National Economic Problems Research Articles

Ten-year experience in the operation of the Plyavinyas hydroelectric station

1. A complex of national economic problems was solved successfully during construction at the Plyavinyas station. 2. The hydraulic structures and power equipment generally are operating reliably. The seepage characteristics in the majority of structures have not reached the design values. The stresses in the reinforcement of most structural elements have not reached the design values. Settlements and displacements of the powerhouse have decreased considerably, but have not yet stabilized. 3. Problems of the repair of flowing vertical drain wells were not solved when designing the station, which creates operational difficulties. 4. At sharp-peaking hydroelectric stations periodic piezometric observations are insufficient for evaluating the seepage state in the zone of influence of the lower pool level fluctuations. 5. It is necessary to increase the reliability and wear resistance of the electrical and hydraulic equipment intended for sharp-peaking stations.

The Antilles Trade of the Old Regime: A Statistical Overview

The Antilles Trade of the Old Regime: A Statistical Overview After more than a century of laborious research in the Archives Nationaux, various chambers of commerce, and other local depositories, scholars have compiled fairly reliable and complete overseas trade statistics for eighteenth-century France and her four major ports, Nantes, Rouen, Bordeaux, and Marseille.' Gaps remain, and research must continue, but we now have a basic stock of statistical data which affords a general overview of the structure and evolution of French trade at both the local and national levels. But these figures, like other kinds of historical evidence, do not speak for themselves: they must be extracted from a specialized and often inaccessible monographic literature, converted into commensurate statistical series, and placed in a framework and form which illuminate whatever phenomena the historian deems significant. Curiously, this all-important task of reworking, integrating, analyzing, and interpreting the published commercial figures remains largely unassayed. Most of the relevant data are still scattered in obscure books and journals, where they are locked into long, monotonous tables which defy detailed comparative analysis. Though available in print, these statistics have yet to be fully and effectively exploited. This article attempts to remedy this situation with regard to one major commercial sector of the Old Regime: the Antilles trade.2 By restructuring and comparing the relevant commerical statistics for France and her four major ports, we shall try both to fashion a statistical overview of the French Antilles trade in the seventy years before the Revolution and to pinpoint the position of this sector in the general commercial structure of Rouen, Nantes, Bordeaux, and Marseille. In addition to presenting one framework for comparing the commercial structure of individual cities, this discussion will show how port statistics can be used to illuminate national economic problems. In its

Use of probability characteristics of control results

1. The use of different probability characteristics of control results in actual problems depends on whether the consumer or the manufacturer of a product is to utilize the results of their solution. 2. The greatest interest of the product manufacturers is in the characteristics that enable them to evaluate the improperly controlled fraction in the total volume of production, as these characteristics particularly help them to solve problems of optimizing the product control that is intimately connected with its manufacturing technology as well as to solve problems of economic nature associated with expenditure on compensation of defects, process stock, etc. 3. The consumers of large batches of products (wholesale dealers) are interested in the probability characteristics of control results that relate only to the total volume of products that have been found suitable after the control test (customer's risk) as they do not deal with other products (that have been rejected in the control test). These characteristics are unequivocally connected with the previous ones and must be communicated by the manufacturers to the wholesale dealers or must be asked by the customers from the manufacturers. 4. The consumers of individual specimens and small batches of products are interested in the limiting probability characteristics of control results particularly the maximum hypothetical probability of undiscovered defects in products as only this parameter guarantees to the consumer the necessary quality control of a concrete product specimen.

A Victorian Views Reconstruction: The American Diary of Samuel Augustus Barnett

A VICTORIAN VIEWS RECONSTRUCTION: The American Diary of Samuel Augustus Barnett Emily K. Abel At the conclusion of the Civil War, hundreds of visitors from Europe and the northern United States toured the South and recorded their impressions in voluminous diaries and letters. These accounts have formed a major source for historians of the Reconstruction. Samuel Augustus Barnett, a prominent British social reformer, wrote a short journal for his family during a trip to America in 1867, which was recently found among his collected papers. Although Barnett did not venture outside the cities and spoke to members of the middle class almost exclusively, his observations furnish further information about the economic condition of the South and Southern reactions to defeat and to the beginning of Congressional Reconstruction. In addition, the diary reveals the social assumptions from which the Victorians viewed the Reconstruction. Samuel Barnett was one of the leaders who, towards the end of the nineteenth century, sought to arouse his contemporaries to the injustices and inequalities of their society. He did this as a member of the establishment, indignant about the selfishness and parochialism of his class. He was born in Bristol in February, 1844, the son of a manufacturer . Following his graduation from Oxford in June, 1865, he spent a year and a half as a master at Winchester College, a prominent public school, in order to earn enough money to travel to the United States. He embarked on a two-and-a-half month trip on April 6, 1867. Immediately upon his return, he began his career as a social reformer. While serving as a curate in London, he helped to organize the first district committee of the Charity Organization Society, an important philanthropic association. In 1873 he married and became vicar of a church in East London. His decision to reside in this working-class community was a highly unusual one for a man of his background at the time. Residential segregation of the classes in cities was almost complete. Upper-class Englishmen shielded themselves from all unnecessary contact with the poor and even leading radicals confessed their own ignorance about the way the other half actually lived. As vicar of St. Jude's, Barnett attempted to fill the gap in moral and cultural leadership created by the flight of the wealthy from East London. He " I wish to thank the Greater London Record Office for permission to publish portions of the diary, document GLRO/F/BAR/557. 135 136CIVIL WAR HISTORY campaigned for better housing, served as a member of local government boards and philanthropic associations and brought adult education within reach of members of the community. In 1883 Barnett founded Toynbee Hall, the first settlement house, as a means of enabling other young men to follow his example. If a large group of Oxford and Cambridge graduates resided in the community and engaged in practical philanthropy, harmony between the classes might be advanced. By 1900 the settlement had developed into a center of social investigation and reform. Instead of restricting their activities to traditional charitable enterprises, the settlement residents sought to apply new political, social and educational theories to the problems they found around them. It was at Toynbee Hall that many of the men who were later instrumental in establishing the British welfare state first formulated their social policy. Barnett changed with the institution and, as warden, he encouraged this gradual broadening of the settlement's concerns. He spoke less about providing the poor with the example of a leisured class and more about solving the nation's fundamental social and economic problems. Upon his appointment as Canon of Westminster in 1906, Barnett resigned the position of warden but continued to watch closely over the settlement. He died in June, 1913. Barnett's influence lay as much in the force of his personality and writings as in the institution he founded. He wrote frequently for the leading periodicals of his day and remained in close contact with men who were prominent in the fields of government, journalism and social reform. His ponderous, moralizing tone was inspiring to many of his contemporaries who accepted even his homilies as wisdom. W. H. Beveridge , Charles Booth...

Redistribution of Rural Labor Resources

The problem of assuring the planned distribution of rural labor resources is very urgent. The lack of uniformity in the territorial distribution of labor resources is the consequence of the natural historical and socioeconomic circumstances of the development of our nation. One of the forms of the territorial-branch redistribution of labor resources in the village is the organization of the voluntary resettlement of working people and members of their families, which furthers the solution of the most important national economic problem of settling vast landed areas throughout the nation and promotes the economically expedient development of newly irrigated (drained) land and other land, as well as the creation of a permanent work force in the lumber industry, fishing industry, and other branches of industry.

A Socioeconomic Essay

A review of the nation's economic problems for the past decade raises a whole series of serious problems. One asks how Mao Tse-tung has succeeded in foisting his ruinous policy on the nation for virtually the entire decade. Can this be attributed solely to Mao's exceptional abilities or to the purges, repressions, and to his cult of personality, which long ago became entrenched throughout the nation? Such an explanation would be too superficial and would exaggerate the real role played by Mao Tse-tung and his group in the nation's history. But even in such a case, one cannot but consider the fact that there must be some kind of objective conditions underlying both the emergence and long existence of the Mao Tse-tung cult of personality in the nation and the continuous purges and massive repressions. The forces of opposition to Mao Tse-tung have been so disorganized that they have not been able to influence the course of events with sufficient effectiveness.

Currency and Financial Cooperation among Comecon Members

The economy of the countries in the world socialist system develops and grows stronger. The industrial output of socialist countries was about ten times greater in 1965 than on that same territory in 1937; in capitalist countries it increased by 3.4 times during the same period. An important prerequisite for the rapid economic development of fraternal countries is to deepen their economic and technological cooperation and unite their efforts to solve national economic problems.

National Economic Problems and Prospects

National Economic Problems and Prospects

Increasing product quality is the most important national economic problem

Increasing product quality is the most important national economic problem

Discussion: Relation of Chronic Low Farm Incomes to Major National Economic Problems

In summary, since passage of the Employment Act of 1946, the task of opening up and creating the new jobs needed to put unemployed workers back to work has been recognized as a national responsibility. In our approach to involuntary underemployment in rural areas, however, we are still plagued by the view that an underemployed worker ought himself to create the job needed to correct his underemployment. We have come close to institutionalizing this view in what is now widely called operation bootstrap. We need to recognize that the problem of involuntary underemployment is as much a national problem as is that of large-scale urban unemployment; that it needs to be taken account of in our national employment statistics and in our national employment policies; and that programs extending to rural areas, little more than pep talks and slogans coined from time-worn cliches, are feeble instruments for the correction of large involuntary rural underemployment.

Relation of Chronic Low Farm Incomes to Major National Economic Problems

Relation of Chronic Low Farm Incomes to Major National Economic Problems

On Developing Collectivism in Scientific Work

The remarkable successes achieved in fulfilling the Seven-Year Plan are the result of the selfless labor of the heroic working class, the splendid collective-farm peasantry, our remarkable intelligentsia, the great creative activity of the entire Soviet people, the tremendous organizational and educational work of the Communist Party. This statement, contained in the decision of the July Plenum of the Party Central Committee, fully applies to the scientific workers and teaching personnel of the higher schools, who have contributed much creative initiative and labor to solving the national economic problems and the tasks of technical progress.

Richard Stafford Cripps, 1889-1952

Stafford Cripps was a man who ‘believed firmly’ and ‘did faithfully.’ He was one of the few to whom the opportunity was given to match his great qualities with the needs of a great hour—a critical hour in the history of Britain. It was written of him when he died that he had been ‘for twenty years one of the most remarkable individual forces in British politics’* ; but in his public life his culminating achievement—that which has had a lasting effect on the social and economic history of Britain and that by which his character can best be judged—was his conduct in the years after October 1947 when he became the first man to combine the offices of Minister of Economic Affairs and Chancellor of the Exchequer. All he did then was based on his intense feeling of the public need and his simple conviction that the nation could overcome its economic problems only by improvement in productive effort combined with restraint in expenditure. He expressed this conviction firmly and courageously in his policy, but above all, and this was his great personal achievement, he was able to impress the same conviction on the Trade Union leaders. He did more than any man to get across to the Trades Union Congress the realities of the national economic problems and to make Trade Unionists realize that the only sure way to improve earnings and standards of living was to increase the productivity of labour. * The Times 22 April 1952.

The End of the Beginning

ANYONE, architect or layman, who tries seriously to understand and /- appreciate the best contemporary architecture produced in Britain today, -*-• JMs likely to become depressed and bewildered. He will be depressed by a lack of imagination and of quality, by an austerity which seems depressing rather than stimulating, and by his failure to find more than the faintest stirrings of original thought. He will be bewildered by the suggestion of innumerable influences dimly felt and often discernable as second or third hand, and by minor changes of emphasis or direction which never seem to develop. In partial explanation and apology we can say that the architect is passing through hard times and that, like other artists, he is struggling to survive. He is certainly up against three very serious problems. The first, of course, is a set of economic circumstances which makes the control and rationing of buildings and building materials necessary. The second is a lack of inspiration or direction from within the profession, and the third a shortage of craftsmen capable of carrying out anything more than the most elementary building. These three problems are interconnected; it is, for instance, often necessary to be experimental and even wasteful in our building if we are to achieve dramatic advances, and in present-day Britain this would possibly be illegal and would certainly be regarded by many as anti-social. Again, the process of developing and refining form which appears so necessary to the continued development of modern architecture requires first class craftsmen, and first class craftsmen can only be trained on good work, which has become so expensive as to be rarely possible without breaking the law or ruining the client. As architects we cannot solve national economic problems with architectural theory, though we can avoid making fools of ourselves by pushing extravagantly uneconomic designs for muddled aesthetic or political reasons. It seems possible, however, that architects can do a lot to solve the other two problems of a lack of direction in design and a shortage of skilled craftsmen. Considering the first of these issues, we find if we examine the history of the modern movement in Britain, that there has been, during and since the war, a very significant change in the attitude of the general public to modern architecture, a change which is reflected very clearly in the work of the architect.

Probable Effects of a National Emergency on Marketing Functions and Policies

N ACCEPTING a place on your program to discuss the topic assigned, I want to make it quite clear that I did not accept the responsibility of defining what constitutes a national emergency, or of making any prediction as to whether such an emergency will arise in the immediate future. I am not even aware of the definitions which your program committee had in mind when this topic was selected. I strongly suspect, however, that whatever their definitions they would now agree that nothing has developed or confronts this country at the present time which can in any sense be described as a national emergency. I am obliged, therefore, to discuss the problem in rather general and abstract terms, directing my analysis toward suggesting what might be some of the effects of any drastic and sudden shift in the conditions of supply and demand arising from any cause whatever. One broad aspect of the problem I may be permitted to dismiss with a word in passingnamely, the special problem of conducting marketing operations under increasing government regulations. Increasing government controls over price, production, and distribution facilities such as transportation might actually constitute the crux of the problem of marketing during a national crisis. On the other hand, marketing is likely to be subjected to an increased number and variety of government controls in the immediate future as in the immediate past, whether or not a national emergency arises. A recent publication of the Brookings Institution emphasized the inescapable fact that government is the architect who designs the business system and that the business man inevitably is obliged to find means of adjusting himself to a constantly changing business structure. Business has been accused of harboring rigidities of various kinds in its price structures, in its marketing methods, and in its views of national economic and social problems. To me it appears that the business man has exhibited a vast amount of flexibility-that quality which economists cherish so much-in adjusting himself to the new rules of the business game as fast as they are devised by economists and others in Washington. Every going concern in the United States might well post up over its portals the sign sometimes displayed by retail establishments-No interruptions to business while alterations are proceeding. The major problem with respect to marketing during a crisis has frequently been stated as the transition from a buyer's market to a seller's market. Accepting that formulation of the issue, I will attempt to show that it should be applied with important reservations and that marketing of most products would go on in much the same way as before. I will deal briefly with four aspects of the problem in turn-namely, the probable effects of a national emergency on (a) underlying conditions of supply and demand

Unemployment Insurance and Its New Problems in Employment Counseling

In the third of his series of background articles on national economic and labor problems that hold special interest for vocational counselors, Dr. Feldman herewith presents facts and comments on a most important activity authorized under the Social Security Act. Opinions expressed are those of the author alone. Another article in this series will appear in an early issue of this magazine.