The Career Killers

George Harris is a tall, dark-haired, outgoing salesman in his late 30s. After graduating from an Eastern university in 1954, he spent two years in the United States Army as a personnel management specialist, worked briefly for a management-consulting firm, settled down to an office job in a large insurance company, married and started raising a family. Four years later, he decided that sales rather than office work was what he wanted and had no trouble securing a good sales position with an equipment manufacturer. He did well until the firm was merged with a larger company and most salesmen were not taken onto the reorganized sales force. This was in the early Sixties. Armed with good recommendations, George Harris--a pseudonym, for reasons that will become evident--applied for a sales job with a large manufacturer. He filled out the application forms and took a six-hour battery of intelligence and aptitude tests. At his interview, the sales manager told him enthusiastically that he had scored higher than anyone who had ever taken the tests at that firm and that he was an outstanding prospect. Three days later, he was hired.

A week after that, George was called into the sales manager's office. In a stern voice, the manager said he was "terribly disappointed" in George for lying about important information on his application. George replied that if there was some inadvertent mistake, he was sure he could explain it. The manager told him he couldn't reveal the information. "But you know what it is," he said. "Why don't you come clean?" Since George didn't have the faintest idea what the manager was talking about, he couldn't "come clean." He left the interview puzzled, disturbed and a little angry. In the following weeks, the manager grew increasingly cold toward George, alluded frequently to his "coming clean" and expressed obvious lack of confidence in his (continued on page 110)Career Killers(continued from page 103)character. Understandably, George found working under such conditions difficult at first and finally impossible: He resigned after a few months.

George began looking around for a new job, concentrating on the large national companies with attractive sales opportunities; he expected little trouble in finding work. But jobs seemed to slip away just as he was about to be hired. He would fill out the application forms, have interviews and take various tests. Often the hiring official would say that he was a fine candidate and would probably be hired. But the offers never came. When he would call to inquire, the personnel manager would say that he had changed his mind about hiring another salesman or that he had found someone who fitted their needs better, or one of a dozen explanations that sounded peculiar to someone with George's experience. Dejected by his continued inability to get a job with a top-notch firm and facing serious financial problems in supporting his wife and two children, George turned to smaller companies. Hired at less than his "market value," he moved through three or four such companies, trying to get a job that utilized his abilities. He kept applying to the big firms but had no success and received no explanations as to why he wasn't hired.

Then, in 1967, George applied to a large national consumer-product firm. He made an outstanding impression on the East Coast personnel manager. A few days later, however, the manager called him and said that he was terribly sorry, but George had failed to pass the pre-employment investigative check made by the company's central personnel office. "I just can't hire you," the manager said, and he added, "I don't think any company in the industry will hire you with that report." But when George asked what kind of report it was, who had written it and how he could find out more about it, the manager turned silent. "I've tried to help you all I can," he said. "I really shouldn't have said what I did. I just can't tell you any more." Everything began to fall into a clear and frightening shape. All these years, some unknown, all-powerful report had been blocking his career. But what was it? No one would tell him and George simply didn't know where to look.

"It's impossible to describe my psychological state at that time," he recalls. "I felt absolute fear for my family and myself; I was ready to jump out of my skin, climb the walls. I am not a drinker, so I walk the streets every night until the early hours of the morning. Where was I to turn? What was I accused of? How was this situation ever to be resolved?." He began asking friends about pre-employment investigations and learned that one firm--which I will call National Investigators--conducted the employment checks for most of the companies in his area. He also learned that this company and fellow investigation firms will not tell a "subject" what derogatory information is in his file nor let him examine its contents.

Desperate, George talked further with friends and family. The only realistic suggestion was that he persuade someone working for a business to request a pre-employment report on him, as though he had applied to him for a job. Luckily, George found someone who consented to help him in this way. In September of 1967, George finally saw his personnel report. Reading it, he knew at last what the nightmare was all about. After summaries of his "Employment-Educational Record," "Finances" and "Legal Records," the report came to the all-important section on "Reputation." Three particularly shocking items leaped from the page:

1. Said to have been dishonorably discharged from the Army.

2. While living in an apartment in 1961, he had held a noisy latenight party. An elderly woman neighbor complained, but the noise continued and she called the police. After the police left, having asked the subject to keep it quiet, the subject went to the woman's apartment. Though he knew she had a heart condition, he abused her verbally and expectorated in her face. Subject's wife also used profanity on her. The woman took subject to court, but dropped the charge on the urging of her attorney and on the condition that the subject apologize. He did so but continued to be rude, abusive and scurrilous at every opportunity.

3. Landlord at the premises was glad the subject moved out from the garden apartment, in view of his conduct while living there.

George was aghast. The unknown report that had controlled his life for the past six years was a tissue of false and biased information. He had been honorably discharged from the Army in 1956, and had discharge papers and Army records to prove it. If National Investigators had checked on this, or if they had confronted George with the allegation, he could have disproved it at once. Yet prospective employers almost undoubtedly assumed that he had been court-martialed for a serious offense and dishonorably discharged and that he had lied on his application by not reporting this "fact."

The story of his "abuse" of an elderly woman must have been given to the investigator by the woman involved or by her family. In fact, the woman was an elderly crank who always complained about the young couples in the building. Several neighbors had told George he would have trouble with her and that several tenants had moved because she was such a pest. Once, she even demanded that George and his wife keep their shoes off when in the apartment, so that the noise of their footsteps wouldn't disturb her. When the police were called about the "noisy party," George never spat at her and his wife never used profanity. Unable to endure her harassment any longer, they brought a lawsuit to restrain her from such conduct and she filed a cross suit. Both suits were withdrawn when the judge and attorneys suggested that both sides try to get along. The investigator didn't bother to report George's side of the dispute.

Unable to understand how the landlord could have said what the report alleged in point three, George contacted him and obtained a letter stating that George had been a perfectly satisfactory tenant. He obtained a similar letter from another former next-door neighbor. The elderly woman, not the landlord himself, was probably the source of the landlord's alleged remark. There were no specific sources listed for the allegations, only statements such as, "It is learned that..." and "The impression in the neighborhood was...."

About the report, George observed, "All this deals with one year, 1961. There is nothing else written in this report about my reputation, absolutely nothing for all the years since 1961. Is this the way to judge a man's reputation--on one alleged incident reported by one side six years ago?" At that point, George approached several lawyers. He thought that now he could get justice, since he had the report and could prove its contents to be false and biased. But he soon learned that under existing American law, personnel-investigating companies enjoy what is called a limited privilege when engaged in circulation of information to their subscribers, the employing companies. Unless it can be shown that the investigating company had a malicious intent in circulating the information, or that it was grossly negligent in the gathering of the data, or that it communicated its information to the public, it is not liable for damages. Even if George were able to convince a judge and a jury that there had been gross negligence, it would be hard to prove that he had lost a substantial amount of money as a result of the report (since he had worked during the whole time) or that his mental suffering was worth a large award.

But all George really wanted was to (continued on page 231)Career Killers(continued from page 110) have the report corrected and a fair one written and circulated to companies that had turned him down because of the earlier report. Since he had very little money to pay a lawyer for taking on his case, and there was little prospect of a large damage award to justify taking it on that contingency, lawyer after lawyer turned him down. Finally, George persuaded an experienced lawyer in a general and civil-liberties practice to take his case. The lawyer arranged a meeting with the manager of the local office of National Investigators, showed him the report on George Harris, demanded that the errors and biased information be corrected and asked what compensation would be forthcoming for the injury done his client. The local manager promised to check with the home office.

A month later, the local manager of National Investigators called George's attorney and stated that the item alleging a dishonorable discharge had been a "typographical error" and that it had appeared only on the report that George had obtained in September 1967. Neither explanation sounded likely to George or his attorney. But the local manager assured the lawyer that they had "resolved the problem." As for the rest of the information under "Reputation," the manager said that George needn't worry any further. Dissatisfied, the attorney asked National Investigators for a letter stating that the dishonorable discharge was an erroneous entry and for a copy of the full report as it would then go out, to see what corrections had been made. Several weeks later, National Investigators sent a letter admitting that the dishonorable-discharge entry was a typographical error but refusing to provide a copy of the corrected report they promised to circulate to potential employers.

At that point, in the fall of 1968, George's attorney filed suit to recover damages for the injuries done and to compel National Investigators to circulate a fair and accurate report (including an account of National Investigators' past error), to be inspected by George Harris and his attorney. National Investigators filed a general denial of liability, indicating that it would fight the case. Because of the delay in getting such a damage suit to court, George now faces a three-to-four-year wait before his case can be decided. Meanwhile, he is at the mercy of National Investigators; he still doesn't know what it may say about him, in writing or by telephone, should he apply for a job with any of the thousands of corporations that use its services. Nothing in its behavior thus far gives George reason to trust its good intentions or sense of justice.

I know George's story because he called me for help. He had read a newspaper account of testimony I had given before a Congressional committee investigating problems of privacy and due process in the operations of retail credit bureaus. This led him to my book Privacy and Freedom, published in 1967, in which I recommend that individuals be granted by law a properly defined procedure for inspecting and correcting their files in such private derogatory information systems. "Look, Professor Westin," George explained to me, "I'm almost 40 years old. In my industry, no one hires salesmen over 40. If I have to wait as long as three or four years for my case to get through the courts, I'm virtually dead as a salesman, even if I win money damages. And if my case becomes a big public episode, what company will want to hire a 'troublemaker'? Shouldn't there be some protection for people like me?"

George's problem is far from unique; it affects more than 35,000,000 Americans today--in executive, professional, sales and white-collar jobs--who have their careers monitored and molded by private personnel investigators. For many reasons, errors often crop up in these reports; yet the basic procedures of these companies inhibit those reported on from learning whether they have been unfairly judged and sharply impede efforts to correct such errors when detected. Most important of all, this problem will soon become far more critical than ever, with the arrival of computerized data banks and cheap long-distance communications networks. Today, this emerging system is in the hands of corporations that operate without any significant state or Federal legislative controls and with near immunity from judicial accountability.

These are serious assertions; let me spell out my reasons for making them. Though pre-employment investigations are occasionally carried out by personnel officials from the employer's own staff, most are conducted by outside firms specializing in such investigations. Some are large national companies with offices located in cities throughout the United States--firms such as Retail Credit Company, Fidelifacts, Dun & Bradstreet and Pinkerton's. Retail Credit, for example, though its name suggests something quite different from what it actually does, devotes most of its time to investigations of insurance applicants and prospective employees. By the late 1960s, it had representatives in 1800 locations in the United States and Canada, employed 6300 salaried investigators, maintained current files on 45,000,000 persons and issued 35,000,000 reports to some 40,000 customers annually. About 3,500,000 of these reports were employment checks and, of that number, some 175,000 each year produce what Retail Credit calls "unfavorable information" about the subject.

Pinkerton's, founded in 1850, proclaims itself "the dominant name in investigation--the world's oldest and largest investigative agency." Its current brochure states that it has 78 "security offices" throughout the United States and Canada. "Job applications and personal references tell only what the applicant wants known," the brochure instructs potential customers. "Pinkerton's Personnel Investigation service tells the employer all that should be known." This includes "occupational history, present address, past residences, personal life and family status, credit and community standing, education, personal references, social affiliations, civic activity, court record, business connections, general reputation and important additional information."

Dun & Bradstreet has long done a thriving business with its "form 98s" on the business history of individuals, but it also furnishes a "Personnel Verification Report" to aid subscribing companies "in determining the qualifications of employees by prospective employers." Hooper-Holmes, a New Jersey firm, maintains a "National Derogatory File" on "deadbeats" that is widely used by business; there are 9,000,000 names in this file. One of the other major personnel-investigating firms. Fidelifacts, is a franchise-granting operation owned and operated solely by former special agents of the FBI, with local offices throughout the country. The largest Fidelifacts agency, in the Greater New York area, reports that it produces derogatory information in 33 percent of its investigations; the Fidelifacts agency in Dallas puts its percentage at 27 percent.

Alongside such giants of the investigative industry are dozens, perhaps hundreds of smaller firms. Many of the nation's 2200 retail-credit bureaus do personnel reports as a side line. In a small community such as Rutland, Vermont, for example, the local credit bureau maintains files on 60,000 persons and sells confidential personnel reports to employers in the area, using information from its credit files, as well as material turned up by direct inquiries. Files on 110,000,000 Americans are maintained by local bureaus affiliated with the Associated Credit Bureaus of America, and any member can utilize this national network to obtain information about an individual. Private detective agencies also do an active business in employment reporting. The New York City classified telephone directory lists more than two dozen detective agencies that conduct pre-employment screening and personnel checks for businesses.

In addition to firms that focus on conventional pre-employment investigations, there are some organizations that provide employers with special "loyalty" investigations that very few job applicants--or anyone else--are aware of. Early in 1969, the president of one of the nation's most famous department stores received a letter from Andrew W. Hunter, field director of a well-known radical-right organization--the Church League of America. The letter warned that "American businessmen are faced with a grave problem.... Our working forces include more than a few radicals, socialists, revolutionaries, Communists and troublemakers of all sorts. The colleges and schools are educating and training thousands more who will soon be seeking employment." Though industry screens applicants for "their educational and professional backgrounds," Hunter continued, "little if anything is done to determine their philosophy of life." Now, the Church League of America, with "32 years [of experience] intensely researching the activities of troublesome individuals, groups and publications," was ready to offer its services to American management. "Our files are the most reliable, comprehensive and complete, and second only to those of the FBI, which, of course, are not available to you." Companies hiring the Church League of America would rarely have to worry whether the dangerous-philosophy material it obtained from the League could "stand up in court," as claimed. It would be used secretly to deny applicants a job without their ever knowing that Hunter and his bloodhounds were the cause of the "Sorry, we can't use you" decision.

Many corporations doing contract work with the military ask their regular personnel-investigating firms to check into the "security" status of applicants who will be working on classified Government projects. At Congressional hearings in 1969, Senator William Proxmire quoted from a 1964 inspector's manual used by Retail Credit Company, which explained to its employees how to write clear and concise reports on its security personnel investigations. For example: "Mr. Bungle, a normal loyal citizen, has no known connection with a 'peace movement' or any other organization of a subversive type." The president of Retail Credit, W. Lee Burge, told Senator Proxmire that this wording must have been "concocted from the post-World War Two era" and "brought forward" to 1964. But he reaffirmed that Retail Credit does check employees in defense work to see "whether the individual has any indication of any subversive tendencies...."

An excellent summary of the major areas that pre-employment investigators look into was contained in a speech delivered in 1968 by Vincent Gillen, president of the Greater New York office of Fidelifacts, to executives from the Association of Stock Exchange Firms. Gillen went from a job with The New York Times into the FBI for two years during the Thirties, then spent 12 years as a personnel executive with several large firms. After four years as an associate professor of management at Hofstra University, he established the Fidelifacts office in New York in 1958 and has headed it ever since. Gillen told the brokerage-house executives that pre-employment investigations turned up employees who had bad records at previous jobs, serious criminal records, drinking problems, falsified information on applications and heavy debts that made them likely prospects for embezzlement, as well as histories of drug addiction and mental disturbance.

Gillen also described the need to investigate "sexual deviates." "Establishing that someone is a homosexual is often difficult," he noted, but "I like to go on the rule of thumb that if one looks like a duck, walks like a duck, associates only with ducks and quacks like a duck, he is probably a duck." Employing homosexuals had "far-reaching consequences" for management, according to Gillen, because they "tend to encourage the employment of their own type in a company" and "are subject to blackmail by the criminal element," creating the risk "that they could take advantage of their employer's finances." He conceded that "these people usually are good workers, with above-average intelligence," but whether homosexuals should be hired, he said, was up to the employer, for professional investigators "are fact finders and not decision makers. All we say... is that you should know as much as is reasonable about people when you hire them, so that you know what you are getting."

Thus, the personnel investigators, large and small, using credit-bureau files, insurance files, employment-investigation files and sometimes "dangerous-philosophy" files, maintain a network of dossiers on millions of Americans working in the white-collar sector. And this system of personnel investigating fails to give those who feel they have been injured by faulty reporting a chance to learn whether such is the case and to verify the correction of any mistakes discovered. Clearly, business needs accurate information on which to make personnel judgments. Few reasonable persons would assert that a candidate for employment should be taken on without his supplying information about educational and employment background, financial status and other relevant matters. And few would maintain that the prospective employer should not take steps to verify the accuracy of the applicant's report. But when tens of millions of reports are being done annually, mistakes and misjudgments will inevitably creep into some. Yet several basic factors in the current personnel-reporting system suggest that this industry has let itself become hostile to error correction.

Time and cost factors in the industry invite trouble with these reports. Investigators sent out to collect facts are generally low-paid employees. Twenty percent of Retail Credit's staff (the "blue-chip firm" of the industry) have no college training; 60 percent have had some college training; and only 20 percent of its staff have a college degree. The typical employment report costs about $25 and Retail Credit studies show that its men average 11-1/2 reports a day. Other firms state that their "extended reports" average from $47 to $82 per applicant; detailed checks on key executives range from $200 to $1000. The low cost of the average report--sometimes even less than $25--creates a strong time pressure on each investigator, who must produce or risk a bad rating. In addition, there is strong pressure to turn up unfavorable information, if the investigator is to be rated a "good digger." At the Proxmire hearings, a series of witnesses who had worked for Retail Credit or had been interviewed to work there asserted emphatically that there was an actual quota system for derogatory reports. "I was told," one man said, "that if I didn't turn in my 15 percent quota of negative reports, my superiors would probably investigate my work."

A former inspector for Retail Credit in Silver Spring, Maryland, told the Senate committee that "the pressure of the production quota system is so great" that an inspector cannot take time to"reconfirm old file material before including it on a new investigation," as company procedures require. He said the "production quota" also encourages a tendency "not to confirm derogatory information with additional sources." Similar testimony was given by a former employee of the Mobile, Alabama, office of Retail Credit. R. C.'s president denied emphatically the existence of any production quota system or requirement for turning up derogatory information. But even though there was no formal requirement for a quota, the pressures of production in the local offices led some inspectors in the past to believe that quotas were part of the system, and employees conducted themselves accordingly.

Caught up in this time-cost squeeze, investigators often cannot live up to their company's own standards for verifying unfavorable information. Retail Credit states that its investigators verify unfavorable information through at least two or more sources. When it comes from one source, the company declares that this data is either disregarded or specifically designated as such and labeled "unconfirmed." But none of this was done by the company in George Harris' case. The three key pieces of derogatory information, judging from the report itself, came from only one source. No confirmation was obtained. Yet it was presented to all of George's prospective employers as solid field investigation.

A member of a licensing board in a Southern city told me that his board had hired the local credit bureau to do a report on each candidate seeking a general contractor's license. A report on one candidate revealed some highly unfavorable facts about his business record and his request for a license was denied. He asked for a hearing, was told by the board what the issue was, was able to prove that the information was inaccurate and was granted the license. But he had been denied the license for several months; and the business he had lined up was seriously affected. All the investigating company said to the concerned licensing board was that some errors had to be expected in inexpensive reports.

Another factor in the industry is its conception of what information it must seek to fulfill its mission. Many observers--specialists in business management, as well as constitutional lawyers--believe that too much of the information collected is an unnecessary intrusion into a job candidate's personal life. The head of a national management-consulting firm believes that no hearsay information should be sought from neighbors or similar sources; "this is unreliable information," he says. Instead, he recommends that employment reports concentrate on the key elements of the applicant's job history and public record. "His official arrest-and-conviction record, marriage and divorce, debts outstanding, previous employment, evaluations by former employers--these are things that matter. In the hands of a good personnel manager, they tell all a company needs to know about the employee." He explains that companies generally seek too much personal information today, because they hope to make a permanent judgment about an employee's trustworthiness. He says they should realize that a program of continuing and sophisticated performance review is the surest way for management to prevent dishonesty and reward ability.

"It's silly," he feels, "to turn over to a $7000-a-year investigator such power over the careers and lives of valuable people." Some executives have reached this conclusion for themselves, after trying out a personnel-investigation firm. An editor of a leading national magazine told me that he ordered a Retail Credit Company check on a prospective employee. The report went into such personal detail about the applicant's private life that he decided not to use Retail Credit again. "I don't want to know all those personal things," he explained.

Behind these problems in the fact-gathering process lie the secrecy procedures that keep individuals from knowing that employment reports have affected them. The basic contract between the investigator, and the employer states that information from the reports and the identity of the investigative agency may not be revealed to the person reported on. In testimony before a House subcommittee in 1968, the president of the Retail Credit Company said that the typical individual who finds that he is being turned down for jobs for which he is qualified will quickly get to Retail Credit for an explanation, since it is "one of the largest business-information sources in the field." The subcommittee chairman, Representative Cornelius Gallagher, sharply contested this and pointed out that most applicants never know that Retail Credit is "in the woods," since the subscriber contract ensures that no one tells them. Representative Gallagher mentioned that one man who had contacted his committee had spent "ten years before he got to somebody" to learn who had turned in an unfavorable employment report on him. And, as we saw in George Harris' case, even a well-educated, business-trained salesman didn't know, nor even suspect, that an employment report was sabotaging his career.

The fact is, Representative Gallagher remarked, "that a man must make a series of guesses before he gets to Retail Credit." He must "guess that it is a report" that's causing him difficulty; "guess that it is somebody reporting from the outside; guess that it may be Retail Credit...." The Congressman added that this was "the basis of a great number of the complaints we have received, that there is just no way of knowing where these stories come from.... Shouldn't there be a fairer approach to this? If there is a problem, what would be so wrong with the man knowing who to go to?"

An example of how the system worked in one case was provided by Stanford Sesser, a Wall Street Journal reporter. He described the case of a man whose wife applied for major medical insurance and was rejected. The husband visited the insurance company, but it stuck to its decision and gave no explanation. He thought Retail Credit, as the largest investigator of insurance applicants, might be involved and asked for an interview; he was refused. The attorneys he consulted advised him that he had little chance of forcing disclosure of their files if he went to court. "Through considerable expense," the man says, "and through a means that I'm not at liberty to state, I was able to learn that my wife was charged with being an alcoholic. Yet my wife has never consumed more than a dozen drinks in the 20 years of our marriage."

This failure to promptly correct errors and distorted reporting is the most important issue of all. Although even well-trained investigators can make a mistake, the basic policy of the employment-reporting firms is to deny a concerned individual access to his own report when he's faced with employment problems. "Fundamentally," the president of Retail Credit has stated, "it is protection to the sources of information." If a report were opened to the subject, he says, reporting sources would not be as willing to give information. It would also spread what should be confidential data "too widely," making the report "public information." Furthermore, Retail Credit's president explained, "We feel that the whole business information process would be slowed down and in many cases the cost would increase drastically." Obviously, the companies also fear that many lawsuits for damages would result from documentation of past errors.

Although these are genuine concerns by the investigating companies, it is clear that a careful procedure could be worked out to deal with these problems with fairness to job applicant, business-reporting firm and employer. An applicant for a job should be informed by the company to which he is applying that a personnel investigation will be conducted to verify information on his application with various public-record and previous employer sources. The nature and procedures of the investigation should be explained to him and he should sign written consent to this procedure. If the applicant is not offered a post and asks whether the employment report was a significant factor in the decision, the employer should be free to answer. If the applicant wishes to know the name of the investigating agency, the employer should be free to supply it.

The applicant should also be entitled to his own report by the agency. He should be able to have a conference with the investigating company, to challenge the accuracy of items or to present explanations of items he feels are misleading. The reporting agency should be required to indicate to the applicant what changes of fact or "subject's explanations," if any, it is prepared to make in the report. Federal or state legislation should provide that if the agency declined to change the report, the applicant would have two avenues of complaint: (A) a proceeding before a public board of review, perhaps one in an existing Government regulatory agency or a special board composed of leading private citizens; and (B) a right to appeal decisions of the public board to the courts, if the individual believes the decision is not fairly supported by facts and circumstances. The applicant would state his case and the investigating company would be compelled to defend and document the accuracy of its judgment. It may be necessary, of course, that a person given access to his file agree in writing not to bring a damage suit against the reporting company if errors are found and corrected in timely fashion. This may seem to immunize the investigators against responsibility for their mistakes, but the primary objective in an age of dossier judgments about individuals is to ensure access to files and correction of errors, rather than to continue the "responsibility-through-damage-suit" method, with its long delays and high costs to litigants.

Were this system installed, the millions of persons reported on each year would know of the reporting on them and would be able to challenge accuracy and context as soon as unfavorable hiring decisions were made. There would be no six-or ten-year periods of damage creating the kind of severe harm that cries out for compensatory damage payments. Many of the basic features of this proposed system are currently embodied in a bill, passed last November by the Senate, covering investigations for credit, employment and insurance purposes. Drafted by Senator Proxmire, and endorsed by President Nixon's Special Assistant for Consumer Affairs, Mrs. Virginia Knauer, the Fair Credit Reporting Act is a major legislative item in the House this year. Similar measures have been introduced in California and New York and will probably be sponsored in several other state legislatures this year.

At stake is whether people or the machine system will emerge as the basic unit of value in the data-bank-dominated era of the 1970s. In a letter to me, George Harris compared his situation with the famous story by Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis, about a man who suddenly finds to his horror that he has turned into a cockroach. The man has no control over what has happened to him and cannot escape from the room in which he is trapped. "The mental suffering and deprivation I felt," George wrote, "have made me feel almost subhuman; each effort I made to extricate myself from the horrendous mess seemed to get me in deeper. How do I regain my humanness and dignity?"

I assume that George Harris, like all of us, is not a perfect man. He has his strengths and his weaknesses and doesn't believe that he has a constitutional right to any particular job. He is prepared to be judged on his record. But he is frightened and outraged by a system that has made secret judgments on him, with false and imperfect information, and will not rectify its mistakes. Will millions of Americans allow themselves to live under this kind of system? If we mean to do something about it, the time is now.