Bayonets for Technocrats

The Chief Caterer of Chicago's great Morrison Hotel summoned his servants last week: ''Five hundred banquet covers for the Continental Convention on Technocracy, and . . ."

Howard Scott the Technocrat was going to make a speech, sped the news. Present would be President Glenn Frank of the University of Wisconsin, General William Irving Westervelt of Sears, Roebuck, old Clarence Darrow, Economist Stuart Chase. Two collateral bodies, the All America Technological Society and the National Technological Congress, were joining with the Continental Convention on Technocracy. It looked as though another flight into the upper air of serious attention might be in store for the limp technocratic skyrocket which last winter burst in a dazzling festoon of headlines and sputtered out in the back pages of hinterland newspapers. Then Howard Scott the Technocrat let off a preliminary bombast: ''We want men of action and when I say men, I mean males and females. Our light is to abolish the price system. Bayonets will line up those who wilfully refuse to join the movement. The Roosevelt raw deal is the greatest boloney ever perpetrated. In eight weeks inventories will be at a maximum. If production hits the 1929 level 12,000,000 will still be unemployed. The country is being fed hooey." To another assemblage Howard Scott the Technocrat glided and, despite objections, mounted its platform. A hotel detective came running to stop the clamor. Howard Scott the Technocrat left. Then, rapidly, General Westervelt was obliged to go to Washington on Government business. Clarence Darrow was "tickled to death" to avoid the Technocrat banquet. Eventually the only ones ready to eat were Howard Scott the Technocrat and his loyal men. But they would not, or could not, pay for 500 Hotel Morrison banquet covers. Nor was there anyone else whom the Chief Caterer could find willing or able to pay.

Philosophized Howard Scott the Technocrat : "It's just like every new movement. There are dissensions."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.