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36 Economics in One LessonIn the depression of 1932, the game of blaming unemploymenton the machines started all over again. Within a few months the doctrinesof a group calling themselves the Technocrats had spreadthrough the country like a forest fire. I shall not weary the reader witha recital of the fantastic figures put forward by this group or with correctionsto show what the real facts were. It is enough to say that theTechnocrats returned to the error in all its native purity that machinespermanently displace men—except that, in their ignorance, they presentedthis error as a new and revolutionary discovery of their own.It was simply one more illustration of Santayana’s aphorism that thosewho cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.The Technocrats were finally laughed out of existence; but theirdoctrine, which preceded them, lingers on. It is reflected in hundredsof make-work rules and feather-bed practices by labor unions; andthese rules and practices are tolerated and even approved because ofthe confusion on this point in the public mind.Testifying on behalf of the United States Department of Justicebefore the Temporary National Economic Committee (better knownas the TNEC) in March, 1941, Corwin Edwards cited innumerableexamples of such practices. The electrical union in New York City wascharged with refusal to install electrical equipment made outside ofNew York State unless the equipment was disassembled and reassembledat the job site. In Houston, Texas, master plumbers and theplumbing union agreed that piping prefabricated for installationwould be installed by the union only if the thread were cut off oneend of the pipe and new thread were cut at the job site. Various localsof the painters’ union imposed restrictions on the use of spray guns,restrictions in many cases designed merely to make work by requiringthe slower process of applying paint with a brush. A local of theteamsters’ union required that every truck entering the New Yorkmetropolitan area have a local driver in addition to the driver alreadyemployed. In various cities the electrical union required that if anytemporary light or power was to be used on a construction job theremust be a full-time maintenance electrician, who should not be permittedto do any electrical construction work. This rule, according to