Bureaucracy-A Bourbon Bogey to Fight Planning Programs
MEDGES, M. H.
"Bureaucracy"—A Bourbon Bogey to Fight Planning Programs Liberal Labor Agencies Under Fire of Congressional Tories By M. H. MEDGES f HOOS1NG the catch-phrase "bureaucracy.'- the Congress of tht...
...In some of the countries, nearly the whole population has been transformed into a proletarian group...
...These legislators, confused by the rapidity of world events, believe that the destiny of the legislative body lies in invading th* realms of the executive branch and taking over its functions...
...The Herman Goering Works and the Banking System have deprived the former wealthy classes of their ownership...
...x...
...A Greek child does not get baby food, as the German does...
...The present rather buoyant attitude of farmers of course colors their reasoning on rationing, shortage, and the other war restrictions which have already b.gun to test their patience and tax their ingenuity...
...These farmers also expressed a desire for snore articles about living and making a living...
...After Himmler's visit to Poland, the Nazis decided to exterminate the Jews...
...The population is exhausted, living in misery, deprived of its rights and ownership, transformed partially into slaves, persecuted and executed...
...The Nazis are trying to instigate one against the other in the old method of "divide and impera...
...The Federal Committee on Apprenticeship has been guided by the labor-management committees set up under its direction...
...Many farmers think that the sight of women working in the fields is demeaningly like the European peasants...
...The situation of the Jews is the worst, the Poles come next, and the Ukrainians are least underprivileged...
...Many farmers are indignant or amused by turns when"the help of school children or women is offered them...
...This article is based on a lecture by Dr...
...In this way, the whole heavy industry in Czechoslovakia, the famous Skoda works, the industrial and coal Basin of Czechoslovakia and Polish Silesia have fallen into German hands...
...Production statistics prove that...
...GENERALLY speaking, farmers seem to be more interested in producing food for our boys in the Army than for the United Nations as an abstract entity...
...Some vassal states in this region as Hungary, Bulgaria, aad Ronmania are playing a similar role as the Nazis, but in a smaller edition...
...THROUGH a shrewd banking system and the organiza-* tion of the Herman Goering Werke, heavy industry as well as all important branches of industry and mines, and the banking system have been taken over by the Germans...
...Much was known and much was written about the mass resistance in the occupied countries...
...It should be clear that these bureaus represented no "low" political policy but arose out of the necessity of the situation and represented a world trend...
...As a whole farmers are probably more aware of the seriousness of the War than are urban people, but both urban and rural people are all but unanimous in the belief that the United States simply cannot lose...
...The states of Central and Eastern Europe came, temporarily, under German domination...
...Originally, many more farmers were increasing their production of certain crops than understood the production-goals campaign as it affected them individually...
...Farmers richer tend as yet to be insistent that their demands for labor, barbed-wire fencing, fertilizers, machinery, equipment, repairs, and so on be met as usual...
...The Bourbons feel de-throned and disinherited...
...On the other hind persecution, misery, starvation and finally the last'deadly battle will exhaust the peoples...
...There is a world peace to at made, there is so much to do in the building of the new world and only by the closest kind of thinking and the most competent administration can America be saved from post-war depressions of great dimensions...
...The peoples of Central and Eastern Europe are waiting for the great moment of mass uprising, for the great moment of the holy fight against the oppressors...
...A majority of them at least think they are distinctly better off than they were a year ago, at least in some respects...
...Hitler is attempting to make his order a lasting one, even if he should lose the war...
...They found out that farmers were so conservative as to be practically reactionary, assuming their sampling method was sound...
...This does not mean that farmers are opposed to the United Nation's concept...
...Farmers became acquainted with the production goals for 1942 and the nature of the so-called Food For Freedom Program rather slowly...
...of course, bureaucracy in every human institution, including Big Business, the Army and Navy, Labor, the colleges, and what-not The unyielding mind, the Bourbon mind, is the great foe of prog, ress, and the Bourbon mind,is in complete control of th* U.S...
...Let us try to see briefly what has happened since 1929...
...An immense task awaits this generation...
...By feeding the Germans better than the subjugated nations, he is giving the whole German generation which is born and brought up during this war a better start in life...
...Farmers also professed marked disinterest in money matters...
...Naturally they tended at first to be guided by prices rather than by patriotic motives...
...However, the American public is just as confused as the Congressmen and is betrayed by the pervasive propaganda in the public press that bureaucracy is some dirt bogeyman and not a state of mind All this is serious...
...Even the old reactionary movement it not totally extinguished...
...The plans of Nazi Germany in the Eastern part of Europe were political, cultural, economic, and social...
...Wahnr B age hot, the shrewd British student of political affair* spat* rightly when he said...
...It may mean the profits of large corporations or the mark-ups of small businesses, the income of stockholders or any large incomes—say in excess of $25,000 a year...
...Some farmers are panic-stricken as their sons are drafted and they prove unable to procure machines to replace their labor...
...The best parts of Central and Eastern Europe are destined for the Germans...
...There is also a signed agreement between the union and the Rural Electrification Administration...
...Farmers tend to feel that the Government depends upon them absolutely for food and in large measure for scrap, and that factory workers, soldiers, and our Allies, now and after the war, are and will be helpless without the food American farmers produce...
...Farmers have fully accepted the idea that food is a war essential...
...They generally feel that price relationships between what they buy and what they sell are favorable...
...All is needed...
...It will be much easier to establish a global economy than to effect a reconstruction, "a rebours"—a reconstruction of custom barriers...
...If American public opinion were more aware of the true significance of these congressional activities, the Bourbons would bei laughed out of the arena of politics...
...indeed they tend to view Russia very favorably and, secondarily, China...
...The mysery and hardships bring forth new ideas, new social forces...
...A strong democratic bloc of oppressed peoples, a third front will arise from Europe's underground movements is now being born from the depths of tragedy and awaits its opportunity to strike at the enemy...
...There will be a great change in Eastern Europe —a change which will be rich in consequences...
...A sense of hesitancy arises about the increased production of "surplus milk.'' Farmers must be made fully to understand that we are producing more milk for positive purposes connected with winning the war—feeding our- ' selves and our Allies so that both workers and soldiers may de their, utmost...
...that it falls below the birth rate of the dominant nation—^Germany...
...Farmers in general favor placing limitations on financial gain...
...Is , Poland, mass killing has achieved astronomical - figures reaching about 400,000 executed persons until 1942 and that not taking into consideration the mass extermination in ghettos...
...While Congress is laying plans to hamstring the Labor movement, the independent agencies are responsive to the Labor movement and are trying their best to fulfill the spirit of the National Labor Relations Act...
...In general, the frequency and depth of the farmers' satisfaction with the values of farm life is still very impressive...
...Only a few indulge in the popular pastime of abusing strikers, unions, and John L. Lewis...
...Future prospects are also interpreted optimistically, tempered somewhat by the threat of higher prices for things farmers buy, and by shortages of goods, materials, equipment, and labor...
...For foHajsay .Sloven* peasants are simply rounded up and ¦sent s*mV place in Eastern Poland or transported to German forced labor camps...
...But it does not possess the essential mass element On the other hand, Adolph Hitler, against his own will, is also preparing the foundation of a new European order...
...The population is, then, completely under control...
...They assume that depressions always follow wars and the biggest of all is inevitable after this biggest-of-all wars...
...Farmers are not the kind of class apart they were before the automobile, the radio, the telephone, and the movie appeared...
...We must have a global economy based on regional planning...
...Economic destruction is accomplished through many measures...
...Notably, they liked rural life and were not farming primarily for money...
...The picture is most tragic...
...I have seen pictures of a market place in Serbia...
...In doing so they were reacting to price incentives as they had been taught to do for some years...
...Thus the subjugated population t in this region is losing its economic independence Political rights are obviously fully abolished...
...This, of course, is an attack upon the prerogatives of Civil Service and upon its fundamental concept, namely, tenure on the basis of merit, irrespective of partisan politics...
...When told to raise more peanuts or soybeans to win the war farmers were inclined to regard these as runof-the-mine slogans and not to see the real urgency behind them...
...Slaughter houses were established in several places (for instance in Kaunas and Belzec) where Jews are electrocuted en masse, through >g^ecial mechanical arrangements consisting of steel floors...
...Czechoslovakia was always a democracy faithful to the teaching of the great Thomas Masaryk...
...There are forces which are able to raise Eastern Europe from the ashes...
...Bureaucracy"—A Bourbon Bogey to Fight Planning Programs Liberal Labor Agencies Under Fire of Congressional Tories By M. H. MEDGES f HOOS1NG the catch-phrase "bureaucracy.'- the Congress of tht United States has embarked upon a campaign to liquidate tat independeni agencies of the government's executive branch...
...Actually, however, as events proved, they reacted even better to patriotic appeals when these were made articulate...
...T IP until March 1942 farmers had not experienced ^ crucial shortages in materials...
...Jftr Wilno alone about 40,000 people were executed in ;hearby forests...
...Many farm people expect their tires to be worn out in 6 months or less, few expect new tires by the end of one year...
...Strong underground movements, guerilla warfare, sabotage—those are the answer of the people to the barbarism of Nazism and Fascism...
...They regard their farm job as their most important potential contribution to victory...
...It is a fact that every industrial country of the world felt the same impelhng drive to reform economic institutions in the dirdjbtion of more centralized control by the federal government...
...About one-third have already died...
...And next to them, passers-by :with faces full of sorrow were carrying on the usual daily business...
...It van necessary to meet a dire emergency—and constitutional procedures were invoked and independent bureaus were set up in the government, executive branch, to meet it...
...In September 1939, the deciaon to push the plan in full force was made...
...By the policy of extermination and destruction of culture, he is trying to assure a stronger position for Germany regardless of the outcome of the war...
...Farmers mention censorship relatively infrequently as a cause of dissatisfaction with the news...
...only 25 per cent were willing to accept moderate social changes...
...Through the shifting of economic centers, be destroyed too the autarchic economy of states in all Europe —including Central and Eastern Europe...
...And tie greatest change af them hJl "« a Democratic {halted Europe in a United World...
...It seems sometimes that the sad German philosopher, Oswald Spengler, was right in his prophecy about "Der Untergang des Abendlandes"—"The Decline of the West...
...Agencies Serve Democratic Ends T^HE assumption of the Bourbons in .Congress is that than bureaus were set up merely to furnish jobs for persons unemployed and to build up a graat political machine under the Democratic administration...
...A Bourbon mind is a foe to bott these conceptions...
...t problem of this generation...
...The rationing of sugar and tires has been somewhat «itating to farmers, but it has also educated them, ey want representation on all rationing boards that til with farm problems...
...Others say that this is the best we can expect without giving aid to the enemy, and praise the speed, completeness, and trustworthiness of our news services...
...The relationship between price levels and wages and salaries is not so obvious as the relationship between price levels and the farmer's income...
...There seems to be a wide-spread misunderstanding among farmers as to what the 40-hour week in industry really means...
...One Senator has introduced a bill directing every official receiving wort than $4,400 a year to be responsible to the Senate...
...fHE German nation has fallen into moral insanity...
...Because of the seasonal nature and kind of their income, they find it difficult to pledge or to buy bonds in regular specified amounts...
...But we hope this it not the case...
...The democratic forces were always strong in Central and Eastern Europe...
...FARMERS more than other groups seem to favor * buying savings bonds bsto"voluntary rather than Government-forced means...
...In the concentration camp at Oswiecim, by December 1942, approxi-' mately 20,000 persons, most of them intellectuals, passed through its gates...
...If the price of some commodity rose, they assumed that the Government needed more of that commodity and tried to produce it...
...Congress than there is in the bureaus, and there is...
...The Germans form a new aristocracy...
...They likewise manifested a fairly lively interest in world events, child training, the problems of youth, and a wide variety of of agricultural topics...
...This danger exists, and there exists another...
...In this connection farm people may say such things as: Wages should be adjusted to the cost of living, or should be equalized among the industries, or simply wages should be adjusted "fairly...
...The tire situation has been acute...
...In other occupied countries in Central and Eastern Europe, the universities are either closed or under the most severe control...
...On November 17, 1939, at least 150 students were killed, and thousands sent to concentrations camps...
...Austria was the first step, Czechoslovakia the second in the materialization of this plan...
...It may refer to the fact that a store has recently raised prices...
...America is in for tough-going in the next 10 years...
...The wages for Germans for the same work as done by non-Germans are much higher...
...Only 15 per cent wanted changes in agricultural methods and machines...
...Millions are waiting fat bread, clothing, drugs, shelter, and last not least books...
...The employment of millions will need a full speed reconstruction of industry and agriculture...
...But in general labor shortages were really feared, anticipated, or believed to exist, rather than actual...
...The writer thinks that probably less than half the farmers expect better times after the war...
...They think such offers of inexperienced people belittle the dignity of their job and the specialized knowledge it requires...
...In Prague, very cruel measures were used against the students...
...It has to 156 over borderlines, inveterated traditions, and resentments...
...It must become: We will produce and if necessary get along with less labor and improvise tools...
...There were some actual shortages of labor, to be sure, but none so great as those about which farmers bitterly complained after many depression years had brought them cheap and abundant labor supplies...
...The labor supply was their main worry...
...Many of them think, though, that our Government should attack the problem of farm labor and machinery shortage, drafting the former necessary and seeing that such priorities as were required were granted manufacturers of the latter...
...Another Congressman wants t» set up a planning committee for Congress...
...Such appeals wore out both their' welcome and their utility...
...Old Guard Wield , MoRkeyWreacBes v ¦TPHE resentment the old guard in Congress has for this activity * of the central government isvculminating in curious bills...
...In his brutal advance, he destroyed the European economic borders...
...A BROAD answer is that farmers are human beings and they think about like urban people...
...We hope to present other papers ia the near future.] /"*ENTRAL and Eastern Europe, the region between the Baltic and Aegean Seas, is today an area of greatest changes in the world...
...In occupied countries the population is now divided into two basic groups—Germans, and non-Germans...
...Two great ideas dominate this era: the first baa to do with human security: the second has to do with planned institutions and planned functions...
...Indeed a number of farmers regard price control as a form of price support...
...It might be good for morale if this disastrous possibility were considered more seriously than it is...
...only 2 per cent professed their main interest to be in world affairs...
...Several -people were lying in blood, shot in the market place, among . them, women and children...
...4 out of 5 farmers were against prohibition...
...On the whole, however, the writer believes farmer morale is good in the main because of favorable price relationships, prospects of a fine harvest, and the satisfaction of being indispensable as the supplier of food for victory...
...Way back in 1930 the editors of "Country Home" (a national magazine established in 1877 as "Farm and Fireside") tried to find out what Farmers thought then...
...4 out of 5 opposed all forms of cigarette advertising...
...The German child will be stronger, better prepared for life when the war ends...
...This is a picture which deserves the pen of Gibbons, and deserves a new version of the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire...
...From certain districts, peasants are expelled Cand deprived of .all property...
...Its unyielding character and its inability t* adapt, to change, and its self-righteous bigotry presents the No...
...Some dairy farmers, also a few truck-farming areas, near cities were affected...
...Ta*y will try to take the easy way to return to cM, reactionary measures, being afraid of great reforms and great changes...
...The Nazis formed puppet countries as in Slovakia and Croatia, and they have established their own Quislings in all countries with the exception of Poland...
...Explosive material is being set free...
...In order to prevent any further cultural development, some countries are forbidden to publish books, and in Poland all publishing houses were seized by the Gestapo...
...This attitude centers around price rises in things purchased...
...is possible that this time, too, weakened by war and misery they will accept any order to obtain finally the peace and bread they so desire...
...This appears to the writer to be true of more rural than city folk...
...For a full realization of their plan, it seemed to the Nazis above all necessary to destroy those nations of this region which form a threat to their plan for today and in the future...
...T'HIS is a general picture of the policy which is now being applied in the occupied countries of Central and Eastern Europe...
...The War Manpower Commission has been responsive to the labor-management committee, and labor has equal rights and equal voice in the control of the National War Labor Board...
...They will be tired of Wars —as tired as the people were after the wars of Napoleon, when they accepted the order which was imposed by the Congress of Vienna It...
...A round trip back to the old conditions is more difficult then a trip to a new and better world Immediately after the war, it will be much easier to Unite Europe than it was in 1938...
...Unless the American public arouses itself, finds out what the shouting is all about, and demands fron Congress support for the two fundamental ideas of security and planning...
...At least half of them feel price control will work to curb inflationary tendencies...
...Today they represent the mass element in underground activity...
...The Tennessee Valley Authority is a model of good labor relations...
...All this implies a special relief policy when the war is terminated...
...they have special cars in the trolley-busses and special waiting rooms and cars at the railway stations...
...4 out of 5 were against divorce on grounds of incompatibility...
...Many feel the war will be followed by the worst depression in history...
...Some smaller nations have been indoctrinated With fascism—even some in Central and Eastern Europe as Roumania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Hungary...
...Oddly enough, 67 per cent wanted it to be made legal for contraceptive information to be published and distributed—oddly when you consider that the old-time - farmers looked on children as workstock...
...The political aim was the establishment, forever, of German domination in its fascist form in Europe...
...There will be a real farm labor problem in the next few years...
...In many cases farmers cried shortage when there was no shortage...
...Like other people some farmers protest that the news reaching them is inadequate, inaccurate, or incomplete...
...And there are many such camps...
...What do fanners think now...
...In Poland the rest of the population is also divided into more and less privileged groups...
...This same Senator wants the Tennessee Valley Authority to apply to his committee in Congress fsr every day-by-day appropriation...
...Sugar rationing was generally proved in rural areas...
...In general, it is the writer's observation — that farmers tend to think the War will end ' rather soon, say in a year or two, and that there may be a terrific deflationary period afterwards...
...The Ghetto of Warsaw was emptied of about 400,000 persons and the latest figures show that • now only 35 to 40 thousand remained there alive...
...However, the motion picture, the radio, and improved and more rapid means . of communication and transportation in general have tended to unify urban and rural opinion more than ever before...
...Few farmers are actually gloomy...
...While farmers have been willing to produce more of critically needed crops when they knew this would help win the war, the direct relationship between the two was impressed upon them rather slowly...
...This method is *^ commonly applied in Jugoslavia and Poland...
...In Poland, the whole faculty of the University of Cracow was arrested and sent to concentration camps...
...All this brings forth new hates among the peoples...
...The re-education of millions is a task foT armies of democratic teachers and leaders...
...The character and destructive power of the German invasion has few parallels in history...
...all schools between the primary grades and the universities (gymnasiums and lyceums) with the exception of professional schools, are closed...
...War in the Fields What the Farmers Are Thinking T. SWANN HARDING THE writer has been in and around the Department •* of Agriculture for what some unkind folk would hastily describe as a generation...
...The real onus of the attack on the bureaus lies in the fact that the bureaus are responsive to labor-management committees and especially to labor -opinion much more than is Congress...
...But for some time most of them expected little immediate increased demand, and tended to stand by or deliver as usual, rather than increase their efforts...
...Wage control also is generally approved in rural areas...
...Well, that was 1930...
...What now, with war in the world and the United States and others of the United Nations seeking to prevent the pattern of totalitarianism from dominating the world...
...In Jugoslavia, Horthy Magyar henchmen are helping the Nazis and fascists in mass killings of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes who are still faithful to their great ideals of freedom...
...AH universities in Poland are closed...
...The fact is that most of these agencies have been more responsive to public opinion and to the representations of labor and management than has Congress...
...But now two million men have left the farms and a million more appear slated to go...
...If not tragic...
...To lower the birth rate so...
...Certainly, the underground movement has other streams too...
...The first task of relief must meet these demands...
...Despite all modern science has done to facilitate communication, there is still much misunderstanding by farmers of labor and by labor of farmers...
...Indeed the reform in the United States in this direction was long delayed, and perhaps this accounted in part for the severity of the depression in 1929-32...
...Suddenly someone asked him the other day: What do Farmers thinkt That called for some note-taking, the results of which follow...
...In Poland, the Labor and Peasant movements were the two most powerful and they never stopped fighting for democracy...
...However, the seriousness of the {rubber shortage and the lack for civilian use are not clearly understood...
...Rj.ing prices, fair-to-good crops, and an expanding market have made farmers generally optimistic about their present condition...
...They do not seem to be aware at all that the new front whicA has manifested itself in the United States in the last 10 years it a part of world-wide change...
...The Bourbons are now imbued with the desire to change this picture by liquidating these bureaus in oat way or another...
...They extracted 13,431 replies from 1,400,000 farmers, the vote running three-fifths women and two-fifths men...
...J The cultural destruction of the oppressed nations is an important factor of the Nazi policy which aimed at the destruction of the nation as a political and cultural unit as well at to reducing its essential functions...
...For example, farmers in most market-milk areas still talk of all 'grades of milk, other than Class I, as "surplus," in spite of the fact that in realistic terms there is no surplus milk today...
...The writer believes that farmers do not yet expect severe economic hardships during the war...
...Some may lose courage for or faith in the great reconstruction...
...Europe must be united in a united world...
...They appear overwhelmingly to approve price control as a policy...
...Farmer objections thereto are fortified by tall tales of lush labor earnings in industry, with consequent drain on farm labor...
...Someone has said the farmer was used to having three men hang around his pasture gate waiting a call for a man for a few hours' work, and he could not get used to working without his accustomed depression-time labor pool around...
...But the times are great, and either We will have great plans—courageous and democratic changte 'Or Europe will slowly decline, shaken by wars and revolutions...
...Incompleteness of the news is perhaps the main complaint...
...This type bf picture has become commonplace to the local population, for death is commonplace...
...3) To destroy the culture and to stop cultural development ¦. « * * I IDICE is not an isolated instance...
...next come dishonesty and the infiltration of propaganda...
...COR a while also many farmers believed the Govern-* ment merely wanted them to produce more of everything, whereas it actually wanted definite percentages more of specific commodities...
...Farmers must get used to taking such labor as they can get and to improvising and making do- as to materials...
...It is by these means that the German domination is to be established...
...Past factors rather than present inadequacies in industry or government are commonly complained about...
...Many farmers feel tfiat price control offers a means of insuring parity prices...
...Those among farmers who believe the war goes poorly usually assign about such reasons as city dwellers do— lack of preparation, military weakness on our part, delays in industrial production, the treacherous nature of the attack on Pearl Harbor...
...But a large majority of them indeed wanted a return to the "old ways," belief in God, reverence for the home, keeping children in their place, self-denial, simplicity, honesty, and temperance...
...Gross at Antioch...
...Feliks Gross is the secretary...
...they receive higher food rations...
...After all, insurance offices tell employees to work harder "in remembrance of Peart Harbor," makers of trick foods ask us to eat them **t» help win the war," and citizens generally are told to do almost anything under the sun to help lick the Axis...
...At Antioch College, a series of papers are being read by distinguished scholars and authorities at the Antioch Institute on Reconstruction of Central and Eastern ' Europe...
...Their attitude is: .Give us the labor and tools and we will produce...
...Several of the papers are arranged in conjunction with the Central and Eastern European Planning Board, composed of official representatives of several nations, of which Dr...
...To destroy a nation and to reduce its functions to cheap manpower, it is necessary, to destroy such essential elements of a nation as: -% f) To destroy the leading and most active element in politics and culture " 2) To reduce the number of its population by mass killing and by biopolitical means...
...A democratic United Europe in a United World—that is the essential task of this war—a task which will be a turning point in history...
...As a secondary appeal in their campaign against the independent agencies of the government, the Bourbons in Congress' arc pretending these new agencies are an affront to democracy...
...A bureaucracy is sore to think that its duty is to augment official powers, official business, or official Humbert, rather than leave free the energies of mankind" A bureaucratic mind is an unyielding mind devoted to precedent, lit* rain ess, tat official view...
...Th* irony is that viewed from this standpoint there ^ nM>rf bureaucracy in...
...Like city people many farmers expect somehow to get -tires from rattening boards, to buy old tires or retreads, or to obtain synthetic rubber tires...
...This reconstruction must be planned in the most efficient way...
...A reactionary new order is not impossible...
...In 1930 the rural indifference to farm relief was profound, not so much because farmers regarded the proposals made as radical as because they were convinced the suggested measures were futile...
...They would far rather buy as they have the money to do so...
...This is not altogether true, of course...
...Profits" is a diversely interpreted concept among rural people...
...In all university towns, many scientists were shot...
...But when given a full opportunity to air their gripes farmers rarely criticize city labor violently...
...The Problem of Central Europe's Reconstruction By FEUKS GROSS [The Central European scene looms large now with the hurried retreat of the German army and the imminent collapse of the German hold in the Balkans...
...The country is taking too lightly the=tragic split betwtwi the legislative and executive branches of the American government There is a chasm unspanned and it is likely to continue to be unspanned until the American people choose to send more flexible minds to the legislative body...
...Once they understood, however, they all but worked miracles...
Vol. 26 • February 1943 • No. 8
