The Grand Job of Our Century
Lilienthal, David E
The Grand Job of Our Century By David E, Lilienthal A "Thirty- Year Plan 'to Give A merica a Society of Abundance PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT recently sketched • bread plan for the development of OUT...
...The arbitrary labels that Identify highway* as public works and automobile making as private enterprise an convenient...
...Enterprise will be nourished along the new water highways...
...Taw Forests and Minerals...
...The modernized rivers will provide an inexhaustible source of electrical energy out of waters now wasted and destructive...
...The label* have nothing to do with the fundamental unity of physical development—of things...
...I write of the very foundation stones of life itself, upon which all else rests...
...Our present forest supplies need to be converted to countless new products made possible by the discoveries of science...
...Thus we demonstrate that the period of war, a war- which has brought death and destruction to a pitch never before witnessed by men, is not wholly a period of despair but one of hopefulness too...
...These programa for forest* and minerals would mean increased need for technicians aad administrator...
...This vast undertaking will vitalise the private business of farming and add to the attractiveness of farming as a family way of life...
...If we fail to strengthen and dtwelcp the foundations of all private undertakings sy some such program as this, *ve will certainly need mere and more t frequent doses of all kinds of economic benzedrine...
...Take a trip through one of the new war plants covering fifty acres, built in a few months...
...Nor is dictation and coercion of the citizen by private organisations or bp government the price of such a mammoth building enterprise...
...The Land AMERICA'S aoll need* badly to be strengthened, the topsoil preserved, the fertility restored, In an intensive twenty to thirty-year enterprise...
...We know "how...
...These are real things to be developed and built upon —the land, the waters, the minerals, the forests...
...it would mean hundreds and thousands of now industrial processes, new and exciting Jobs and opportunities in existing and new private industries and in public service...
...It ia sot an laeoswiderable *. sue...
...It will save thousands of communities and farms and private businesses from ' periodic invasion by flood waters...
...We know how to organise to do almost anything...
...Beyond the war, there opena an historic opportunity—but an opportunity only, not an inevitable wave of the future—for the building of America on a firmer foundation...
...Lark of knowledge elite not stand in the way, nor laek of physical resoureee if scientifically developed...
...The Grand Job of Our Century By David E, Lilienthal A "Thirty- Year Plan 'to Give A merica a Society of Abundance PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT recently sketched • bread plan for the development of OUT river valley a in the United States—the Missouri, the) Columbia, the Arkansas, arffl others—by regional authorities which would brine...
...The building of a new automobile factory, privately owned, do- ' velops a need for new highs ays...
...But factories and new jobs and new products, more fertile aoil, and Improved nutrition—the things people want, the things such a building program for oar generation will produce—then realities rest not in midair on words and dogmas, but upon the realities of the earth, upon the resources of Nature, upon the technical and organizing skills of men and women...
...Of course not...
...America's minerals need to become the basis of the greatest exploratory and research program ever undertaken to promote the most intensive and prudent and wealth-creating utilization of these fundamental resources...
...Out of sack a huge developssent of America's incomparable rivers would come countless new privets undertakings—the building of barges sod tow boat*, the erection of electric furnaces astd a hundred ether kind* of old and new enterprise to nee the added power, the building of hotels and hostels along the now man-made lake*, the expansion of exulting business no longer threatened by flood destruction, the building of new highwsys and rsilrosds to keep up with the resulting expansion...
...Bat there is * daager...
...Do we lack initiative and daring and high apirita...
...The development of America's rivers, on a huge scale, will raise up a profession of monumental builders such ss the world has never seen...
...but they «re no more than that...
...For the reality is—and many people, all .over the world, sense it—that ahead «/ ns com lie the meet fruitful era of «jraf.oN iin- world hat ever known...
...Our methods of managing almost sit of our riven, after all then yean of trying, i* still hi the ox-team period, compared with American progress in nearly every other technical field...
...In sight of the towers of great cities of America it ia so assy for us to forgot that the foundation of skyscraper* i* not the rock beneath thorn but the aoil of America, her forest* and streams and minerals...
...Are we held back by the bonds of tradition or caste...
...f many kinds that would a train the universities and private laboratories and training centers...
...Not lack of knowledge...
...To develop our rivers by modern methods is by no means beyond our capacities, but it will he the largest engineering projeet of all time...
...The knowledge of technology end of organisation,- the resources and the imaginative spirit are all here...
...a^ MERICA'S forests need to be restored and refreshed, after the drain of a century, by the most extensive reforestation undertaking in human history, and by the spread of scientific forestry methods, in an intensive educational effort the country over...
...But that would be incidental...
...When I write of the opportunity to build America, I «m not thinking about such slogans or abstractions, but of real things that we can see and understand...
...Lakes Will create spots of beauty for outdoor recration...
...An American Development Program for the coming generation, for the period, from now until 1978, a program for America's building, can be stated in terms of real thing*—land, factories, stream*, electricity, forests, jobs, minerals...
...Otserve how quickly we can train tens-of-thousands of men to.be technicians of, every kind...
...V.'hat stands in the way of this golden prospect...
...Hen la another illustration of the way the dogmatist delights in abstract phrases that only confuse—neatly segregating "public" works from "private" enterprise as if they wen not both parts of the same living tissue of community existence, interacting end wholly interdependent...
...Before the 79th Congress there is a concrete proposal providing for such an agency to develop the great Missouri Valley...
...But real things will out through this fog of dogma...
...A new beginning has been made in the past decade—but only a beginning...
...It will mean new opportunities and new job* in factories making soil chemical*, agricultural machinery, electric pumps, tractor*, materials for million* of farm buildings and barn* and rural schools...
...There is soma, thing about being in a city, any city, that makes one feel self-sufficient, even though cut off from the real underpinning of our life...
...In our tremendous achievements in the global convict we have demonstrated our capabilities for the future...
...There is a .very simple reason for this: unless there is public understanding and public confidence in what i* being none...
...The program I have in mind relates not to such devices, whatever their merits, but to the very source of productiveness itself...
...The daager is that w* may permit eunolves - to ho diverted from the creative opportunities by disputes ever economic and political theories and dogmas...
...Definitely not...
...New highway*—"public works" so-called—create the opportunity and the need for new automobile factories, oil refineries, tin factories, filling stations end so on...
...The daager is that we will allow oar energies and our driving vitality to be consumed in violent controversy ewer saeaaiagleaa slogsns and catch-phrases, by name-calling over vague abstractions—uadeflaed phrases such a* "free enterprise," "collectivism," "reactionary" or "radical...
...we can indeed boast that nowhere on earth in any period of human history has then been a > vast nation less cursed with deep class division...
...into, fun fruitfulness the vast resources of soil, water, forests, minerals, and, most important of all, the potential capabilities of the people of those valleys...
...The current preoccupation with labels, with word* that flow so smoothly out of American dogmatists a* they inundate us here at home, and do not even spare our nonplussed allies abroad— words about word*, and word* upon word*—these will only add to our confusion and our divisions...
...The Rivers and Streams A.MEKICA'S vast river* need grievously to be put under control and mad* to work, for, not against, the the people...
...On the contrary, a further development of characteristic American methods of voluntary cooperation would be essential...
...Nor is this a proposal to provide unemployment relief, a "shot in the arm" of public employment to tide over a period when private employment or Investment 1* tending to starnate...
...A dogmatist, a worshipper,, of words, may be defined as a man who has his feet firmly planted in mid-air...
...Does conflict between groups within America prevent our entering an era of great bsildlng...
...Public works would be Involved, of course, for bridge* and highway* and n«w poatoffico* and schools and sewer systems would be necessary if America took the step toward expansion that such a program would entail...
...To do this particular job the Constitution of the United States need* no ameadment, nor does the scope of functions of Government require basic revision...
...Irrigation with stored waters will cause to flourish millions of acres that now are fertile but dead...
...publicly built...
...4 o • The expansion in pur standard of living in America that can take plan between 1946 and 1976 can be accomplished with no fundamental change in our institutions of government or of property...
...I trust I ban made it clear that the American Development I am describing is not what ia usually labelled a "public works" program...
Vol. 28 • February 1945 • No. 7
