"H. Beam Piper - Day of the Moron" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piper H Beam)

"So are we," Cronnin nodded.

"All right, then. Since the I.F.A.W. is the complaining party in this question, perhaps you gentlemen
should state the grounds for your complaints."

Fields and Cronnin exchanged glances: Cronnin nodded to Fields and the latter rose. The two employees
in question, he stated, had been the victims of discrimination and persecution because of union activities.
Koffler was the union shop-steward for the men employed by the Melroy Engineering Corporation, and
Burris had been active in bringing complaints about unfair employment practices. Furthermore, it was the
opinion of the I.F.A.W. that the psychological tests imposed on their members had been a fraudulent
pretext for dismissing these two men, and, in any case, the practice of compelling workers to submit to
such tests was insulting, degrading, and not a customary condition of employment.

With that, he sat down. Melroy was on his feet at once.

"I'll deny those statements, categorically and seriatim," he replied. "They are based entirely upon
misrepresentations made by the two men who were disqualified by the tests and dropped from my
payroll because of being, in the words of my contract with your union, 'persons of unsound mind,
deficient intelligence and/or emotional instability.' What happened is that your local official, Crandall,
accepted everything they told him uncritically, and you accepted everything Crandall told you, in the same
spirit.

"Before I go on," Melroy continued, turning to Lyons, "have I your permission to let Dr. Rives explain
about these tests, herself, and tell how they were given and evaluated?"
Permission granted by Lyons, Doris Rives rose. At some length, she explained the nature and purpose of
the tests, and her method of scoring and correlating them.

"Well, did Mr. Melroy suggest to you that any specific employee or employees of his were undesirable
and ought to be eliminated?" Fields asked.

"Certainly not!" Doris Rives became angry. "And if he had, I'd have taken the first plane out of here. That
suggestion is insulting! And for your information, I never met Mr. Melroy before day-before-yesterday
afternoon; I am not dependent upon him for anything; I took this job as an accommodation to Dr. Karl
von Heydenreich, who ordinarily does such work for the Melroy company, and I'm losing money by
remaining here. Does that satisfy you?"

"Yes, it does," Fields admitted. He was obviously impressed by mention of the distinguished Austrian
psychologist's name. "If I may ask Mr. Melroy a question: I gather that these tests are given to all your
employees. Why do you demand such an extraordinary level of intelligence from your employees, even
common laborers?"

"Extraordinary?" Melroy echoed. "If the standards established by those tests are extraordinary, then God
help this country; we are becoming a race of morons! I'll leave that statement to Dr. Rives for
confirmation; she's already pointed out that all that is required to pass those tests is ordinary adult mental
capacity.

"My company specializes in cybernetic-control systems," he continued. "In spite of a lot of misleading
colloquial jargon about 'thinking machines' and 'giant brains', a cybernetic system doesn't really think. It
only does what it's been designed and built to do, and if somebody builds a mistake into it, it will