EXCELSIOR

Now that the stentorian blasts of Howard Scott and the other Technocrats have died away under the rigors of a close examination, a new and more demure solution to the social ill offers itself. Professor Cannon of Harvard, in a recent speech, advanced a theory which the gentlemen of the press have baptized with the title, "Biocracy." Though Professor Cannon himself deprecates any publicity attaching to his revelation, and probably expected none when he propounded it; the papers and the public have refused to let him go down unsung. His proposition has that indefinable quality of esoteric complexity which endears itself to the nation, provided only that it be the bedfellow of science.

Biocracy suggests an arrangement of the economic system comparable to the ordering of the various parts of the human body. It comprises several points, showing how the world might regulate itself in accordance with physiological teaching. For instance, as the body possesses two kidneys where one would do, the new economy should plan for a similar margin of safety. The lesson of science shows, too, that the organs are spendthrifts, throwing away sugar by the gallon when necessary; even so should the social system behave towards its unwieldy surpluses.

However, the most beautiful result of the innovation would be its automatic nature. As the Transcript expresses it, in terse and simple periods: "A faithful reproduction of the body structure . . . would bring automatic corrections . . . thus freeing the brains of the populace from the details of bare existence and opening up wider fields for adventure and achievement." Certain difficulties arise, of course, when the economic system is made too nearly like the body: these details, however damning in the eyes of Joy Street matrons, would not under normal circumstances, interpose any real obstacle to the success of the plan. Should the "new economy," however, fall heir to any of the ills of the flesh, and wander off some day, imagining itself somehow a modern Casanova, the results would be most painful.