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Streamline Training & Documentation
Streamline Training & Documentation
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Thomas H. Connell III, 1942 -2010
One of the most charming obituaries I've ever read is that for the Metropolitan Opera's chief stage manager, Thomas Connell, published in today's edition of the New York Times.
Here is the closing portion of the Times obituary: ... no stage manager can take the weight of a singing horse. In the same “Falstaff,” Ms. Pierson recalled, the soprano made an entrance on horseback. One night, as she began her aria, the horse was moved to bray along in bold duet.
“What do you do when the horse starts to sing at the same time as the singer starts to sing?” Ms. Pierson asked.
There was only one thing for it. Mr. Connell fired the horse.
Last November, I wrote about the competencies required to be licensed by the US Coast Guard for working on a tugboat. Pretty dry (no pun intended) material, but the sort of detailed technical information I like because it creates a very specific picture of the topic.
This week The New Yorker has an entire article devoted to the details of what's involved in operating a tugboat. Naturally, the story that staff writer Burkhard Bilger tells is far more colorful than a set of competency matrices. Bilger reports on one family's involvement in running tugboats over a period that dates back to the sixties, meaning he covers the time both before and after the Coast began tightening licensing requirements.
The family of Latham Smith, which now has two factions each operating its own tugboat, bases its operations in Morgan City LA. Here are some excerpts from Bilger's report, focused on the contrast between old-style and new-style tugboating:
The Smiths are from Florida originally, of Irish and British extraction, but the Cajuns have accepted them as their own. Latham is something of a legend in the towing world. When he and [first wife] Elsbeth first took to the sea, in the late sixties, they seemed like characters from a picture book: the little tugboat family, island-hopping across the Caribbean, homeschooling five children as they went. Together and separately, Latham and his children have weathered cyclones on the Atlantic, towed barges up the Amazon, and circumnavigated the globe, even as the industry around them has grown ever more regulated and safety-conscious.
. . .
"When we started out, you could do anything," Elsbeth says. "You could pick up your crew from the homeless section of the DuPont Plaza parking lot and take 'em out and sober 'em up." ... "The other tugboats, they always went for the old alkies and the deadbeat people," Elsbeth says. "We took a different approach," ... Latham took to hiring any sailor or surfer who wandered past and whose conversation he could half abide. "It was the time of the flower children, the Beatles, and the long skirts," Elsbeth says. "We found people everywhere, just everywhere — beautiful young people. These hippies would come down on a one-way ticket from Florida to Rincón, Puerto Rico, and they'd run out of money and get desperate. So we'd hire them just for the ride back to the States." ...
When regulations began to tighten, in the seventies, and a minimum of two licensed sailors were required on every tug, Latham and Elsbeth both put in for captain's licenses.
. . .
... the footloose spirit that once sent sailors to sea has been slowly starched out of the business — mostly with good reason. Beginning with the Exxon Valdez oil spill, in 1989, regulations have ratcheted up with each high-profile accident ...
Most tug captain's licenses now require at least three years' training at sea, if not a four-year degree from a maritime academy. Background checks, safety inspections, and drug and alcohol tests are mandatory, as are certifications in radar, firefighting, first aid, and social responsibility. As a result, in the past decade oil spills have decreased by more than eighty per cent compared with the nineteen-nineties, and crew fatalities and injuries have been nearly cut in half.
... the tramping days of Latham's youth, when a sailor could spend his shore leave exploring the markets of Bangkok, the bars of Panama City, are gone.
. . .
Technology has taken some of the risk out of the business. Many new tugs can be steered by joystick — though most captains disdain it — and trainees often learn to operate them on land, in mock wheelhouses surrounded by virtual harbors. (When I tried my hand at this recently at the Maritime Simulation Institute, in Middletown, Rhode Island, I spent an hour doing doughnuts in Los Angeles Harbor; I couldn't seem to stop ramming my bow into the container ship I was towing — and that was before the computer called in the heavy fog and twenty-foot seas.) But a virtual storm is still no substitute for a howling gale, or the mad tilt and groaning steel of a ship on rough seas.
If this story of one family's life in the the tugboating world appeals to you, by all means get yourself a copy of the April 19 New Yorker and read the whole thing. The entire issue is dedicated to the theme of travel, so if that's your cup of tea, you'll find other articles of interest as well. The table of contents is here.
You will probably recognize line 625 in the excerpt below from Alexander Pope's "Essay on Criticism." The excerpt comprises lines 610 to 642. Such shameless bards we have, and yet, 'tis true, There are as mad abandoned critics, too. The bookful blockhead ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head, With his own tongue still edifies his ears, And always listening to himself appears. All books he reads and all he reads assails From Dryden's Fables down to Durfey's Tales. With him most authors steal their works or buy; Garth did not write his own Dispensary. Name a new play, and he's the poets friend Nay, showed his faults — but when would poets mend? No place so sacred from such fops is barred, Nor is Paul's Church more safe than Paul's Churchyard: Nay, fly to altars; there they'll talk you dead, For fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Distrustful sense with modest caution speaks, It still looks home, and short excursions makes; But rattling nonsense in full volleys breaks, And, never shocked, and never turned aside, Bursts out, resistless, with a thundering tide.
But where's the man who counsel can bestow, Still pleased to teach, and yet not proud to know? Unbiased, or by favor, or in spite, Not dully prepossessed, nor blindly right; Though learned, well-bred, and though well-bred, sincere, Modestly bold, and humanly severe, Who to a friend his faults can freely show, And gladly praise the merit of a foe? Blessed with a taste exact, yet unconfined; A knowledge both of books and human kind; Generous converse, a soul exempt from pride; And love to praise, with reason on his side?
Note: The Wikipedia entry for John Dryden's Fables, Ancient and Modern is here. You can read about Thomas Durfey here. The Wikipedia entry for Sir Samuel Garth is here.
There is a little parable in The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History, by John M. Barry, that I particularly like: … a young graduate student entered a laboratory and saw a renowned Harvard professor at the sink washing glassware while his technician was performing a complex task at the workbench. The student asked him why the technician was not washing the glassware. “Because,” the professor replied, “I always do the most important part of the experiment and in this experiment the most important thing is the cleanliness of the glassware.” [pp. 286-287]
Finally ... a joke about economists that actually made me laugh: A party of economists was climbing in the Alps. After several hours they became hopelessly lost. One of them studied the map for some time, turning it up and down, sighting on distant landmarks, consulting his compass, and checking the location of the sun in the sky.
Finally he said, "OK, see that big mountain over there?"
"Yes!" answered the others eagerly.
"Well, according to the map, we're standing on top of it."
Laughter is the Best Medicine XXVI: A Mathematical Proof
In the process of checking out a particular website, I drifted off to a collection of business jokes, most of which are fairly lame, but some of which caught my fancy. For instance ... Engineers and scientists will never make as much money as business executives. Now a rigorous mathematical proof has been developed that explains why this is true:
Postulate 1: Knowledge is Power. Postulate 2: Time is Money.
As every engineer knows,
Work = Power x Time
Since Knowledge = Power, and Time = Money, we have:
Work = Knowledge x Money
Solving for Money, we get:
Money = Work/Knowledge
Thus, as Knowledge decreases, Money increases, regardless of how much Work is done.
I've been enjoying the Ken Burns series on the US National Parks being broadcast this week on PBS, but hadn't been planning to mention it on the Streamline blog until tonight, when one of the topics turned out to be the fine service provided over the years by the Park Rangers.
Shelton Johnson, a Park Ranger at Yosemite, who speaks eloquently in Ken Burns' documentary, The National Parks: America's Best Idea (National Park Service)
One thing that caught my ear were some examples of surprising questions park visitors have asked the Rangers. Some of the questions quoted on the show were among those compiled by Debra Shore in a brief item published in the May 1995 issue of Outside magazine. My favorites from Shore's list:
At Grand Canyon National Park, "Is the mule train air-conditioned?"
At Mesa Verde, "Why did they build the ruins so close to the road?" and "Do you know of any undiscovered ruins?"
At Carlsbad Caverns, "How much of the cave is underground?" and "How many Ping-Pong balls would it take to fill this up?"
At Yosemite, "Can I get my picture taken with the carving of President Clinton?"
At Denali, "What time do you feed the bears?" "How often do you mow the tundra?" and "How much does Mount McKinley weigh?"
Debra Shore also compiled some amusing anecdotes of visitor misadventures in the National Parks. I haven't been able to find the original source online, but the anecdotes have been posted at a number of websites, such as that of Bob Brooks, a diligent collector of comic material who works at Computing Information Services at Texas A&M.
A couple of Shore's anecdotes: In 1993 a woman called 911 from the top of Half Dome using her cellular phone. According to dispatch, she reported: "Well, I'm at the top and I'm really tired." The answering ranger asked if she felt sick. "No," she said, "I'm just really tired and I want my friends to drive to the base and pick me up."The dispatcher explained that she would have to hike down the trail she had ascended. The visitor replied, "But you don't understand, I'm really tired." What happened next? "It turned out we got really lucky," the ranger said,"her phone battery died."
A group of European visitors came into the Wawona ranger station in Yosemite National Park and said, "Our car is parked at the trail head and it's been blown up by terrorists." Though rangers expressed some doubt, the visitors insisted that a bomb had exploded in their car and that they could see powder residue from the explosives. Investigating rangers indeed found that a door had been torn off and a powder-like substance — pancake flour — was strewn about the car."They were quite embarrassed when we showed them the bear prints," the ranger said.
Laughter is the Best Medicine XXV: Black Humor on the Financial Front
Depending on your mood and financial situation, the "Devil's Dictionary — Financial Edition" Matthew Rose published in today's Wall Street Journal will strike you as more or less entertaining. I'll just note a pair of my favorite definitions and invite you to peruse the entire collection. DEFICIT, n. For the party in power, at worst a minor irritant and at best a precondition for economic growth. For the minority, the gravest threat to the stability of the Republic.
QUANTITATIVE EASING, n. A regulatory approach based on the point in Western movies when the sheriff, having fired all available bullets, in an act of final desperation throws his gun at the bad guys. See also INFLATION, HYPER.
Laughter is the Best Medicine XXIV: From the Newsroom
Peridically, I have a look around the Internet to see if I can turn up any G-rated office humor for my proudly staid blog. Invariably, it's slim pickings. Most of the amusement either isn't actually funny (a problem shared with the cartoons in the Harvard Business Review and the Wall Street Journal), or it's too racy to suit my purposes.
However, today I've hit paydirt. At the Facebook page "Overheard in the Newsroom," status entry #1686 reports this remark from a young visitor: Home-school kid on tour of newsroom to copy editors/paginators: “So basically... your job is a bunch of clicking.”
Several of the responses from "fans" of the page are also worth quoting: I had a fourth-grade kid on a tour ask "So if a guy shot someone's face off with a bazooka would you have a story about it?"
Designers just don't click ... They also draw boxes.
My wife used to ask why I came home tired after 8 or 10 or however many hours on the copy desk, "all you do is sit there and push a few buttons." Then she got a job there, too. She didn't ask anymore.
I always described being a graphic designer as doing 'executive colouring in'.
wow - remember when we actually *went* somewhere to do interviews??
The woman who gave tours at my former job told people all the copy desk did was cut and paste.
Laughter is the Best Medicine XXIII: A Candid Job Applicant
The material at NotHired.com varies in how funny it is, and in where it falls along the Gentle-Harsh continuum. As a benign sample, here is a cover letter excerpt that I particularly liked:
The vexed question of whether emancipation should be a goal of the Union side in the Civil War has led many to question Lincoln's sensitivity to the need to correct the obvious injustices of slavery and racism. In Lincoln and His Admirals, the book cited in yesterday's post, author Craig Symonds offers this summary and anecdote:
"Conservative Republicans supported the president so long as it was evident that his primary goal — indeed, his only goal — was saving the Union. They were lukewarm to the idea that the party should ensure the permanence or universality of emancipation, and most of them opposed the proposition of granting citizenship or other civil rights to the former slaves. More progressive Republicans, such as Chase [the treasury secretary] pressed Lincoln not only to make emancipation permanent and universal but also to make a commitment to civil rights for blacks. Lincoln was entirely committed to emanicipation in the rebellious South, and encouraged programs by which the border states could undertake voluntary emancipation, but he made no specific commitments either way about civil rights for blacks. On this, as on other issues, Lincoln kept both branches of his party in the fold by postponing the moment when he had to choose between them.
In a cabinet meeting later that winter [of 1863], Lincoln told a story about a black preacher who told his parishioners that there were 'two roads for you' and they must 'be careful,' for one road led 'straight to hell,' and the other went 'right to damnation.' Upon consideration of this warning, the parishioner responded: 'Josh, take which road you please, I go troo de wood.'" (p.269)
I think it's safe to say that Lincoln's anecdote has relevance to just about any factional struggle that threatens achievement of a critical mission.
A couple of previousposts have discussed how Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, views exceptional customer service as the linchpin of his company's strategy for continuing success.
Hsieh is convinced that the key to exceptional service is hiring people with the right attitude and a willingness to embrace the culture at Zappos, a culture that is encapsulated in ten core values:
Deliver WOW through service
Embrace and drive change
Create fun and a little weirdness
Be adventurous, creative, and open-minded
Pursue growth and learning
Build open and honest relationships with communication
Build a positive team and family spirit
Do more with less
Be passionate and determined
Be humble
Hsieh's commitment to these values comes through in a blog post he wrote back in January dealing with his happy experience as a Twitter user. Since I'm stillresisting spending time with Twitter, and worrying that I need to get on the bandwagon, naturally this post caught my eye.
As a company, Hsieh explains, Zappos "[uses] Twitter to build more personal connections with people." But that's not all, as far as he's concerned. He goes on to say that "Twitter has contributed to my own personal growth and made me a better person."
Hsieh mentions four aspects of this personal impact of Twitter:
"Transparency & Values: Twitter constantly reminds me of who I want to be, and what I want Zappos to stand for."
This is where Hsieh cites Zappos' core values as a constant guide not just for his company but also for his own life. He explains, "Whether I tweet about something personal or something related to Zappos, if I'm living my life through these 10 core values, it all goes towards building the Zappos brand while shaping me personally as well." He also mentions that "Because I knew that I was going to be tweeting regularly about whatever I was doing or thinking, I was more conscious of and made more of an effort to live up to our 10 core values."
"Reframing Reality: Twitter encourages me to search for ways to view reality in a funnier and/or more positive way."
Hsieh explains that "now anytime something that used to get me upset or frustrated happens, I try to find the humor in the situation and think about how the situation can be reframed. I've found that almost every 'bad' situation is actually an opportunity that can be entertaining to my followers on Twitter, which also forces myself to see things in a different light." You definitely want to read the example he cites of how he used Twitter when he managed to lock himself out on his hotel balcony while on a trip to Mexico.
"Helping Others: Twitter makes me think about how to make a positive impact on other people's lives."
Hsieh reports that nowadays most of his tweets "do at least one of the following: Cause my followers to smile with something funny. Inspire my followers (for example, with an inspirational quote). Enrich my followers' perspectives (such as with a link to an interesting article)." This certainly matches my own idea of what would interest me enough to become someone's follower on Twitter.
"Gratitude: Twitter helps me notice and appreciate the little things in life."
Hsieh says, "For me, because I try to tweet every day, I've found that I'm always looking for opportunities to have something to tweet about. So I end up noticing and appreciating things that I would normally not even give a second thought to." Again, the sample tweets he mentions are charming.
Since I'm already following Hsieh, in the sense that I always read anything I happen upon that quotes his thoughts about running a business, the day may just come when I add myself to his Twitter followers list.
The well-respected blogger, Tanta — the family nickname Doris Dungey used to sign her posts at Calculated Risk — died yesterday. Tanta was an ex-mortgage banker who developed deep expertise in the field before giving up her job in 2006 in order to be treated for ovarian cancer.
You can get the flavor of Tanta's expertise and style from this September post in which she takes on Gretchen Morgenson, financial columnist at the New York Times. You can read the Times obituary here.
One of the earliest themes of this blog is "critical caring" — making sure, as far as possible, that your work is something you really and truly want to do well.
I recently came upon a prime example of this philosophy in the culinary area. At the Reluctant Gourmet blog, there is an interview with Todd Mohr, a man who began a second career as a chef after spending about ten less-than-fulfilling years as a middle manager in marketing and advertising.
Having recognized that "I was spending the majority of my life in an endeavor that was not fulfilling spiritually," Mohr jumped ship at considerable financial cost and enrolled in the culinary arts program at Baltimore International College. He finished the two-year program in 13 months and went on to his first job in his new field — working at the National Security Agency, where the kitchen team prepared two meals a day for a workforce of 15,000. Among his remarks about this experience, Mohr notes:
I didn’t realize it at the time, but the NSA taught me a tremendous amount. There were certainly times I wanted to quit, but I’m glad I persevered, because that knowledge paid off.
After a couple more jobs in institutional cooking, Mohr returned to his home state of North Carolina and opened Savor Hospitality, a catering business. He explains his thinking:
I didn’t want to start just another catering company. I wanted to create a unique niche. I started to notice large, important, companies having important business meetings and getting wax-paper wrapped sandwiches brought by an unskilled delivery boy, dumped at the receptionist’s desk.
The secretary now has to set everything up, clean it up, stuff that’s not their job. I created “Business Dining Catering,” elements of a wedding caterer brought to the business environment. This unique approach that included a Chef on site, gold and chrome chafing dishes, white linens, and return clean-up service separated us from every other caterer.
Now, 7 years later, others are copying what I started.
The whole discussion with Mohr is quite informative and engaging. For my purposes, I would just reiterate what I take away from the interview: Mohr is working hard and productively, and is continuing to expand the range of services he offers (which now include a cooking school for laypeople). He is motivated to put in all the time and effort this requires because he truly cares about what he is doing. As Mohr puts it, "I would be terribly frustrated with 12 - 18 hour days if I worked for someone else. The fact that I'm forwarding my own business makes it a joy."
Earlier this year, Mohr began a blog, where he posts brief instructional videos. In the example below, you can learn how to make a Japanese omelet, a technique Mohr was taught by a Japanese chef who visited one of his classes at culinary school.
If you're looking for some instructive amusement, you can try browsing at IQ Trainwrecks, which bills itself as "A Website Dedicated to Information/Data Quality Disasters from Around the World." IQ Trainwrecks is maintained by members of the International Association for Information & Data Quality (IAIDQ).
IAIDQ define Information Quality as “meeting or exceeding ‘information customer’ expectations”. As for an IQ trainwreck, that's defined as "a problem that affects real people in the real world that has, at its heart, poor quality information or a failure to manage the quality of information."
Here's a sample of what you'll find at the IQ Trainwrecks website:
"A little while ago we shared the story of the Irish Rail train that left the platform at the correct time but somehow forgot 300 passengers, and left with just one visually impaired passenger.
"From a reliable source we have recently learned of the findings of the investigation into what happened. It is a salutory lesson in the importance of processes, and the importance of controls and checks on processes.
"The normal practice for the Irish Rail service is for passengers requiring assistance in boarding to be boarded last. Due to some minor operational issues on the platform that evening, it seems that a controller took the decision to have the visually impaired passenger boarded before the other passengers — reversing the normal run of the process.
"The guard on the train, having satisfied himself that the visually impaired passenger had been boarded safely, proceeded to give the signal for the train to leave — on the assumption that if the last passenger had boarded it was time to go. It would seem that at no time did the presence of 300 people on the platform and the absence of people on the train register with the guard or the controller, so the train left.
"A simple process short-cut, taken for a doubtless sound operational reason, gave information to the guard which, in his view of the process, meant it was time to go. At the risk of a bad pun we could say that ‘tunnel’ vision set in. Any number of small checks (such as a random check on carriages to see if there were any people in them) might have prevented the embarrassing problem.
"The 300 passengers were accommodated on a different train which made an unscheduled stop on its route to connect with a special shuttle service that was laid on to bring the passengers to their destination. Efficient scrap and rework.
"Our source also informs us that the revenue control ticket check statistics for the train that left the passengers behind showed 100% compliance that evening."
Frédéric Bastiat Would Have Done Well on "The Daily Show"
The Frenchman Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850), was a popularizer of economic theory (and a politician) who devoted considerable energy to making fun of illogical thinking about economic issues. A particularly famous instance of his wit is the "Petition of the Candlemakers," Chapter 7 of the first series of Bastiat's Sophismes Èconomiques, published in 1845. In this essay, Bastiat mocks trade protectionists ...
A petition from the manufacturers of candles, tapers, lanterns, sticks, street lamps, snuffers, and extinguishers, and from producers of tallow, oil, resin, alcohol, and generally of everything connected with lighting
To the Honourable Members of the Chamber of Deputies.
Gentlemen: You are on the right track. You reject abstract theories: abundance and affordable prices do not much worry you. You concern yourselves mainly with the fate of the producer. You wish to free him from foreign competition, that is, to reserve the domestic market for domestic industry.
We come to offer you a wonderful opportunity for your — what shall we call it? Your theory? No, nothing is more deceptive than theory. Your doctrine? Your system? Your principle? But you dislike doctrines, you have a horror of systems, as for principles, you deny that there are any in political economy; therefore we shall call it your practice — your practice without theory and without principle.
We are suffering from the ruinous competition of a rival who apparently works under conditions so far superior to our own for the production of light that he is flooding the domestic market with it at an incredibly low price; for, the moment he appears, our sales cease, all the consumers turn to him, and a branch of French industry whose ramifications are innumerable is all at once reduced to complete stagnation. This rival, which is none other than the sun, is waging war on us so mercilessly we suspect he is being stirred up against us by perfidious Albion [England] (excellent diplomacy nowadays!), particularly because he has for that haughty island a respect that he does not show for us. {England is often foggy and overcast.]
We ask you to be so good as to pass a law requiring the closing of all windows, dormers, skylights, inside and outside shutters, curtains, casements, bull's-eyes, deadlights, and blinds — in short, all openings, holes, chinks, and fissures through which the light of the sun is wont to enter houses, to the detriment of the fair industries with which, we are proud to say, we have endowed the country, a country that cannot, without betraying ingratitude, abandon us today to so unequal a combat.
Be good enough, honourable deputies, to take our request seriously, and do not reject it without at least hearing the reasons that we have to advance in its support.
First, if you shut off as much as possible all access to natural light, and thereby create a need for artificial light, what industry in France will not ultimately be encouraged?
If France consumes more tallow, there will have to be more cattle and sheep, and, consequently, we shall see an increase in cleared fields, meat, wool, leather, and especially manure, the basis of all agricultural wealth.
If France consumes more oil, we shall see an expansion in the cultivation of the poppy, the olive, and rapeseed. These rich yet soil-exhausting plants will come at just the right time to enable us to put to profitable use the increased fertility that the breeding of cattle will impart to the land.
Our moors will be covered with resinous trees. Numerous swarms of bees will gather from our mountains the perfumed treasures that today waste their fragrance, like the flowers from which they emanate. Thus, there is not one branch of agriculture that would not undergo a great expansion.
The same holds true of shipping. Thousands of vessels will engage in whaling, and in a short time we shall have a fleet capable of upholding the honour of France and of gratifying the patriotic aspirations of the undersigned petitioners, chandlers, etc.
But what shall we say of the specialities of Parisian manufacture? Henceforth you will behold gilding, bronze, and crystal in candlesticks, in lamps, in chandeliers, in candelabra sparkling in spacious emporia compared with which those of today are but stalls.
There is no needy resin-collector on the heights of his sand dunes, no poor miner in the depths of his black pit, who will not receive higher wages and enjoy increased prosperity.
It needs but a little reflection, gentlemen, to be convinced that there is perhaps not one Frenchman, from the wealthy stockholder of the Anzin Company to the humblest vendor of matches, whose condition would not be improved by the success of our petition.
We anticipate your objections, gentlemen; but there is not a single one of them that you have not picked up from the musty old books of the advocates of free trade. We defy you to utter a word against us that will not instantly rebound against yourselves and the principle behind all your policy.
Will you tell us that, though we may gain by this protection, France will not gain at all, because the consumer will bear the expense?
We have our answer ready:
You no longer have the right to invoke the interests of the consumer. You have sacrificed him whenever you have found his interests opposed to those of the producer. You have done so in order to encourage industry and to increase employment. For the same reason you ought to do so this time too.
Indeed, you yourselves have anticipated this objection. When told that the consumer has a stake in the free entry of iron, coal, sesame, wheat, and textiles, "Yes," you reply, "but the producer has a stake in their exclusion." Very well, surely if consumers have a stake in the admission of natural light, producers have a stake in its interdiction.
"But," you may still say, "the producer and the consumer are one and the same person. If the manufacturer profits by protection, he will make the farmer prosperous. Contrariwise, if agriculture is prosperous, it will open markets for manufactured goods." Very well, If you grant us a monopoly over the production of lighting during the day, first of all we shall buy large amounts of tallow, charcoal, oil, resin, wax, alcohol, silver, iron, bronze, and crystal, to supply our industry; and, moreover, we and our numerous suppliers, having become rich, will consume a great deal and spread prosperity into all areas of domestic industry.
Will you say that the light of the sun is a gratuitous gift of Nature, and that to reject such gifts would be to reject wealth itself under the pretext of encouraging the means of acquiring it?
But if you take this position, you strike a mortal blow at your own policy; remember that up to now you have always excluded foreign goods because and in proportion as they approximate gratuitous gifts. You have only half as good a reason for complying with the demands of other monopolists as you have for granting our petition, which is in complete accord with your established policy; and to reject our demands precisely because they are better founded than anyone else's would be tantamount to accepting the equation: + x + = -; in other words, it would be to heap absurdity upon absurdity.
Labour and Nature collaborate in varying proportions, depending upon the country and the climate, in the production of a commodity. The part that Nature contributes is always free of charge; it is the part contributed by human labour that constitutes value and is paid for.
If an orange from Lisbon sells for half the price of an orange from Paris, it is because the natural heat of the sun, which is, of course, free of charge, does for the former what the latter owes to artificial heating, which necessarily has to be paid for in the market.
Thus, when an orange reaches us from Portugal, one can say that it is given to us half free of charge, or, in other words, at half price as compared with those from Paris.
Now, it is precisely on the basis of its being semigratuitous (pardon the word) that you maintain it should be barred. You ask: "How can French labour withstand the competition of foreign labour when the former has to do all the work, whereas the latter has to do only half, the sun taking care of the rest?" But if the fact that a product is half free of charge leads you to exclude it from competition, how can its being totally free of charge induce you to admit it into competition? Either you are not consistent, or you should, after excluding what is half free of charge as harmful to our domestic industry, exclude what is totally gratuitous with all the more reason and with twice the zeal.
To take another example: When a product — coal, iron, wheat, or textiles — comes to us from abroad, and when we can acquire it for less labour than if we produced it ourselves, the difference is a gratuitous gift that is conferred upon us. The size of this gift is proportionate to the extent of this difference. It is a quarter, a half, or three-quarters of the value of the product if the foreigner asks of us only three-quarters, one-half, or one-quarter as high a price. It is as complete as it can be when the donor, like the sun in providing us with light, asks nothing from us. The question, and we pose it formally, is whether what you desire for France is the benefit of consumption free of charge or the alleged advantages of onerous production. Make your choice, but be logical; for as long as you ban, as you do, foreign coal, iron, wheat, and textiles, in proportion as their price approaches zero, how inconsistent it would be to admit the light of the sun, whose price is zero all day long! [link added]
[Source: Website of Bill Phillips, associate professor of economics at the University of Maine. (The beginning of the essay has been slightly edited.) The original French text can be found here.]
