Let's Humanize Our Economic Aid

...The men and women who run it should have an eye and a heart for present people as well as a mind for future prosperity...

...When mere description of a situation does not bring results, we can call attention to the discrepancy between the capital and the human elements in economic development...

...Here, again, was the U.S...

...We can explain the unfairness it involves for the rank and file, the lack of political wisdom in tolerating it...

...The mine's power center was American...

...The U.S...

...There was no diffusing device to distribute the air throughout the boring and digging area...

...This is not widely realized in underdeveloped countries...

...Wage rates for the unskilled and semi-skilled are barely enough for a modicum of food, clothing and housing...

...We may have to sell welfare in the guise of productivity...

...Unlike Santa Claus, the United States Government does not stealthily slip in, fill all empty stockings, and vanish into thin air...

...Occupational accidents are frequent because safety arrangements are either lacking or not properly maintained...

...In many instances, merely portraying the human situation on the project discussed would achieve results...

...Today, U.S...

...This abiding preoccupation with a distant tomorrow also pervades the labor advisers of the International Cooperation Administration, as the old FOA is now called...

...It is no way to give the toiling and exploited masses a stake in their country...

...It is quite usual for governments of underdeveloped countries to be unfamiliar with their own backyards this, rather than ill will, often accounts for bad conditions...

...Ludwig Hamburger spent more than a year surveying the condition of workers in Thailand for the International Labor Office...

...development aid concerns itself almost exclusively with creating the material prerequisites of future prosperity...

...Plainly, in equipping the project, no one had thought much about the workers, or of providing a well and a pump to raise good drinking water for their convenience...

...development aid makes no difference in the working conditions of those most directly involved in it: the tens of thousands of men, women and children who do the actual work on the projects we support abroad...

...ICA can broaden the usual discussions and negotiations to include working conditions...

...We are indignant because Soviet Communism sacrifices living men on the altar of unborn generations...

...For the most part union nominees, they are absorbed in promoting labor organization, although everything indicates that it will take years for genuine, independent, influential unions to emerge in most underdeveloped countries...

...We do not have to accept local labor conditions as if they were foreordained...

...For example, it is up to us to fit the equipment we supply not only with the usual safety devices but also for the maximum convenience of the operators...

...There may, therefore, be a priority for commending reliable methods of wage accounting and modern techniques of wage payment, such as the pay envelope, which permit the worker to check on the computation of his final wage...

...The innovation may have spread, and wells and pumps would have turned up on other civil engineering projects where they are just as badly needed...

...It grants development aid after talks, conferences, meetings, negotiations (often protracted) with representatives of the government concerned...

...More frequently, we will need active cooperation from the government aided...

...Here we can hope to make the first dent...

...A major curse in various underdeveloped countries is indirect employment by an outside contractor rather than by management...

...We may not wish to make aid contingent on foreign acceptance of a code of "fair labor standards...

...aid does make an obvious and significant difference in profit margins to the local businesses operating U.S.-supported projects, as well as to associated contractors, suppliers, shipping interests, banks and so forth...

...It is no way to immunize the underdog against the deceptive promises of Communism...

...This, of course, would mean that the FOA Mission had studied local conditions with an eye to the human element...

...The capital ingredient is maximized because U.S...

...Rudimentary wage accounting and techniques of wage-payment make it easy to cheat the worker...

...Foreign Operations Administration had furnished an impressive air compressor, which effectively drove a number of mechanical units...

...Is our approach in economic development abroad so much superior...

...We could do better...

...Is more foreign economic aid necessary...

...Our programs are drawn up by engineers, economists and planners whose tools are blueprints, slide-rules and computers...

...are rampant...

...Plainly, in equipping the mine, no one had thought much about the men on the job, not even the chief of the FOA mission who had traveled some 500 miles from Bangkok to present the compressor to the management...

...We cannot hope to export the whole range of American labor standards along with American equipment...

...We can urge that our development aid benefit all participants, and we can suggest specific measures promoting human welfare to be included in any particular project...

...Needless to stress, our suggestions must be realistic in order to be acceptable...

...With notable variations, of course, the worker is expendable...

...Later on, I visited an irrigation project in northeast Thailand, where dams and tanks were being built to regulate the scarce, haphazard flow of available water...

...development aid has a hard, grim, metallic quality...

...Overtime is not necessarily compensated and, if it is, not necessarily at rates above normal...

...Here is an opportunity to help the forgotten men of our aid programs...

...Ventilation of that mine was no small item...

...They talk and think in terms of investment, capital formation, output and a rising gross national product which, it is hoped, will raise per capita income and ultimately yield higher living standards for the masses...

...The successive steps preceding the allocation of development aid could be used to introduce higher labor standards on American-supported projects...

...Phuket's climate is that of Washington, D.C...

...Assorted types of graft ("tea money," kickbacks, etc...

...Higher wages are no good to the worker unless he actually receives his full earnings...

...The work day as a rule is long, and manual laborers often work a seven-day week...

...The arrangement obscures management responsibility as well, and aggravates the problem of safety measures...

...Numerous technical-assistance programs (American- as well as UN-operated) are designed to change local conditions, including labor conditions, for the immediate benefit of the people...

...development aid operates through the medium of local enterprises (either private or public), and these local businesses employ local labor in local conditions which by and large recall the early days of the Industrial Revolution in Europe...

...I do not know...

...In general, we may well start out by proposing that women and children be protected against unsuitable, excessive and premature work, and that all workers be protected against loss of life, limb and health...

...They are broadly representative of conditions on American-supported A recurring complaint against Marshall aid in Europe was that it rebuilt industry, but did not immediately benefit the people at large...

...in mid-summer, and the heat and humidity in the mine shafts and tunnels had to be felt to be believed...

...A new dollar boom for the privileged few, age-old want for the underprivileged many this is no way to win friends...

...The contractor gets a commission for supplying and supervising workers and often pockets some of their wages, too...

...But I do know that, at any level of dollar expenditure, our aid could bring more justice and more happiness for many more people abroad than it is now bringing...

...Women frequently work on jobs beyond their physical strength...

...projects in Thailand and other underdeveloped countries...

...Moreover, first things first...

...equipment: trucks, bulldozers, excavator sharp, powerful, neatly painted and polished, their fuels painstakingly extracted from the earth in some distant land and refined, canned and carried to Thailand over thousands of miles...

...Our action can raise working standards on U.S.-supported projects...

...The West has learned by now that the worker's welfare (including safety and convenience) adds to his productivity...

...Child labor is widespread...

...These are the areas of ready human appeal, less controversial than many others...

...They illustrate a major weakness of our foreign aid as hitherto administered: The capital ingredient in economic development is maximized the human element is neglected...

...These are carried out at a high policy level, when broad programs or specific projects are discussed between the ICA Mission Chief and responsible executives of the foreign government and also at the operating level, when experts of both sides get together to hammer out the particulars of a broadly-agreed program...

...This is a plea for aid with an emphasis on human welfare now...

...This goes especially for ICA's labor advisers, who could well add a more active concern with today's sweat and tears to their endeavors to set up tomorrow's unions...

...These two scenes are not exceptional...

...For all its underlying idealism, much of U.S...

...In Western Europe, however, strong trade unions and workers' parties ultimately insured that the prosperity reached by the 1950s would be widely shared...

...We can only hope to make a dent in existing local patterns...

...The focus is on the future accomplishments of horsepower, rather than the present sufferings of manpower...

...It may well have started a significant trend, for the pressingly-needed ventilation of enclosed work-places has been generally neglected in the industries of Thailand and most other tropical countries...

...Many underdeveloped countries lack such safeguards against governmental and capitalist rapacity there, big development projects supported by us often reinforce poverty and squalor...

...If, for example, FOA had pointed out that there was no provision for clean drinking water on irrigation projects, the Thai Government almost certainly would have requested the agency to supply digging facilities and pumps as well as heavy production equipment had the Government not made such a request, it would have accepted an American offer of wells and pumps...

...In suggesting, for example, higher wages, we should call for rates only moderately higher than those prevailing in the community and occupation concerned...

...Another reason for the neglect of the human element is that U.S...

...It is equally possible to administer our development aid so as to consider workers' as well as capital's contribution to our projects...

...And there were the native workers: children aged 9 and 11, men and women clad in rags, living in hovels, eating little but rice, sweating-it out under the tropical sun with no water to drink other than a tepid, dirty soup drawn from crudely-dug holes in the ground...

...Yet the Thai miners lacked effective ventilation...

...It scrutinizes, checks, weighs and reviews all requests for aid...

...An extra hose had been fitted to the compressor, with air streaming from its open end, but its impact was confined to a spot no larger than the palm of a hand...

...In the case of the air compressor on Phuket Island, FOA could and should have provided a mechanism for diffusing the air...

...Our aid to economic development abroad needs a new and kindlier look...

...But "aid without strings" does not mean that we sign a check and shut up...

...Let's Humanize Our Economic Aid By Ludwig Hamburger We should help improve conditions for foreign workers In August 1953, I visited a wolfram mine on the Siamese island of Phuket in the Bay of Bengal...