{ } = word or expression can't be understood
{word} = hard to understand, might be this

...today for the last time with the transformation of the 14th Amendment. And I wish you to keep in mind what the reason was: that the 14th Amendment, which was passed for the protection of the Negro, has become the protection for the corporations that do commerce and work all over the 49 or 50 states.

The change of the country--its centralized state in ways of production, commerce, labor, transportation, communication--as a result -- is the result of course of the railroads and of the Civil War in which the central authority had to act for five years as the guardian of the rebellious states. That I think is the best legal formula, because the states were not destroyed. Alabama and Mississippi are -- have been -- are -- have never ceased to be states, but they were in receivership, so to speak, and the central government in Washington, exercised the -- in their place the authority of the -- these states.

So when the 14th Amendment was passed, it was felt that the overseeing capacity of the central government had to remain. And it has worked out in such a way that today the 14th Amendment is used more or less principally for the protection of the corporations, that they enjoy the same treatment as the citizens of the various states, where, regardless whether they are located in New York, or Los Angeles, or San Francisco, or Cleveland.

Obviously we are, with this development, on the road to what you live now today in Los Angeles: that a man without a car and a man with a car are two different citizens, that you have to live in this community here armed with a car, or you are -- or car with an arm; I don't know. Well, you cannot think sufficiently about the two moralities that this entails. You come to a man, and the telephone rings. And the man is entitled to interrupt your interview, and to speak to the man over the telephone, because he is in charge of a mechanical weapon, the telephone.

I told you the story of hospitality in this country. Didn't -- didn't I tell you my plebiscite about the sheriff and the FBI? That is, the 18th-century American democracy, which you still have in your -- as stock phrases in your mind, and the reality of a mechanized world today is still clashing. All these great moral issues. The boys -- said to me, my students, that they would deliver -- give up a man whom the FBI persecuted, and tried to arrest in my house at midnight; but they would protect a man whom the sheriff, you see, tries to arrest.

So everywhere, you have today two worlds. One on top of the other. The world of your ideals, and the phrases of the -- the Constitution -- and your idea

of a public in which you are all rational individuals; and a world in which you can only survive, if you are embarked on participation of great mechanical constructions and processes. The whole life on the boulevards of this town is one big conveyor belt. And woe to you if you do not behave.

I had -- the experience today in a very practical manner. I am the only pedestrian between my house and this campus. I have met one old man beside me in all these days when I -- walk to the campus, you see. Otherwise, I am obsolete, you see; a man of 1750. And so I had a friend passing me by, but there were signs all this way from my home to the campus: No Stopping at Any Time. So we really moved in two dif- -- separate worlds, you see. Here he was, and I was on the curbstone, trying not to fall off. And -- on the other side, there were the -- the grass was plowed open, you see, so that if I did step to the other side of the curbstone, I would sink in deeply into {one of these} canyons.

Now please be serious, because these are the two humanities that today exist side by side still in the United States. And what you call "slum" is a local expression of this distinction. But it goes much deeper. It's a class distinction. People who do not participate in these modern means of communication, you see, simply are out of luck. They belong to the Stone Age. And -- nice as it is to be a man of the Stone Age, still it has its difficulties.

These -- this is a development of corporations and masses, because wherever we enter the streamlined life, we have to behave. We have to -- we are disciplined. And you hear to- -- of- -- very often today this word of "social democracy" as again- -- or "economic democracy" as against "political democracy." And I warn you against this stupid slogan. It's a mere slogan. All technical discipline is hierarchical, and is dictatorial, and has no equality. Man may be born free and equal. But in the process of production, we are all graded. Everybody in his place. There is no equality. And it is utter nonsense to pretend that what the telephone exchange, or the -- Tel & Tel commands can be by me dealt with as an equal. I cannot deal with any of these corporations as an equal.

And that's a big illusion today in the stock phrases of American daily politics, that people are lulled to sleep by -- getting empty promises of social democracy, when this is in the -- in the essential -- method of doing business, excluded by the simple fact that these processes of production have their own laws, and are not legislated by Congr- -- by the Congress or by your vote, you see. -- To -- streamlined car -- traffic on the road, that follows a law for which you and I have no -- have neither sentiment. It has to be ruled by the exigency of the process. And the process -- has its own laws. And -- "At No Time Any Parking Here," you see, I cannot advocate a change of this sign. It's perfectly correct. Otherwise the whole traffic of 3 million cars in Los Angeles would come to a

standstill. And my wishes in this matter are of no avail. They have absolutely no meaning, and they are powerless sighs in the void.

So if you kindly would consider seriously my proposition today that when we come to the modern world of corporations and masses, whether these are immigrants, or Negroes, or sailors, or mine- -- mine workers, the problem is not one of democracy. And the sooner you illumi- -- illuminate the true situation of industry--of a scientific way of producing in which we live--the sooner you may also find ways and means of -- of easing the stress and strain on the people produced by these processes, you see. I don't say that they don't bear change, transformation, reform.

As a matter of fact, I have -- dedicated my life of this transformation of -- of the work in factories and industry to other forms. I have written innumerable studies. I have sacrificed my academic career three times to this purpose. So I think I know what I'm talking about. But the -- your public discussion in this country never mentions these problems. They think that if you unionize people, that's all industry and labor can work for. But there is a sidelight to this, where the individual worker sides against the union, as well as against the capital; because his work is meaningless, or is low-rated, or is, you see without interest for his own up-building. He's made degraded by the kind of work he has to do, as most clerks in our offices are. And it is this, the slow-down, this process of industrial form, as long as you bandy around this meaningless -- patchwork of social or economic democracy. Political democracy is something utterly different, because there we organize from our own willpower the body politic. But "economic democracy" is a contradiction in terms, because it means that we -- are not -- are free from the rules, so to speak, of work.

Now a soup has -- has to -- water has to boil in order to produce tea. A ship has to sail the seas. The airplane has just to go in the proper way down and up by instrument landing. And no questions asked. And any helper, assistant, crew member has to work in teams. And the discipline of a team is an iron discipline. And you cannot break out of it by taking a vote, a majority vote, and saying it should be done differently, you see. The vote has nothing to do with the process.

So you cannot vote industry into existence or out of existence, because it follows the laws of the good earth, or the bad earth. That is, it is materially prescribed, materially ordained. And only if you over- -- as long as this is overlooked, the most serious question before this country can be, so to speak, lighthandedly dismissed as "just politics," or "It's just a question of education," and so on. And these slogans which you bandy around, "Everything is a question of education," or telling people, or propaganda, you have quite to keep out, if you

want to understand the iron discipline of the iron man under which we live.

Your besetting sin, or your besetting, I think, illusion is that half the world is done today by advertising and propaganda. And so you don't see the order behind these placards, and advertising, and neon lights, and allurements, and sensations. And you may -- I -- some of you, I think, one-half of the -- of the intelligent people in this country are despondent, because they see the power of Madison Avenue, and the power of Hollywood, and the power of the television, you see. And we then are rather despondent, and think they can sell us anything.

Now I think it isn't so hopeless. If you look behind these wonderful neon lights, and these wonderful ads, there's of course, much necessity behind it that drives these people, and they express in glowing terms, certainly, what they would like to achieve. But they are not quite independent from the processes which dictate their products. And then there is another, I think, group in this country, who are -- have become rather fatalistic, and say, "Big business is just there to stay with us," and so are not so much worried about the psychological hidden persuader and the organization man, but over this bigness: that nobody any longer can run his own small business, and that free enterprise today has become a strange slogan to protect General Motors. So that -- it really means that nobody has a free enterprise except these monopolistic corporations.

I think both side -- both aspects are petrifying you. And I find so many among your generation who say, "We can't do anything." I mean, "We're just," you see, "We are just little cogs on the wheels, just a human being," and therefore lose interest in public affairs.

I do think that the articulation of industry, the sudden division, the membering, the -- you can call it "decentralization of industry"--is the vital question of our future. Not that you can have in -- 125 free enterprises, but you can very well have a General Electric and a General Motors that contain in themselves all kind of -- of limbs, of teams, of groups, and it's very hard for Amer- -- the American tradition to appreciate, or to like this whole direction which our -- practically our development today is beginning to take, that these big entities try to subdivide, and without losing central authority, give initiative and life to the parts of the enterprise.

I have called this from in -- inside myself, "industrial feudalism." But "feudalism," of course, with you runs a shiver over your spine; and you have never -- chosen to consider the greatness of the old feudal order which allowed a -- a thousand years ago the organization of the whole, old Roman Empire into innumerable little valleys, and counties, and cities, and provinces--treating every

one of them with their own spontaneous life, you see, and yet holding together the whole with -- not sacrificing unity, you see, and not centralizing on the other hand, as we now do at this moment of transition still in our great cor- -- big corporations and in Washington. Our states are -- have ended their importance. That is, our states, the individual states of this -- of the United States are dependent on the good will of the central government, especially financially. They are dedicated -- have dedicated power, more or less, today. And they can't do anything anymore.

The delegation of power then, will have to take place within the industries. That's your problem today, and that's -- the sooner you embark on this vision, the sooner will you see that the old world of feudalism--which has been pooh-poohed for 200 years in this country as -- terrible--today in industry would be a great help against the centralization of industry in the head office, and the ruling of all the branches of such a big enterprise all over the United States by telephone from Cleveland, or wherever the central office happens to be.

I had a friend who had to get a leave of absence of five days as a chemist in one of these big corporations. When he received the -- the permission, it had to -- was stamped by five different directors, different nobility, vice-presidents and so on. Now that shows you the -- what we are suffering today from, you see: inability to delegate power.

And so the delegation of power is the problem of indus- -- the industrial order. And -- that is not equality, you see. But that is articulating power so that it is enacted most vitally, and most responsibly, and most refreshingly.

To give you the -- best starting point I have been able to find for this last part, I will now go to the first and oldest corporation of industry, the ship. People never think in this country much of shipping as the starting point for the discovery that man, inside a corporation, is subject to a discipline, whether he likes it or not, which is the discipline which you today find on the conveyor belt in -- in Ford, you see, and which is the -- the great principle, you may say, of our industrial production today at large.

On board ship, people for the last 5,000 years, have been submitted to a rule of despotic character. Now the word "despot" may frighten you, but originally it means simply the lord of a manor or of a house. The Greek word "despot" means to rule a household. "Des" is the roo- -- the same -- as in "domestic," the same syllable. What in Latin "domestic" would be Greek "des," and "potes" means the -- the lord. So despotism means to treat the -- the order of society in the way the hou- -- lady of the manor has to organize her kitchen, and her pantry, and her provisions, you see, and her servants, her help. It is the organization of help.

And in antiquity of course, the home was the center of production, and you did produce everything from linen to food, you see, and leather wear, and weapons, at home. And therefore, despotism, or economy, which is the same word--"ecos" meaning the house, and "nomos" the law of the house--economy is alw- -- has always been bossy. You have to have a boss for the process of production. Somebody has to say what you shall eat on Thursday.

And in the old times, you see, the lady of a house would say with great complaint to her cook, "Terrible. Thursday, so it has to be -- there has -- has to be cabbage."

And if anybody had asked the lady, "But why, Madam, if you don't like cabbage, does it have to be cabbage?"

"Because," she would have answered, "because on Thursdays, there has to be cabbage," you see. Because the menu was of course just as ironclad as today the Catholic Mass is, and the liturgy of the calendar. Economy was iron, and couldn't be -- couldn't be changed by the whim, even of the lady of the manor. She had to go through the menu--ham and pork on Monday, and -- and beef on Tuesday, et cetera, et cetera.

It is a -- very much so with -- if you go -- today to one -- any of these big firms who are our big soap manufacturers. Who makes the -- all the soaps?

(Procter and Gamble.)

Wie?

(Procter and Gamble.)

Yes, Procter and Gamble, you see. So they are great people, then they -- one be- -- of them becomes then secretary of defense. And we take all our administrators today from these concerns, because there the processes of production are rigidly regulated economically, we say. That is, in the one way which is the best. And no majority or minority can vote the best process of production, you see, out of existence, and take a second-rate -- that would be the death of the enterprise. So there is no whim, and no arbitrary power in industry. The thing has to be done in the proper way.

On board ship, this is a question matter of life and death. First of all, the ship has to be seaworthy. Second, the orders have to be executed without any time for approval by the people ordered around. I recommend to you, of course, Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, just to understand this once more. Or read Dana,

Two Years before the Mast. Who has still read Dana, Two Years before the Mast? Ja.

Well, of course, that made a tremendous impression, you see, this discovery of this world, and it happened in 1841, I think the book was published. And it happened in the same time the American people woke up to the problems of industry. That is, to the iron discipline which all such processes of production took. In 1841, there very -- there were very few factories in this country. Really nothing to speak of. The -- the mills in Lowell and -- and Lawrence, in Massachusetts, begin to develop; and Eli Whitney had developed some manufacturing -- fac- -- places in Connecticut for his famous cotton gin. But otherwise, I mean, still 90 percent of the people of the United States lived in small towns, and farming was the -- the thing from -- by which everything was measured.

But as I told you, the very moment in which the secular government of the United States had taken the place of the local church, the -- the new development begins, industry. And in the -- Two Years before the Mast, the people woke up to the absurdity, cruelty, brutality, and difficulty of running a ship. A ship has always been an industrial enterprise. Because you can call "industrial enterprise" an enterprise in which everything that has to be done is prescribed. And the first hu- -- machines were not built from iron or wood, and leather, but from men. The armies of the 18th century were treated as living machines. The great discipline of the Prussian army was based on the assumption that the men, the hundred men standing in one room, should behave like the centipede, you see, and just act under orders as one man. The idea -- idea of the machine is -- was invented first in the application to human beings, and only later it was carried over into dead materials.

This is unknown here, and so I have to tell you this. The ship is the first large-scale modern machinery in this country, and the horse guards and the -- storm- -- house troops of her majesty, the queen of England, or the king of Prussia, they were treated in the 17th -- 18th century as machines. And the famous book which was written in 1748 by La Mettrie, pronounced this very clearly by saying "long machine." This was at a time when actually machines were hardly in existence. Man was the first mechanism, you see. That was the Cartesian idea, that man himself could be seen and understood best as a machine.

Since you all believe today that the machine is the -- so to speak, the forerunner of your -- mechanical view of the universe, I have to warn you against this. The history of science is always -- goes in this way, that we first ascribe newly discovered philosophies of world -- point of views to man himself, and then carry this out into the world. First man bred his own race, and then he cattle bred. Today we have perverted this and say we think we should treat man

like cattle, when all we do with cattles and horses is that we treat them like human beings. The idea of interbreeding, or producing a good race is first among the humans, and then it goes out into nature. Man go -- always precedes, and this is true about man as a machine.

Now why is the ship a machine? Because as I said, there is only one percent of deviation possible on a sailboat in a storm, how to behave. If you make one mistake, you flounder. And it has -- all the maneuvers on board ship have to be -- carried out with great precision, and with the least possible loss of time. And therefore the second quality of the machine is enacted: saving of time.

Modern industry is based on one -- on three simple laws or principles. You can also call it "one law," you see. All industry is an -- industry when it shortens the time, enlarges the space, and uproots a former group, a former -- yes, group of human beings. Any machine that you introduce into your household, you see, enlarges the environment on which you depend. If you have a fireplace with wood, the wood may come from your own woodlot. As soon as you have oil, this oil comes, you see, from so far away, that you suddenly enter into relations to far distant countries, like Arabia, or Venezuela, you see, or Texas, which is still { } Venezuela { }.

And so every new invention in industry, ever since 1750 has been done and undertaken because it was -- it {prevented} a gain of -- in time. You get the house of course much quicker warm by oil heat -- oil heater. You just turn it on one minute; the whole house is aglow, the staircase and everything. You have one fireplace, you usually have to wait very long, and usually the rest of the house never gets warm. With an English house where you freeze all day, and all year -- the year around, with their fireplaces.

This then is the law of industry. It's strangely unknown, but it is a very simple law. We shorten the time; we enlarge the space; and we thereby change the group. Because from my woodlot, I can ask my neighbor's son to bring in the wood, and I'm therefore on intimate terms with my neighbor. But if Sibn Aud- -- Ibn Saudi from Arabia came -- he's -- he's, so to speak, my boss with regard to the oil, I suddenly belong to a worldwide economy; and my neighbor, as it is today in a big city, you see, I don't care for. I do not depend on his services, but I depend on far-away people for the services, whether this is sewer, or whether this is the electric light, or whether it's water. It is no longer a neighborhood, and all the attempts today of modern sentimentalists to preach you good-neighborliness are limited, because the economic interest of you and me is no longer one with my next-door neighbor.

We all -- the best thing you can say is that in any one neighborhood the

power plant and the water comes from far away; and in this sense, we are all in the same boat. And you shut down the electricity, and as soon -- the very moment the neighborly feeling goes up, you see, because you have to borrow the candle from your neighbor, you see, and the matches, not to sit in the dark. And in this very moment, you begin to develop your neighborly feelings again. But otherwise, you may not know for 10 years who is your neighbor next door.

This is then inevitable. Where you have industry, the record is to -- the idea is to shorten time, instead of -- for -- take a match, produced now from Norweg- -- Norway or somewhere else, you see, such a matchbox that allows you to -- lit a fire instead of having to rub two pieces, you see, of wood together as the -- in the old drill borer where you had to produce fire as a solemn action. It took you I suppose three or four minutes.

So the -- the aim of the industrial process is certainly the push-button civilization, where nothing, so to speak, takes time. But you pay for this the mo- -- less anything takes time, the more space it takes. You can shoot a moon into the universe, perhaps, you see, in a second, in -- at the Cape there in -- in Florida, you see. And you can only do it because it takes, so to speak, no time, you see. And the satellite then rushes around at this incredible speed. But you have to mobilize for this incredible energy all the resources of the whole globe. You have to get your uranium, and your radar, and all the means that go into this machine wherever you can find it. And you cannot possibly produce such a machine, you see, with the raw materials you find in any one part of -- even of the United States. So that the more indus- -- industrialized we become, the more immense becomes the area from which we have to draw these resources.

If you would consider kindly this proportion between time and space in our modern processes of production, it would help you understand the pro- -- problems of modern mass men, and the whole problem of our future society. Since there is a constant loss of intimacy of the smallness of the group with- -- inside which you can make a living, you see, then this group -- the neighborhood is constantly enlarged--Southern California, whole of California, United States, the globe, et cetera--you -- we lose in warmth, in familiarity, we lose in neighborly feeling. We enter socially a great void, a great vacuum, a great coldness on the one-hand side. And on the other-hand side, our own lifetime and the rhythm of production separate. If you have a push- -- push-button economy, and you compare it to a farmer's economy 200 years ago when the preserves, the fruits had to be churned into preserves in fall, the la- -- women in the household had work to do for six weeks. That is, they knew what to do. Now it can all be frozen. You don't can the fruits anymore, and the saving of time makes of course so much time over that you have to go and be stimulated by the -- savage cruelty of obscene pictures, of -- or novels, or something exciting, because you have to

fill the time.

And many -- daily more and more people come into this position, that their work is faster than their -- their -- their lifetime would demand. We live technically and in production infinitely -- quicker than we have to live with our 70, or 80, or 90 years, which we are meant to become nowadays, when the doctors even prevent Mr. Dulles to die a decent death. The cruelty, you see, of prolonging the physical life today of man, when he economically -- he should live shorter, is -- is quite paradoxical. And it will become a burning question of the future. I think future ages will -- think of us as very cruel people in this respect.

The greatest example of this development is, of course -- are the two world wars. The two world wars were technologically finished in a very short time, four or five years. But they were such fundamental events that the human soul could not develop its antibiotics, or its solutions from these technological events, except decades later. And you are in -- have the honor in 1959 -- 1960, so to speak, to live at the moment in which the human beings who have undergone the Second World War are perhaps mature enough to make peace. There was no way in between to -- to get to these human beings in their heart of hearts to make them understand the solutions necessitated by the technological events of the throwing of the bomb over Hiroshima in 1945.

And this must not astonish you, but you must, so to speak, apply this rule of -- for in- -- on industry -- for the -- all the developments we are faced with today, the technology today has outrun biography. This is the rule which I recommend to you. It's a good formula. It has two highfalutin words, so it must be true.

Technology outruns biography. You can do today in your lifetime infinitely more things through the help of technology than you should do. You all do too much. You all see too much. You all experience allegedly too much. So you experience nothing. Every one of us is overstimulated. Every one of you has to think far too many -- sees far too many pictures, has -- gets far too many impressions, so he digests none. And this is the story of the downfall of Europe in -- from 1914 to today: that technically, industrially, mechanically, the wars reached their explosive end, the flower of Europe was killed on the battlefield, and not a thought in the heads of the statesmen how to solve -- how to make peace.

And so we live today behind the technological events. And a man like Franklin D. Roosevelt knew this, and he has always said during the Second World War--and of course the newspapers never mentioned this--that this time,

peace could not be made in the first years after the war, would be impossible. Now that's his wisest word. But you prefer to hear of him as a wily politician. And when he was wise, it's forgotten.

I was deeply hurt in a similar relation. The one great industrial leader of this country has die -- died a few days ago, Mr. Myron Taylor, who introduced collective bargaining into our society. And the only thing mentioned in his obituary was this silly mission to the Vatican, which is good -- as a showpiece, you see, for snobs. And that he was the man who invited John Lewis and his -- Mrs. Lewis for a luncheon, told him, "From now on, American industry would be based on collective bargaining," that wasn't mentioned.

I only want to tell you that the great history of i- -- the industrial process of the last hundred years has yet to be written. It is not on record. It is nowhere recorded. You know nothing. You are absolutely ignorant of this. All the slogans you read are misleading, because you only think of democracy in these terms. It's all politi- -- politics, what you hear about industry. Has nothing to do with political processes; not -- whatsoever. It's a very iron discipline imposed on men. And the -- the most gruesome is, you see, that technologically, we have no limits today to the speed-up process. We can super -- have supersonic flight. But when the poor man arrives after the supersonic flight, you see, he hasn't yet left Europe or the place of -- of departure.

And I can only tell you one thing which you -- some of you must have experienced. Most Americans who go to Europe in the summer have never left New York when they have returned. They -- they have seen certain things in Europe, but to -- to arrive in another country, that doesn't take transportation. It takes transport, in the higher sense of the word, "transport." You have to be transported. And since you no -- never have time to do that, since you move there in Europe--again from hotel to hotel, and from bus to bus--you better not leave New York, because it is a fiction that you ever have left. In your soul of souls, you are still comparing everything in Europe with what you are accustomed to see in New York. And that's all you do with it. Don't go to Europe. Ruin all these travel agencies. Would be good for them.

Give you a simple example of this constant law of acceleration by our industrial processes. My wife was standing in a -- our travel bureau in our little town, next to a student of my -- our college, who wanted to go to Europe. And she being a Swiss and from the Rhine, she heard that he wanted to go from the mouth of the Rhine up to Basle, and to Switzerland. And she said, "Oh, how wonderful. You just take the steamboat, and go up there, and you will enjoy yourself greatly."

The boss of the travel agency immediately, you see, stopped this and said to the boy, "I haven't -- cannot make any reservations here for steamboats on the Rhine. You have to take the plane."

So the poor man, you see, having saved up all this money to see the miracles of the Rhine, didn't -- of course take the plane, because that's so simple an order here, you see. And in one hour, he overflew all the glory and never saw anything.

But that's very typical, I mean. And this woman didn't even know what a criminal she was. She thought that she -- in the -- what -- what is -- you see, within the frame of reference of speed and economy, she was right. But with regard to the meaning of a journey, she was utterly wrong. But today since everything is treated as a question of technology, you see, technologically {she} was absolutely, you see, correct. She had no bad conscience. It was this -- the quickest, you see, fastest way, of not seeing anything, but of having achieved the nominally, you see, all the ends connected with crossing Europe.

Well, this happens to you every day, I mean. Every -- every technolog- -- -logical invention--take television--is an attempt, of course, to sell you short, to say "It goes so fast, you just have to push the button." There it is.

When I went to the Mellon Gallery in Washington, you know our great National Gallery of Art, there were -- was a wonderful collection of nudes. And I had the feeling that all these poor peo- -- people who suddenly stood before them, coming in from the street for five minutes, should have first been in- -- ushered into a bathroom, you see, so that they could have taken a bath, and put on Japanese, silky clothes, and then slowly walked up to these beauties, so it was nothing but a shock. If you go fully dressed from a -- from the dust of the road, and suddenly stand before something that reveals the greatest sa- -- sacraments of creation, the naked body, then you are utterly unprepared. It makes no sense. They took no time to prepare themselves.

And I think with most of you, that's the case. You all get the things far too early before you have expected anything, before you have anticipated it, before it has been promised to you. So there is never any fulfillment. You get always the fulfillment before the promise. And so you see all these treasures. And you say, "Oh, I've seen all the pictures." And you shouldn't have seen the pictures. -- Wait. The sooner you give a -- child -- all the tech- -- these presents at Christmas, the more, of course, you will ruin its appetite. And our children, of course, all receive too many things, too early.

And so their imagination is killed, and as an American group of educators

came to see me in Europe one day, they said, "We are -- we have -- all the -- our children of course are wonderful, as long as they 10 or 11. And then their spirit dies," and asked me to advise them of what to do. Could they save genius in Europe? They had all the money in the world -- millions of dollars. I think I told this story already, did I? Wie? Did I? I'm -- so I asked them to leave as fast as possible, that was the only way of saving genius in Europe. Because they would just -- would have with their money accelerated the growth, instead of slowing it down.

This is very serious, gentlemen. That's why the -- the barbarism --. -- This country has receded from its civilized state in 1900 every year. The values in this country -- have deteriorated with the speed. And this is really what you have to -- if you have children to bring up, your whole problem is to slow down their growth. That's all you have to do. And it's very difficult, because everything is set against you in this respect.

Now the ship is a corporation. The body of the ship itself is the oldest form of a corporate body which is separate from the people who own it on land. And so, for a -- a mortgage is, for example, sh- -- of the ship, the master, is like a commander of a regiment, you see, a commander-in-chief. He's like the chief executive of the United States. He has the -- the powers united of a general, of a president, and of a father of the family. And so the first thing you have on board ship is discipline instead of law.

Discipline is not law, and law is not discipline. There's again a tremendous confusion about this in this country at this moment. To slap a child and to coerce it to do something is discipline. The law is only possible when there is time, because the delay of the law--as Shakespeare calls it in Hamlet--is necessary. The law means that for a while we leave our routine activities and go to court. And if during this time where you prosecute a crime, or where you fight for your in- -- heri- -- inheritance in a court, life is at a standstill. The thing is impounded, as we say, you see. And that means that nothing can happen. Nothing can move. It's in escrow.

So the delay of the law is the curse of the law. Wise men, therefore, don't go to court, because it is such a loss of time. It is inevitable. The peace is bought for the price of the delay in litigation. Our Judiciary is aristocratic and slow. But that -- are two sides of the same thing. And a -- a gent doesn't run; a gentleman is not in a hurry. And the courts are certainly not in a hurry.

The delay is -- where the delay is possible, you can go to law. Where delay would be fatal, you have to have discipline. Where an explosion is threatening in a factory, you can't go to law about the orders given to a man: should he climb

up this ladder, you see?--at it -- he has to do it. And if he has -- isn't to do it on board ship, he was whipped. That is, corporal punishment is inherent in discipline, because the whole outfit will perish unless this man is ma- -- made to do it.

And this iron discipline which today frightens you, because you have abolished corporal punishment, is of course much more merciful. In a family, for example, to whip a child is much more merciful than to make long, moralizing speeches and to say, "Wouldn't it be a good idea if Johnny would decide to do such-and-such?" Cut it out. That's all nonsense. But today that's the style of -- of government, that you say, "Wouldn't it be a good idea if"; and then the child is made to believe that it had the idea it- -- itself first, and no orders were given.

This is -- I mean, I think that's un- -- van- -- I hope it will vanish soon, this idiocy, that the child, which has the great privilege of entering a process of production in dishwashing, in -- in helping in the kitchen, or doing a floor, that it may share this wonderful, complicated process of doing things, performing acts, is invited to exercise its independence as a person. Dishwashing is not for persons. It is for disciplined people. And to make a -- all the -- the technological processes carried out by persons is the fiction of the social democracy, you see. We are not persons when we are engaged in teamwork. But we are dovetailing, we are fitting--as a centipede--into the -- in the way of a machinery, you see, into each other. And the less friction, and the more comradeship, and the less independence there is developed, the more do we fulfill our duty. No questions asked. Whatever has to be done has to be done. Whoever has to do it does it, you see, and there are -- is no reflection. That is, discipline, ladies and gentlemen--to say in one word--cuts out reflection. There is no time to reflect. Reflect is a luxury where you are in a household produc- -- in the economy. It's not your business at this moment to reflect on the process, but to do it.

Today there is a complete confusion in your minds. All students seem to me in America, have this complete confusion that they think the state of reflection is a primary state. And the day -- the state of -- of functioning is so to speak, something inferior, or something that can only be arrived at after reflection. This is just not so. Without reflection, you get up in the morning, and you fulfill all the requirements of your -- body and so on; and that has -- is -- needs no reflection. We only have to reflect when we come to a -- to a stopping place, when we come to hindrance, to an obstacle. Reflection is only needed where the flow of goods, and the flow of production suddenly, you see, is stopped by some unforeseen hurdle which has to be taken. That is, reflection is concentrated on the points where the process of production is interrupted. Reflection is interruption.

So reflection is interruption. He has reflected on the time, which we have spent here. And now you all go to Mr. {Byron}, I suppose -- or Mr. {Bryan}, or

what's his name? Yes, in 2- -- 39.