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ter how successful he had been, as chief administrator of the 

 Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company of America. 



The wise man who does not know asks the man who does. 

 This explains, in part, the flood of questionnaires. The ad- 

 ministrators were taking a correspondence course in the 

 affairs of the food business, about which they knew little but 

 were hired to administer. 



Furthermore, it is necessary for the administrators of a 

 controlled food economy to get current information which 

 was formerly available in the form of prices in the market 

 place. Under a price economy all distributive agencies get 

 such information all the time. They carry it in their heads 

 and act upon it at once. It is therefore not necessary for them 

 to use questionnaires. If they did they would soon be out 

 of business. The questionnaire has been unjustly abused. 

 It is a vital cog in the logistics of a regimented civilian econ- 

 omy. 



The administrators who write the rules of the game are 

 without experience. The most difficult task an administrator 

 has is to attempt to teach the 125 millions what he himself 

 does not know. 



Even if he did know, he has the impossible task of averag- 

 ing out the wants of people. He cannot write 125 million sets 

 of executive rules one for each civilian. They usually fall 

 in one category; and at best only two or three. The admin- 

 istrator's task is very difficult because he cannot meet the 

 economic requirements of our freedoms and at the same time 

 force people into two or three economic strait- jackets. 



Under the price mechanism there can be millions of pat- 

 terns as easily as three. 



New Bureaucracy Necessary 



Some persons point out the disadvantages of the multi- 

 plication and overlapping of Washington agencies which 



