Efficiency Experts Get Short Shrift From Sinclair

Radio Record, Volume XII, Issue 35, 10 February 1939, Page 12

Efficiency Experts Get Short Shrift From Sinclair

[JPTON SINCLAIR, in ‘‘Little Steel, >? has once again written a hook with a message . this time exposing the efficiency experts who talk their way into established businesses in the guise of saviours of the industry. The ramifications of the "industrial counsellors" is shown to be on an immense scale in America. Listen to this: " ; .. Later the Senate investigation of industrial espionage brought out the fact that American ‘corporations had paid a total of more than eighty million dollars for spy. work against their employees;. and you can buy a large fiock of stool pigeons for that." The gradual change in working conditions is pictured by Upton Sinclair, who has written a worthy suecessor to "The Jungle" and "Oil" He bases his story on the life of Walter Judson Quayle, a kindly old employer of the old school-a man whose father and grandfather had known each and every one of the workers in the growing factory. Racketeers, in the guise of "industrial counsellors," came to the town and persuaded Quayle that he could do much more for the staff by enlisting the aid of their organisation. He does so,

only to see his business running into bad times, with the counsellors working in their own interests. Sinclair shows that the business of industrial counselling is a "bigtime" industry in America. It has its own colieges, from which "sraduates" are sent to "assist"? industries to meet altered conditions; it has its own course of journalism, where men are taught the uses and misuses of publicity and propaganda. The experiences of Walter Judson Quayle, who realises, just in time, that the "industrial counsellors" are ruining his business, breaking up his family and working against the interests of employer and employee, should be read with intense interest by both employers and employees. The use of radio in-world affairs; too, is discussed by Sinclair, whe makes reference to "... and now and then a speech from the White House about ‘economic royalists’ and their pretensions to be the reali rulers of the United States. What was America coming to, when hunkies and wops in a steel town could gather round a cheap radio set in anybody’s home and hear the voice of the President of the United States telling them that they were ‘ill-fed, ill-housed and ill-clad,’ and that he was going to work to remedy that evil state of affairs?" America has exported most of her business methods; no doubt industrial counsellors will come toe New Zealand, but if "Little Steel" is read and digested they should

not make much headway--

W.F.

I.

"Little Steel." Upton Sinclair. T. Werner Laurie, London. Our copy from the publisher.