At 10 the Policy Board of the Center met, all present save Dean Al Grace of Education. Since we discussed his former boss George Stoddard, now Chancellor as well as Exec VP by the grace of the mad daemons that drive man, in not entirely agreeable terms, Grace's absence was fortunate. The Board stands to a man for maintaining the present structure & functions of the Center, for asking more understanding and time to show our potential. None of us is sanguine. S is exorcizing his inner pests and, since Newsom has just let one Exec VP go, he is not likely to press S too hard. My guess is that S wants to run the U. in high handed fashion so as to end his almost disastrous career in a burst of glory, while N is unhappy and would like a good offer from some international "do-good" group to let him resign. Dimock has lost influence w/S,, who now wishes to strengthen & abet the embryonic Internatl. Affairs Ctr. Zurcher is being dealt roughly too. If S's situation were not naturally strong and he a tough character too, I should guess he would soon be in bad trouble .... Dimock and I lunched well at Minetta's restaurant, save that the waiter complained like a stuck pig over requesting sauce on the side of the spaghetti. The absence of any decent standard of service almost everywhere in N.Y.C. is annoying. It is now better to be served by some Midwestern or Southern waitress who at least is cordial in her ignorance. All too many million jobs in America nowadays are carried on by disgruntled people. Amidst the fatness of prosperity everyone feels cheated in his role.
On the way home from the office I picked up a framed painting. Stephanie Neuman came in for a drink before class. She attends a course in the Soviet Union and Far East. I met for the first time my class in "Social Invention." "Happy Anniversary!" she said, smiling. I look at her perplexedly. "We met just a year ago." True, it was at the first meeting of last year's class. I replied, "Happy Anniversary," and bussed her lightly. I was studying her eyes. They are light cocoa brown. She wore a sweater of that color, trimmed in black and buttoned down the front. Altogether beautiful.
She will lunch with Dick Smith next week, pursuing her study of the Republican leadership of Manhattan. I last saw him with Munson of McKenzie Co., Hugo Ettinger of Lynch F & B at M's office 2 weeks ago. Good men all 3, intelligent, hard-working, of handsome appearance. I was aghast, as always when I think of it, at the waste of time & resources of grass roots politics. Ettinger has a little group that meets and painstakingly compiles voting figures on all the precincts of NYC. M's group is launching a registration drive, in spots to come out of E's research, that requires checking voting lists against the telephone directory to see who should be contacted & urged to register. The results must be small, the labor great. The people who do the work hold college degrees, responsible jobs. This is how they spend their "leisure time." That is, until they tire of it. One time, workers on the public payrolls did these chores, and kept the electorate stimulated personally. Now it's either the middle and even upper classes who scrub these floors or the work isn't done. I do not believe this situation can last. The mass of people has no interest, unless paid. It is a wretched waste of valuable resources to use leadership for private's work, whether in politics, civic work, business, or war.
The alternatives are a non-electorally based political system or universal civic conscription. The latter would be nearly impossible to legislate, no matter how desperately the innumerable welfare areas of our society need manpower. Democracy is rights without duties to practically everyone, often now verbally, but in fact if not in word: conscription might be effected like taxes. Everyone would have to show certification of having passed so many hours in accredited civic work in a year. If it were organized otherwise, it would hold people too tightly to the bosom of the state. Or else, barring this, we should consider coldly the basic problems of democracy, deciding perhaps that we can now move beyond it, creating a governing system more economical, more spontaneous, more creative, better adapted to resolving problems and coming to decisions. Our democracy is now like the despotisms of old: it does everything but does it badly. And the "remedy" = do more -- badly, of course ...
Jill told me that she and Rosaline Freylinheusen were driving our station wagon with the two little boys, Kinny F & Chrissy, and some dozens of the great white eggs that old gentleman farmer Gulick sells us. Elsie The Collie rode in the second seat, the boys in the third w/ the eggs. They wrestled and yelled, and both women called to them simultaneously, Jill "Kinny, get in the second seat w/ Elsie because she's cold!" and Rosaline, "Kenny, get in second seat w/Elsie, she's warm!" Same motive, save the eggs. Two opposite rationalizations. Moreover note Jill's "altruism" & Rosaline's "protectionism," typical of both women: showing how rationalization is not all cut from the same cloth. Its substance & content matters much, in any instant case & in education.
Another incident, remarked on those nights when Princetonians descend from the 1 AM train at Princeton Junction. Ordinance provides that a cab must meet the train. The cab is an old one, small, usually jammed with passengers for the long ride to Princeton. (There is no shuttle train this late at night.) During the day, when people are brisker, when the ride is short from the Borough station to home, new shiny cabs await in abundance and one often rides a few blocks home in solitary magnificence. Why is this so? We start simply: no man likes to get out at 1 AM to meet a train. Therefore only one does. Why does he? Because a law requires it. Why not require two? Bec. too much resistance by the fleet-owner (the principle of marginal resistance of pressure groups in government). But why not rationally, foresight fully specific. Then why the old exceptional cab. Because of non-competition. Why run a new cab when you can run an old -- or, perhaps more correctly, what do you do with an old cab & a driver who may be able to work at odd hours: you give him this job. But why, to go back to the beginning, doesn't a new cab offer competition at this hour. Because he can't charge any higher fee than the old, first by law which thus restrains the good effects of competition for the consumer, and then by the needs of the riders. That is, in respect to needs, I doubt that the passengers would pay more than a quarter extra for an uncramped ride to town. Three to four quarters for this train would not pay for the difference between a new & old cab. But why all the new cabs then during the day -- so we derive new principles: The total competition is psychologically restricted, inasmuch as cabdrivers in a time of full employment and high wages choose to work only under "better" conditions, i.e. during the day. Besides, cabs are used for private purposes, for display & prestige, for family travel. And also competition within the socially established limits: an old car would receive no passengers at all during the day or evening, save when people throng the town for reunions and football games. (Yet if it could charge 25¢ on a 50¢ town trip, it might do well.) I note, therefore, in the bleak chilly middle of night, the operations of forces of regulatory law, the free market, prestige considerations, by-product use, mass habits, and, within each, specific deviation or possible deviations that would affect its impact and the action-equilibrium of the several factors that form the emerging act.
A paper on the subject "Is the Republican Party Against Government" would be important to the Rep. P. It would also make some valid points. Principally, academia is anti-Rep, owing largely to its investment in the positive & welfare state, in socialism too & the intell. currents of the 1900's, efficiency, centralization. Anything vs. this becomes anti-govt, i.e. anti-social. Now govt. can do much more than simply own, operate & regulate things so. It can encourage, promote, and it can divide things into ever smaller pieces by many means. It can educate. Govt can be essential & good. There is no quarrel with its existence but with its functions and philosophy. (Unfortunately a reactionary group of Republicans has been so little aware of their troubles that they have assumed the no-govt. position. They must give way.) The Rep. Party can gain many new friends by espousing this new doctrine of government "positive for the right things."
The Negroes have not received their due for determination of the American Southern character. I am struck by certain behaviors of the new West African elites in Ghana, Togo, and elsewhere. They remind me of traits of the Southern whites of the USA, not particularly the hill-folk either but of the dominant stereotype. Historians, in the USA no exception to their brethren elsewhere, are so concerned showing how influence moves down the power & wealth hierarchy, miss the continuous up-flow of language, temperament, Weltanschauung from the masses. In brief, we need to rewrite U.S. history in part, showing influences where even our own democratic historians have failed to see them.
Also, and a propos, the Negro matriarchal family system, seen by social workers and all others as a result of poverty, sexual looseness, & slavery that separated the male & female & gave the female a breeding & familial function, should be looked at again as a "normal" inheritance of the African systems, where the female has a strong role, much as in Harlem or the Black Belt of Chicago today.
Note the great social & political implications of these hypotheses. The "good" of white culture in the South (& I for one am fond of the Southern character I speak of) must be credited to the Negroes in part. The "degradation" & "immorality" of the Negro in the South and northern cities turn out to be a different, true cultural phenomenon, not sub-strata baseness. Thus the Negro woman in her frequent role becomes equal to the blue-stocking Quaker woman in her upper-class but functionally equivalent role of emancipated, decision-making family manager.
En route NYC
Feb. 9, 1960 Tues. 9:45
Finished work on the March PROD early this morning. Bright mild day. Jill drove me to station at the Junction. Settled various details en route, such as cashing checks, meeting in NYC w/ her sister Daisy tomorrow, how to pay Mr. Rose, the housepainter. Sebastian is back from St. Louis, [Nordilcans], Mexico, Cuba, Charleston & Washington. He finds the Mexicans dull & unfriendly. His baby Tancred has grown much in two weeks, 3 lbs in the month since birth! I joke that he has been off on his "couvade", but it is true. Anna Maria has been bitter & reproachful in his absence, but she was a great trial during pregnancy, and he needed the vacation. It made her attend to the baby more, too, a discipline and involvement she needed to be a better mother later on.
My visit to Chicago is nearly two weeks past, but I should say something of it before it lapses into the universal nous.
Chicago politics seemed unchanged. Some more of the corruption of the police has come to light. The secret documents on crime & politics that we used in an endeavor to win the mayoralty Election of 1955 have been exhumed and are being reprinted. A police lieutenant has been fired at least temporarily for making a European tour with a notorious gangster, Tony Accardo, both with their wives in good bourgeois style.
Brother Victor has just enabled Marshall Korshak to become War Committeeman of the 5th Ward, as well as being State Senator. Korshak phones him a half dozen times a day for advice, consultation and action. Vic, with his pretty & most intelligent wife and three charming little children, is temporarily unemployed. He serves everyone well except himself, he was offered a [Kisdenist] distributorship of a new voting machine firm by Korshak, whose brother is attorney for more criminals-at-large than can be counted on toes and fingers, but has refused, feeling that the undoubted financial success of the company would be clouded by the sinister associations. No other post is momentarily in the offing, and, since Vic has no professional license, as lawyer or realtor, the compensation that can go to him for his past and continued political genius is small.
He deserves well by Arnold Maremont too but has received only the means for holding on economically & doing political work for independent liberal Democratic groups. Maremont, who is worth twenty-five millions, uses Vic as he would a $30,000 a year public relations consultant and gives him little in return. I urged Vic to break off the relation if Maremont will not help him more. I mentioned the matter to Klaus Ollendorf, too. He knows both. Klaus at first defended Maremont, saying that M was not obligated to spend more pro bono publico than he desired. I asserted, however, that Maremont obtained prestige and a reputation for political intelligence from Vic's work and should pay for it just as he pays a quarter million for his abstract paintings or indulges himself with a month in the sun at Palm Springs.
This fellow, Maremont, is an extraordinary prototype of a kind of political man in today's America. He is most "liberal," laborphile, against big business (though he owns 2 companies on the NY Stock Exchange), collects abstract paintings of dubious merit and high price, decorates his offices with them and with modernistic furniture, lives luxuriously but in modernistic settings, is Jewish though not a believer in God, is strongly for Adlai Stevenson, has no humaneness, is brittle, metallic, cool, strong of opinion. He is a lawyer by training, graduated from the U. of Chicago Law School, and was started towards his large wealth by the fortune of his father. Every last one of these traits goes together with the rest in a way to excite the student of social types.
Robin Jackson, Vic's wife, talked at length one evening, awaiting his return from a meeting. She showed me a pile of "dittoed" papers from David Riesman, called "News and Notes." For years, he has plagued his presumed coterie with thousands of these comments on events & books, self-critiques, injunctions and hypotheses. Most of the enormous output which, I imagine, he talks onto a recording machine and has transcribed & reproduced, is dull & without depth, but as sheer measure of input of stimuli, it is valuable and from it all should come a couple hundred pages of excellent criticism (cf. James' monkey pounding on the typewriter for a million yrs.)
Abraham Lincoln's birthday. A man worth calling a holiday for. Washington too. We are lucky to have a handful of first-class national heroes. Kings of worth are rare. Most great leaders have committed acts that are unforgivable, e. g. Napoleon, Caesar, Lenin, not to mention the largely bad Stalins, Hitlers and the worrisome Gandhis and Woodrow Wilson. If Christ were not divine, his qualities on the scale of man's virtues would practically project him into divinity, or whatever one would call the unique and remote end of the measure of greatness. There are, of course, the unknown men of superior goodness, never celebrated, save in the preaching of the abstract values of charity, courage, self-sacrifice and the like. Our poor searchlights cannot find them unless they are elevated to power in their lifetimes or through their institutions.
Lunch with Lasswell today. We are still anxious to promote an applied social science exposition. He is going to arrange a meeting of several rich and intellectually curious men next month to talk of this and other mutual interests. I explained in detail the magazine project, The American Social Scientist. He is enthusiastic and, as always, had original suggestions to make. I called to his attention Dr. Brauer's ideas about a large research program on social medicine among the Inca descendant communities of the Andean altipiano, he has worked there and may find the project can be related to his own research group of Holmberg, Collier, et al., who are studying through experimentation on a leased hacienda, the possibilities of wholesale social and technological transformation of un-modern communities.
I have gotten in touch with Hewin Ceniston, Chairman of the newly appointed President's Commission on National Goals, and will see him on my return from Washington next week. I wish him to offer me an interesting task that I can undertake through the Center. I am curious to see what nine years have done to him. He sounds the same over the phone, thinner of voice, cordial and yet rapid of decision, marks of genius in management of public affairs. He lacks profundity and passion, however. But an "authority" on international affairs and university presidents cannot live with those qualities anyway.
I also offered my services, with qualifications, to "Governor" Frank Moore, who has been left holding the bag upon Otto Nelson's resignation from the Commission on Government Operations in New York City. There may be a chance there for a political toboggan. Also for prestige for the Center. Bill Ronan, the Governor's Secretary, thought it might be good idea when I asked him. I'll pursue the matter upon returning from Washington. (I was told that Otto Nelson was fired.)
I gave impromptu talks to the faculty of the Dept. of Govt. yesterday at the meetings, one on how to put out a brochure on the Department's merits, a second on the program of the Center. The remarks went well; the group is highly critical, and as seems to be my fate, I hold the newcomer's position along with those of the not-wholly integrated and suspicious avant-garde. My position is that of a new personality, standing by himself. My allies [ missing words] not institutionalized, not proven, save Dimock. I can take it, but sometimes am exasperated by any [mismobility] and intellectual and physical visibility. Hutchins [words missing] so, for while my mind runs deeper, my subterfuges are more frequent and effective, but Hutchins had an impregnable set of positions from birth -- his father a U. Pres., appointed Law Dean at Yale, then to the strong presidency at Chicago. I think Hutchins has suffered grievously since hitting the Ford F & meeting its internal aggression & then his Fund for the R. He has had great sums to work with, good salaries, etc. but has bogged down since leaving Chicago. Malheureusement, I have never had even a small ledge of rock from which to direct my charges against the world. The exception, two secure years of college, my senior yr & first grad. yr., & my year or so in command of troops. But I could not remain a student forever, nor did I choose to remain in the army.
Off to the Republican Party's Lincoln Day dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria. $100 a plate. I wonder who it was that paid for my ticket?
"He has a mind like a steel trap." Unhappily, it often clamps shut on the truth.
REPORT ON TRIP TO WASHINGTON, D.C. BY DR. ALFRED DE GRAZIA ON FEBRUARY 15, 16, 17, 1960.I visited the National Science Foundation and talked with Henry Riecken, Director of the Social Science Division. I explained a plan to propose legislation for a political science research fund to be lodged in the Library of Congress, Legislative Reference Division. Riecken is sympathetic and says that the Foundation will contribute its support to the proposal. He says the Foundation is naturally wary of instituting research in political science because of the reflections such research might cast on the whole budget picture of the Foundation. Furthermore, it is felt that the legislative branch would be more sympathetic to such research. The next day, I visited Mr. Edward Higgins, Assistant to Senator Green of Rhode Island, who is chairman of the Library Committee. Mr. Higgins assured me that the would introduce the legislation whenever I submitted it to him along with a justification of the new program. The Library of Congress has been approached on this question and has declared that it will accept such a grant of authority and funds should the congress vote for it. The executive branch of the government, particularly the White House and Budget Bureau, appear to be well disposed also toward the idea.
I visited Norman Wengert of the ORRRC. Their budget is currently being debated in Congress and the Commission expects to have funds from which at least a small project may be directed into the Center at NYU. It would probably be our proposed project studying recreation needs in the New York City region.
I discussed with Mr. William Colman his new position as Executive Director of the Commission on Inter-Governmental relations which is composed of 26 members under the chairmanship on Frank Bane and the Vice-Chairmanship of James Pollock. This governmental and private body will probably have permanent existence and will from time to time sponsor research in metropolitan affairs. I explained our interest in
such projects as may come before the commission for study.
I visited Senator Morton from Kentucky to engage his support of the Political Science Research Fund, and he agreed to help if needed. He has, however, just today relinquished his post on the Library Committee.
I visited Robert Merriam in regard to the President's Commission on National Goals and he encouraged my meeting with Dr. Wriston, Chairman of the Commission, which is planned for Friday, February 19th. I also urged that he request a report on my proposed survey of Social Research for Federal Government. He said he would look into the matter. Mr. Merriam is Deputy Assistant to President Eisenhower at the White House.
I spoke to Dr. Claude Hawley of the U.S. Information Agency. We were not able to meet for any length of time however. At present it seems unlikely that his office on information services can provide us with any support. Dr. Leo Crespi, Director of Research for USIA was in the middle of budget hearings and, while cordial, could have no precise idea of their future program.
I spoke with Mr. Russell Phackeray of the Association of Land Grant Colleges, which is located in the same building with the American Council on Education, hoping to inspire a general study of the financial of colleges and universities in the country, particularly with respect to the sources of support. Mr. Phackeray feels that the extent of public support of private universities is greatly underestimated and that much private support is coming to the aid of public universities. He is seeking the support of other groups on this project and would like to engage a private university for the purpose to avoid subjectivity. We will be corresponding as the matter proceeds.
At the International Finance Corporation, I discussed with Jentry Holmes, the Public Affairs Director, the project proposing the study of grass roots sources of free enterprise in underdeveloped countries. He was not optimistic at this moment but if we developed strong interest at the University for such a study, he feels that he could pass it along for financing to several private individuals and groups with whom he is connected. He also mentioned that he was interested in a study of differing interest rates in countries around the world, a matter that is always a cause for concern at the ISC and about which little is known. He is going to Paris next week and will talk to the Chamber of Commerce there about joint sponsorship of such a study. He has in mind letting us undertake the task if financing can be arranged.
12 Perry Street, 11:15 PM
Feb. 18, 1960
Just back from a speech before the Overseas Press Club. Came through a black downpour, walking a mile and taking the bus between 37th & 9th on 5th Avenue. My clothes wet, but happy & relaxed nevertheless. The air is sweet, the rain heavy, wet with unwintertime. Present and speaking also: Chester Bowles, Congressman & former OPA administrator, Ambassador to India and Governor of Connecticut: he would like to be President; Congressman Steve Derounian, Congressman Saund of Calif., Prof. Neustadt of Columbia U. Dept. of Government. My speech was strong and sharp. I had my audience with the introduction; I could have kept it friendly as well as respectful by being sweet and vague. I chose not to, partly because it goes against the grain, partly because I have a wider, partisan audience in mind. The minority of Republicans present were delighted. Some Bowles supporters present -- they were a majority -- were angered. It is a strange sensation to knowingly alienate people. I am conscientiously on good ground, in any events. The book of Bowles, The Coming Political Breakthrough, is one of the worst books I have ever read. To think men of "presidential calibre" put out such insults to the intellect. Hitler's Mein Kampf at least had elements of brilliance & a great passion. Derounian is a staunch character, full of partisan ardor and considerable powers of expression. Saund, the PhD in math from Berkeley, is a country politician, irrelevant, amusing, sincere about nothingness. Neustadt is friendly, pedantic, alas [words missing] new position. Bowles was annoyed by my talk but couldn't find a place to attack. He said then, cutting it out of whole cloth, that it was rumored I was to write Mr. Nixon's speeches in the campaign. Observe how underhanded, cloaked in mildness. This was the worst thing that he thought he could say about me.
Bill Colman, Asst to Director of National Science Foundation, and Hank Riecken, Head of the Social Sciences Division of the NSF asked me to see them about a legislative scheme on my next visit to Washington. I did so on Tuesday. Some time ago I had declared, in an editorial in PROD, that political science research support, if it should come from the federal government, should be organized in the legislative, rather than executive, branch of the government. For one thing, Congress would feel more at ease with this strange and possibly controversial subject matter if it were more within their immediate control. Other reasons exist and will be detailed in PROD. Colman and Riecken encouraged me to pursue this idea actively and promised me the support of the Natl. Sci. Foundation once the matter became public. Bill said he had spoken w/ Hugh Elsbree and Ernest Graffiths of the Library of Congress Reference Service and that neither had interposed objections, but that both would accept any new obligation to conduct a new program in support of pol. Sci. Research. The American Pol. Sci. Assn. has been actively lobbying to force the NSF to support Pol. Sci. out of present funds used for social science research, and the NSF has been unhesitatingly resistant. After a two-hour conversation, I decided to go ahead; and the next day spoke to Eddie Higgins, Sen. Green's asst., about the matter. Eddie said "Sure, bring in the bill, with something written to back it up, and we'll have the Library Committee OK it & put it before the Comm. on Rules & Admin." Thus the affair has begun favorably.
Casals on cello, a violin, a piano. Why do pianos so often play with strings? Not an ideal match. Harp, harpsichord, spinet much better as accompanists or in combination. Piano beautiful alone or with percussion. If tinny, good with trumpet or French horn. Goes well with voice, however. All in all the queen of instruments. The trumpet stands in authentic opposition, perhaps the only instrument not in some sense suggested by the piano. The trumpet has its own range of psychology and timbre.
Ted Gurr and Erika Klee, my assistants, were married on Saturday. On my arrival home from NYC Friday evening, Jill said "You are to give away a bride tomorrow." "What bride?" "Erica." So in a quiet ten-minute ceremony at the Episcopal church, the vows were exchanged. The church was empty. Sill was best man. Jill maid of honor. We returned to our home, ate dinner and held a reception and party. Earlier I had bought a variety of Italian foods in Trenton. 15-lb sausage, 18 large buns, crusty long bread, rolls of spaghetti in a case, 3 lbs mixed olives in oil and vinegar, 4 cans eggplant "caponata", two salamis, a jar of hot green peppers, three lbs. dried, cooked sausage, several lbs assorted hard cookies. With these went the cheeses, wines and whiskies we had stored in abundance. The crowd came to about 18 guests, 15 family, Ted & Erika. Most congregated in the basement where the phonograph alternated its music with a three-piece combo of Bus on piano, Joe his son on clarinet and myself on trumpet, and with Tod, a folk singer on the guitar. The last an amusing, slightly difficult, sardonic young man, big handsome exotic tho not looking the half-Japanese he is, finally quite friendly and warm with me, inviting himself to visit us again. I told him he should come and meant it. He attended Reed College w/ Ted and is studying medicine at Temple. The pretty nurse who accompanied him became ill -- tho not from our food or drink, and politely and quietly vomited in the bathroom and on the rug. The crowd was all friends of the Gurrs. Most were quiet and somewhat dull, unlike the people we used to party with in our rather wild early twenties.
Colt came by for breakfast on Friday and afterwards drove me to Columbia U to see Henry Wriston and Wm. Bundy, Chairman & Executive Director of the brand-new President's Commission on National Goals. Wriston appears fit, thinner than when last I saw him 8 years ago. He is a workhorse on this kind of job. It is to be like an American Assembly affair, unfortunately. Bob Merriam muffed this chance to set in motion a good research job on America's future. Wriston says he must raise $500 M for the Commission; Bob should have done this & more. I don't know where Bundy came from. He is a Central Intelligence Agency executive on leave for the task. Hart Perry knows him well. I find him unattractive, washed out and compressed of appearance, little in his neat casual Boston-type manner to suggest intellectual depth or force. Hiding in CIA for 10 years is no way to prepare for this task. I think the job will be mediocre.
An excellent lunch at the University Club with Arnold Zurcher, Ken Thompson and Sebastian, afterwards. Vodka, fresh clams, scrod, lemon meringue pie, and coffee. We discussed my ideas for a European Center in Italy to bring U. S. and European and Mediterranean scholars together for research & conferences. We shall move ahead a few more paces. Something may come of it.
At 4 AM Saturday Carlo became quite ill. He appeared at our bedside with a high fever and was tucked in next to me. A little later he vomited. His head hurt him badly. At seven I gave him a mashed Bufferin tablet in a spoonful of sugar water. He felt a little better. We used cold cloths on his face and forehead. At 9 AM Dr. Munro came across the street & diagnosed his symptoms as the [word missing], as we suspected. More aspirin, more ice packs. He has since been closely attended, smothered with affection & care. Today he is much better. He is up and down and is back to sleeping in his own bed now. It's been a long time since we dragged ourselves sleep-deadened and glum through the cold midnight rooms of the house in service to the ill and the infant. I even think Jill enjoyed a little the exercise of her highly skilled but rusted emergency nursing talents this time, feeling the agonies like an athlete his old powerful muscles aching with unaccustomed exercise.
Hard day but interesting: 6:30-7 Dress; 7:30 newspaper; 7-8:30 children & office odds & ends. (John not feeling well. He is a delightful, good boy of great competence. But he is most sensitive and prone to tears; he is strong but is not combative. He works steadily, much by contrast with Paul who has energy in great spurts and lolls about otherwise. At 8, John is very much as I was in ability, temperament, appearance: the major difference is in color; he has large bright blue eyes & blond hair; I was brunette of hair and eyes.) 8:40 - 10:15 on the train to NYC, sitting with McKim Norton, Exec. VP of the Regional Plan. Assn. We discussed his new 18-month plan that goes before his Board on Friday. I thought it excellent. How to activate a regional leadership for the Region's problems? I suggested a sociometric study, coming out with the 1,000 most influential and carrying forward a panel selected from among these by the others, and then having the panel describe collectively the ideal methodologies; this model finally to serve as the goal of planning. This would be a superior way of obtaining both a practical and an ideal plan and of mustering powerful support for Regional needs. 10:30 - 12:15 Essex House, Larry Moore, Pres. of Beloit Iron Mills (Beloit-Jones), Harley Jones, head of the Jones component, and an engineer discussing Piranant's paper mill project together. Pleasant men. Moore a handsome, highly intelligent, and decisive person. They would happily build the mill, if credit can be properly arranged. Moore has the concept of a vast new market & a great intl. industrial paper mfg & distrib. combine to exploit it that I have independently conceived & prepared memoranda about.
12:30 - 2:30 lunch with Bill Harvey of the Press & Peter Van Doren. We signed contracts on the welfare survey book.
3:15 - 4:15 Marshall Dimock on general view of the Center's situation, recent events, exchange of notes.
4:15 - 5:15 more calls, correspondence, office talk.
5:15 - 6:15 coffee w/ Colt
6:15 - 8:15 Class. Seminar discussed "Purposive Social Change" e. g. case used was Depressed Area Committee & a typical cluster of 19th century (circa) inventions, now a typical American behavior pattern.
9:00 - 11:00 Dinner
Perry Street, 6 AM
Feb. 25, 1960
The heat was off for 24 hours yesterday. An illiterate pencilled note informed the occupants of 12 Perry. I felt sorry for the janitor who had laboriously printed it. He was obviously embarrassed and momentarily sober. He is drunk half the time, a black minor character out of Dostoevski, lank, disheveled, curious but not aggressive. He and his wife share quartersomely a small ground-floor apartment.
I met Robert Kopple yesterday, who is acting director of the New York World's Fair of 1964. We were frequently interrupted by phone calls, the longest having to do with an important meeting of his Board today. The Presidency of the Fair and its organization have to be decided, and a crisis is at hand. He confessed that he was "way over his head,"by which he means that he is having to coordinate the sporadic activities and whims of some of the most influential men of New York - Pres. Robinson of Coca Cola, Gen. Clay, David Rockefeller, Bernard Gimbel, et al. I like Kopple. He seems quick, sensitive, & intelligent, speaks well, and wishes the Fair to be a creditable cultural performance.
We held a shareholders and Board meeting of MIDCO (the Mediterr. Indus. Devel. Co.) Last Thursday. It typifies the activities that fragmentalize my time and energy, producing little. I hold a ludicrous bunch of petty possessions and titles, and get poor & distraught merely maintaining them, like a minor German prince with tiny medieval patches of rock and wood. I have MIDCO, with Pat McGinnus as minor partner, but it earns nothing. I have METRON, a fine hollow shell of a research company. I have the non-profit Institute of Political Science, that publishes PROD, but I am dissatisfied that my intellectual mark in history should be PROD. I have several book contracts, only one of which The American Way of Government, brings in more than a few $ of royalties. I have a house that is fun to live in but costs too much to maintain properly. I direct a Center for Research that is not bursting with realized grand projects and, of the moment, shows no signs of becoming the world's best. My ten thousand or so of stocks are holding well in a sagging market but will not shortly make me financially independent. The PIRAMIT Turkish paper mill project keeps grinding on, with little immediate prospect of financing, tho it would make me a small fortune if it were realized. Within all of these things there is the question of what to do or not to do. But overall the ? is which of these to drop and which to continue & press.
