Katy Johnson and Nicholas Johnson interview on WSUI, September 1, 1965

Speaker 1: The recent death on our campus of Professor Wendell Johnson has had one salutary characteristic to it, and that is it has brought home, to Iowa city, his two children Nicholas Johnson, Maritime Administrator and Katie Johnson who is with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Toronto. Both of you have distinguished yourselves in work at a very early age and so I think our audience will be very interested in hearing what progress you have to report in your individual careers. Katie, since it's our practice to have ladies go first, what are you doing at the CBC? Katie Johnson: It doesn't really have a name, I'm afraid. Speaker 1: That's better than some of the circumstances you could be in. Katie Johnson: I better start with when I arrived in Toronto. Speaker 1: That was after you left Iowa city, as I recall... Katie Johnson: I was in Europe for two years and I came through here and I was here for several months and then I went to Toronto. I got hired as hostess on a Toronto public affairs television series. Speaker 1: Is this television [inaudible] or something? Katie Johnson: No, it's called Generation, a very serious-minded sort of show. It had to do with getting the older generation and the younger generations together, and- Speaker 1: Did it ever work out? Katie Johnson: Yes, compared to other shows, and there aren't really any other shows like that. Speaker 1: Now this is television already? Katie Johnson: This is television, and I also then was story editor of that program. Then, last year I continued to do that but dropped the story editing on that and went with another program called This Hour Has Seven Days, which is a one hour a week, prime-time show in Canada. What they were trying to do is something very interesting, as you probably know, Canadian television is half commercial and half non-commercial. In public affairs, no commercials are allowed so it's like one great big non-commercial network in public affairs. This Hour Has Seven Days, which was the name of the show, came on right after Bonanza which is carried on the CBC and they were trying to carry that audience through an hour of public affairs. Which was something new, because most public affairs in Canada tends to be a bit on the dried up side. Speaker 1: So how long has the program been off the air? Katie Johnson: It's still on the air, and it achieved the highest rating of any series in CBC history. Speaker 1: I see, maybe this does work then. Gave them a little Pablum and then gave them something to think about. Katie Johnson: Except that the Pablum wasn't all on Bonanza. Speaker 1: Some of it was on the CBC? Katie Johnson: It was a magazine format, and they did a variety of things on each show and they mixed it up. They had comedy, it was a little bit like That Was The Week That Was. They also had things which were definitely not comedy, and they did a lot of studio interviews and also film stories, and every fourth Sunday was a one-hour solid documentary. Speaker 1: Did you appear on the program or write it? Katie Johnson: Yes I did some interviewing on it. I was hired as a combination researcher-interviewer, so I was mainly doing research about 16 hours a day. Speaker 1: I'm sure many of our listeners will recall your series of children's programs on WMT Television, was that for two consecutive years or summers or...? Katie Johnson: Two summers. Speaker 1: That had something to do with the Ford Foundation as I recall, or one of the foundations, did it not? Katie Johnson: I believe it was subsidized, I don't know who was subsidizing it. Speaker 1: Did that experience put you in good stead with the CBC do you think? Katie Johnson: In terms of getting a job and saying I did this and that, I don't really think it did too much because that had been two years ago and it sounded very far away. Iowa really sounds far away when you're in Toronto. I think that personally, it certainly, in a more basic sense, gave me marvelous training. In fact, I have sort of been missing, in a sense, in Toronto I have found that it's very, very rare that you go into a situation of the kind that I was lucky enough to go into it at WMT and Cedar Rapids where you were hired, although I was quite young then and really inexperienced, they sort of threw you a ball and let you carry it. I find that that was just marvelous training, I'm terribly grateful for it because most producers tend to be a little bit tighter than that. Speaker 1: Working with children is a fairly unpredictable kind of an experience in itself, isn't it? There was no way of controlling precisely what would happen on your program. Katie Johnson: No, and we didn't want to. The unpredictability of it, I think was part of the fun involved. Speaker 1: Would you have any idea what your brother is doing as Maritime Administrator? Katie Johnson: No. Speaker 1: Well this would be an excellent opportunity for us to find out. What does the Maritime Administrator do? I know it has something to do with the merchant shipping in this country but there must be a more complicated explanation. Nicholas J.: I'm sure I could make it more complicated, actually we're in the business of subsidizing shipping and I must say, I, in many ways I would rather be in the business of subsidizing children's television programs, but in any event, that's not an option given to me in this position. Maritime Administration is an agency of about 2500 employees and a budget of about 350 million dollars a year. Its principal programs in terms of budget involves subsidizing the operation of ships, some 300 ships owned by 15 companies and subsidizing the construction of ships. This is a subsidy program not for the shipping companies but for the ship yards. For about 15 merchant ships a year, and that costs us another 100 million dollars. In addition, we have other very important programs, but without that budgetary consequence, we're responsible for the United States Merchant Marine Academy at King's Point. This is the West Point in Annapolis of the Merchant Marine, as well as five state academies. We have a responsibility for the reserve fleets of merchant ships. There's some 1600 ships around the United States and eight different fleets. Speaker 1: These are the sort of thing we find up the Hudson River? Nicholas J.: That's right, sometimes referred to as The Mothball. Speaker 1: Mm-hmm (affirmative), often filled with grain too? Nicholas J.: They were, up until about a year and a half ago, but that was a program that's been phased out shortly after I came in. We also have a research and development program. The United States has the world's only nuclear powered merchant ship, the NS Savannah. This is a Maritime Administration project along with the Atomic Energy Commission. We're also doing work with hydrofoils, the HS Denison was the world's only ocean-going hydrofoil. And we're now doing research in- Katie Johnson: Can I interrupt a minute? Speaker 1: Certainly. Katie Johnson: What is a hydrofoil? Nicholas J.: Well I think that's a good question. It's a ship that rides up, [inaudible] it's hull is out of the water, the motor end is in the water, the propeller. There are foils on the ship, very much like an airplane's wings and the same lift effect is provided in the water that the airplane's wing provides in the air. The foil is underneath the ship so the effect is that the hull of the ship is lifted up out of the water and the ship rides through the water on the foil rather than on the hull of the ship. Speaker 1: Now you know what a hydrofoil is. They put them into an operation on the Hudson River again [crosstalk] just recently for transportation much like the ferry boats they used to do. I guess they are rather successful except for debris in the river. Nicholas J.: I had the opportunity to pilot one of these, I don't whether you call it drive it or fly it or sail it, or whatever it was I was doing, but I was hanging on to a wheel. It has the capability to cut through a four by four. Katie Johnson: How fast? Nicholas J.: About whatever speed you want to make one go, these on the Hudson operate about 50 knots, 50 miles an hour, but there's nothing to keep you from designing one that would go 100 miles an hour. Speaker 1: They're making some great big ones aren't they, the passenger carrying [inaudible] [crosstalk] Nicholas J.: The Russians have one, which they quite symbolically call Sputnik which carries 300 passengers comfortably and 700 with presumably some discomfort. It operates on [inaudible] at about 70 knots. Speaker 1: You spoke of your primary purpose as being to subsidize shipping and ship building in the United States, and I know that the question of subsidy and subsidization of American transportation is one that is troubled the President a great deal. He has taken some steps to improve, we know, city transit systems, and I understand that was a major step forward though I'm not entirely conversant with the problems involved. What sort of development is most needed in your field? Nicholas J.: I think the principal problem in American shipping for the last 100 years really, has been one of making it more competitive, making it more productive. Speaker 1: Competitive within the country or [inaudible] the country? Nicholas J.: I mean internationally competitive, because by definition the shipping business is a worldwide, international business, so your standard of competitiveness is that of the foreign nation not of the United States. In the middle part of the 19th century, we had the capability in this country of building ships, about 10 thousand dollars cheaper than they could be built in Great Britain. We operated the world's largest and fastest sailing ships. The famous Clipper ships out of Baltimore and elsewhere on the East Coast. We were very [inaudible] engaged in the shipping business at that time, and then along came Steele and Steen and we decided that this should inspire us to build ever greater sailing ships and we continued along that course until the early part of the 20th century, and then in World War 1 launched a massive ship building program which was concluded somewhat after the war leaving us with a great supply of ships. Ever since then we've been subsidizing the operation of shipping in the United States. Speaker 1: The competition, I think, from other nations has grown much more intense hasn't it? Nicholas J.: Yes, without question. Speaker 1: I recall a recent article by Joseph Craft which I think you have seen. It was an editorial column which I saw reprinted in the St. Louis Post dispatch. It had to do with the question of the 50% quota on shipping of Russian wheat or something that was to be bought, Russian corn or something was to be bought in this country. I have just the smattering of a hint as to what it's all about, but are you involved in that? Nicholas J.: Yes, very much. Actually, at the time- Speaker 1: Explain the problem and then tell me what the answer is. Nicholas J.: In a general sense, we have a law in the United States referred to as PL 480 and also PL 664, both of which provide that shipments of agricultural surpluses out of the United States is a part of government programs, will be carried 50% in American flagged ships. This creates some problem just in terms of competing for shipping in the world, this is obviously a discriminatory favoritism for our own ships. The most severe problem is created by the fact that because our ships are uncompetitive in, other than the subsidized segment, it means that we must charge more to move this grain on our ships than it would cost at world rates, roughly 2 to 3 times the world rate. This amounts to a lot of money, and therefor a country which has an option to buy from the United States or buy elsewhere, would often prefer to buy elsewhere and save the extra shipping, the charges. The Russian wheat transaction, the first one was just been resolved at the time I came into the office in March of 1964. Since then there have been no more large wheat sales and large [inaudible] many believe, because of this requirement. It constitutes one of the principal issues that the Maritime Advisory Committee, and the Interdepartmental Maritime Task Force are now looking at in Washington. Speaker 1: It is kind of too bad, that in one area where we have had a great surplus and here we had an opportunity to get rid of some of that surplus and other kind of subsidy, of course we had farm subsidies for many years. Another kind of subsidy is now militating against that development, isn't it? Nicholas J.: Yes, it's effect the balance of payments, the surplus that we have that we're not getting rid of and what we could do with it in terms of feeding other peoples throughout the world. Ironically enough, also of course, preventing the availability of jobs to longshoreman and seaman who would otherwise be carrying these commodities who have nothing to carry. Speaker 1: I want to come back to a question which has always bothered me with you and Nick, and that is whether most of the American shipping isn't actually under somebody else's flag anyway, but you'd be mulling over a response and try to straighten me out while I inquire of your sister Katie, why she said Iowa seems such a long way from Toronto? Toronto doesn't seem a very long way to me. We hear, here, the CBC a good deal, the CBC radio. Katie Johnson: I don't really mean that in a sense that they look down upon, something in that way, but they tend to pronounce it "Ohio". Speaker 1: Or "Utah". Katie Johnson: Or "Idaho". Speaker 1: Are you developing big city ways or does coming back to Iowa City, is that the kind of a thing you look forward to? Katie Johnson: Definitely, it's a hometown. Speaker 1: I remember you as a saxophone player. I really should've promised not to bring this up, but you may remember that at the age of 15 or thereabouts you played the saxophone in the All-State Music Camp. For some reason I was a member of the faculty that year, and so I always rather picture you carrying along an E flat alto saxophone and a paper bag or something, but you're no longer interested in music of course there is a period of saxophone players never were interested in music. Katie Johnson: I've enjoyed the saxophone very much, I know it doesn't sound very lady-like, but I did. I just bought a piano in Toronto, and I enjoy playing the piano very much. Speaker 1: You have had more experiences in radio than most of us who are working in educational radio. You went abroad and did some interviews I know about and I don't know how you disposed of the interviews, someone bought them, did they not? Katie Johnson: I shipped some back to [inaudible] which was operating then. The first year I was over I did a weekly interview for WMT. Speaker 1: How do you characterize the difference between our radio and your radio? It's half commercial, you say [crosstalk] Katie Johnson: You mean Canadian radio? Speaker 1: Yes, mm-hmm (affirmative). [crosstalk] Katie Johnson: There is also a lot of commercial radio in Canada. Speaker 1: Which is not owned and operated by the CBC. Katie Johnson: Mm-mm (negative) Not at all. However, I think that the commercial radio is pretty much like it is here, but luckily the CBC being a national network, and being half non-commercial, they do much more in the ways of radio documentary and even radio drama is still bigger there than it is in the States. Speaker 1: I heard a series from the CBC and I mentioned it to you earlier, I think you said it was called Brain Drain or it was at least based on the complaint which we're hearing in England and I hadn't any idea we were hearing it in Canada that vast numbers of the most talented people are leaving the country and going south, as they call it, into the United States. How serious a problem does this seem to be from your standpoint in Toronto? Katie Johnson: [crosstalk] They wonder what I'm doing there and I tell them I them re-birthing the [inaudible] I think that it's very hard for me to answer, because I've only been there for two years. I know that at the CBC, sometimes the very top producers use it as a training ground and then leave. However, I think you find in television that a lot of producers use television as a training ground and then go into film. I think that that's partly not because they necessarily want to go to the States. They like the comparative non-commercial atmosphere, especially in something like public affairs. The CBC is having very sad difficulties right now. Speaker 1: I had read a report, or a report was issued criticizing- Katie Johnson: Producers have been leaving because of conflicts between the quote "creative side" and the quote "administrative side". The producers think that there's been a little too much censorship and that's caused some people to leave. If they could get that straightened up, I think that very top people would stay there just because of the atmosphere. Speaker 1: Do you think they will straighten it out? Katie Johnson: I think they're on the way to. Speaker 1: Nick, I promised to ask you about this business of sailing under false colors. It seems to me every time I hear about an American owned ship it's flying the flag of Panama. Is there a good deal of that goes on and do you have any control over American owned shipping that flies somebody else's flag? Nicholas J.: Well, there are a number of related issues here. The first point to make is that by all odds, most shipping out of the United States is on foreign flagged ships. Well over 90%. Speaker 1: These are not necessarily owned by Americans. Nicholas J.: No, but they are flying a foreign flag. Of those, perhaps one third are foreign flagships owned by American citizens, we should perhaps explain why anyone would want to bother to do this. The answer is that an American flagship, one registered here, is required by law to carry an American crew, and the owner is required to replace his ships and replace them in American shipyards. Since American shipyards cost over twice as much as foreign shipyards, and the American crews get three to five times as much in wages as the foreign crews, is really precluded economically from engaging in this kind of business unless he subsidized, and there are operators who are not subsidized. So that gives you little option but to operate ships, build in foreign yards, and man with foreign crews. This he can do, but then he must register his ships in a foreign country, and it's usually a country like Panama or Liberia or Honduras where it's the countries that favor this kind of registration. Speaker 1: When you subsidize, what is the ostensible reason on the case of our airlines we subsidize through Airmail stamps. [inaudible] postage is one way, we pay a lot of money for them to carry our mail whether there's any Airmail on it or not, am I correct here [crosstalk] Nicholas J.: That was true at one point in time, actually the airlines now, I think, are really paid straight commercial rates for carrying the mail, much as they would be for any other cargo. I don't think it's, today, really a concealed subsidy. Speaker 1: What do you do to help an American shipper or an American- Nicholas J.: The ship operating subsidy is paid, presumably, under a theory that we need to have ships operating with American flags on them. This means with American crews and there is a defense need for ships of this character, although we feel we also have control over ships owned by Americans operating under foreign flags. The subsidy is designed to pay a difference between the American cost of operation and the foreign cost of operation. 85% of what we pay out of this 200 million dollars are year is, in fact, a wage subsidy. It pays the difference between the foreign wage and the American wage. The rest of the amount we pay out, it goes for insurance, subsistence, and other smaller items of that kind. Roughly three fourths of what the seaman receives in wages comes from the United States government. This is what interjects a remarkably confusing element into the judgment of the American ship owner. He's one of the only American employers who's paying, in effect, Japanese wages, you see, to his men. He doesn't have to pay them minimum wage. As a consequence, he doesn't have the incentive to cut back on his labor costs through increased productivity. It is then a part of consequence of this, that we perpetuate the subsidy system and are not becoming more competitive than we are. Speaker 1: We know of a lot of rather sordid developments along the coastline of our country. I think of some of the problems involving the various unions and some criminal elements operating within various unions having to do with the handling of cargos. Does this problem come within your purview as a Maritime Administrator? Nicholas J.: Yes, we don't pay a subsidy to the longshoreman, but to the extent that any government agency is concerned with the American longshoreman, it is the Maritime Administration, as well as the Labor Department. We have had our difficulties this year, there's no question about that. I think we had a period of probably about 150 days where we had strikes for 100. So this has been a bad year by that standard, though this has also been a difficult year for the industry in terms on new policies that have been coming out of the Maritime Administration. I think we've made a great of progress and this a part of the price we pay for it. Speaker 1: Well I don't mean to strike a tender part of the Administrator's problem, but I do remember from a motion picture On The Waterfront, if that's what it was. I also remember some of the hearings in which it was discovered that certain elements within some of the unions were in collusion with some of the shippers to disobey the law or otherwise to get around the course of supply and demand. Have you gotten through this phase of the thing? Nicholas J.: I would say only that is very colorful part of American society, yes, but we haven't engaged in any particular investigations of criminal activity in the waterfront or the seaman's unions. Speaker 1: I'm going to ask one more tender question, but this is more personal. I've watched Katie's career develop and she's had a good deal of training in radio and television and gone on to the CBC. How does one train to become a Maritime Administrator. Nicholas J.: One doesn't train to become a Maritime Administrator. My dad had a story he was fond of when asked how he got into stuttering work, he would say he was like the man who was pulled out of the lake and asked how he came to fall in the lake. He said "I didn't come to fall in the lake, I came to fish." My experience with the Maritime Administration is very much the same. I was teaching law at the University of California, Berkeley, teaching administrative law. I had wanted to take a couple of years, leave, go to Washington D.C and practice before some of the agencies and as a professor, get a view of actual practice. That is why I came to Washington. I was to spend two years with Covington and Burling and I had just concluded one but I was called over to the White House one afternoon and first encountered the agency known as the Maritime Administration, an agency that I subsequently came to learn a little something more about, but it was nothing that I had set out to do. My appointment was dubbed as a fresh approach to the Maritime problems, which is another way of saying no experience at all, which is what you have quite well put your finger on. Speaker 1: Well, I'm sure there are some areas of human endeavor in which no experience is possible and maybe not even desirable, wouldn't you think? Nicholas J.: I think, if I may say so, that that was in large measure what the Maritime Administration and the Maritime industry needed. I don't mean me, certainly I would get a wonderful argument on that, [inaudible] I was the last thing they needed. My own judgment, and apparently the President's, was that what the industry did need was someone who was not out of the industry, but someone who came who had a capacity for thinking about problems in a fresh sort of way, and who would tie into this thing and try to bring some new thought and new policies into an agency and an industry that had been sailing under the 1936 act increasingly to their own doom for the last 30 years. Speaker 1: You've been in this capacity for not quite 18 months, is that right? Nicholas J.: That's right. Speaker 1: How do you feel about the progress that's been made under your administration? Nicholas J.: I think we've made a tremendous amount of progress, really. Just one example, we've built nothing but mechanized ships since I've been here. There have been a dozen or so of these built. These ships deliver 26% more in carrying capacity than the ships they replaced and yet they operate for $100,000 a year less in subsidy cost, than the ships they replaced. This is a very tangible and significant achievement, I think, and not one for which I take credit. Needless to say this is a function of the entire agencies working on this program. The most substantial change, I think, is that the industry now is thinking we have asked very fundamental questions like why do we have an American merchant [inaudible] at all? Why do we have to subsidize one at all, and if so, why do we have to use this particular subsidy system that tends to deny the operators much incentive? These kinds of questions are now being openly asked and openly discussed and I think it needs to be done with many government programs, and this is the sort of thing President Johnson is trying to promote, is asking these very fundamental questions. What old programs can we simply discard? Which have outlived their usefulness? What do we need to replace them for the middle of the 20th century and second half of the 20th century? It's this kind of thinking that has been seen, in greatest measure, in McNamara's defense department that is now coming into the entire United States government. I think that the impact of this, the revolutionary impact of it, is really going to be profound and the Maritime Administration is of course just one small corner of this whole undertaking. Speaker 1: The President has been capable it seems of accomplishing remarkable progress in a variety of areas, particularity on the domestic scene, I think. It often seems as though he manages to encompass so many aspects of American life and give vigorous support to all of them. Have you had this experience? Nicholas J.: I, frankly, have been very, very impressed with the President. I did not know him before, I knew no member of his staff or anyone at all. Since I've been in the job, obviously I've had a number of occasions to be with him, and talk with him, and see him in action. On each occasion I have been impressed with his knowledge of and interest in what was going on, for example, at the Maritime Administration, which is, I would be the first to acknowledge, not the most important agency in Washington. He is very much aware of what's going on there and very interested in it, and I think that his total commitment to the job, the tremendous amount of energy and time that he puts into it, is in large measure, what we have seen as paying the dividends that have come out during his tenure. Speaker 1: Katie, our time is running and I wanted to ask you just before we concluded, what your plans are when you return to Toronto? Have you had some thoughts about your work since you've been in Iowa that [inaudible]? Katie Johnson: Not particularly since I've been in Iowa- Speaker 1: Do you have assignments to do [inaudible]? Katie Johnson: I'm working on a film which is going to involve living in a slum area, a part of Toronto called Cabbage Town, which I'm going to move into for two weeks to do a story on a young boy who is living there who has been in and out of penitentiaries. Sort of the Tom Sawyer of Cabbage Town. Nicholas J.: Sounds to me like Peter Rabbit. Speaker 1: That's quite a challenging undertaking in itself, are you looking forward to this or do you have some trepidation about it? Katie Johnson: No, I'm looking forward to it. Very, very much. Speaker 1: Well, we bid you bon voyage to Cabbage Town and we just bid the Maritime Administration bon voyage generally, I suppose, Nicholas. Thank you very much, Nicholas Johnson and Katie Johnson, the son and daughter of the late Wendell Johnson, the distinguished member of the faculty of the University of Iowa. Thank you very much. Nicholas J.: Thank you. Katie Johnson: Thank you.