PUBLIC OPINION by WALTER LIPPMANN TO FAYE LIPPMANN ...

system of truth than that which arises spontaneously in the amateur's
mind. But experience has shown that the traditional lawyer's equipment
was not enough assistance. The Great Society had grown furiously and
to colossal dimensions by the application of technical knowledge. It
was made by engineers who had learned to use exact measurements and
quantitative analysis. It could not be governed, men began to
discover, by men who thought deductively about rights and wrongs. It
could be brought under human control only by the technic which had
created it. Gradually, then, the more enlightened directing minds have
called in experts who were trained, or had trained themselves, to make
parts of this Great Society intelligible to those who manage it. These
men are known by all kinds of names, as statisticians, accountants,
auditors, industrial counsellors, engineers of many species,
scientific managers, personnel administrators, research men,
"scientists," and sometimes just as plain private secretaries. They
have brought with them each a jargon of his own, as well as filing
cabinets, card catalogues, graphs, loose-leaf contraptions, and above
all the perfectly sound ideal of an executive who sits before a
flat-top desk, one sheet of typewritten paper before him, and decides
on matters of policy presented in a form ready for his rejection or
approval.
This whole development has been the work, not so much of a spontaneous
creative evolution, as of blind natural selection. The statesman, the
executive, the party leader, the head of a voluntary association,
found that if he had to discuss two dozen different subjects in the
course of the day, somebody would have to coach him. He began to
clamor for memoranda. He found he could not read his mail. He demanded
somebody who would blue-pencil the interesting sentences in the
important letters. He found he could not digest the great stacks of
type-written reports that grew mellow on his desk. He demanded
summaries. He found he could not read an unending series of figures.
He embraced the man who made colored pictures of them. He found that
he really did not know one machine from another. He hired engineers to
pick them, and tell him how much they cost and what they could do. He
peeled off one burden after another, as a man will take off first his
hat, then his coat, then his collar, when he is struggling to move an
unwieldy load.
3
Yet curiously enough, though he knew that he needed help, he was slow
to call in the social scientist. The chemist, the physicist, the
geologist, had a much earlier and more friendly reception.
Laboratories were set up for them, inducements offered, for there was
quick appreciation of the victories over nature. But the scientist who
has human nature as his problem is in a different case. There are many
reasons for this: the chief one, that he has so few victories to