The Nation: Maladministration

As a a further hedge against age and sex discrimination, the Department of Labor will issue a supplement to its Dictionary of Occupational Titles in May, rendering job titles inoffensively neuter— if offensively bland and even silly.

The fully revised fourth edition of the dictionary will not be out until 1976, but the department has decided that now is the time for all good neuters to come to the aid of their job descriptions.

Had the dictionary’s compilers held sway in an earlier time, Arthur Miller’s play could have been called Death of a Sales Representative, and that wellknown refugee from Kypton might have been named Superperson.

Something seems lost the translation, but henceforth, says the department, a brewmaster will perform his duties as a brewing consultant. A governess will be a child mentor. In an incomprehensibly backward step, a valet will be known as a gentleman’s attendant. One will henceforth be seen into the world by a birth attendant, not a midwife. And an offal man’s duties in slaughterhouses and meat-packing plants will become the awful work of an offal separator. What of the Labor Department’s own Manpower Administration? Says a spokesperson: “They haven’t figured that one out yet.”