GATB-like “ethnic conversion table”nwith its widely used personnel test.nThe Illinois-based testing company opposesnany move to prohibit race-norming.nPragmatism is one thing, but corporatenpersonnel offices also have adoptednthe doubletalk of the bureaucracy.nPanning any use of test results thatnhave not been race-normed, an officialnof Campbell Soup Company ofnOmaha opposed suspension of racenormingnbecause he did not believenthe Labor Department “should dictatensocial policy at the expense of workplacenproductivity.” Huh? A packagingncompany hailed the test-rigging fornproviding “a more representative samplingnwith regard to race.” And thenmanager of a Ford assembly plant nearnAtlanta marveled because race-normingnprovided him applicant pool testscorenpercentages exactly as follows:nwhite male, 31; black male, 42; whitenfemale, 5; black female, 24; Asian, 9;nand Hispanic, 2. Egads. That adds upnto 113 percent, and the Asians andnHispanics appear to have lost theirnsexual identities.nThe larger question race-normingnraises is whether any shred of honestynremains in Big Government, Big Business,nor Big Media.nRobert G. Holland is a columnist andneditorial writer for the RichmondnTimes-Dispatch in Virginia.nA ReactionarynRevolutionnby Ian CrowthernThe Distributist Critiquenof WelfarenIn recent years conservative thinkersnand politicians in Britain and Americanhave mounted a powerful critique ofnwelfare statism and of the “dependencynculture” that it creates. A similar thoughnmore radical critique of the nascentnsocial state was made by a group ofnBritish dissident intellectuals before andnafter the First World War. It is true that,nby and large, the Conservative Partynduring this period was also opposed toninterventionist legislation as a means ofn46/CHRONICLESnimproving society. But their oppositionnwas tactical and spontaneous in character,nand it is difficult to derive from itnany systematically worked-out alternativento collectivism, unless it be thenunreformed capitalism of 19th-centurynEngland. Much more interesting, andnmore relevant today, than the campaignnwaged by Tories against the “New Liberalism”ninside Pariiament was the campaignnwaged outside it by a group thatneventually came to be known as thenDistributists. The sociopolitical philosophynthat gave this movement its namenand inspiration was first formulated bynHilaire Belloc in his book The ServilenState, published in 1912. Belloc advocatednthe “distributive state” in which an’•determining number” of citizensn”should severally own the means ofnproduction.” However, it wasn’t untiln1926 that Belloc, G.K. Chesterton,nand a number of others founded ThenDistributionist League in an attempt tonput the ideas they had previously expressedninto practice as well as print.nDistributist no less than collectivistnideas had their genesis in the “socialnquestion,” which first gained prominencenin the late Victorian andnEdwardian eras. The investigations ofnCharles Booth into conditions in Londonnand of Seerbohm Rowntree intonconditions in York revealed that asnmuch as a third of the population ofnthese cities were living in destitution.nThese studies, thick with grim statisticsnof ill health and stunted growth amongnurban working-class families, correlatednwith army recruitment figuresnshowing that some 40 percent of BoernWar military recruits had been rejectednas unfit. At a time when Germany wasnseen as the main threat to Britain’snimperial and industrial supremacy,nthese revelations excited not just compassionnbut the fear that the IslandnEmpire was imperiled by the physicalndeterioration of its people. Germanynwas a model as well as a threat. It wasnBismarck’s Prussia, after all, which hadnpioneered social reforms in the shapenof national insurance and mass education.nFueled by a mixture of motives,nfrom the purely compassionate to thenimpurely politic, England’s social reformnmovement in the early years ofnthis century had.a powerful head ofnsteam behind it. First came old-agenpensions and the establishment of labornnnexchanges. Then in 1911 there wasnthe National Insurance Act, whichneffectively laid the foundations of Britain’snwelfare state. It was while DavidnLloyd George’s insurance bill was stillnbeing debated in the House of Commonsnthat Hilaire Belloc put the finishingntouches to his prophetic work. ThenServile State; prophetic, because it correctlynforesaw that reformist legislationnwould have as its result a state in whichnthe masses would be “permanentlyndispossessed of the means of production.”nBelloc viewed the nascent collectivistnstate of his time as engaged in anprocess of institutionalizing, by makingntolerable, the proletarian condition tonwhich so many had been reduced sincenthe Industrial Revolution by-large-scalencapitalism.- So apparently inured werensocial reformers at the beginning ofnthis century to the circumstances ofndependence in which masses of peoplenfound themselves, it never occurred tonthem that the circumstances themselvesnmight be altered, instead of onlynsome of the worst consequences arisingnout of them. It was considered impracticalnby the great and the good, whennthe matter was considered at all, tonreturn to the sort of society in whichnmen are either independent producersnor at least exercise some control overntheir productive lives. The scale ofnmodern production and organization,nit was automatically assumed, renderednany such thoughts Utopian, not to saynreactionary. Henceforward, the dispossessedncould look to the state for reliefnfrom poverty and insecurity, but notnfor the restoration of those liberties andnresponsibilities that are proper to freenmen. Regimentation was to replacenexploitation. The working class were tonbe better fed, clothed, educated, andnhoused—but all after a pattern dictatednby their “betters,” namely the politicalnmandarins recruited to run thennew social state that. Leviathan-like,nwas to spread its tentacles into everyncorner of 20th-century life.nThe mounting variety and complexitynof welfare legislation bred a newnclass of administrative experts, whosenOlympian pretensions were encapsulatednin Karl Mannheim’s 1929 definitionnof them as a “disinterested elite.”nFrom the start these experts were “endnof ideology” types inspired less bynvisions of equality than of efficiency.n