ORGANIZATIONS

Twentieth Century man, though often lonely, does not live alone. His existence is tied to an ever-increasing number of organizations which, like feudal castles, dot the 20th Century's landscape. They are created by the simple fact that man can no longer alone cope with what Churchill calls the 20th Century's tides and tornadoes. What happens to man in this situation was the problem discussed by the panel on "The Role of the Individual in a World of Institutions."

The Trap. Some organizations are created by the special demands of doing business and producing things in the machine age, e.g., the corporation. Others are caused by man's desire to protect himself against the machine age, e.g., labor unions. To all these, as once to the feudal castles, man owes loyalties.

In all these organizations, the danger exists that man, though the society at large may be democratic, will become a voiceless cipher. As Erwin Canham, editor of the Christian Science Monitor, put it, 20th Century man faces in his organizations "an internal kind of totalitarianism."

This, at least in the minds of many men, tends to make useless the political freedom enjoyed by citizens of a democracy. That kind of sentiment has been an important recruiting agent for communism.

Rugged Clinton Golden, a former locomotive fireman, a leader of the Steelworkers' Union and veteran of half a dozen Government posts dealing with labor elaborated: "The individual sought refuge in organizations [leagues, associations, societies, lobbies, bureaus, granges, cooperatives, parties] in order to protect his own integrity and to win a place in [his] fluctuating environment. . . The organization appeared ... an instrumentality for good. But after a time, the organization took on a life of its own, with ethics of its own."

An individual may join an organization from excellent if misguided motives--as he might join the Nazi or Communist Party in protest against social injustices; once in, the individual has little voice in the organization, which pursues policies of its own, often diametrically opposed to what the individual wanted in the first place. This process, said Golden, "creates a trap." Unless this dilemma can be resolved, the whole fiber of human society is endangered.

Time to Awake. A less sinister, but equally significant situation was described by Vermont's Senator Ralph E. Flanders as existing in mass-production enterprise, where the worker performs a specific operation, planned by people he does not know, often for reasons he does not understand. He has no direct connection with the finished product, no voice as to how it is to be used. He can make up for this loss of influence only through social and political participation in his community.

Merle Tuve, physicist and director of the Carnegie Institution of Washington's Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, summed up: "The broad problem we are examining is whether our society is now so intensively organized that the individual is becoming helpless and ineffective . . ."

The panel offered little relief. The speakers only agreed that the solution lies in increasing the individual's intelligent sense of responsibility, so that he will make his opinions felt within a group. Said Canham: "No human institution can compare with the validity and dynamic power of awakened individual men . . . [Institutions] were put under [man's] feet, and they will stay there as long as man remembers his heritage."

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