Katherine MacLean

“ He was deep in the symbology of human motives and the equations of human behavior in groups. After running through a few different types of grower and shrinker type organizations, we came back to the snowball, and decided to run the test by making something grow.
"You add the motives," he said, "and the equation will translate them into organization."
"How about a good selfish reason for the ins to drag others into the group—some sort of bounty on new members, a cut of their membership fee?" ”

“ Please, Professor Caswell! That would hardly be a recommendation. Washington, the New Deal and the present Administration are somewhat touchy subjects to the men I have to deal with. They consider its value debatable, if you know what I mean. If they got the idea that sociology professors are giving advice and guidance—No, we have to stick to brass tacks and leave Washington out of this. What, specifically, has the work of this specific department done that would make it as worthy to receive money as—say, a heart disease research fund? ”

“ We'd better pick a little group that no one in his right mind would expect to grow."
"There should be a suitable club—"
Picture Professor Caswell, head of the Department of Sociology, and with him the President of the University, leaning across the table toward each other, sipping coffee and talking in conspiratorial tones over something they were writing in a notebook.
That was us.
"Ladies," said the skinny female chairman of the Watashaw Sewing Circle. "Today we have guests." She signaled for us to rise, and we stood up, bowing to polite applause and smiles. ”

“ In working on the problem, I found that the mathematics of open system, as introduced to biology by Ludwig von Bertalanffy and George Kreezer, could be used as a base that would enable me to develop a specifically social mathematics, expressing the human factors of intermeshing authority and motives in simple formulas.
"By these formulations, it is possible to determine automatically the amount of growth and period of life of any organization. The UN, to choose an unfortunate example, is a shrinker type organization. ”

“ We left the diagram of organization and our typed copy of the new bylaws with her and went off soberly, as befitted two social science experimenters. We didn't start laughing until our car passed the town limits and began the climb for University Heights.
If Caswell's equations meant anything at all, we had given that sewing circle more growth drives than the Roman Empire.
Four months later I had time out from a very busy schedule to wonder how the test was coming along. Passing Caswell's office, I put my head in. He looked up from a student research paper he was correcting. ”

“ A businessman is constantly dealing with organizations, including his own, and finding them either inert, cantankerous, or both. Caswell's formula could be a handle to grasp them with. Gratitude alone would bring money into the university in carload lots. ”

“ The United Organization of Church and Secular Charities." That's what it said. Below began the rules of membership.
I looked up. The speaker, with a clear, determined voice and conscious, forceful gestures, had entered the homestretch of her speech, an appeal to the civic pride of all citizens of Watashaw.
"With a bright and glorious future—potentially without poor and without uncared-for ill—potentially with no ugliness, no vistas which are not beautiful—the best people in the best planned town in the country—the jewel of the United States." ”

“ Tack power drives on a sewing circle and
you can needle the world into the darndest mess!
"All right," I said, "what is sociology good for?"
Wilton Caswell, Ph.D., was head of my Sociology Department, and right then he was mad enough to chew nails. On the office wall behind him were three or four framed documents in Latin that were supposed to be signs of great learning, but I didn't care at that moment if he papered the walls with his degrees. I had been appointed dean and president to see to it that the university made money. ”

“ She paused and then leaned forward intensely, striking her clenched hand on the speaker's stand with each word for emphasis.
"All we need is more members. Now get out there and recruit!"
I finally recognized Mrs. Searles, as an answering sudden blast of sound half deafened me. The crowd was chanting at the top of its lungs: "Recruit! Recruit!" ”

“ The curve was definitely some sort of log curve now, growing more rapidly with each increase.
"Leaving out practical limitations for a moment, where does the formula say it will stop?" I asked.
"When you run out of people to join it. But after all, there are only so many people in Watashaw. It's a pretty small town."
"They've opened a branch office in New York," I said carefully into the phone, a few weeks later.
With my pencil, very carefully, I extended the membership curve from where it was then. ”

“ They probably would.
"No," he continued. "We'll just let it play out to the end of its tether and die of old age."
"When will that be?"
"It can't grow past the female population of the town. There are only so many women in Watashaw, and some of them don't like sewing." ”