LETTERS

...Are most employers behaving irrationally...

...But I liked them—they were nice people...

...Winos, bums, hobos, or tramps, whatever you want to call them, they were my friends...

...The back of my hand, also, to those literal-minded persons who misread that truly noble man, Milton Mayer...

...My children won't grow up in the kind of neighborhood I did so they'll never know these poor people of Skid Row...

...Mayer writes upside down in an attempt to conceal his tender heart and raging idealism...

...Unfortunately, while Miller's article stands as an indictment of one of our Government's largest bureaucratic programs, it touches only the tip of the iceberg...

...Her ability to integrate coherently the mass of data relating to Section 236 housing alone bears witness to her journalistic skill...

...I didn't really become aware of the poverty they were in until I was an adult...

...Advocates of worker control as the means to a democratic community must continue to exploit these tensions...

...But once workers do increase the scope and depth of their skills, they do develop the confidence and the objective power to claim a greater share of the product and insist that they, too, can define the content of the craft...

...A person doesn't contest power while feeling dependent and impotent...

...Why does this country take such a poor attitude toward people like these...

...Vietnam veterans are not monsters...

...The only real hero being fashioned out of this garbage heap is Billy Jack, not an especially admirable character at that...

...Moreover, television has picked up this device, and not a week goes by that "Cannon" or "Kojack" or "Columbo" doesn't have a Vietnam veteran villain doing something violent, senseless, or destructive...

...This strategy is powerfully reinforced by the current economic crisis and a state policy which trades high rates of employment for improved profit margins...

...Monalsabel Hopper Anderson, Indiana Need Housing Revolt Judith Miller's article in your October issue, "HUD's Housing Horrors," is one of the finest pieces of writing on this complex subject which I have yet read...

...Fve seen them sitting on tavern stoops and curbs and smoking cigar butts...

...DavidLoeffler Milwaukee, Wisconsin . Problems of Crime Steven D. Stark, in his confused review of James Wilson's Thinking About Crime, in the October issue, says that Wilson's "principal problem" is his "philosophical bias...

...There were women there, too...

...We all need a place to live, and government policy today makes this need harder to fulfill...

...Most of them have just never had a chance to do anything for themselves...

...What is not over is the stigma of the Vietnam experience attached to those who have served there...

...In general, HUD refuses to deal directly either with homeowners or tenants who, because of government housing and banking policies, are compelled to fall victim to a host of middlemen...

...But the record of HUD, FHA, FNMA, GNMA, FHLB, and the Federal Reserve on this score is mutilating to contemplate...

...Notwithstanding short-run losses in productivity, most employers will not tinker with the organization of work which sustains attitudes consistent with a capitalist society...

...But I hope that I can share with them a few of my memories, and show them that there are people in the world who have tried so many times that they feel it's not worth trying again...

...A person whose work doesn't deeply tap his or her cognitive or emotional resources isn't going to challenge seriously the owner's right to organize unilaterally the work process and keep a portion of the value of the workers' product...

...An alienated worker is not a productive worker...

...Judith Miller's article is a significant contribution in this direction...

...Peter A. Jay Churchville, Maryland Skid Row Memories "The Skid Row Explosion" by James David Besser in the October issue reminded me of growing up in the 1960s in a neighborhood just a few blocks from Skid Row in Muncie, Indiana...

...Most employers will rely upon a soft labor market to discipline workers who act out their alienation...

...Now, as in the recent past, these Government agencies serve special interests while often mouthing liberal causes, to the exclusion of long-range benefits for the majority of citizens...

...James Wilson may be wrong in some of his ideas about crime...

...The major results are that Vietnam vets have become the new villain for the movie industry...

...One feels competent in a sustained way only after performing important tasks competently...

...Maybe a few dirty young men...

...He takes a little knowing, but it's worth it...

...DougBradley President, Vet'sHouse Madison, Wisconsin...

...Dennis Sandage Housing Services Butler County Welfare Department Oxford, Ohio Vietnam Stigma I read with interest (October issue) Ann Marie Cunningham's review of Julian Smith's recent book, Looking Away, concerning the treatment Vietnam has received from Hollywood...

...Absenteeism, wildcat strikes, on-the-job drug and alcohol usage, and outright sabotage are the consequences of jobs which don't engage the worker's present (let alone potential) capabilities...

...There weren't many "dirty old men'' among them as some people believed...

...This was true during the high point of Section 236, and it is now again true of the newer so-called Section 8 rent-subsidy housing promulgated by the Nixon Administration and a questionably responsible Congress...

...The contradiction persists...

...On the other hand, the HEW study, among others, demonstrates a correlation between increased worker control and participation in the immediate work process and productivity gains which cannot be attributed to technological change...

...Literature has also suffered in this same sense—the hard, brutal truth of Vietnam revealed in the vivid, accurate, personal reports of the war have taken a great deal of the steam out of any Vietnam war novels...

...The attitudes, perceptions, and feelings which result in the workers' passive acceptance of (or ineffectual personal rebellion against) the relationships of capitalist production are reinforced by their daily work experience...

...But at least he has done some thinking about the subject, which is more than can be said for Stark, who leaves us with the flip suggestion that we "look elsewhere" for answers to the critical questions Wilson discusses...

...Although the facts remain that Vietnam has been too volatile an issue for Hollywood to come to grips with, this is not a problem indigenous to the film industry...

...This is a point Smith brings out in his book, and I feel it is one worth emphasizing...

...Hierarchal organization and intense division of labor are not as productive as democratized alternatives which permit development and growth of human capacity...

...If not, are we about to witness further employer experimentation with "humanization" of work...

...At the same time, the authors point to the considerable body of evidence which suggests that Taylorism is not an effective profit maximizing strategy, at least in the short to middle run...

...The upshot of all this is not simply that our executives and our filmmakers and our artists have not understood Vietnam, but we as individuals have not understood what went on, and worse yet, what it did to those involved in it...

...I've known people like those Besser spoke of...

...Given the nature of America's economy since FDR, there can be little doubt that the Federal Government must remain an integral part of our systems for producing housing...

...Give them an inch and they'll take a mile" is not wholly a paranoid employer posture...

...The dynamic interrelationship between consciousness and accomplishment in the work place is perceived by members of the capitalist class...

...I have read the book, and as a Vietnam veteran I want to comment...

...Wilson's central point is that'' society at a minimum must be able to protect itself from dangerous offenders and to impose some costs on criminal acts.'' The essays do more than simply raise questions, as Stark suggests...

...Moreover, the war is over...

...They object to having the first raped by the second...

...May I suggest that you try reading them, distinguishing, in the French phrases, between la patrie and le regime...

...LETTERS What We Protest LeRoy Netts of Beloit, Wisconsin, comments in the * 'Letters*' of your October issue that your magazine never has a good word to say about our country...

...What they protest are the truly rotten policies of many politicians and business men in high places...

...The articles I read do not express dark, drab, dreary views of America...

...Besser doesn't write much about them in his article, but they were there...

...I happen to think he's right in most of them...

...As people we have to begin beating back these stereotypical, biased views of Vietnam veterans, begin treating them human beings, and work toward changing the media that are content to present vets as killers and degenerates...

...Virginia Neff San Francisco, California Alienated Workers In their article, "A New Democracy,'' in the October issue, Michael Best and John Buell contend that capitalist employers atomize the work process and confine individual workers to repetitive, unreflective tasks to increase profit through intensified per capita output...

...Stark may be looking in the mirror...

...He is no more a male chauvinist than Gloria Steinem...

...I think not...

...A fundamental revolution in the financing of housing, in the regulation of the industry, and in the techniques of construction is needed...

...When I was little I called them winos or bums because that's what my mother always called them...

...He doesn't, of course, say where...

...They provide a clear and, in my view anyway, a sound framework for dealing with the pervasive problems of crime—problems that really ought to be non-ideological but are constantly colored in public discussion by bloodthirsty conservatism on the one hand, and on the other by people like Stark who say frankly they don't know what to do about crime but don't like anyone else's ideas either...

...More than seventy films have dealt with the Vietnam veterans, mostly cast in the negative light of drug-addicted, violence-prone, motorcycle-gang misfits...

...We just cannot expect too much help from the Boss...

...One thing F11 always remember: they were nice people...

...we are human beings like the rest of you, with our foibles, shortcomings, and problems...