PERSONNEL: Brainwork on the Brains Shortage

Last week Under Secretary of War Bob Patterson presented the U. S. with a new shortage. It was not another material, like aluminum, nor another type of machinery. Nor was it just man power. It was something even more crucial, which takes a longer time to develop—technological know-how. Former Judge Patterson was on the bench too long to pass sentence until the last deposition is in. But by last week he had heard lots of evidence that frantic U. S. manufacturers are pirating each other’s technologists. He warned that such raiding “cannot be tolerated.”

Every employer of specialized technical talent knows how hard it is to replace. But to date, only one step has been taken toward a national inventory of brains. That is the National Roster of Scientific and Specialized Personnel, which the National Resources Planning Board and the Civil Service Commission are compiling (in collaboration with the American Council on Education, American Council of Learned Societies, National Research Council and Social Science Research Council). It is no secret that the National Roster leaves something to be desired. Its questionnaires are going mainly to members and mailing lists of technical societies. But probably less than half the U. S.’s engineers and technologists belong to these societies, while many who belong are not technicians but salesmen and company presidents.

Late last year a group of defense-conscious engineers in Detroit figured out a way of supplementing the National Roster’s approach. They were members of the Engineering Society of Detroit, which is an engineers’ clearinghouse affiliated with the local sections of 16 national technical societies, from ceramists to welders. They had several fears: 1) the draft might get too many technicians; 2) private pirating might disrupt defense work (as it has); 3) if industry fails to get full efficiency out of its engineers, the Government might commandeer everybody’s specialists. To work out an orderly procedure for getting the right brains into the right spot, and to protect their plants against raiding by competitors, or Government, they decided to get up a local inventory of brain power by going directly to all the employers in Michigan.

They sold Engineering Society of Detroit’s President Jim Parker (chief engineer of Detroit Edison) and their directing board on the idea, got several thousand dollars to spend on it, secured endorsements from Detroit Edison’s crusty Alex Dow, University of Michigan’s Engineering Dean Emeritus M. E. Cooley, and technical sage Charles Franklin Kettering of General Motors. Then they made contact with Michigan’s 2,200 employers of engineering skill, asked each to distribute questionnaires in his plants.

The questionnaire was simple but inclusive. Worked out by 200 E. S. D. members, it divided the technicians into nine occupational groups (chemical, electrical, etc.), asked each man to specify a major field and a minor one. Then it broke them down by types of work nine ways (research, design, construction, production, etc.) and by types of responsibility (chief executive, etc.). Other angles: foreign languages, intellectual interests, Federal Government experience.

Early this month, a follow-up letter helped quiet employers’ fears. It warned that “many skilled technical men will be required and will be obtained by Governmental agencies for emergency tasks.” It argued that “with the comprehensive list of talent so obtained, we will be able to … choose those whose transfer will cause the least disruption to industry.” It promised that “our questionnaire cards will be kept permanently in strictest confidence at the offices of the E. S. D., with technical qualifications made available to responsible Governmental agencies (not to private employers). Those men eligible for emergency tasks will be approached only after their release has been obtained from the present employer.”

To the National Roster, to which it pledged cooperation, the E. S. D. spoke hopefully of rounding up as many as 15,000 case histories in Michigan alone, of setting an example to other State groups. To emergency-torn Washington, this was a hopeful sign. The brains which must get the U. S.’s defense job done were handling their own prospective shortage.