Mr. Hindus Loves The Cossacks
CALMADGE, I. 0. W
Mr. Hindus Loves The Cossacks Review by I. 0. W CALMADGE THE COSSACKS: The Story of a Wai-rUte People. By Maurwe Hindu: New Yolk: Doubted"!/, Doran and Company. 32j pages. 93.00. Maurice Hindus...
...But there, i'm a/raid, the similarity ends...
...I doubt very much if the Cossacks will ever write a book about Mr...
...To ths devotees of Gerald Heard The Perennial Philosophy will be familiar reading...
...New York: Harconrt trace' and Company, 1945...
...He flosses over their role in Russian history as the mercenaries of Czarist reaction...
...Workers Are Human Beings Review by NATHAN GLAZEK MEN AT WORK: Some Democratic Methods for the Power Age...
...Besides theoretical results of long-range interest, the Hawthorne study, as Mr...
...John of the Cross, to the Eastera mystics in a maner that ignores contexts and linguistic or translation problems...
...The commentary is uncompromisingly abstract...
...Hindus is the pure romanticist...
...democratic social reform and Nazism are both aspects of an evil "time-philosophy...
...Some of the examples (one telling the story of sharecroppers aided by FSA, another describing the work of the TVA) are not exactly relevant, since the people involved did not do the planning themselves but were planned for...
...Bui most of the bosk is unassailable evidence in support of Mr...
...Stuarts chase's major interest is in the practical results of the Hawthorne studies, as embodied in the "Training Within Industry" program...
...An unsuspected factor-more important than the physical working conditions, length of hours or arrangement of working time, rest-pauses or wage incentives—was discovered to have a tremendous effect on workers' output...
...Here again there i» the flagrant omission of the bitter and bloody struggle waged by the Cossacks against enforced collectivisation...
...the other half consists of Huxley's own commentary and argument...
...The author is at his best in the flrst third of the volume where he recounts the early glory of the Cossack rebels— the blood and thunder tales of the arch-mutineers Slenka Razin and Yeseeiyan Pugatcbev who defied the Autocracy...
...Chase points out, inspired the "Training Within Industry" plan which played such an important role in America's war production program...
...and help production...
...He has done the same thing in the esse of the Russian Orthodox Church...
...This was a tremendous organization explaining to foremen how they could get along best with their workers, snd so reduce turnover, improve mm ale...
...At the close of Moby Dick the arms of the submerged Tashtego rise from the waves and nail the flag to the mast of the sinking ship...
...To the Huxley of liti...
...They finally discovered the cause ef this trend: it was a psychological attitude, an attitude based on the social relations thst existed between the workers themselves, between them sad their superiors, between them and their friends and families...
...The word "pogrom" is never mentioned in the book...
...Even Sbolokbov in his censored novels give* a more objective picture than Mr...
...It is slso undoubtedly true that the majority of the Cossacks have fought courageously for their fatherland in this war as they have always done in past wars—for Ciar or Soviet...
...Even those who hope that the mystic's appruach may be somehow reconciled with the arU ist's, the scientist's, or the theologian's methods of understanding reality, will shy away from an uncompromising attitude that subordinates all other approaches to Huxley's own, when it does not reject them outright...
...An eagle, fluttering about the tip of the mast, is nailed to it along with the flag...
...to the believers in rational religion it will often seem close to nonsense...
...They could have been used with the same results by Nasi Germany and Soviet Russia—and probably were...
...ThIS little book contains recent articles by Stuart Chase describing experiments and plans for increasing the workers' output, and giving examples of social planning Both are supposed to illustrate a single thesis: that ordinary people, if they are given responsibility, show unsuspected capacity for organization, innovation and all-mound productiveness...
...In The Perennial Philosophy Huxley nails his own flag to the mast...
...Ironically, under the conditions of modern industrial society, the discovery could only be made by treating them as guinea pigs...
...146 payee...
...New York, 1946...
...By Aldeme Hurley...
...B«t the citations are too brief, for the most part, to be effective, and they skip, besides, from Fenelon, througk St...
...What was so striking in the Hawthorne study...
...the eagle, I think, ought to represent the curious reader, who, if he is not careful, will sink as surely as Melville's bird...
...It is rather difficult to see why these techniques, used by foremen to get workers to produce more by giving them a sense of their own importance, are necessarily democratic...
...This failing is also manifest in his treatment of the Cossacks...
...In twenty-seven chapters bearing titles like "Mortification, Nun-Attachment', Right Livelihood," "Time and Eternity," and "Spiritual Exercises," Huxley presents us with quotations from the mystics of ancient and modern times, Esst and West...
...Some of the former privileges have been restored to them — apparently on the-theory that since the Czar could use the Cossacks to his advantage so can Stalin...
...But during all these changes the rate of output continued to climb...
...The most interesting parts of the book are those dealing with the experiments started by physiologists at the Hawthorne (Chicago) works of the Western Electric Company in the 1920's, and which, before the depression put an end to them, had brought in psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists to explain the puzzling things (hat were being discovered about workers...
...These bouts of quotation take up about one-half of each chapter...
...Unhappily the major part of the book—17 of the 28 chapters—is devoted to "The Cossack of Today" and this section is heavily weighted with •Hinduism propaganda...
...The man who could etch futility in the a nls of Point Counter Point and depict wittily a futuristic inferno in Brave !<>¦* World has turned, in Eyeless in Gaza, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan, and Time Must Have a Stop, in, creasingly to the mystic way...
...Neither an anthology nor a book of essays, this volume is a combination of the two—snd such an irritating combine, ti • 11 that one cannot appreciate the virtues of either...
...Even the "most democratic" element in this program—the management—labor committee—does not modify the completely autocratic power of the boss, win ih extends even to the power to abolish the committee when it is no longer in his interest...
...Hindus does...
...John of the Cross, the Sufis, I.ao I'm-, and many more...
...i shan't attempt to say which is the greater author that will have tu he decided by posterity and the Herald Tribune Books section...
...This is all to the good but there is not enough of it...
...Gone are the days when our local Commies used te yell "Cosssck" at mounted cops...
...Hindus to write a book about Ihe Cossacks...
...One does gather from this book, however, that a "great reconciliation" has taken place in recent years between tho Soviet Government and the Cossacks...
...These girls who made up the test grasp felt that they had been singled out for..special distinction...
...here we have Boethius, Eekhart, William Law, St...
...Its discovery was completely accidental...
...And Russia haa a most elaborate system of labor-management committees without any perceptible degree of democracy...
...the history of the formation of the Cossack republics on the Dnieper and the Don, He also gives a one-chapter synopsis of Gogol's all time classic of Cossack life, Tarat Bnlha...
...Harper's...
...13.00...
...If confronted by a concentration camp, he'd probably mistake it for a summer spa...
...Sticking throughout to the simple question—what raises workers' output?—the Hawthorne investigators were drawn into ever-widening fields of social research and amassed a la>dy of data which has beeen of seminal influence in all the social sciences, and whose full implications are probably still not known...
...The fact that a half-million Ceaaacks under the Soviet General Andrev Vlassov deserted to Hitler and fought for*Nazism is dismissed in a few lines toward the end of the book...
...2.0O...
...the story of Yermak, the conqueror of Siberia...
...The great discovery was that workers are human beings toe...
...Chase's thesis...
...A group of girls engaged in assembling telephone parts had been isolated for special study and subjected to a variety of working conditions, sosns of which, the experimenters assumed, would have favorable effects on production, others unfavorable...
...In anything that even remotely • latca to the "Soviet motherland," Mr...
...By Stuart Chase...
...But this is by no means a definitive history of the Cossack people nor even a good try...
...At any rate, it was very nice of Mr...
...they had been relieved, in addition, from the pressures of foremen and supervisors...
...Baedeker to the Mystic Way Review by EDWAHD FUSS THS PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY...
...Maurice Hindus and Leo Tolstoy have liolh written books railed The Cossacks...
...Off hand, it does seem, however, that the Count never loved this warrior people as much as Mr...
...312 pages...
Vol. 28 • December 1945 • No. 49
