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This article compares the efficiency of the coal-fired steam-generated electricity in Great Britain, the U.S. and France in 1970. The authors selected this industry for close examination because it had experienced rapid technological progress, its output is homogeneous and the data available are comparatively good. They found that the average level and rate of growth of fuel productivity in Great Britain industry were less than in France and in the U.S. The authors were careful to state, however, that technological backwardness was not the only interpretation of this result. They were aware that partial productivity measures could be very misleading because the contribution of other inputs, particularly capital, is ignored. Furthermore, this paper shows that the percentage increase in output in Great Britain from 1949-63 was higher than that in France and in the U.S., while the percentage increase in capital, measured by generating capacity, was much lower than in France or the US. This difference could be interpreted as implying that the productivity of capital in Great Britain industry was rising relatively to that in France and in the U.S. and thus that the industry in Great Britain was technologically forward. However, there are other interpretations, because capital productivity is also a partial measure of productivity. Thus, this paper suggests that there is a need a measure of productivity which reflects the simultaneous influence of all inputs and output and a production function provides such a measure. This article also estimates production functions for this industry.

The article discusses the rationale of the participation of Monsanto Co. in the development of nuclear power. First, the operation of nuclear reactors basically concerns chemical engineering. Second, the company consumes huge amounts of electric power, and nuclear power may be a cost-effective alternative. This assertion is validated by Monsanto's research conducted for the U.N. Atomic Energy Commission that electricity produced from a nuclear plant costs only a little more than the cost of generating power from conventional coal-powered plants. Third, Monsanto foresees that it can produce plutonium at a lower price to the government than the prevailing cost.

Fifty years ago the water-borne diseases were the perpetual curse of British cities. Typhoid or enteric fever was the type of them. Rickets, being merely a disease of infancy and childhood, may excite but languid interest in the adult who has no sense of the future, nor of trusteeship for man and destiny. Bronchitis and bronchiolitis and broncho-pneumonia are all diseases of the air-system. The true solution must depend upon the true view of the nature of coal. There is no real and ultimate solution in automatic stokers, powdered coal, devices for catching and consuming smoke; there is nothing but a few trifles in Lord Onslow's Bill for Smoke Abatement, prepared for a recent Parliament; and there will be little more in the Bill promised by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. The promised Bill assumes and accepts the burning of coal, and it does not even profess to touch the resultant problem in the domestic chimney. The labour now needed is that proper to the status of him in whom, too often, and always after long years of success, the Godlike reason fusts unused.