Science: Technocrats Expelled

Technocracy was good meat to Nicholas Murray Butler a month ago. In his annual Columbia University report, he beamed upon “a group of engineers who. impressed by the recent quickening of productivity and the enormous new possibilities which lie still ahead of us in this field, urge the desirability of an entirely new system of control which they term technocracy. Without accepting their inferences, the data which they are accumulating regarding the efficiency of modern production and its methods will have to be taken into account in any serious study of this whole question.”

Last week President Butler’s Dean Joseph Warren ‘Barker defended much-criticized Technocracy, explained: “There are two clearly marked divisions in this discussion as far as Columbia University is concerned, 1) The factual survey of the energy production rates on this continent; 2) the personal opinions and conclusions of the individual members of Technocracy. . . . We are interested in the factual study. But with the second part the University has assumed no responsibility.”

Nonetheless, Columbia was factually entertaining the Technocrats. A cry arose when the community discovered that $5,700 per month of unemployment relief was enabling the Technocrats to predict everlasting unemployment. Last week President Butler sidestepped: “Columbia University has no more to do with Technocracy than it has with the Fourth Dimension.”

But under professorial cover matters were getting hot at Columbia. In a few days Professor Walter Rautenstrauch, chief sponsor for Chief Technocrat Howard Scott, issued a countersigned manifesto: “We are withdrawing from association with Technocracy. … A new organization under another name will continue research into natural resources and industrial changes.” Thus Columbia put High Priest Scott and Technocracy off the campus (see p. 23).