JOB HUNTING
Snt,—Miss Downie has scraped beneath the surface of this problem, which is more than some of your correspondents have done. But her argument seems to me to have missed one basic point.
This is that before the war a considerable number of people were trained to hold posts of responsibility in the " management " of industry and commerce ; a first-class secretary, for instance, was considered a responsible person and paid accordingly. Today, however, apart from the fact that the labour and machinery are not yet available to require the same complexity of organisation, an attempt is being made for political reasons to transfer the job of " management " to the Civil Service, which is under-staffed and whose personnel was generally in the bad old days drawn from young people lacking ability or initiative. This is a point, incidentally, which the Conservative Party, with its aura of dividends and directors' fees, does singularly little to instil.
James Burnham has pointed out the difference between the " mana- gerial revolution " and Socialism. While I neither like some of his argu- ments nor agree with all his conclusions, it is impossible to overlook the drift towards the lowest common denominator which is inherent in the " please everybody " (and therefore no one) policy of the present Government.
Finally, let me beg "Ex-Warrant Officer" not to pursue the excellent offer of " Bishop Auckland." The latter is obviously one of the better products of the era of free enterprise, but commercial travelling is not the band-waggon of the moment and may well be left to the unfortunates of my own generation If he is under thirty and has not yet spent his gratuity, let him apprentice himself in a manual capacity to some industry interested in nuclear physics and, in five or ten years, he may at least become one of the Major-Generals of Calamity—Yours faithfully,
CASSANDRA.
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