. Once it is installed, it A jumbo jet could carry the most sophisti- will instantly protect an airplane against the cated collision-avoidance equipment and still risk of collision with any other aircraft be unprotected from a student pilot in a carrying a transponder. Secondly, it is ensingle-engine craft, if the small plane didn't tirely compatible with the ground-based air traffic control system. carry a compatible system.

AIR SAFETY continued

22

SPAN .AUGUST 1979

Above: Flight attendants ofEastern Airlines erect a canopy over a life raft in a swimming pool to practice survival at sea. Regulations of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration require attendants to undergo preparedness training. A Piper aircraft ( right, top) is dropped from a scaffolding ar NASA's Langley Research Facility in Virginia to simulate crash conditions ( right, center) in the first such free-flight-crash test program in the world. After the impact, NASA's Dr. Robert Thomson ( right, bottom) inspects dummy occupants of the aircrafi. The goal is to design improved seat and airframe construction.

The risk of midair collision is relatively low in comparison to the risk of other kinds of air-travel accidents. The two most critical phases of any flight are the takeoff and the approach-and-landing. About 85 per cent of all fatal accidents occur during these phaseslike the American Airlines plane which crashed just after it took off from O'Hare International Airport, Chicago, on May ?.5, 1978.

The Federal Aviation Administration, the private airline industry, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and others are all working to identify the causes of accidents that occur at these critical points, and to determine the best way to eliminate them.

Bad weather is very often a contributing factor to approach-and-landing mishaps; everyone is aware of the hazards created by fog, rain, sleet and snow. But pilots often can't detect one of the meanest weather phenomena-clear-air turbulence. Of the many forms such turbulence can take, the most unpredictable and dangerous is wind shear-a condition in which adjacent winds of high velocity blow in opposing directions.

Wind shear has become a subject of top priority at the FAA and NASA. The two agencies are spending more than $5 million annually to develop systems capable of alerting pilot and controller to weather patterns that can precipitate wind shear. NASA is experimenting with lasers to detect wind shear and other forms of clear-air turbulence.

Researchers designed a fairing that transmits a pulsed laser beam forward along the airplane's heading. The system measures backscattered light from micron-sized aerosol particles in the atmosphere. By comparing

the reflected light with the transmitted beam, flight crews cart determine the presence of turbulence. In test flights, the laser accurately identified several forms of clear-air turbulence, including wind shear, that weren't detected by standard aircraft radar systems.

* * *

Most specialists agree that today the majority of air accidents fall . into two categories: weather-related accidents and accidents caused by human error. [n the past, equipment failure was often a cause of accidents. But the modern jet aircraft is a remarkably fail-safe vehicle and can take most of the credit for the turnaround in accident statistics. Jet airliners today tend to be built on the theory of triple redundancy: Most vital flight operations are backed up by at least two identical systems that can take over at the first sign of malfunction. The Boeing 747, for example, can land automatically and come to a safe stop under these conditions: Two of its four engines are not operating; three of its four hydraulic systems have lost pressure; its antiskid mechanism is out of order; all tires have burst; and there is a thunderstorm at the destination.

Although the phrase " pilot error" or "controller error" frequently pops up under the heading "cause of accident," human mistakes are relatively few. Occassionally, however, slipups-on the ground and in the air- go unreported for fear of reprisals. On the theory that unreported incidents conceal hazardous patterns that might otherwise be noted and corrected, the FAA and NASA initiated the Aviation Safety Reporting System in 1976, a nonpunitive fact-finding program that encourages pilots, controllers, mechanics, passengers and others to report, with complete anonymity, any incident of a potentially hazardous nature.

* * *

A clearance bust-when a pilot goes above or below the altitude for which he is clearedis often the result of a misunderstanding between pilot and controller. The breakdown in communications can take place in the sky or on the ground. For instance, Domenic Torchia, an Oakland, California, air traffic controller with an impeccable record, was handling departure control in the San Francisco Bay area when a Trans International Airlines DC-8 left Oakland en route to Bogota, Colombia. About the same time, a Pan Am 747 took off from San Francisco on a flight to Honolulu, Hawaii. Torchia cleared the DC-8 to "2, 700 feet." "Roger, cleared to 3, 700 feet," the pilot replied, and Torchia didn't botice the discrepancy.

The 747 was at 3,000 feet. Almost too late, Torchia realized the two airplanes were on a collision course. He shouted into his microphone: "TIA turn right immediately heading three six zero ... Clipper turn right immediately heading zero nine zero." The SPAN AUGUST 1979

23

AIR SAFETY continued

planes missed each other by 400 feet.

The point is that, for accuracy, voice communication leaves much to be desired.

The FAA is working toward a system that would eliminate dependence on a voice link between controller and pilot.

If the schedule proceeds as planned, by the early 1980s the air traffic control system will be able to send written communications to individual aircraft over a data link called the

Discrete Address Beacon System. When the new system becomes operational, the controller will be able to punch up an airplane's transponder code and send up information for one plane and only that plane will get it.

A teletype or cathode-ray tube will transcribe the information in the cockpit and send the controller electronic verification that the message was relayed correctly.

Judging by the number of new programs the FAA bas in the works, it would appear that the pursuit of safety will be a never-

ending process. A small sampling of slated projects includes: â&#x20AC;˘ Wake Vortex Advisory System. An airplane in flight leaves two spiraling vortices, like horizontal tornadoes, trailing from its wing tips. A vortex from a large jet can tip a smaller following plane, tail over nose. NASA is studying the feasibility of operating large fans at airports to dissipate vortices, and is attempting to design wing tips that might reduce the vortices. â&#x20AC;˘ Automated Flow Control. By adjusting

Localizer beftl \.

lnstrameot Landing

"- Systeaa Initial approach

-.,

traffic flow to match airport capacity, the air traffic control system can prevent the stacking of aircraft in holding patterns and relieve dangerous and wasteful congestion.

• Runway Pavement Design. About onefourth of U.S. airports now have grooved runways to prevent tire hydroplaning under slippery conditions. The FAA is also researching improved construction methods and materials to reduce maintenance and to extend runway life.

• Human Factors Research. A joint

NASA and FAA study has made significant progress in ferreting out weaknesses in pilot and controller performance. Investigation into human factors has resulted in improved cockpit alerting systems. The program is continuing research into the use of cockpit displays that mount flight-path instruments near the windshield, directly in the pilot's line of sight.

In a separate study, the FAA is trying to determine the best relationship between human controllers and the automated system.

Everyone agrees that efficient handling of increasing air traffic requires more 2.utomation.

The Federal Aviation Administration and the aviation industry in the United States are pursuing the most practical courae of action in dealing with automation-building a system with an elaborate series of backups and other elements that provide the maximum possible margins of safety.

0 About the Author : Gary Pergl is a SPAN staff correspondent in Washington, D.C.

Distance Measuring E quipment , which will be used in the Microwa ve Landing System, will allow a pilot to look at a cockpit counter and read his distance from that point to the runway anywhere within the MLS signal area.

At the In omen Landing System outer marker (in blue), located by a radio beam coming straight up from the ground 8 kilometers from the runway' all aircraft must be stabilized on glide·slope and localizer beams.

J. Barn owl 2. Golden eagle 3. Coa1imundi

4. Bighorn sheep 5. Jaguar

6. Collared lizard

he Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, 23 kilometers from Tucson, Arizona, combines elements of a museum, zoo, botanical garden. aquarium and geological exhibition in one institution.

The museum, founded in 1952 and supported entirely by private donations. is devoted to the study and preservation of the vast Sonoran Desert that sprawls across the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico.

Many forms of desert life insects and ocelots, vampire bats and saguaro cacti - inhabit the museum as part of imaginative displays that meticulously recreate natural desert habitats.

In the Tunnel Exhibit, for example, visitors descend underground. to view the daytime hiding places of such animals as the kit fox. ringtail cat and rattlesnake. Each tunnel is illuminated by the push of a button.

The Desert Museum attracts some 500,000 visitors a year, and has earned an international reputation for excellence. When the British Broadcasting Corporation set out to film seven of the world's outstanding zoos, it chose two in the United States: the San Diego Zoo in California and the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.

The museum has more than a hundred volunteer teacherguides, or docents, who undergo intensive instruction in desert ecology, geology, flora and fauna before they begin conducting tourists and school groups tlirough the museum. They also accompany vans that carry live animals and other exhibits to schools in the Tucson area, allowing children to learn about the desert firsthand by handling such creatures as desert ground squirrels, snakes, ferrets and jackrabbits. "We want to help along a generation of environ-

T

mentally aware children," says museum official Carla McClain. 路路we particularly hope they'll know and revere their land and identify with it.路路 The museum's educational programs extend across the border of Mexico, 97 kilometers away. Mexican schoolchildren visit the museum regularly, and vans with videotapes and plant and animal specimens tour schools in the Mexican border state of Sonora.

By avoiding the familiar unrelated collection of animals found in more conventional zoos. the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum is able to convey the beauty, fragility and richness of the Sonoran Desert. ''I've always thought of the desert as a dry, forsaken place," summed up one visitor, "but that's not at all true."

Visitors are often amazed at the number and variety of desert wildlife native to the Sonora region. Many of the animals, such as the bighorn sheep, . beaver and otter, live in settings that are indistinguishable from the wild. The Sonoran wildcats- ocelot, bobcat, jaguarundi and margay-live in rock-walled grottoes, and the colonies of prairie dogs and coatimundis (whose nearest relatives are raccoons) live in open-air, unfenced enclosures.

Lizards, snakes, amphibians and little known desert fish are on display as well. The museum plans to build an animal mountain, which will contain naturalistic habitats for its larger animals, such as jaguars, wolves, bear, coyotes, deer and pronghorn antelope.

In every exhibit, the museum stresses the interconnectedness and complexity of desert life.

Sonoran plants are surprisingly varied and abundant, and, like the animal life, adapted to the severe conditions of the desert. Plants tend to have fleshy stalks, to retain water, and to have minimal leaf development - often in the form of spikesto reduce moisture loss due to transpiration. The most spec-

A hummingbird liol'ers over o cenwry p/0111

tacular plants on the museum grounds are the giant saguaro cacti. found only in the Sonoran Desert, that sometimes grow to heights of 15 meters and weigh 50 tons. Nature trails wind through gardens of native cacti. Joshua trees and flowering desert shrubs; one area demonstrates ways by which homeowners can landscape with attractive desert vegetation.

The Earth Sciences Center, which depicts the geology and paleontology of the Sonoran Desert, is the newest addition to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. Visitors learn how natural underground caves are formed, listen to the sounds of

aJ

the Arizona Desert Museum.

live bats that inhabit the manmade cave, see ancient fossils and watch a pack rat at work in its den.

They can explore a wet cave filled with dramatic stalactites, stalagmites and other rock fom1ations created by seeping water. Adventuresome youngsters who are interested in spelunking can crawl along a side trail that loops through and under these cave formations. ln another portion of the cave, visitors can take a geologic time walk through 4,500 million years of the earth's natural history.

With its variety of exhibits, the museum offers visitors an extraordinary opportunity to experience the diverse. complex, critically balanced natural world of the Sonoran Desert.

0

Though still in its infancy, the community trust movement in the United States has demonstrated that the land trust idea lends itself to solving a broad range of social and economic problems. t was an American dream - with a few twists. In 1973 Pedro and Gloria Castex and their two children, political refugees from Chile, made their way to California, hoping to find a farm of their own. Virtually penniless and with very meager English, Pedro, 53, was told that at his age, with his resources and with the cost of land, his dream of a farm in California's Central Valley was a fantasy.

Five years later Pedro and Gloria and another couple are working their own 40 acres near Lodi. They have suffered two years of drought, followed by too much rain, but now the crops look good and they see a new life.

Their dream has come true because of the Northern California Land Trust, one of a growing number (currently some 30) of nonprofit groups being formed nationally to help people like

I

Reprinled with pcrmis~ion rrom Smilh.wmiun magazine. @ Smithsonian Institution 1978.

LAID FOB

TBB

LliDLBSS

by JOHN BLACKMORE

the Castexes-with desire but no money-acquire the use of land.

Community land trust organizers have set out to prove that if land is considered a community resource and made available to those who will use it well, the landless poor can find economic independence and the land itself can be preserved intact for the future. Rural farms and urban vegetable gardens. homesteading communities striving toward self-sufficiency, and whole new towns are coming into being on land held "in trust." The experience of the Castexes illustrates how the system works.

Castex first learned about American land trusts at a meeting called to help some elderly farm workers find a home. There he heard Steve Bridge, a retired carpenter and a founder of the Northern California Land Trust, explain. Foundations and individuals had put up $10Q,OOO. The trust, in turn, would buy property for a family or group that had the skills and ambition to farm) but not the money. Such a family or group would lease the land from the trust for an annual payment-in the Castexes' case, equal to 2.5 per cent of what it cost the trust to buy it.

Income to the trust would be used to buy more land and to pro¡ . mote the land trust idea.

Castex discussed the idea with friends, wrote to Bridge and met with the land trust board. Eight months later he signed a five-year renewable lease on what came to be known as the New Life Farm.

The lease is even more favorable than it sounds. The trust

offered the Castexes an initial grace period of no payments until they got the farm under way. And the trust used its equity to borrow $10,000 for equipment and supplies.

The idea of diverting land from the market place to conserve its resources is not novel i11 the United States. Conservation trusts, such as the Nature Conservancy and the Trust for Public Land, have had significant success in protecting some wilderness and natural areas and tracts of particular ecological importance.

Community land trusts do not seek to prevent development altogether, but try to encourage development which demonstrates how to meet both the economic and social needs of a larger community.

The community land trust movement seeks universal land reform as its ultimate goal. but in nonviolent and noncompulsory ways. Land-trust proponents do not advocate government intervention to nationalize lan<,l - they prefer to acquire it through gift and purchase. Trusted land is not given outright; rather. it is leased so that the larger community can maintain some control over how it is developed. Land trusts typically contract longterm leases with users to guarantee their rights and security.

Often these leases are automatically renewable and inheritable, and can be terminated only should the lessee leave the land or violate the agreement.

The man most closely associated with the beginnings of the community land trust movement is Robert Swann, director of

LAND FOR THE LANDLESS

('0111i1111ed

Inspired by India's gramdan movement, community trusts have been set up in the United States to help the landless poor who want to till the land but lack resources to do so. the Institute for Community Economics. Founded in 1967 by Swann and the late Ralph Borsodi, the institute promotes their novel, and often heretical, ideas for worldwide economic reform: establishment of a global commodity-based currency, an international development bank to aid struggling farmers, and decentralized land control through community land trusts.

The conceptual basis for community land trusts stems from Borsodi's distinction between property and ''trusterty," Swann explains. Property, accordi ng to this theory, consists of those things that man creates through his own efforts, while trusterty includes resources like land, the oceans and the atmosphere. which came into existence without human intervention. If trusterty is to be held at all, Swann argues, it must be held in public trust. Advocating community control over such resources, Swann and Borsodi proposed the formation of regional trusts to act as "stewards," or trustees, of land.

The ideas behind their stewardship concept are not original.

In Great Britain , France and America , frequently visionary secular and religious leaders- Thomas Spence, Robert Owen.

Charles Fourier and John Noyes among them-have in the past advanced t he notion that land properly should be under community, rather than owner, control.

his tradition culminated in the work of Henry George, an American journalist and economist whose 1879 book, Progress and Poverty, inspired a series of social experiments and political movements here and abroad. George decried what he saw as the central problem raised by.the industrial ' revolution : that as industrialization brings wealth to society, it also leads to increased poverty among the less fortunate. On the basis of his thesis that all wealth is ultimately based on the control of land resources, he proposed that poverty in an industrial society could be eliminated if all were given equal access to land.

Borsodi is credited with founding several new communities where versions of George's theories were put into practice. His interest in alternative forms of land tenure led him to India, where he studied the Gandhi-inspired gramdan, or village land-gift movement, which set aside millions of acres for the landless poor.

It was after his Jast meeting with gramdan leaders in 1966 that Borsodi returned to the United States to found the institute with Swann and lay the groundwork for the American land trust movement.

In 1968, Swann and Borsodi had their first opportunity to help organize an American community land trust, New Communities, Incorporated , in Lee County, Georgia. Through his contacts with the Civil Rights movement, Swann learned of a group of Southern leaders interested in providing a land base for rural blacks. With the institute's sponsorship and support from the National Sharecroppers Fund, Swann and seven of the leaders went to Israel to study land acquisition and settlement practices there. The group returned from there enthusiastic about the

12

SPAN AUGUST 1979

concept and practice of cooperative settlements.

Eleven years later, New Communities now operates a 5, 735acre cooperative farm near Smithville, Georgia- the largest black-owned single-tract farm in America. Although only 16 families gain their incomes from the farm , the members of New Communities are working hard to free the land from debt (they are about to sell I ,500 acres for refinancing) so tha l its resources can be used to build housing, schools, processing plants and other industries-the rudiments of a largely self-sufficient new town.

All of New Communities' 2,000 acres of tillable land are now under cultivation or in pasture; the rest are covered with forest and dotted with cypress swamps. The farm produces table vegetables, soybeans, grapes, corn, watermelons, pecans, peanuts, pork and beef.

Community land trusts organized since New Communities have explored many variations on the land-access theme. No single trust has settled more leaseholders on trusted land than Vermont's Earth Bridge Land Trust, where 35 people now share 14leaseholds on five sites in four different towns. Earth Bridge's D avid McCauley reports eight new housing starts. " We want to keep it simple," says McCauley, whose salary comes from the American Friends Service Committee. "First, we're concerned with getting land into trust and getting it settled. ' ' Earth Bridge also sponsors community gardens and participates in a farmers' market.

Western Virginia's Wartroot Trust has focused on one particular tract, an Appalachian hollow which its members hope to develop as a pure watershed system surrounded by farmsteads.

Founder Ken Marion explained that the trust was formed as a demonstration to show how land conservation can go hand in hand with agricultural use. Still other trusts. such as the Oregon Women's Land Trust and the already mentioned New Communities and Northern California trusts, were organized to provide land access to traditionally landless groups women, black sharecroppers and migrant farm workers.

The people attracted to land trusts are an unusual multiracial mix of young and old, rich and poor, conservatives and ideological leftists. The common concern is the land . How can land be made to serve the most people ? Many land-trust organizers, unsurprisingly, were part of the antiwar and racial integration struggles of the 1960s. But people with different outlooks are involved, too. A Vermont farmer, overburdened with taxes and having no progeny to carry on; a conservative Maine lawyer, who believes passionately in local self-determination ; a forester, who controls hundreds of thousands of acres of land and sees the waste of private woodlots going fallow-all are people who have been drawn to the land-trust movement.

If there are common themes, they are a love of the land, the feeling that too much of it is controlled by too few, a desire to take part in some decisions about land use, and a resistance to the idea that "the government" is going to do something about the diminishing amount of productive land.

The first statewide land-trust organization, Maine's Sam Ely Community Services Corporation, was founded in 1972 to

address the problems of hard-core rural poverty in that state.

Named after an 18th-century New England land reformer, Sam Ely Community's original charter boldly proclaimed its intention "to acquire and liberate Maine land from traditional concepts of private ownership. " Today "Sam," as its members call it, has evolved into twin organizations: the Community Services Corporation, which plans and implements the trust's programs, and the Maine Community Land Trust, an independent affiliate which holds perpetual title to the trust's acquisitions and keeps an eye open to long-term nurturing of land.

. am's first acquisition was a 36-acre subsistence farm near Bangor. When it came into their hands, the gift of a dying young man, the group decided to offer it publicly on a first-come, first-served basis to a family in need. Fred and Sue Melvin, a year later, signed a 99-year lease on terms similar to those enjoyed by the Castexes in California. The Melvins have since planted a large vegetable garden and furnished a modest cabin for themselves and their two children. They plan to clear some additional acreage for a small truck-farming operation, but until they do Fred must work at carpentry.

A 33-acre property in North Monmouth, Maine. suggested a different use. Within commuting distance of two small cities, agricultural use was rejected in favor of developing a model rural subdivision. Four one-to-two-acre homesites were leased, with the remaining 28 acres on woodlot or common gardening land, which is leased collectively by the resident famiJjes. Monthly lease fees are $33 to $40. Two local banks have agreed to consider the leaseholds as sufficient equity for issuing home mortgages.

Seeing land access and easier home mortgages as only a first step, Sam has organized a team, Community Design and Development, to explore alternatives for low-cost housing. The group's first project, a prototype two-bedroom house with such costreducing features as post-and-beam construction, passive solar heating and the use of native, rough-hewn timber was recently sold for $28,000. The team has since built two other houses with the prototype design as the core unit which they now estimate can be sold for under $20,000, a price that would make unsubsidized ownership a reality for an additional 35 per cent of Maine families.

One of Sam's major new initiatives is the Farmlands Project.

Concerned about the abandonment of farmland in Maine and the difficulties of young families, trust members have begun to contact Maine farmers who are considering getting out of the business because of age, high taxes and low profitability. Sam proposes to acquire such threatened farms at low cost by allowing the farmer to retain his home and some additional acreage as a life estate. Use of the remaining agricultural land would then be shared by the farmer and a young family. The young partners would share the work. learn farming skills and, when the original owner retires, have the opportunity to take over the farming operation, which they would lease from the trust. Besides being

able to keep his home, the original farmer would earn a steady income from the purchase arrangement as well as from the output of the farm .

Although most American trusts are concerned with rural. agricultural land, there is one group which addresses itself solely to urban land tracts, the National Urban Land Program of the Trust for Public Land (TPL). At his San Francisco oflice, TPL preside11t Joel Kuperberg produced numbers on the extent of wasted urban land. There are more than 20,000 vacant lots in Philadelphia, 45,000 in New York City and a whopping 100,000 in Los Angeles. Inner-city vacant lots like these are the focus of TPL's Urban Land Program.

In January 1976, TPL organized the Oakland Land Project to acquire unus!'!d lots and bring them under community control through neighborhood land trusts. In the largely black and Chicano (Mexican-American) portions of east Oakland , TPL found 941 vacant lots comprising 250 acres of potentially useful land. Trust workers contacted the owners of the more desirable ones and asked for land donations. In its first year alone, the project was offered 30 lots free of charge. The gifts netted their donors substantial tax benefits and relief from property taxes.

Before any parcel was accepted, the project staff determined whether the lot had any potential for community use and if its neighbors had interest in taking responsibility for it. Then the trust helped those interested form a committee to plan and implement whatever project they chose. The TPL workers helped physically and financially (with foundation grants) to get the project going. The neighborhood committees are encouraged to incorporate as autonomous land trust organizations which take title to the donated lots.

So far, eight neighborhood land trusts have been incorporated in Oakland, each controlling three to eight parcels. Most of the lots have been developed as community gardens; a number have become parks, others have been cleared and planted as open space, with community uses yet to be determined.

Following the successes in Oakland, TPL has initiated similar projects in South Florida, Newark, New Jersey, and New York City's South Bronx and Lower East Side neighborhoods. It plans others in Los Angeles and Philadelphia. "Unlike in Oakland, ¡ we operate not as community organizers, but as a response mechanism," explains Peter Stein of TPL's northeast office.

"That is, we respond to requests for help from bona fide neighborhood organizations."

The community land-trust movement is attempting what it considers to be land reform. Still in its infancy, and with only a small amount of land now held in trust, the movement has yet to have a profound effect on land tenure in the United States.

What these first community trusts have demonstrated is that the land-trust idea lends itself to a broad range of social and economic applications and can be of help to those who want to earn a livelihood from the land but lack the resources to do so.

0 About the Author: John Blackmore, a free-lance writer and board member oj a community trust, is at present working on a book about the community trust moveme/11 in the United States.

SPAN AUGUST 1979

33

{\\led golden years of the ~

The forties ~er

36

For anyone who was around in the forties and early fifties, aged anywhere from eight to eighty, Hollywood musicals will always hold a magical memory. Only the self-consciously intellectual or those devoid of fantasy could remain untouched by them.

Although the musical comedy as a genre reached its apogee in that period, music really became an essential part of the cinema with the arrival of sound in 1927. ln those early transitiona l years, sound created a host of problems for technicians, actors, even costume designers. Their limitations extended to the choice of fabric for the clothes they designed taffeta sounded like thunder, and was, in fact, used for simulating earthquake sounds and fires. Petticoats had to be rnade of felt and wool; shoes covered w1th rubber. Much of what had been takl.n for granted had to be changed.

The big arc lights, for instance, proved suddenly impractical because of the sizzling sound they made.

Rouben Mamoulian's first film Applause ( 1929), was made for Paramount in New York. His success on Broadway had not prepared him for the absurd problems the cinema was then facing.

'The mike picked up everything you didn't want it to. lf you had a letter in a scene, it had to be soaked in water.

That way it didn't make a thunderous

e tbe

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crackle, but it looked like a Dali watch." fhe musical is still at irs height in An American in Paris, 1951 ( center) . remains lil¡e~r in It was a time of continuing chaos.

Not the least among the problems, Funny Face, 1957 (right); Cabaret, 1972, apart from the voices and accents of the (left). is an example o.f the serious musical actors, was dialogue. While Hollywood and makes macabre comments 011 the rise frantically looked about for writers and of Nazism. voice coaches, music stepped in to fill extravaganzas. In 1929, many of the stuthe sound track, providing the loudest dios began theirown regular"Revues" and ¡'Follies." The first of the Broadway sound with the fewest headaches.

Warner Brothers, at that time, was the Golddiggers and the Broadway Melody most experimental of the studios. Almost series were also made in that year. These a year before their sound film The Jazz were all-star movies for which the studios, Singer, with AI Jolson's three songs and led by MGM , which boasted of more its brief piece of dialogue, turned the stars than there are in heaven, pulled out film world upside down, they had already all the stops: Hund reds of lovely girls tried out music-with-film. In August 1926, moved and coalesced and separated in a Don Juan , with John Barrymore and variety of patterns, forming magnificent Mary Astor, had a musical score which the tableaux-the Shipboard Wedding in New York Philharmonic recorded at the Sunny. the Jewel Box in Hollywood R evue, the Melting Pot number in King of Jaz=.

Metropolitan Opera House in New York.

But by 1930, despite the visual delights, From then on, practically every second film was a musica l. Productions were audiences began to grow bored as the on a sumptuous scale with fantastic camera still could not move, nor could sets and lavish costumes. The girls were the actors, restricted as they were by the glamorous, and the costs staggering. Mari- domineering sound men with their microlyn Miller, one of Ziegfeld's greatest phones planted in strategic spots. Three stars, was lured to Hollywood to film years later, Warner Brothers gave the muher Broadway success Sally ( 1929) at sical another lease of life. They decided to $1,000 per hour. But the takings were on make 42nd Street with a cast of favoritesa corresponding scale. In 1929, Warners Bebe Daniels, Warner Baxter, Ginger recorded a net profit increase of 745 per Rogers. They brought in Busby Berkeley to stage the musical numbers. cent over the previous year.

It was Berkeley who liberated the Most of the musicals were either filmed versions of Broadway hits, or spectacular cinema, making it fly and swoop and

swirL giving the spectator dizzying views and extraordinary perspectives. His star was the camera. It glided down from great heights, dived under water, coasted between the legs of rows of girls; it reversed and tilted from impossible angles, making everything appear easy and natural. Along with this was an almost surrealistic imagination-pianos danced, water sprays whirled and swayed and everywhere there were girls, girls, girls.

For the aquacade number in Footlight Parade (1933), Berkeley designed a pool with thick glass walls and caverns underneath from where he could shoot. Hydraulic lifts pumped 20,000 gallons of water a minute over waterfalls down which slid a hundred girls whose costumes and headpieces were specially made to give a seminude effect. It was all outrageous extravagance and a campy spectacle. and audiences loved it.

Those were the thirties at Warner Brothers. But Berkeley's productions were just mechanical toys compared to the timeless artistry of Fred Astaire at RKO and later at MGM . It needed the great gifts of individual personalities like Astaire and Ginger Rogers and Eleanor Powell to lift the musical onto another plane, where dance and movement were fused with enchanting music.

Fred Astaire began his dance into film history in 1933 with Joan Crawford

in Dancing Lady, and continued for at war, audiences flocked to the movies three decades, exercising his wizardry- and found escape and entertainment, with Rita Hayworth (You Were Never laughter and joy, and came out singing Lovelier, You'll Never Get Rich), Paulette the blues away. As film technique became Goddard (Second Chorus), Judy Garland more assured and innovative, the director (Easter Parade), Cyd Charisse(Si/k Stock- became more than just someone who put ings, The Bandwagon). Betty Hutton (Let's it all together. Vincente Minnelli directed Dance), Leslie Caron (Daddy Long Legs), Judy Garland, Stanley Donen directed Audrey Hepburn (Funny Face). But one Gene Kelly, who himself directed others. of the great partnerships of all times was George Cukor and Otto Preminger and Astaire and Ginger Rogers. It lasted all Lewis Milestone took over where Ernst through the thirties with a string of Lubitsch and Rouben Mamoulian had successes-from The Gay Divorcee in left off. Charles Walters was the first 1933 to Tlze Story of Vernon and Irene to choreograph the films he directed with Castle in 1939-with one more, The great success-Good News, Easter Parade.

Barkley.\¡ of Broacbvay, in 1949. Their The Barkleys of Broadway, Lili. Stanley fast-moving, delightful films created dance Donen and Gene Kelly did it first for On the Town. <.:razes that swept the country.

But without the song writers and Astaire worked on the choreography of all his films, rehearsing for two months musical composers, there could have been before starting shooting. But the final no dancing. To the lilting melodies of effect is one of spontaneity, of an easy, Irving Berlin. Jerome Kern . the ciTortless grace. A critic on seeing Top Gershwins, Cole Porter, Lorenz Hart and Hammerstein. scores of stars danced Hat wrote of Astaire's feet: and sang their way into film legend.

They tell f'a r more libelou5ly than words ju,t The stars still carried the show, and wllal he thinks of the silence in a room . .. . They let out all sorts of secrets about the fun of driving there were literally hundreds of them. a pretty girl in I he rain. They criticize and confess: There was the Road series, with Dorothy they are sometimes caustic, often independent.

Lamour, Bing Crosby and Bob Hope never sen1i men tal. taking the road to Morocco and Rio, The forties were the golden years to Singapore, Zanzibar and even Utopia. of the Hollywood musical, brought to a Betty Grable was the Pinup Girl. Carmen perfect pitch at MGM, with 20th Century- Miranda the Brazilian Bombshell, Sonja Fox not far behind. With America too Henie danced on ice, Esther Williams

3'

=---------~~ f the purest genres in the c .

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11Jema.

The musical is

38

the fifties, and the cinema lost out.

Attendance feU off at a staggering rate. in the water (Busby Berkeley was ca1led Hollywood panicked. Studios began to upon to stage her aquatic numbers). cut down on expenses, prepared only There was little variation in the vehicles to take on films that would easily recover for the stars; the stories all resembled their costs. T he big budget musical was each other. but the directors and the the hardest hit. Only under a secure dancers gave them their individuality. studio system had this genre been possible.

But there were memorable sequences. With actors, teclmicians and directors, In Singin' in the Rain, Gene Kelly enters choreographers and song writers all under the set and tosses his hat away in a gesture contract, the long rehearsal weeks reof gay abandon. It lands on a swinging quired had not been an impossible drain foot. The camera pans along a very on finances. But many names that had been shapely leg, and keeps going up. and up, a magic draw on the marquee, talents that and up the longest legs in show business. had lit up the screen, all went their As it reveals Cyd Charisse nonchalantly separate ways into near oblivion. Only smoking a cigarette, she flings both hat and those who had already turned to straight cigarette lazily away to go into a dazzling comedy or d ramatic acting, survived the Broadway Rhythm ballet with Gene Kelly. collapse. The musical was over, and an There is the wistfulness of Gene Kelly's age of innocence went with it. dance with Leslie Caron on the banks of The few musica ls that were made after the Seine in An American in Paris, and the the mid-fifties generally fall into two beautiful finale with ensemble. categories-biographies of musical perFor sheer exuberance and virtuoso sonalities or filmed versions of Broadway dancing, On the Town is unequalled. hits. Singers and band leaders, composers Based on Jerome Robbins' ballet Fancy and song writers, were feted in films Free to Leonard Bernstein's music, it about their private lives. The stories of features Gene KeHy, Frank Sinatra and Benny Goodman, Eddie Duchin, Helen Jules Munshin along with Ann Mi!Jer, Morgan and Lilian Roth gave audiences Betty Garrett and Vera-Ellen in a zany a chance to shed a nostalgic tear over old caper across New York. favorites, while films about Beethoven, At the beginning of the fifties, the Chopin. Liszt popularized classical music.

In 1936, The Grear Ziegfeld was Hollymusical was still going strong with Ethel Merman belting out "Call Me Madam," wood's affectionate tribute to the man Betty Hutton lamenting "You Can't Get who set a trend for the movies as he a Man With a Gun." Doris Day's star had done for the stage. This practice of was rising. Repeatedly voted the most adapting theatrical productions had never popular actress, she emerged "in a sting- stopped, but in the fifties it became ing temper from the honeycomb of sickly almost an imperative. Familiarity with sweet pictures" that she found were the songs through radio, and now telefalling more and more to her lot as the vision, created ready-made audiences and healthy, sunshiny all-American girl. In guaranteed success for Carrousel, Oklacontrast to this image was Marilyn homa!, Sourh Pacific. The King and I. Monroe, who. as one critic said. "simply Off and on since then, musicals have was the fifties." To anyone who has seen been attempted, but hardly a handful most of her films, including the last, sear- have succeeded. Only The Sound of Music ing, The Misfits, the image propagated of (1965) captured something of the genre's her as the ultimate sex symbol does irresponsible charm, and grossed over a her touching vulnerability and consider- million dollars. The musicals of the able acting talent a grave injustice. Al- sixties and seventies- whether Sweer though not all her films were musicals, Charity. Cabaret, Wesr Side Story, or in all except The Misfits she sang a even My Fair Lady- do not provide number of very popular songs in her the purely escapist fare which was an slightly breathless, poignant voice. essential part of the musical's appeal.

By the mid-fifties the era which had An element of socia l concern enters the spawned the great musicals was drawing later films and lifts them out of the to a close. The conditions under which realm of fantasy. Wit h the break-up the musical had flourished no longer of H ollywood's make-believe world and operated. The confrontation between the growing involvement of the creative cinema and television took place early in artist with the harsh reality of contempo-

rary events, it was inevitable that the character of the musicals should also have changed. Sweet Charity is a bittersweet evocation of the world of call girls without the comfortable happy end.

Cabare(s powerful music highlights the Nazi terror about toengulfthe Germany of the late thirties against which the film is set.

My Fair Lady comments cleverly on the class structure of British society. Wesr Side Story, a modern-day Romeo and Juliet, is no romantic fable. Ethnic minorities, gang wars between slum kids looking for an identity among the streets in the only way they know how, make it into a totally credible, senselessly tragic story. Take, for example, the jaunty "Officer Krupky" number where one of the two warring gangs dance around their local police officer, mocking with social work cliche: Gee Officer Krupky. we're very upset We never had the love, every child oughta get We ain"t no delinquents. we¡re misunderstood Deep down inside us. there is good! . . Dear kindly Judge. Your Honor. my parents treat me rough With all that marijuana, they won't give me a puff They didn't wanna have me. but so mehow I was had Leapin' lizard~. that"s why l"m so bad!

Compare this with the Rodgers and H art hit tune from Love Me Tonight: Isn' t it romantic. merely to be young On such a night as this? ...

Moving shadows write the oldest magic words 1 hear the breezes playing, 111 the trees above While all the world is saying, you were meant for love Isn't it romantic?

Perhaps because of the intrusion of reality, the later films were never able to achieve the heart-warming exuberance of the best musicals of the forties against which they would have to be measured.

There have been several attempts by hardened film critics and film historians to explain the enduring charm of this bygone genre. J.C. Jarvie. anthropologist and sociologist, with credentials solid enough to satisfy the most highbrow inteUectuals. declared that, in his view. "the musical is among the purest and most enjoyable of all genres in the cinema and response to them is a measure of response to pure film." o¡ T hat just about sums it all up!

About the Au thor : Aruna Va~udev. /rained in .filmmaking ill France, has produced several documentaries. She received her Ph.D. ji-mn Paris Universi1y, and is 1he awhor of Liberty and Licence in i ndian Cinema.

Martin Hillenbrand, former U.S. Ambassador to West Germany, and P.R. Chari, director, Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis, discuss a wide range of arms control issues-West European attitudes toward the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty negotiations, and American, Indian and West European views on nuclear nonproliferation and a comprehensive test ban.

CHARI: Mr. Hillenbrand, would you agree that Wesl European counlries Kenerally lw1â&#x20AC;˘e a somewhat ambivalent allilltde loll'ard SALT negotiations ? They welcome the stabilily it portends, but at 1/ze same time they have a fear that superpower unders/andings might somehow weaken 1he American commitmenl 10 Europe.

HILLENBRAND: I would say that the European concern (by Europe here I mean the NATO members of the alliance rather than the neutrals) is not so much that the American commitment to the alliance will be weakened through superpower agreement on SALT 11, but that SALT II may in some way pre{;ondition SALT Ill. Europeans feel that the theoretical possibility should be considered of stationing certain other types of weapons in Western Europe to ofrset the new Soviet weapons

targeted on Western Europe. That is the so-called ¡'gray area problem," much discussed and debated in Europe at the present time. The principal concern here is the two-stage Soviet SS 20 missile, a new mobile missile with multiple warheads which js beginning to be deployed in the eastern parts of the Soviet Union.

The Soviets claim it is a nonstrategic missile in the sense that it cannot reach the United States in its two-stage version. But to the West Europeans it's very strategic, since when fully deployed with highly skillful guidance devices, it could have the effect of destabilizing the balance at that level of nuclear deterrence in Europe. Now how you offset this is of course a very complicated question to which no one has any specific answers.

Whether a so-called Euro-strategic system should be deployed,

SPAN AUGUST 1979 3~

NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION rr1111inued

The assumption that any country has anything to gain by the possession of nuclear weapor

or whether there is some offset. or whether continued reliance on the American central deterrent is sufficient, is all part of this ongoing debate. But I think the Europeans want SALT II in no way to foreclose the possibility of exercising the various options that are presently under discussion. Still, the debate over what should be the proper system to offset the SS 20 in Europe will continue for the next few years in any event.

CHARI: To shift the focus slightly, Mr. Hillenbrand: I think you will agree that if the SALT 11egotiations are difficult, those in the mutual force reduction are extremely complex. Cuts that migiH take place in forces on both sides are possible as far as men are concerned, or units, or weapons, either conventional or nuclear; they might be symmetrical or asymmetrical, in national forces or in total alliance forces. Given all these problems in regard to mutual force reductions in the negotiations which are going on, do you really fee/That there is a chance ofany kind ofagreement at all in the foreseeable future?

HILLENBRAND: Here of course I can only express a personal opinion. I was associated as an official with the origins of what we used to call the MBFR (Mutual Balanced Force Reduction) negotiations ; the B seems to have dropped out from current usage. 1 recall that in its origins a strong motive for the U.S. was to provide an argument against the efforts of certain U.S. Senators to w1ilaterally reduce U.S. forces in Europe. The argument was that as long as the MBFR negotiations were going on, it would be foolishness on the part of the United States to anticipate the outcome and degrade the Western negotiating position by unilateral force withdrawals from Europe. As you know, some years ago the Western side made a comprehensive offer which involved among other things the willingness to reduce one thousand tactical nuclear weapons in Western Europe. That led to a Soviet counteroffer, but there have nt:J er been really serious negotiations because of the impasse reached in the definition of force levels.

CHARI: On the question of nuclear nonproliferation, may I ask you what the West European attitudes are? It seems to me that the burden of the European argument for plutonium reprocessing, breeder technology or even uranium enrichment. is that they favor independence in uranium supply. It's not so much a question of the availability of uranium as access to uranium supply sources. As the West Europeans seem to perceive this question, 80 per cent of the uranium produced in tile world and available to Wes1ern Europe is produced by the United States, Canada, Australia and South Africa. This seems to be one of the reasons why the West Europeans believe in plutonium reprocessing and breeder technology and would like to have their own uranium enrichment sources. How does this argument seem to you?

HILLENBRAND: The whole issue, as you know, has been under debate for some years. It arose in a particularly acute form

40

SPA,'I AUGUST 1979

in the case of Germany's proposed sale to Brazil of a full fuel-cycle technology which would permit the Brazilians at the end of some years to come into possession of the technology enabling them to reprocess spent plutonium. Theoretically they could then siphon off enough to achieve a nuclear weapons capacity.

The United States has taken a negative position on this sale, claiming that the fast breeder technology or full fuel-cycle technology is dangerous. The Europeans have not accepted this position. When J was ambassador in Bonn I must have had 20 meetings with a German foreign minister or foreign ministry senior officials in an effort to persuade them that the American position was a reasonable one and that the Germans could make a real contribution to the cause of nonproliferation if they modified the terms of their agreement with Brazil. The U.S. Government's arguments did not prevl'lil at that time, nor have they prevailed under the Carter Administration. As you know, one result of the London summit is that an investigation has been going on, which will come to some conclusions next autumn (1980), into the whole question oft he fast breeder and full fuel-cycle technology. When we have the findings of this group, perhaps it will be easier to arrive at some conclusions about which side is right in this debate. But certainly up to now there has been little meeting of minds between the Europeans and the Americans. The Europeans have accepted the goal of achieving guarantees against proliferation, and the countries involved had signed the nonproliferation treaty. But a broad area of disagreement persists as to the dangers inherent in the fast breeder technology.

CHARI: Mr. Hillenbrand, recently, when President Jimmy Carter was addressing the American Press Institute of Editors, he said: ''It is a lillie hit difficult for me to talk to Prime Minister Desai, who has publicly sworn that his gorernment will never again tum to a nuclear explosive, when we ourselves have not yet restrained the spread of nuclear weapons."

Now Mr. Desai has made this point ll'ith Mr. Carter that India would think in terms of accepting perlwps full-scope safeguards or even signing the nonproliferation treaty, provided the nuclear weapons powers did something positive to stop the accumulation ofnuclear weapons, and ultilnate~~· see to it that there are no nuclear arsenals left. In other words, President Carter and Mr. Desai seem to .feel that there is a kind of link hetll"een ••ertical and hori:onta! proliferation. What do you think of this argumeJit :> HILLENBRAND: Well, of course President Carter's words speak for themselves; but I think under other circumstances he might have argued somewhat differently. The assumption that any country has anything to gain by possession of nuclear weapons or by proliferation of nuclear weapons seems to me and here I speak both personally as well as someone who's acquainted with the arguments that are made on both sides- that this assumption is an erroneous one, because the insecurity of all countries will be heightened thereby. Some people have

~

erroneous, because they mere]y heighten the insecurity of all countries.

worked it out with computers and say that this insecurity will be heightened in a geometrical rather than an atithmetical way.

Certainly the possession of nuclear weapons by the United States and the Soviet Union, apart from bringing with it a certain sobriety, has not notably increased the conventional warmaking power of either country. Otherwise the Soviet Union wouldn't be suffering from the fears of the People's Republic of China which it does suffer from, nor would the United States have got bogged down in Vietnam as it did and have lost the war there. I think the basic consideration for a country such as India must be : Does this ultimately contribute to our own security, or does it really heighten the amount of insecurity in the world, which ultimately affects Indian security?

CHARI: There is an argument made sometimes that a country might be deterred from exercising a nuclear option ifit was supplied with conventional weaponry. This argument has often been made in the United States , for instance, as regards Pakistan. As you know, Pakistan was supplied a nuclear reprocessing plant by France in 1976, and Henry Kissinger had felt that ifPakistan was supplied with some A-7 planes, they might he deterredfrom proceeding in the nuclear direction. What do you think of this argument?

HILLENBRAND: I would say that depends on the country involved, and the position in which that country finds itself. I know that India is concerned about the delivery of conventional weapons to Pakistan. I think one has to judge the present situation against the background of 10 or 15 years of recent history.

The position of the United States developed within a specific historic context. Now that context seems to have changed somewhat in the recent past, and the United States will presumably arrive at logical deductions from that changed context.

But our policy, as T understand it, is really in a state of evolution now. It would be premature to draw any final conclusions about where we'llland up on this very difficult and controversial issue.

CHARI: There is this rather pessimistic point of view as far as the question ofnuclear nonproliferation is concerned, that no matter what steps are taken , whether conventional weapons are given or not, no matter what guarantees might be given, there are countries which suffer from a certain paranoia, countries which have ve1y acute security problems. It is very difficult for any kind of international regime to restrict these countries from going in for nuclear weapons if they are determined to do so. Would you agree with the view that proliferation can only be perhaps stopped for a while, or delayed, but that's about all?

HILLENBRAND: One really doesn't know. I think responsible people must make the effort to prevent proliferation in whatever context the problem arises, because proliferation is bound to be bad for the world. Now if there are some errant countries, undependable countries, which, to achieve objectives of their own,

want to develop a nuclear weapon, that then becomes an object of concern. Every effort must be made to deter such countries from moving in that direction; that's about all one can say.

CHARJ: Let's talk about a comprehensive test ban treaty. I mean

a truly comprehensive treaty in the sense that not only would all nuclear tests, whether they be peaceful or militaty, be stopped, but also that all the nuclear weapons powers- most particularly as far as India is concerned, France and China- are brought in.

What do you think are the chances of such a comprehensive test ban treaty ?

HILLENBRAND: Well, as between the Soviet Union and the United States you know the issue is essentially one of detection technology and of Soviet agreement to the use of that technology on its own soil. So long as the technology does not permit the detection of explosions below a certain level of intensity, and so long as the Soviet Union will not permit on its soil the use of what technology is available, it doesn't seem to me that a comprehensive test ban treaty between the two countries is likely. Now by comprehensive you mean also one extending to all countries in the world including countries such as France and the People's Republic of China, which have not committed themselves in any way, or indicated any interest in committing themselves, to abstain from tests. There, of course, a treaty is even more unlikely for the foreseeable future. But, one can only, as a responsible government, make every effort to prevent proliferation by halting tests below ground OT above ground. Above ground testing, of course, has deleterious general effects on the environment, which is an additional negative argument.

CHARI: One last question, Mr. Hillenbrand.

As you are aware, in 1974, a threshold test ban treaty was signed between the United States and the Soviet Union. Then in 7976 the two countries signed a Peaceful Nuclear Explosion Treaty. There is an argument that these two treaties somehow reduced the compulsions upon the United States and the Soviet Union to go ahead and sign a comprehensive test ban treaty. What do you think of this argument?

HlLLENBRAND: Well this is a rather "iffy" argument, as President Franklin D. Roosevelt used to say. My own personal feeling is that these agreements did not contribute to the unlikelihood of a comprehensive test ban treaty, which is being decided on the basis of different issues. It was better that the Soviet Union and the United States bind themselves not to test in the atmosphere, because that was good for the entire world in terms of avoiding environmental pollution and fallout. What would have happened without that partial agreement, no one really knows.

Perhaps both the Soviet Union and the United States would have desisted anyway, but we can't be sure of that. So I think on the whole it was a good thing, and I don't think it is the issue over D which the comprehensive test ban treaty has been held up.

SPAN AUGUST 1979

41

14.

10ry Lovins is a roaming energy think tank, an American living in London, schooled at Harvard and degreed at Oxford, an adviser to nations but with a message for the common man.

He is consultant to several governments on energy matters, cross-pollinating ideas between nuclear scientists and conservationists, politicians and technicians, academics and bureaucrats, and explaining the two worlds he straddles- worlds that have become labeled in the Lovins lexicon as the "hard path" (large-scale energy systems) and the "soft path" (a diversity of need-tailored, small-scale energy systems).

He is based in London with Friends of the Earth, an environmental group, but spends his summers biking in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. He has lectured at the University of California, Berkeley. He was raised in a scientific family living near Washington, D.C. He is also a pianist and has published two books of photographs on the Welsh headlands.

His influence lies in the fact that he has jumped ship, leaving the traditional, evenkeel energy thinking, but still using all the technological and economic ropes. And he shows how the energy problem can be the means of transforming society. His statistics cut across ideological disputes.

In three years, his ideas have shaken the public confidence in the U.S. energy establishment down to its very uranium rods.

During the 1976 campaign, Jimmy Carter consulted Lovins about an energy plan for the nation. They met again in October 1977.

The President, a former nuclear engineer, had asked to see Lovins, a 30-year-old " former high-technologist."

At their meeting, Mr. Carter showed himself well grounded in Lovins' analysis, even to the point of correcting a slip over a Rcpnnred by permission of71r~ Chrluuur Science Morritor. @ 1978 the Chrisuan S<:1ence Pubhshing Socie1y. All rights re.erved.

figure made by the U.S. energy chief, James Schlesinger, who sat in.

In fact, in a speech the next day, the President cited some Lovins calculations on world nuclear hazards. And within the U.S. Department of Energy, top officials are beginning to shift Federal policy to a soft-path strategy - and have taken on Lovins as a consultant.

The ideas he offered to Mr. Carter first came to public notice in October, 1976, when Lovins wrote a now-famous article for Foreign Affairs entitled "Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken?"

The highbrow journal received a nearrecord number of requests for reprints. The nuclear and electric power industry quickly launched a counterattack, even publishing an entire book of critiques (Soft vs. Hard Energy Paths, from Charles Yulish Associates, Inc.). The Lovins strategy, which he so far has been able to defend in his calculations, was called "flaccid and flatulent," "wistful neo-fantasy," and a "cuddly road to nowhere." ''1 suppose that some people in the electricrnuclear industry are particularly hurt that I am writing with their numbers in what they might have thought of as their journal," Lovins said in an interview. " I am penetrating the periphery of their system and beliefs and sort of running around the inside of their perimeter, using their numbers and criteria while rejecting their values."

In the article, and in a book that followed in 1977 called Sofr Energy Parhs, Lovins suggests that the United States, like many other nations, has a choice between two highly different types of energy systems for the 21st century and the choice will affect what kind of society

AMORY LOVINS: ENERGY PLANNER

by CLAYTON JONES

42

SPAN AUGUST 1979

and earth humankind will have.

In brief, a "hard path" would require the use of .. hard technologies," such as electric power stations, which would be centrally run and powered by depletable and potentially dangerous fuels (oil, gas, coal, uranium) and costly to replace.

A "soft path" would rely on "clean" and renewable energy, such as sunlight, wind, and plants, all found and used locally. The type and amount of energy would be matched to the job needed to be done, and thus keep the "energy economy" within its means.

"This economy-of-means argument-of doing the job with the least energy- is really a restatement of E.F. Schumacher's classic essay on Buddhist economics ['Small Is Beautiful']," Lovins said. ''These ideas keep chasing each other around. They are in the air. I'm bound to be influenced by them.

"But I must say that I was awfully surprised when it turned out that soft technologies are cheaper than hard ones to do the same jobs. I had always assumed, as a former high-technologist, that although soft technologies are nice, they would cost more. I was doing some numbers in late 1975 or early I 976, and was quite surprised when it proved otherwise. Indeed, since then, people are sending me, or I am stumbling across, a great deal more evidence to the same effect.

"Fritz [Schumacher] argued largely from ethical and social grounds, but I am taking a more technocratic approach, befitting my background as a high-technologist. I am in the enemy's camp and he wasn't. It's a tactical difference.

"Of course, I'm not saying everything has to be small. It should be matched to the job. And if you read Fritz carefully, he said that, too. He said quite explicitly that there was a danger of developing a dogma of smallness that would have to be fought just as vigorously as the dogma of largescale."

Put into energy terms: "It is just as silly to run high-heat smelters with large wind machines as it is to heat houses with a fast breeder reactor," he maintains.

More than half of America's energy needs are in the form of heat, with liquid fuels running second and electricity as a distant third. Thus, Lovins says, it is cheaper. quicker. simpler, and less harmful to use solar technology in the future than to build new, heavily subsidized atomic and coal-fired electric generating plants.

"Electricity is very expensive stuff- a new barrel's worth costs you over a hundred dollars in oil," he said. ¡¡you could freeze in the dark because you couldn't pay your utility bill." Giant electric stations also tie up more capital. he believes, produce fewer jobs, increase inflationary pressures, create

a vulnerable and centralized power system run by a larger and larger technocratic bureaucracy, and hide the long-term environmental side effects in Wyoming, West Virginia, and the atmosphere.

"Hard technologies are a sophisticated way of stealing from our children," he said simply. "Energy is the most useful integrating principle we have so far to catalyze change and look at a wide range of problems. It is not just a resource problem but a matter of how our society is going to evolve.

"Soft path takes for granted that the United States is a diverse, pluralistic country in which we do not agree amongst ourselves about what the energy problem is, what our society should look like, what the role of government should be, what the price and regulation of energy should be. If we say we can't have an energy policy until people agreed about these things, hell will freeze over first, literally," he said.

"A soft path approach works within that pluralism. If you are an economic traditionalist, then you put up your solar collector, because it's cheaper than not doing it. If you are a conservationist, then you build a solar collector because it is benign. If you are a social transformationist, then you build a solar collector, because it is autonomous.

But it's still the same collector. You don't have to agree on why you are doing it.

"Or to put it another way, we have a strong consensus in America that solar energy and energy husbandry are good things, and we have a pretty good consensus on the limited, clean use of coal, and no consensus on anything else in energy.

"So I am saying, let's add up all the bits people agree about, because they are enough, and forget the rest, because they are superfluous. We've never tried before to design an energy policy around consensus, but it seems time we started.''

In fact, Lovins has found in his travels

that the action in energy policy is not in Washington but at the local and state levelsolar assistance, bicycle paths, insulation credits, recycling centers, utility reform. In Vermont, for instance, 40 per cent of the homes have instaUed wood-burning stoves since 1974.

Eventually, a soft-path society would have cars running on alcohol derived from farm and forestry wastes. Electricity, generated from new and old hydro dams and wind machines, would be transmitted through the present grid of wires. Petrochemicals, for such things as plastics, would come from coal and agricultural products.

A real study of Lovins' thesis was performed by the U.S. Department of Energy: Could California survive on its own native energy, given present technologies?

Researchers calculated that yes, the state could, just by using thousands of windmills, electric cars and railroads, strict conservation, and large tracts of "energy farms." Less than I 0 per cent of energy needs would have to be imported, such as coal-derived oil. The study has persuaded other regions to look into soft-path futures.

Beyond energy, Lovins believes the next crisis for America will come from its water policy.

"You can go right down the line and see that we are making all the mistakes in water policy that we had been making in energy policy: We' re being supply- rather than demand-oriented. We call for more dam projects to divide up the water that isn't there. We're concentrating on total demand of water in gallons and not on the quality of water required for each job. ''If we don't start to adapt now, we'll conceivably be in a much worse mess than we are with energy."

0 About the Author: Clayton Jones is a staff correspondefll of The Christian Science Monitor.

Sunlight, wind, plants-Amory Lovins' soft path to energy calls for use of these natural, renewable elements instead of depletable, unclean fuels like oil, gas, coal and uranium.

SPAN AUGUST 1979

43

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WHAT SKYLAB ACHIEVED

Ways of eliminating both of these problems likely will result from information gained by Skylab.

Another benefit will be in helping to make more accurate long-ra_nge- up to two weeks-weather forecasts, since solar radiation striking the earth's atmosphere determines both climate and weather.

Perhaps most important at this time is the information that can be applied to the world's search for new energy sources. The unlocking of the secret of converting magnetic energy to thermal energy could lead to a new method of obtaining inexpensive electrical power on earth.

Studies of the nuclear fusion process that powers the sun adds much needed knowledge to current efforts to duplicate the process on a small scale as a source of energy for the world. Skylab also added to the knowledge of how to use solar energy directly; how to trap "sunbeams" in orbiting or earthbound collectors and convert the energy to electricity.

Skylab also made additional studies of the moon and other planets. A bonus was the appearance of the comet Kohoutek. Such an unobstructed view of one of these mysterious space travelers had never been possible before.

Major medical experiments also were

continuedfrompage4B

part ofSkylab's bonanza. The information Left: Dr. Owen Garriott, science pilot of the obtained from these tests is contributing second Skylab crew, works outside the craft's to .general knowledge of the human body orbiting laboratory. He has just installed an as wen as providing information for future important experimental facility-to record the impact of interplanetary dust particles on a space ventures. solar panel of Skylab's telescope mount. Above: As a result of Skylab, NASA says, many This near-vertical view of Wyoming, a northdoctors believe man is capable of with- western state in the United States, was taken standing extended periods in space with from Skylab by an astronaut with a handno serious problems. held camera. The dark area is Yellowstone Dr. Charles A. Berry was NASA's National Park, the largest body of water is director of life sciences at the time of the Yellowstone Lake. About 30 per cent of the state space laboratory's working life, and is of Wyoming is seen in this picture. recognized as one of the world's foremost medical authorities on space flight. He They also reported on flood damage in the said at the time, "From what we know Mississippi River basin of the United today, there is no medical reason to bar a States, forest fire damage in the northtwo-year mission to Mars." eastern United States and damage to Much of the information collected by crops by fruit flies and fire ants along the Skylab dealt with our own world.

United States-Mexico border.

All this information has practical appliThe Earth Resources Experiments Package (EREP) assessed geographic, geo- cation on earth. It can aid in weather logical and biological aspects of much of forecasting and will be helpfuUn making it the world. The photographs from space possible to predict floods and hurricanes, are invaluable to cartographers. earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. It The crewmen had the opportunity to could even make it possible someday to record the development and t~e end of control the weather, at least to a limited a tropical storm, looked at the drought- extent. And Skylab's information gives stricken area of Africa, saw an active man the opportunity to see-and correctvolcano (Etna), observed a severe storm some of the damage he is doing to his in the U.S. state of Oklahoma, noted environment. the effects of strip mining for coal in the Another experiment indicated "hot states of Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky. spots" (springs and gas pockets) beneath

SPAN AUGUST 1979

44 A

WHIT SKYlAB ACHIEVED

448

the ground in the western United States.

These could be developed by private industry to produce electricity from geothermal energy.

Cool spots-swirling pools of cold water-were spotted in the warm gulf stream that runs from the Caribbean along the southern United States coast and then eastward to Europe. This has important implications for weather forecasting and possibly for the fishing industry.

One experiment was the idea of a 17-year-old American high school student, who suggested that Skylab carry along a pair of spiders-to see if they could spin webs in the weightlessness of outer space.

After a few shaky starts, the spiders did produce webs of creditable symmetry.

But there was nothing for spiders to eat in outer space. One of them starved to death.

Other nonhuman passengers included 1,000 gypsy moths, which were hatched in space. The eggs hatched twice as fast in space as on earth. This could have practical applications at some far distant date. Seeking a substitute for toxic chemi-

SPAN AUGUST 1919

continued

cats that can destroy insects that defoliate thousands of trees eaCh year in the United States, scientists have attempted to produce a massive population of sterilized males and turn them loose. But the slow development cycle of the moth has slowed down the project. A breeding farm in space could be the solution.

Future factories in the sky might be another outgrowth of experiments conducted aboard Skylab. A number of tests indicate that weightlessness could usher in a new age for metallurgy.

Possibilities include foamed steel-a metal dotted with air pockets like a sponge. Such a process is impossible on earth, where gravity would solidify the mass. This process could lead to lighter and stronger surgical equipment and electrical conductors.

Another possibility is a perfect, hollow sphere-another impossibility in earth's gravity. This could be used as a ball bearing that would wear out very little even after long use, would produce little friction and be relatively quiet.

Perfect lenses could be ground in

Skylab and other space ventures have opened up many exciting possibilities for tomorrow. One of them, dramatized above by an artist, is that of a solar power station in space, which will convert the sun's rays to electricity for beaming to ground antennas. Experts say that some 50 such stations, each of them as large as a small city, may be able to match all the power now being generated in the United States.

gravity-free space.

Finally, the possibility of being able to separate chemicals with only slight differences in molecular weight could lead to purer, more potent vaccines and medicines with fewer side effects.

Reflections on Skylab by Dr. James C. Fletcher, then NASA administrator, at the conclusion of the mission in 1974, are still applicable today: "Everything that we have done in the Skylab program has been necessary for future progress in space, and the Skylab experience has confirmed that we are really on the right track in proceeding to develop the space shuttle and its spacelab manned module for use in the 1980s and 1990s."

0

John Wayne died in June of father-son relationship; it this year, finally ending a career became a rich, productive comthat spanned more than 50 years bination of two highly individual of film history. By any set of men, continuing into the sixties, critical standards, there have and until Ford's death. Wayne been many better actors over certainly owed much to Ford; his early success in Stagecoach those years: few, though, have had a personality and screen is at least partly attributable to the director. image that meshed so closely; It is said that Wayne underfewer still, those who, by mere presence and manner, were able acted, often atrociously. Though to so completely evoke the entire not incorrect, this view is unfair, because it leaves out too much. atmosphere of a genre.

You could count on him to Not an especially gifted actor, be big, solid. reassuring, just what Wayne did was to adapt the there, in somewhat the way roles he played to suit his own that a rock is. To see him in the strengths and limitations. And later films - face lined like old the quality of strength in repose that characterizes much of his leather, weary almost, except for actingeminentlysuits, even lends the inner vitality that even the smallest gesture could state-was to be reminded, not only of a certain dignity, to the rough and tumble roles he was asked to the many films he'd been in or the roles he'd played. but, in play. In the world that Westerns try to re-create, that may have some way, of a single composite character slowly formed through been the only kind of dignity that was possible. the many years and films. If the test of a star is that he should Early in his career, he was given a leading role because the bring the echoes of his past roles on the screen each time-, re- director liked the way he walked. It was that walk, that unique molding his previous successes into characters that are believ- style, blending elegance, informality and self-containment, that able and real, then Wayne was a star if anyone was. He was was Wayne's trade mark. It was still in evidence as he approached an archetypal Western hero. You couldn't not believe him. his 70s. Though be went on to act in many different kinds of To any follower of American film, and especially to afi- films, Wayne's growth and best performances were in Westerns: cionados of the Western, this is a statement of the obvious. If as the Ringo Kid in Stagecoach, the cavalry officer in She Wore a I write it down, it is because that's the way Wayne affects me. Yellow Ribbon, the cattledriver in Red River, or the aging, defunct He had some special quality that brought out the child hidden in gunfighter in ElDorado. To see him later in, say, a crime film, was all of us. To see him is to be immediately willing to believe in the to be reminded that this man belonged to an earlier, more indiblack-and-white nature of good and evil; to be convinced that vidualistic era.

Wayne, however he appears to the other characters in the film, . He was a particularly American hero, popular elsewhere to will not only finally triumph, but do so with his own brand of the extent that the American ethos had communicated and been assimilated. Brusque, direct, an obviously outdoor man: the grace and wry humor.

From such absolute credibility screen myths are made. John natural grace of an animal veiling a reined-in roughness, an Wayne came close to being an American folk hero, an almost explosiveness held in check. But, of course, these tra.its were not mythical figure whose era had passed; but his sheer presence only to be seen in front of the camera. In his later years, Wayne, could bring it all back for us, and it dido 't matter much if it was a in his public life, came to say, do and behave pretty much as he purely mythical past that was evoked. liked. Dogmatically Republican in his politics, openly hostile to It is interesting to investigate the process by which a legend is critics of the Vietnam war, he didn't lose his popularity with the formed; in order to do this, we must go back to the films he did in young, even in the militant sixties. If sections of the public the twenties and thirties. It is another John Wayne we see there, disagreed with his statements, they did not object very fresh-faced, almost young: but there is, in the movements, in the strongly. He was a legend, and you do not question legends too affected, slow casualness, the qualities of heaviness and grace closely. held in balance, the beginnings of a particular style. This style ln his last years, the battle against cancer consumed him. For ' would bp a highly individual one, were it not, already, a kind of a time he enjoyed announcing, in typical fashion, that he had archetype. beaten the disease. Of course be hadn't, and the cancer led to an In this respect. Wayne was, among Western actors, what John amputated lung and stomach, and, finally, to his death. He left as Ford was among the directors. The two did some of their best his epitaph a line that says, in Spanish, "He was strong, he was work together. After launching Wayne in the successful Srage- ugly, and he had dignity." They may carve that on his gravestone, coach, Ford built his "Cavalry" trilogy (Fort Apache, She Wore a 'but it seems all too wordy to remember John Wayne by. The 0 Yellow Ribbon, and Rio Grande) around him. They shared a kind visual testimony of the films will serve much better.

SPAN AUGUST 1979 â&#x20AC;˘

THE ROAD TO DEVELOPMENT An Interview With Jagdish Bhagwati An eminent Indian-born economist outlines his views on many aspects of development strategy -agricultural productivity, employment, export-led growth, protectionism, commodity policy, external assistance-in this interview with a SPAN correspondent in the United States.

QUESTION: What kind of development strategy do you think works best for developing nations?

BHAGWATI: Countries that follow rigid planning models- trying to force industrialization through import licensing and other direct controls, for example-have run into problems. It may be useful for a plan to define the country's economic framework and outlook, but I think the kind of policy that tries to predetermine exactly where investments will be made is now reasonably discredited.

1 think there is today a distinct trend among developing countries toward recognizing that you need flexibility and a

larger role for individual initiatives and the market.

Q: Are there enough entrepreneurs in the private sector in developing countries that

such a decentralized economic approach will be effective?

BHAGWATI: I think one finds entrepreneurs in the public sector, as well as the private sector. Some developing countries may not have the private sector entrepreneurship needed to handle big jobs, like building up a heavy industry base. In this situation, the government may have to step in. Japan did that in its early industrial days, and then sold

the going enterprises to the private sector.

Q: Do you think developing countries generally attach appropriate priority to the development of their rural sector?

BHAGWATI: Well, I think most of them could do little about agricuJture, especially in the early stages of development. It's not easy to get ¡the decentralized millions of the farmers in a poor country to make those inc!emental, technical changes that will increase productivity.

Economists often urge a twofold attack on this problem: First, let agricultural ¡ extension services provide the knowledge, and, second, have the right prices for farm products.

Before you can expand extension services, however, you have to educate the people who will give the advice-and that takes a lot of time. However, many countries have crossed that hurdle recently.

The question of ensuring farmers a sufficient economic return to motivate them is more difficult. "Economists traditionally saw the answer in prices. But a modest increase in prices is not a sufficient inducement if, for example, a single crop failure could stiU be ruinous. And you can't raise agricultural prices without limit, because agricultural prices affect wages and industrial prices, and fuel inflation.

However, there is now, owing to new seeds and technology, much Jess pessimism about what can be done to boost agricultural productivity. It may now even be possible for some of these countries to achieve a 4 per cent rate of growth or more in agriculture over the next 10 years.

Q: Aside from the need to increase food production, are there other reasons for developing countries 10 raise the prioriry

46

SPAN AUGUST 1979

of rural development programs?

BHAGWATI: Oh. yes, I think equity requires it. Growth without improved equity is not viable. A country should create more jobs to absorb the enormous reserve of unemployed and underemployed labor in the rural areas. This clearly supports the focus on agriculture, not just for the sake of growth, but in the hope that rural people can experience economic growth bette\ if they stay there on the farms than if they migrate to the cities in search of jobs.

Q: What are the external factors that affect development?

BHAGWATI: I think there is growing awareness that an outward-looking development strategy is helpful. The success of Taiwan, South Korea. Hong Kong. and Singapore in linking rapid growth to export development has made it clear to many other countries that the import substitution route does not work as well as export-led growth. They now see that a developing country really can industrialize and break the world export market.

Still, pessimism lingers about the bad shape ,of the world economy as a whole.

The developed countries-where the big markets are-have their own unemployment problems and trade unions, and they are getting very sensitive about jobs.

Q: Are you suggesting that the threat of protectionism in these countries may be

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an obstacle to de1â&#x20AC;˘eloprnent in the developing countries?

BHAGWATI: The Northern leaders face some real problems here. You can't really blame the trade unions for asserting the concerns of their members, who try to hold on to their jobs. It's a paradox that just as developing countries are learning that the international market is an attractive route to accelerated growth, they see signals in the industrial country markets that lead them to doubt whether they really can go that route.

I think it is very important for the industrial countries to keep their markets open, and to prevent the collapse of liberal trade policies. That's all part of the tradjtional economic system, not of the new international order. Those in the developing countries who understand tills say: "Look, you believe in the liberal international order. You can really profit from it, and we really want access to your markets. Don't close them."

Q: How do you think the tensions between protectionist and liberalizing pressures will be resolved?

BHAGWATI: I don't think the industrial country markets . will be closed. There has always been a battle between their executive and legislative branches on this kind of question - not only in the United States, but in all the parHamentary systems. If the energy situation worsens and if the industrial countries cannot manage their stagflation problems (combined eco-

nomic stagnation with inflation), then I think the government executives may get into weaker positions with their trade unions. So the big question is whether economic management in the industrial countries will deal successfully with these larger economic problemS. Right now, the situation is not bad enough for the dam to burst, and I think they will manage to hold it back.

Q: Why has the commodity issue become so important in the North-South debate?

BHAGWATI: I trunk frustration over the failure of industrial countries to extend more grant aid was a factor. The success of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in escalating oil prices provided an example of how developing countries could unilaterally take a larger share of the world's income.

This view was overoptimistic, and I think the developing countries now realize that that approach wouldn't make much sense in the long run. Unfortunately from their point of view, no other product among developing country exports is like oil.

Q: Is commodity policy only symbolically significant for developing countries?

BHAGWATI: I don't see commodity policy as a good way to effect income redistribution. I think this effort to get a "just price" based on some abstract notion of real justice was naive.

I think the United Nations Conference for Trade and Development secretariat

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18

THE ROAD TO DEVELOPMENT continued

made a major mistake in pushing commodity schemes as the main issue.

be a marvelous time for a U.S. aid program of that scope to encourage the developing nations to meet the basic Q: What kinds of official development needs of their people while not neglecting assistance projects are most useful? the economic needs that favor growth.

BHAGWATI: I would emphasize that But remember, when we talk about major capital development projectsexternal assistance we are inevitably talkthose that support the construction of ing about a very small portion of the ports, for example-can be a useful way to funds spent on development. Most . get most impact out of resource transfer. developing countries invest 15 to 20 per To the extent that the recent emphasis cent of their incomes on development. on meeting the basic needs of the world's Foreign aid funds represent less than poorest people implies that aid for l per cent of the incomes of developing development is useless and only serves to countries, or something like one-fifteenth satisfy politicians' whims, it is rather of the total investment funds. naive. The bigger development projects do contribute to economic growth, and with- Q: What about technical assistance? Is out that growth, there :would be many it still useful? more poor people in the world than there BHAGWATI: Yes, in selected areas. are now.

But many countries have grown up in But I would say a really progressive the last generation, and now they have form of aid would be frankly designed their own technical manpower. for redistribution purposes, and would There are still specific areas where aid consumption by the poor. That kind many United Nations experts go, and of program should look beyond the year there are now a number of programs 2000 and would have to be a very big whereby experts from one developing program. I would really like to see a nation go to another. This sort of thing stepped-up Marshall Plan-type aid pro- can absorb some of the oversupply of gram - comparable in size to the aid to certain kinds of experts in some countries postwar- recovery in Europe- lined up such as Mexico, Brazil, India, and South with human rights and basic human Korea. But overall, developing nations needs. 1fthe United States weren't caught don't have ·the same lack of experts as up with inflation and unemployment did the world just after World War II. problems, with competing budget priori- That technological backwardness has ties and taxpayer resistance, this would really changed dramatically.

0

Jagdisb Natwarlal Bhagwati, 45, is a leading theorist on international trade, and has served on. the expert groups of several internatioJUZi organizations. He wok his M.A .from Cambridge University in 1961 and his Ph.D. from the Massachusells institute of Technology in 1967.

Formerly a professor at the Indian StatistiCilllnstitute, Delhi, and the Delhi School of Economics, Dr. Bhagwati is now a puJfessor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He hqs written and edited 18 books on international trade, migration, education and development.

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Baltimore, Maryland, was founded in 1729, two and a half centuries ago, to provide an outlet for the tobacco grown locally. It is today the fastest growing port on the U.S. East Coast and the fourth largest in the country. Petroleum products, ore, grain, coal, bananas and automobiles are among its leading cargoes. After a long spell of growth, Baltimore began to wither in the 1960s in the face of a staggering onslaught of social, economic and physical problems common to all big cities. But thanks to its citizens' determined efforts, Baltimore has survived and prospered in every field -construction, commerce, education, culture. The city has won an award for environmental design for its new structures, renovations and green areas. And it has been ra.nked first among the country's 22 largest cities in terms of responsiveness to its citizens.

As community pride soars, residents are working individually and collectively to make Baltimore a bettter place to live in.

Clockwise from above: This immaculate row of well-maintained old houses with their marble steps typifies Baltimore's community pride in self-renewal; youngsters take part in a race sponsored by the Bureau of Recreation, which nms recreational and educational activities for the y01mg, the old, and for those with physical handicaps or learning disabilities; the 200-year-old Lexington Market has over a hundred familyowned shops like this one; a potter practices his craft in a ceramics class, one ofBaltimore's many adult education programs.