America's Crises; 3; The Individual

[unintelligable] Music playing The following program is from NET the National Educational Television network Modern man is haunted by the fear that he has lost his identity.

that mass society has crunched his own small world. The forces behind this fear show them selves in different ways and different places on a pennsylvania farm, in a chicago housing project, on the assembly line of an automobile plant, in an executive community. what happened in each of these places is dissimilar but each story in its own way reflects the growing conflict between the individual and the complex society in which he lives. In its america's crisis series NET presents one of four hour long studies of values in America.

The individual a look at American lives caught in the tensions of a bigsociety a report of how people are reacting to rapid change and to be expanding power of large scale organizations. [Noise] [Noise, drums] [Noise drums] [Noise drums] [Noise drums] play are you

it's been the [background music, and applause] "[Host]: Tradition stands as an anchor in a turbulent age. Old rural towns like Chambersburg, Pennsylvania remember the past. [bakcground music] [Host]: Change has begun to ?shape? the roots of Chambersburg and its neighboring farmlands. [Silence with background noise] Eber Pisel has farmed this land since nineteen twelve. His farm lies in the Potomac river basin. [cow moos] This is a broad expanse of good

farms, wooded hills, historic villages spreading into four states, knitted together by the Potomac as it flows down to Washington, DC. [background noise, rooster crow, door opening and closing] [Voice]: Good morning, sir. [Mr. Pisel]: Good Morning. [Voice] I assume you're Mr. Pisel? Yes, sir. I am. [Voice]: ?inaudible? is my name. [Mr. Pisel]: Glad to meet you. [Voice]: My associate is Mr. Mr. Glen ?Clove? [Mr. Pisel]: Glad to meet you, sir. [Glen ?Clove?]: Glad to meet you, sir. [Voice]: Uh, Mr. [Different voice]: Mr. Pisel, we men are from the Army Corps of Engineers, Baltimore District. [Announcer]: These are land appraisers from the United States Army Corps of Engineers, a military organization which performs many civilian functions. The Corps is responsible

for river basin planning. Pollution of the Potomac River at Washington, more than one hundred miles down from Pisel's farm, is a national disgrace. In the name of future needs for health, recreation, and clean water in the booming Washington area, the Corps plans to build 16 major reservoirs and dams in the river basin. [background sounds] What do you say, Glen? [Announcer]: To make way for one of these dams the plans demand that Eber Pisel give up some of his land to the government. [Voice]: Again, I thank you sir. It was a pleasure to have done... [Mr. Pisel]: Thank you. [Voice]: ...Talked with you, and, uh, I appreciate knowing you. Good day, sir. [Mr. Pisel]: Yessir. It was nice to have met you. [Voice] Goodbye.

America will see more regional planning. Planning which takes in urban and rural areas alike. The planner's problem will become more difficult. How to arrive at a plan which does the job and which will also be fair to people of widely differing traditions and values? Colonel Roy Kelly, Baltimore Office United States Corps of Engineers. [Another voice]: It's going to become increasingly difficult for the individual to see how his use of land competes with those uses proposed in the public interest i think nothing is more tasteful for me then to go into that community and the people who must be relocated by a public works project. I can understand their problems. One extremely

unfortunate circumstance which occurs occasionally is a situation in which a former for example has its roots in the land that has been in the family for many many years he's perhaps advanced in age and knows no trade other than farming. What happens to him when his land is required for any public work project: highway, water resources, or other? Well, first of all in planning we can attempt to make this as rare as possible, but I think our prime consideration must be for the future population and this is, this is a very unfortunate circumstance over which we really have no control if we are to proceed with the projects which have such great value to the region as a whole. but the point [pause] [dog barking]

[background noise] [voice]: Our family has had roots in this region for 4 or 5 generations and we've all lived here rural farmers practically all our life. I dont know anything else. My entire livelihood. I think that the farm is always gonna to be a standby. It always was the mother of the world and it's always gonna be the mother of the world. Progress is coming along in a different way. I've seen it over my lifetime of 50 years since I've been growing up. That, uh, the farm had been a very good independent place. It is yet for the man that wants to be independent and, uh, we've come now to the place where our land is sort of you might say gonna be used for another purpose as the army engineer corps from Washington says it's supposed to be a dam and take

quite a bit of our land. In our hearts we would hate to give it up. Course if they if they come and condemn it and take it, there isn't much we can do about it, I guess. We just have to go somewhere else. [Announcer]: No planner or engineer actually wants to uproot individuals, but the engineers' plan has evoked unusually bitter opposition and many, without denying the necessity of a plan, have denounced it as a bad plan. [pause] [long pause]. [Announcer]: These neighboring farmers and dairymen are meeting at Pisel's home. [Voice]: I've called you here this evening, on this here dam problem that's come to our community. We are not quite satisfied with it. On the, uh, come and take the land out of our valley

right here and our surrounding community. Take the nice homes and farms and we'd be very much satisfied if the dams would all be abandoned and let our country and our little community as it was before [Second voice]: I spent my lifetime trying to find markets for farmers milk. I remember when the first plant came to Franklin County. I rode with Jack ?inaudible?, then the county agent, and we tried to persuade enough of farmers to bring 100 cans of milk into a weigh station on the railroad. We waited at the ?inaudible? ?scale? put it in a box car, put ice around it, ship it into Philadelphia. I saw that thing grow. I gotta ?inaudible? And now someone says, "I'm gonna take this from you. Oh, I'm going to give you some dollars Dollars don't buy things that you actually love, things that you grew up with. Dollars are just something that you spend tomorrow for something that you want for a short time. Now I think we posi-

tively gotta get our friends in this county and our friends down in Washington to understand that we don't wanna keep anybody from getting something, but we want him to get it the same way we got this. Work for it. [Another voice]: Our forbears came into Franklin Franklin County in the 1730's. Uh, those people cleared this land. They risked their life almost daily working in the fields from the Indians. And this, this fall means more to us, as you expressed in dollars and cents. you can't pay us for this land because we love every foot of it ?inaudible? [Voice]: This is the whole thing they don't understand. [Second voice]: Our rights have been erroded away over the years and we are to blame that we did not raise our voices. all of us, everyone gathered here tonight, is to blame because we didn't do anything about it. Now we're beginning to feel the pressure. And we're to blame. [Another voice]: I believe the people of this county feel exactly like we farmers do and this is that they're not willing, under this guise of improvement,

to ruin their county in order that somebody might see his dream of engineering carried out on some creek, anyplace, anywhere, and this is a pretty much what you've got [Another voice]: I just don't like to be pushed any better than the rest of you do. Now don't you agree with this? [Another voice]: That's right [Announcer]: Large scale planning is necessary. It is bound to increase but some accuse the planning agency of being rigid and of ignoring human factors this is the farm of Anthony Wayne Smith of the National Parks Association. He feels the wrong people are doing the planning. [Mr. Smith]: People up here are, uh, affected by decisions made by a group of men, uh, with drawing boards down in Washington and over in Baltimore, who make some decisions on paper and it affects the lives of these

people up here, and mainly for the benefit of the big city. The basic trouble with the, uh, planning on the Potomac River thus far, and it's examp-, an example of the trouble elsewhere in the United States is that planning has been entrusted to a technical agency, the United States Corps of Engineers, a group of engineers who are not qualified by professional training or point of view for planning for the human needs of an entire region. [pause, dog barking, background noise] [Announcer]: Eber Pisel's story reflects a more basic problem of mass society: destruction of the individual sense of community. [birds chirping] [background music] In another situation, a sense of

community for people without roots has not been created. [background music] Erline White is a Chicago housewife, mother of 6 children. [Pause with music][Announcer]: Before urban renewal she lived in a slum. Now she inhabits a new world, a world of concrete and glass. It is clean and free of rats. Her new home has heat in the winter and rows of open galleries to catch the summer breeze Mrs. White is a resident of Robert Taylor Homes, one of the largest housing

projects in the United States. It was built with federal aid by the Chicago Housing Authority. Earline White resettled here when her house was demolished in the slum clearance program. [children's voices in the background] [ambient sounds] [ambient sounds] [ambient sounds] [Announcer]: Like many other residents of Robert Taylor Homes, Mrs. White knows that the project is physically a vast improvement over the slums. Yet like other tenants she feels that within the project's great high-rise buildings she is struggling with the new enemy.

[Mrs. White]: Anyone that is ?inaudible? in a high-rise project, and looking in from the outside is seeing, like, a beautiful home, a clean home, and a lovely place to live in. in, but I live inside of the high-rise in Chicago and I know the atmosphere that I am living in. It's so many peoples in the high risin'. There are 10 families to a floor floor. There are 154 to 156 families to one building. To each family there are from 2 to 10 children. You go out to get groceries, you come up on an elevator, you have to wait ten, fifteen, twenty minutes before you can get it. With this many peoples around, in the morning as you wake up there's childrens up and down the ?inaudible? with the noise, knockin' on your door, couple of neighbors arguing on a gallery. At night when you go to bed, it's the same thing. You feel feel that it's too many families involved, too many faces that you see

You can't go in and out of the building 'less you lookin' into many faces. You can't go to the chute to empty your garbage, 'less there's a million faces in front of you. front of you. And I wonder, "Who are my childrens playing with? Who are they friends?" friends?" [sounds of children playing] I I wonder, see if I can raise my boys and girls here and they can turn out to be the type of children and young men and ladies that I have always dreamed and hoped and prayed for them to be. You don't have privacy in your apartment. You don't have no doors to your closet. Why they don't put em up? We don't know. If ?inaudible? thing gone that we don't know and cannot even get an answer for You can't hang your pictures like you want to. The the walls are rough. You still can't paint them what you want to paint em someone would think that living in a high-rise

?building? with as many families that is involved, that you wouldn't be lonely. But I feel living in a high rise building like this, that you are very much lonely. There's too many peoples involved. You don't know who to trust. You can't really trust any to a certain extent because you don't know who the people are, are, what they represent. The best thing that you can do is try try to keep your business to yourself and to stay alone. It makes me feel as if this is not my home. This is only a place where I sleep and pay my rent. It's just like your clothes in a corner with no way out, nowhere to go. [clarinet music] When I visit my mother, in what some people may call a slum area, I feel this is home. Not because it's my mother's home, but it's because I

feel free. I've left behind me the noise, I've left behind me the hundreds of children. I've left behind me these stone walls. closed in on ya. When I go there I can sit on a porch or my kids can go in the yard and play. I can open a door and walkout and say there, "Don't do this." or "Come inside and eat." These little small things things is really what matters. [children counting and playing] Earleen White and other tenants have taken their complaints to the Chicago housing authority, the agency responsible for planning Robert Taylor Homes. The chairman of the housing authority is Charles Swiball. The lack of privacy and the number of people in a high rise building

building would not necessarily create a mental strain. If we look at the background and where these people came from, this is where we need the education. We at the Chicago Housing Authority have interpreted that the rules and regulations in regard to public housing to mean that we are too provide safe, decen- decent and sanitary housing, which means good housing, but not luxurious housing. Some of the individual complaints that I, as well as [pause] the people on the outside, have heard about the people, the residents not being able to paint walls, not being able to hang pictures on the walls, are a slight over-exaggeration. We do give our tenants now a choice of five colors. This is an evolution. You must remember that these people have come out of slums. They have brought with them some of the slum-bred ideas, some of slum-bred hostilities in regard to hanging a

picture on the wall, all we ask of them is that they notify the manager so we can give em the proper hook. Otherwise, in order to hang a postcard, so to speak, they might use a two-inch nail. We don't want to make it so comfortable and so ideal for them that they wish to remain in public housing. We are trying to get them upgraded, if you will, so they ?think? they can go out on the open market and find private housing. I think it is very important for our residents to feel that they are individuals and I wish that we as the Chicago Housing Authority could bring this message to all the residents in public housing, that we are interested in them individually. We do want them to better themselves. That is the sole purpose of the public housing program. We want their morale to go up. We hope and pray that they can merely use public housing for an economic reason and that they will better themselves, ma- get better jobs, make more money, and go into the private

market. We are not in competition with the private market. If I had a choice of living at Robert Taylor Homes, or in a dilapidated shack, I would choose Robert Taylor Homes. [Children's voices] [Announcer]: Ear- line White and Eber Pisel share a common feeling of being ground down by impersonal forces which are reshaping their lives. These forces are the result of a crowded society that is growing even more crowded the organization and planning, the attempt to cope with the crowding is both the remedy and an object of resentment. Again Anthony Smith, [Mr. Smith]: Our society is becoming, um, more and more complicated, uh, there are tremendous problems to be solved, people in the cities are- their lives are i'm up with the lives of the people in the country and people in the country were those and say you can't separate these things out if we're going to fail always slays together and the society that people can a man and we've got to have programs

the problem becomes then, how does the individual, uh, preserve his freedoms, preserve his sense of integrity and independence, and his own free choices, in spite of the fact that we have to have broad general programs of this kind and we have to have strong agencies to carry them out. Well, one of the answers, and the most important answer to it is, not to leave the development of these programs to people who have knowledge of only one little segment. It may be how to build a dam, or it may be how to build a housing project in the city, but this is not enough. You have to have people that can see the whole social problem in the round. Uh, these people should have, uh, a background probably in the social sciences, uh, in uh, uh psychology and political science, uh, in economics. Uh, there should be some philoso-, philosophers and artists among them as

far as that's concerned. They've got to be human programs. They've got to be programs for people, and not just for building this, uh, a road or a dam, or a housing project, or whatnot. They've all got to be geared to what the overall general needs of the people of this country are. [warehouse noises] [Announcer]: Work helps to shape man's image of himself, and in their work, millions of Americans thrive amid complexity and bigness. The power of organizations, the power of machines, become mere extensions of themselves. [drilling and hammering] But there are others who find it more and more difficult to achieve an individual identity within the huge technology. [voices talking, laughing] Herbert Slater works on the assembly line of an automobile plant.

[Slater]: They could carry on a conversation, um, I'm not that exhausted. [voices talking] Comparing my work with my wife's family's work, I feel that they are trademen, they are more or less their own boss, and it's a much better way of life. [noises] [industrial noises] [industrial noises] [Slater]: When I start working in the morning, it's just like somebody pulling the switch on myself. [ambient noise] It's monotonous. Very monotonous.

It's, uh, a steady pace, there's no break, unless the line stops or I'm relieved from my break or lunchtime. As far as the job goes, I don't think about that [tool noise] because, uh, after doin' it so long it becomes automatic to me. And, uh, there's no thought to it. Just to do it. [industrial noises] Most of the men working in this plant, like myself, are forced into the job in the first place mainly because of once a man gets in there, if he's got a family, he's stuck there. He hasn't got the education to get a better job. [voices laughing and yelling] I wouldn't want my son to, uh, work in any plant.

He can be a plumber, if he like, or a carpenter. I get stuck in a factory and work the way we have to work. [banging and factory noises] The few men I had workin' around me, I don't know them, because we don't have time to actually meet each other. We can't get a chance to talk. The 2 newest men have been working with me approximately a month each. If I don't know their own, their names, and I don't know if they know mine. [clanging] [clanging and drilling] I think of other things deliberately to, uh, keep the monotony out of my mind from the job. I think of my wife and baby at home, what she might be doing, if the baby's alright.

If he's asleep or if he's awake. [music] [music] When I'm driving along the street, and I see, probably one of my jobs go by, I feel, I feel big about it. I do very little on a car, but it's still, it's something I did, and I'm proud of the way I do it, the best I can. [baby noises] [Announcer]: Herbert Slater is caught midway between the twilight of one industrial age and the dawn of another.

Automation will eliminate more and more dull repetitive jobs. The wave of the future is for machines to do this kind of work. [Slater playing with his baby] If he loses the job, which he now resents, what can he do? Jobs in the new age require higher levels of education and training. [baby cry] [baby cry] A psychologist has called

work the individual's main basis for self-justification. [Slater]: The way we live, the furniture and appliances we have is a lot more than a lot of people in this country, let alone the world, I'm thankful for that. The job I have is paying for this. I'm thankful for. But I still feel that there is something missing in our life. [ambient sound] [gate closing] [Announcer]: Doctor Edwin Land, scientist and president of the Polaroid Corporation: [Land]: Uh, we must remember

that the problem that concerns us in industry now, the over specialized use of the individual is a relatively new one in the history of mankind, perhaps only 60 or 70 years old. That prior to that, uh, people gathered together to work together as craftsmen. That, uh, with the invention of the steam engine, with the concept of the division of labor, uh, a technique was developed which made enormous contributions to the mechanical components of our society, but which also, over this period, have made a great demand on individuals in terms of sacrificing their special contributions. As we now approach the new age of automation, uh, which is the ultimate in this 100 year process of mechanization, we see ourselves as ready to be set free again, not to terminate industry but to bring industry back to that kind of warmth. Uh. To the kind of crea-, of, of

an environment that made life good for the craftsman before the first stages of mechanization. [industrial noises] [Slater]: Sometimes I really didn't want to come in to work because it was so much of a bore, sitting in a chair for, well, the best part of 8 hours, watching rolls come up the chute. I'd be staring and, and looking, and I'd see nothing. [industrial noises] I said to myself, "I'm not gonna sit here, for the rest of my life, watching rolls come off the machine." I'm going to try to better myself the best that I can. [Chemistry teacher]: Now when we light our burner, turn your gas on, light your flame, and then admit more air until you get a good hot flame. And notice how the color changes from the orange to the blue and we have a cone of gas, cone of heat starting to form. And this is our new compound.

[Announcer]: This chemistry class is not in a university, but inside the Polaroid factory. It is part of a limited experiment designed to help workers learn jobs which require more individual contributions. Machine operators like this man had moved up to take positions in laboratories as technicians and assistant scientists. It is part of an effort to draw the average worker closer to the scientific developments which are shaping his life and will determine his future. [industrial noise] [industrial noise] In the company's film division, machinists like Ralph Butcher, a former warehouseman

in a grain mill, are involved in an unusual program. It combines education with careful job counseling. Workers who might ordinarily be limited to dull repetitive jobs now do work requiring high degrees of personal judgment and involvement. [Butcher]: You're the father of this thing. You're the director. You're telling me what to do and, uh, when it comes out with, uh, something, a perfect product, it's, it's almost a thing of beauty. It took all of this machinery to make it. And I made it and it's perfect. [industrial noises] [Announcer]: Ralph Butcher's job represents a break in the pattern of overspecialization usually found throughout industry. He is freed from the daylong attachment to the machine itself. He has knowledge of the complete manufacturing process and this gives him a greater sense of identification with his work. Ralph Butcher shares

responsibility for the raw materials fed into the machine and the quality of the product which comes out. [Supervisor]: Lacks a little black and shade's nice and smooth. [Butcher]: Mm-hmm. [Supervisor]: Tell you what, why don't you switch to that pod and let me know how you make out on that. [Butcher]: Alright, fine I'll get on that. Now, as far as the units we've already produced, do you feel that these are photographically alright? [Supervisor]: The units you've produced, I wouldn't, uh, I wouldn't.... [Announcer]: Ralph Butcher never finished high school. Like other unskilled workers he has lived in the shadow of advancing technology. He talks about the experimental program: [Butcher]: There were 300 applicants for a 30 man requisition for this job. Of the 300 they selected 30. We sat it out, all machine operators, quality control, what have you. Various backgrounds in this company. We're involved in the reeducation. I ran

?indoctrination?, probably a re- evaluation of life. And all of a sudden I found myself back as a school boy. This meant, uh, books, uh, all of the things that I had been so out of synchronization with. Normally I would leave my work at work and go home, uh, looking for, er, looking forward to a night with the wife and the children, uh, television and so forth. Uh. All of a sudden I found myself with, uh, books, a great many demands. Uh, my family, [chuckles] they couldn't quite figure me out at first. Since the advent of the program, the educational program, and since the number of hours that I spend in the classroom, with physics and algebra, chemistry, so forth, I feel today that I'm in a better bargaining position than I've ever been. I think probably the most amazing thing that I

find is the fact that when I wake up in the morning I don't detest going to my job. I feel that, uh, this is something in itself that is wonderful. [Announcer]: The job of getting out the work and also liberalizing the atmosphere for the individual worker is a continuing problem for management. [Dr. Land?]: Well, we've been meeting now over a period of 3 months, once every week. And we've been meeting for the purpose of finding out how we can do a better job of helping people. And the hope is, of course, in the seminar that we will develop more understanding and insight which will enable us to do a better job.... [Announcer]: Supervisors at the plant are not always comfortable in their double role as boss and counselor. [Different speaker] One problem we've talked about is, y'know, can you help people, can you direct them, can you guide them, can you counsel them, can you befriend them, can you be concerned about their welfare and at the same time, you know, get the product out and, uh, and, and make money for the company. And what happens when you try to, uh, guide and counsel and educate, uh, 3 thousand people. [Different speaker]: Well, I think we gotta be careful because one of the basic

problems and basic objectives of, of our whole career counseling program is to be sure that the job doesn't, the job doesn't outrun the man, and I think we see it in industry today as we get closer to, closer to complete automation or even more automation. You see the job that a man did yesterday, he's having difficulty moving over and doing a more difficult job today. And when the day comes for him to move, he's got to be ready. And I think the problem is that so many people get started so darn late. Y'know. They wake up to the fact that, y'know, their job as they know it today is gonna be eliminated and all of a sudden they hit a panic and they wanna, "Oh, I gotta learn how to do the new job!" But unless he's progressively come along, and, and built himself a pretty good base, he's in real trouble, and I think we see it. [Interviewer]: Now, how about the guy who's on the job and he's doing very well. okay? He doesn't want to move. Now you know he's going to have to move because if he doesn't move he's going to be out of a job maybe for years from now. But he's satisfied. He doesn't want to move. He's doing very well. How about this guy? Do you push him? Do you make him move? What do you do? [Interviewee]: Well, you have to talk to him. I mean, because you can

see this thing is going to happen. And you, you've got it through to this guy. [Interviewer]: How about the individual who moves around, who has to change constantly, who moves from one job to another, who's pushed to change, who's pushed to move onward and upward. What happens to the individual in of all this? [Interviewee]: I think the people, Jack, who are the ones moving up are, tend to be aggressive, and, uh, they, they are happy in this kind of a challenging situation. That's how they got there, because they, they pushed so that they could get. [Interviewer]: And they applied for it. [Interviewee]: Yeah. [Different speaker]: Ayeah, I've seen some, though, they fall flat on their face when you, you give them, uh, uh, too much responsibility sometimes. And they, they, they, they just don't have the ability to handle the responsibility or the pressure of the boss. They've got into a job, they, they've gone up the ladder what they thought was a much better job. Because it looked better. They went from blue shirts to white shirts. Salary structure changed, then all of a sudden they said, "Why didn't I stay where I was?" Now, what do you do with this kind of

an employee? [Different speaker] I think you have to be sure that you're basically going to be honest with yourself and the guy has to be honest with himself, because any time you're ?running? anything sort of experimental, you're gonna misfire, you're gonna have some failures and you better [Different speaker]: Be plannin' on it. [Previous speaker]: Be plannin' on it, and be able to be big enough to see them and admit them. [Previous speaker]: And I don't really see what is wrong with bringin' a guy back down if he, y'know, especially on request if he realizes that he cannot keep up with the level of the job. And he requests to go back, why not? Maybe he'd be happier in this type of, [Interviewer]: What happens if you ask him to come back down? Have you had this experience, [?Name?], you were talking...? [Interviewee]: No, I, uh, I wouldn't say that the actual employee said he wanted to back down, but you could tell by his actions, his frustrations, and his inability to handle the job as, as you feel that he should handle it. [Different speaker]: Isn't one of the things ?inaudible? the reason he doesn't want to come down to do a job that he [can't] handle, that, y'know, sort of the social stigma of "I tried and I failed" and everybody looks at him and says he failed. [Different speaker]: Absolutely right. [Different speaker]: It seems to me, we have

a choice between two futures: one future, which is a magnificent and exciting one, and which within the industrial framework everybody will be learning and be retrained and we'll be bringing his new abilities to the new products and new needs. The other future which I fear, and which I think we all would fear, and which need not happen. The future we must avoid is one in which we go on with our program of making more and more things automatically, of training scientists and engineers who live in a separate world from the mass of the people, while the mass of the people, uh, freed from work, but become less and less interested in the life that they have to live. [Announcer]: The workers' struggle for personal identity has its counterpart on other levels of industry. For a corporation executive, the struggle may be

just as real, more subtle, but equally important to the human spirit. There has been a series of incidents this year involving the right of corporation executives to speak out independently on public issues. Each case exposed the conflict between the needs of the man and the needs of the organization. David Wood, a public relations man, is revisiting the place where he began his industrial career. Now the corporation has fired him after 12 years of employment. [Wood]: I want to emphasize as strongly as I can that I hold no animosity for the Bethlehem Steel Company. It is a giant steel company, an excellent company. It makes a wonderful product, that, highly respected in the industrial world and even in the one area where we disagreed it is no worse than probably hundreds of other

corporations in the United States. [beeping noise] [beeping noise] [Wood]: I'm standing across the Lehigh River from the main offices and steel plant of the Bethlehem Steel Company. I first came here in 1952 fresh out of the University of Washington in Seattle as a new member of the company's management training program. When my wife and I and our year old daughter arrived in Bethlehem, we felt it was the start of a career that probably would last a lifetime. [flute music] We felt confident pro-, that progress would be fairly rapid, that we could expect better housing, better income, a finer way of life, in fact, uh, it's the subject of the, uh, the recruitment booklet that's put

out to attract college graduates, how wonderful living is in the plant communities around the country. Right here in Bethlehem there is a very magnificent, uh, private club called the Saucon Valley Country Club, and the higher ups in the Bethlehem Steel Company belong to this club. They, well they know they got it made when they're invited to join the Saucon Valley Country Club, and this is the epitome I guess, uh, in, uh the Lehigh Valley area of fine gracious living. [Announcer]: Over the years, promotions came to David Wood, working at the company's West Coast office he enjoyed corporate living. [Wood]: In fact, perhaps life was becoming too good I was growing less and less concerned about the, if you wanna call them the burning social and economic and political issues of the day. Frankly, my wife and my family and myself were just enjoying life too much.

Then, uh, I went to, uh, a dinner at San Jose State College to hear a typical commencement speech by a typical corporate public relations director. He talked about the dangers to private initiative and individual freedom, of big government and creeping socialism and the welfare state, and the importance of the profit system. Well, this is something that we public relations men have been warning the American people about for years. Uh, these are scare phrases we drove around. But what we never seemed to talk about is the danger to individual freedom of the corporation itself. The growing complacency the, uh, overwhelming, uh, feeling of, uh, human comfort that we have when we work up at a corporation and, uh, we're earning a good living and we're all very happy and we can ignore these problems because life is so good. Well, because of this particular speech, I felt strongly enough to write my own

rebuttal, and I decided to eliminate all references, uh, uh, to Bethlehem Steel and submit it as a magazine article to Harper's Magazine. Now, what I said in effect in this article is that if businessmen are really concerned about big government and creeping socialism and the welfare state, what they ought to do is get out and do something to solve the problems of our society themselves, rather than sitting back and waiting for big government to do it for them. The article was published in the November issue of Harper's Magazine last year, and I must say, the reaction was, uh, pretty immediate, and, uh, pretty surprising to me. Uh, I remember my secretary reporting to me one day that she had had a conversation with some of the people in the Industrial Rela-, in the Industrial Relations Department, who had expressed, uh, surprise that I would do such a terrible thing because I was jeopardizing my way of earning a livelihood and I had, after all, a wife and 5 children to support

and it was not fair to them that I would speak out in such a way as to jeopardize my future employment. Uh, in a couple of weeks the head of our department, from Bethlehem here, came out to San Francisco, and had a long heart-to-heart fatherly talk with me, uh, in which the essence was that any future writing I might do should be submitted to the company in advance, so that they could review it and make any suggested changes or corrections that they would feel would be embarrassing to the company. Nevertheless, he admitted that I had a right to freedom of expression and therefore this would be a kind of compromise. Uh, it sounded fairly reasonable and I agreed to submit, uh, anything that I wrote in the future to the company for its comment. Last February, after researching the retirement programs of several other companies, I did submit

a second article to Bethlehem's management here in the home office. I had become interested in retirement programs because I've been interviewing Bethlehem employees for a number of years for stories about their retirement I've felt strongly enough about this to do some research on what some other companies were doing and to do an article on the subject. By implication, I suppose, I was criticizing, I think, my own company, because I praised the programs of these other companies and Bethlehem was doing none of these things that I praised. Well, they sat on the article for about 2 weeks back here. I wondered what was happening; I was curious, interested on what changes they would request and then I found out that I wasn't going to get a response because the Vice President of Industrial and Public Relations was on a trip, and would not be back till the last week of February. He returned on a Monday and as I heard later, got around to reading the article on Tuesday

and on Wednesday morning the home office called my boss in San Francisco and told him to let me go, effective immediately. Uh, I would be paid, uh, for the final 2 days of February, I would receive my vacation pay for the month of March and I would receive severance pay that was coming to me as an employee of more than 11 years. [Announcer]: The company has declined to comment on David Wood's story. William Whyte, in his book "The Organization Man" said this about the individual: "There are only a few times in organization life when he can wrench his destiny into his own hands. If he goes against the group, is he being courageous or just stubborn? Helpful or selfish?" "But," says Mr. Whyte, "fight he must: for the demands of his surrender are constant and powerful." [music] In

nearly everything he does, the American moves within the patterns of organization, and there is increasing concern with his ability to lead a highly organized life and still retain his individuality. Some experiments have begun which may shed new light on what happens to the individual in groups and organizations. In the Department of Psychology--Princeton University, hundreds of groups, business, military, student--like this one--have been observed and studied by Dr. John Kennedy. [Kennedy]: You're looking at a scaled down version of modern society: the small problem-solving group. Nowadays it is popular to criticize groups and organizations because they appear to dominate the individual personality. On the other hand, it is perfectly clear that the complexity of our modern society demands organization.

This is the dilemma in which we find ourselves: how shall we design groups and organizations in such a way that they do not obliterate the individual and his individual needs. [Announcer]: Dr. Kennedy is seeking ways to eliminate the rigid patterns of authority which seem to inevitably arise in human organization. He believes the way of the future is toward organizations which stress greater individual freedom and participation. [Kennedy]: These laboratory discussions permit a freer exchange of ideas than the real world, since individuals are not punished for ideas or actions which might ordinarily be censored, for it is by participation in the shaping of his own destiny that the individual becomes truly free.

[Announcer]: This has been a look at American lives in an age of bigness. We tend to think of the United States as a country in which resourcefulness and individualism are dominant. But the growth of population and the development of a mass society has limited man's personal control over his working and living conditions. [background music]

Historian Arnold Toynbee has said, "the United States faces acutely the problem of finding a compromise between extreme individualism and extreme mechanization. America's future will depend largely on how she reconciles these contradictory tendencies." [background music] Those who plan our society must develop more concern for human lives, and humanitarians must be among the planners. [music break] The tradition of individualism is dear to us. It must be nurtured and it must adapt. [music break] [music playing]

[music playing] [brass music playing] [clanging] [music playing] This is N.E.T., the National Educational Television Network. [silence] [static silence]