THE INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES
Oral History Office
SUBJECT: Changes in San Antonio last 25-30 years
INTERVIEW WITH: Dr. Martin Goland
DATE: 25 May 1994
PLACE: Office of Dr. Goland,
Southwest Research Institute
INTERVIEWER: Sterlin Holmesly
TAPE I, Side 1
H: Interview with Dr. Martin Goland, head of Southwest Research Institute, at his office, May 25 1994. This is Sterlin Holmesly.
G: Well, my name is Martin Goland, and I'm the president of Southwest Research Institute. And have been the president since 1968. And as such, of course, I direct all the activities in the Institute. I think that's about all you asked for and...
H: And, well, where were you born? When you were born? And when you came to San Antonio?
G: I was born in New York City. Actually, Brooklyn, New York, which is part of New York City. I went to school through the New York City High Schools and then went to Cornell University. And after Cornell, I taught there for a little while. Subsequently, I went into the aircraft industry - airframe industry, really. And I worked for Curtis-Wright and some of the other companies. After that I went to Mid-West Research Institute. I went there in about G: 1946 and stayed until 1955. Mid-West Research Institute is in Kansas City and is another research organization similar to Southwest Research Institute. I left Mid-West in '55 and came here.
H: Did Tom Slick hire you? Was he still alive in '55?
G: Well, Hal [no last name]. Yes, Tom was still alive. Harold [last name omitted] was the president of Mid-West Research Institute. And then he inveigled me - I shouldn't use the word inveigle because I'm very happy it happened -[laughter] to come down to Southwest Research Institute. And, as I say, I became president in 1968 and have been president ever since.
H: Let me just drop in the reference to Tom Slick - he was the originator, founder of Southwest Research.
G: Southwest Foundation for Research and Education, which is now the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research.
H: Right.
G: Southwest Research Institute, which is a separate organization from the Foundation...
H: Right.
G: ...and also at that time, the Institute of Inventive Research.
H: Which has been...
G: That I...
H: ...melded into this or just disappeared?
G: ...that I came...shortly after I came, I had the unhappy task of decapitating the Inventive Research G:Dr. Martin Goland (Tape 1 of 1)
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Institute. Since it was...Tom was personally paying all the expenses of the Institute of Inventive Research.
H: That's a long-term payout, isn't it?
G: It was going nowhere. Just wasting his money.
H: Well, the focus of this oral history project are the changes you've seen in San Antonio in roughly the last 25 years, since HemisFair. You're not limited to that, you can go back to when you came to town in '55.
G: Uh-huh.
H: But the changes that I'm most interested in are the political, social and economic, and we can discuss those or you can tell me what you have seen, and then we can get into the specifics of your special area of knowledge, which is research, which has changed drastically in San Antonio.
G: Well, I must tell you, since you told me that we were going to have this discussion together, I've been thinking about that. And you know, I must confess in all honesty, that unfortunately there haven't been all that many changes. Now, I say unfortunately...
H: You mean in San Antonio?
G: Yeah, in San Antonio. I say unfortunately, because we would have hoped that there would have been more.
H: Uh-huh.
G: We would have hoped that San Antonio would have blossomed into a technologically advanced city, in line withDr. Martin Goland (Tape 1 of 1)
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much of...many other cities in the country over that period. H: You're referring to, say, Silicone Valley?
G: But I must confess that with one or two exceptions, it has not. Now, the way I look at San Antonio...let me go back a little...
H: Sure.
G: ...before HemisFair. When I came here and that was in '65...
H: '55.
G: '55. When I came here, it was a very pleasant town. And there were perhaps four or five private universities, as you know, no public university. The private universities had no significant advanced training. There were, of course, degrees in nursing, there were one or 2 advanced degrees at St. Mary's, and Trinity had not had its re-birth at that time, which has been so sensational under Calgaard, as a matter of fact...
H: Uh-huh.
G: ...but San Antonio was certainly not a very advanced city, in terms of technology, science, engineering and so forth. This made Tom Slick's decision to build what he always envisioned as a citadel of applied research and medical research. I use those two terms, incidently, for a reason; Tom never visualized that the Southwest Research Institute would be a university. He visualized it would be Dr. Martin Goland (Tape 1 of 1)
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an applied research organization - helping industry, helping government. To take the results from a research laboratory G: and transfer those results into products and processes for the market place...
H: Practical application.
G: ...for the military. For application, in other words. Now, I should say Tom visualized a really... To give you a little more background here, and I'm probably talking more than you want me to...
H: No, no, we're here to hear you talk.
G: ...it was really Harold [no last name]...
H: Uh-huh.
G: ...because you know, when Tom brought Harold down here from Mid-West Research Institute, as I mentioned earlier, it was to set-up this whole complex of these three organiza- tions, which I've already mentioned. Tom was primarily interested in bio-medical research. Harold, on the other hand, was primarily interested in doing the same thing here that he'd done in Kansas City, which was applied research, and the same thing he had done at the Armour Research Foundation in Chicago before that, which was an applied research organization. Well, the two of them compromised. And Tom told Harold, "Well, if you'll run my bio-medical organization, then I'll work with you to set up Southwest Research Institute." As a matter of fact, Southwest Dr. Martin Goland (Tape 1 of 1)
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Research Institute started, during that agreement, with first of all, nothing. Tom did not pay any of the expenses of Southwest Research Institute. Tom's will did provide for G: Southwest Research Institute, but primarily... When he was so unfortunately killed at a very young age in an airplane accident, but he primarily, of course, was interested in the medical foundation and left most of his resources to the medical foundation. Furthermore, it was agreed at that time that because the medical foundation would continually be raising money, that Southwest Research Institute would never raise money publicly, and we never have. So everything you have out here has been built by the staff. Well, that goes back into a little history that's not your primary interest.
H: But the staff gets either grants or...either from industry or...
G: Yeah. Not a grant, contracts. Contracts and in fact, we do very little in the way grants. Most of our work is contracts, for the very important reason that in contracts, we get a fee.
H: Right. And that's in return for results.
G: Yeah. And a fee is what built this place, you see. Well. Well, as I say, San Antonio - I used to tell people, that it was a very odd place to start because the public library in the science and technology section had four booksDr. Martin Goland (Tape 1 of 1)
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and they were coloring books and two of them were already colored. [laughter]
H: And this was the Main Library downtown?
G: The Main Library downtown. [laughter] Of course, we G: have since built our own library which, I think, has a very excellent collection. It is not a repository collection, like they have up at the University of Texas Law School.
H: But it's a working collection.
G: But it's a working library. Well, the Institute flourished. There are a lot of reasons for that, or I should say there were several, anyway. It was the right time in history to establish this kind of an organization. We - the Government, at least in the military, were putting out lots of money in contracts, which enabled us to get started in many programs. Industry at that time was searching for high-technology activities, investments, improvements in their own operations. We benefited from that environment. And so the Institute flourished. By the time of HemisFair, we were pretty firmly established.
H: Uh-huh.
G: We were basically an island in the midst of not very much. All of our people who wanted advanced degrees - particularly PhD degrees - would go up to Austin or College Station, primarily Austin because it was closer. And there Dr. Martin Goland (Tape 1 of 1)
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was nothing in San Antonio. One of the disadvantages of the Institute, because there was nothing in San Antonio in the way of advanced science and engineering education to speak of, with the exception of a little bit at St. Mary's. And in the medical field, nursing.
H: Uh-huh. But there have been changes in that in San Antonio.
G: That has now changed. Now, since HemisFair, of course, the Health Science Center was established. After a rocky start, with which I'm sure you're familiar with...
H: Right.
G: We were fortunate enough to get John Howe to come down here. John has been a wonderful administrator, wonderful builder, and the Health Science Center has progressed very rapidly. In addition to strictly medicine, they have a graduate science program. Of course, they have a nursing program, and they have a dental program, and so forth and so on. And so in the bio-medical field they have grown up to be an institution of national prominence. They have a long way to go before they're the equal of Harvard or Yale or some of the other - Cal-Tech and so forth.
H: But there's also...they have the relationship with your sister...
G: And that gave us, of course, a chance to develop. The history of UTSA, just kind of jumping around... Dr. Martin Goland (Tape 1 of 1)
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H: Sure.
G: ...in the educational area. Well, first let me point out that Trinity, which was basically...and I think I'm saying this and can say this, I'll leave it up to your discretion as to whether you want to say it,...
H: Say what you wish.
G: ...they were a pretty country-club university.
H: Uh-huh.
G: When Calgaard came in, he just turned that around, 180 degrees. And as you know, now I think they have probably the finest four-year undergraduate school west of the Mississippi and I wouldn't even say west of the Mississippi anymore. I think they're really a first class school. As is evidenced by the fact that, you know, their enrollment is of top-grade students, they're... And Calgaard has really done some things which I won't go into - you're probably going to talk to him...
H: Yes, I plan to.
G: ...But he's done some things that are very advanced for under-graduate training. He has emphasized under-graduate training. He has not emphasized graduate training, except in a few areas. But, in general, it's a fine school. St. Mary's has always given a good basic education.
H: Uh-huh.
G: And they still do. The other schools - Our Lady of the Dr. Martin Goland (Tape 1 of 1)
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Lake and so forth and so on, they're very good schools. As is characteristic of Catholic schools, they give pretty good grounding. But they have not attempted to expand, certainly on the university scale, and I think while they give a good basic education, that's about where it stops. UTSA, of course, was established... The day they opened the door, they were over-run with students. Tremendous demand, G: obviously. Interestingly enough, I was on the Board of St. Mary's at that time, and I have been on the Board of St. Mary's several times. The great fear at St. Mary's was that when UTSA opened, its doors tuition would be so cheap that St. Mary's would lose its entire student body. Well, for a variety of reasons, I always argued that that was not going to be the case. That if anything, once there was more educational activity in San Antonio, this would help all the universities and not hurt them. Well, it turned out I was correct. But, with the influx of students at UTSA, that has been their primary occupation since they opened their doors - just keeping on top of the expanding enrollment. The first president, of course, was Peter Flawn, Pete Flawn. Now, Pete is a real academician. He left shortly. He has never told me this, but I think partly out of frustration in the fact that he could not build into UTSA, because of financial limitations, and because of the fact that you just had to be able to afford to buy desks and chairs, he could Dr. Martin Goland (Tape 1 of 1)
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not build into it the kind of scholarly foundation...
H: Well, he went on to be president of UT-Austin, didn't he?
G: Well, he did. He left here to put himself into a position to become president of the Austin campus, and he did, of course. And Pete - nationally known figure, very, as I said, very much a scholar, very much a university educator. And UTSA, however, has just kept trying to G: satisfy its expanding population.
H: But it has begun to add some science and engineering courses...
G: And I'm talking now very candidly.
H: Sure.
G: They don't even have... You know, one of the primary reasons for setting up UTSA was to establish some engineering education in San Antonio.
H: Uh-huh.
G: Well, they still don't have a College of Engineering. They do have a College of Engineering in Bio-Science. What the two have to do with each other, I'm not a hundred percent sure.
H: Maybe they share in the same building.
G: Yeah. But in general, you know, it's wonderful to have a public university here. From the point of view of scholarly attainment, as I say, I'm not blaming anybody, Dr. Martin Goland (Tape 1 of 1)
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because their problems have been overwhelming. And never- theless, I don't think they've advanced, certainly not in the manner of the Health Science Center.
H: Uh-huh.
G: And I'm talking very candidly now. Although this is not something that I have been loath to say to some of their folks, you know.
H: Well, then, should they stablized the student population so they can concentrate on developing some H: excellence in...?
G: Well, if they do - but it doesn't look as if that's going to happen. Instead of having one university - and you can argue about whether or not it's in the right place - they are now going to have two. They're part of the same university.
H: One downtown...
G: Presumably both with a full curriculum. Certainly, there will be the student demand; I don't think there's any question about that. So, when you say will they stablize, I'm not sure they're going to have a chance to stabilize.
H: But it, at some point... I mean, even UT-Austin had to cap its student population...
G: Yeah.
H: ...say no more.
G: That's correct. Well, will the Board of Regents permit Dr. Martin Goland (Tape 1 of 1)
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them to do that?
H: Okay.
G: You see?
H: Well, do you think it's a necessary step to...?
G: I think it's...if they're ever going to develop any real excellence, it's essential. In fact, they should not have grown as fast as they did. And in the long run of history, which I won't be here to see, of course, I think that would have been the better route for UTSA to take, but I'm not the one to judge that. That's...
H: Well, if you were suddenly declared emperor of Bexar County, do anything you wanted to about the higher education and... What would you do?
G: About higher education?
H: And the quality? Excellence.
G: Well, that's a complicated question. But let me try to answer it. First of all, I would limit the enrollment of UTSA.
H: Uh-huh. To what? 20,000?
G: Well, you can't go backward.
H: No.
G: So I would say, even if they can just stop! [laughter] Secondly, there has to be a desire on the part of the Coordinating Board, and of course that translates into the Board of Regents of the University; there has to be a desireDr. Martin Goland (Tape 1 of 1)
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to build a program of excellence, and that requires resources. Now, in the normal course of events, those resources come, first of all, from the State, which, I think, incidently, has been very liberal in the way they've dealt with higher education - although on a populist, rather than a search of excellence.
H: That goes back to Governor John Connally, I think.
G: Yeah. Secondly, the resources have to come from the community. In the form of contributions, in the form of endowed chairs, which certainly you can't afford on the State budget. Our community has not been terribly G: forthcoming. In fact, our community is not forthcoming in many of these directions. San Antonio is not known for being a truly liberal, contributing community.
H: Right.
G: As you well know.
H: Well, have you diagnosed why there's...?
G: Well, I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that the wealthier component of San Antonio, a lot of their interests have been in Austin, College Station and Princeton ...
H: Um.
G: ...and New Haven... [laughter]...Boston.
H: So they give to their alma maters, rather than...
G: They give to their alma mater. I think that's probably Dr. Martin Goland (Tape 1 of 1)
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one of the major reasons. The University has the disadvan-tage of being young. It has no alumnae. And certainly very few alumnae who are in the wealthy category. And it will take many years for that to develop, if it does develop. And I'm sure it will eventually. But, nevertheless, at the moment, UTSA has the hard row. But the first thing I would do is try to get UTSA the resources it needs to build in some departments of excellence.
H: You mentioned engineering, what else?
G: Well, engineering and, of course, some of the branches of science. You can't do all of them. I think, you know, talking perfectly candidly, why, when we have the Med G: School, with a first-class biological program, I mean it really is top-flight - Sandy Miller, whom I'm sure you know,...
H: Sure.
G: ...is an excellent person, as the Dean. Why, we need to invest a lot of resources out at UTSA in biology and medicine; I don't know, well, they don't do any medicine, but biology? When we've got, just down the street, a very excellent capability.
H: Which is part of the same institution.
G: Well, it's part...
H: System.
G: ...of the same overall system. System, yes. So I Dr. Martin Goland (Tape 1 of 1)
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would have chosen a different area of science. Or a different... And of course, we mustn't forget the humanities and so forth and so on. Now, if you want to get into another broad ranging discussion, of course, UTSA... now I'm really talking much more freely than probably I should...
H: This is for the history books, so...
G: UTSA, of course, has taken a considerable amount of responsibility for minority educations, which, you know and I know, is very important. On the other hand, if you're swamped with minority education, you really don't have time for many scholarly pursuits. It's just that simple. [laughter]
H: Well, one professor I know quite well out there raised the question, "What good does a degree in Hispanic studies do if you're trying to get a job at IBM or wherever? How do you apply that? What can you do, other than teach the same subject?"
G: That's correct.
H: To someone else.
G: That's correct. Now,...
H: A matter of application of the degree.
G: Now, that doesn't mean we shouldn't have Hispanic studies, [inaudible] I think you would not agree with that.
H: I question the need for a degree in...Dr. Martin Goland (Tape 1 of 1)
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G: But the idea of taking the San Antonio population and upgrading it in marketable skills...
H: Uh-huh.
G: ...their interpretation of that, to a large extent, is a business school.
H: Um.
G: I personally have a rather small opinion of business schools generally. I think you come out of a business school knowing a little bit about a lot of things, but not much about anything. [laughter] So, I do not encourage MBA studies among our staff, although I don't take any active steps to discourage it, you understand.
H: Some of my most unpleasant experiences has been with MBA students.
G: [laughter] But, now, picking up the threads since '68. Of course, '68 was San Antonio's big introduction for the first time to what they euphemistically call the "Hospital-ity Sector."
H: Um.
G: [laughter] And with the River, with San Antonio being a very friendly city - which it certainly is - San Antonio only recently having grown-up to a size where the size becomes somewhat an inconvenience, at least in my opinion, for the natives. But it certainly brings in the tourists like crazy. The Hospitality Sector has really received the Dr. Martin Goland (Tape 1 of 1)
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central focus of the city's development. Certainly on the part of the Chamber of Commerce, certainly on the part of the City Government. Now, I'm not exempting military. And of course, we have just recently awakened to just what a gift we have had in the military.
H: Uh-huh.
G: By the fact that maybe it's not always going to be there. [laughter]
H: Right.
G: So everybody... But I won't dispute the fact, the military has always been a very important part of San Antonio. And what the military brought to San Antonio - much more than San Antonio brought to the military. Now, in the hotel sector, of course, we build hotels like mad, but I'm on a Chamber study now, which is being headed by Jamie G: Axtell, and the idea is, what do we do to upgrade the quality of San Antonio workforce, so that we get into higher paying jobs and things of that sort, you know? All the good things that come with high technology. Supposedly. Well, the City, as a matter of fact I had a meeting with the News-Express editorial group at one time. And Sterlin, I don't remember if you were here at that lunch - it was over at Paesano's, as a matter of fact...
H: I was there.
G: You were there? And they asked me... Well, I pointed Dr. Martin Goland (Tape 1 of 1)
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out that I didn't think that city had it's heart and had it's focus in the development of high technology. And they said, "Oh, that's not true." Somebody said - I think it was Roddy Stinson - and he said, "Look at everything the city has done to sponsor high technology." And I said, "Well, Roddy, name some of them."
H: Um.
G: And then the city... [laughter] the meeting just kind of stopped!
H: Well, let me broach this, then. The city, or at least Henry Cisneros, was a major force in setting up the Research Park and...
G: Ah...
H: ...getting the land...
G: Well...
H: ...or he was, at least, heavily involved in the front H: of...
G: Yeah.
H: ...but, where is that going?
G: Well, it isn't going anywhere. It isn't going anywhere. It was not set up. First of all, I'm not going to blame Henry for that. There are a number of things Henry can be blamed for, but I'm not going to blame him for that. [laughter] That was really a creation of McDermott.
H: Right.Dr. Martin Goland (Tape 1 of 1)
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G: McD.
H: But Southwest Foundation is going to move, sell out, and move out there.
G: Well, they've got to have some tenants out there.
H: And how many are there, so far?
G: They have had, fortunately - and Henry was involved in this, as were some of the other city leaders...
H: Um.
G: ...They have the Institute for Biotechnology, of the Health Science Center out there...
H: That's a State tenant.
G: ...the Cancer...they have the Cancer Treatment Therapy Research operation. They've got to get some more tenants out there; they have nothing else.
H: Well, have you seen any sign at all of the Applied Biomedical Research that was the goal, as I understood it?
G: Well, they're trying. They have an incubator operation G: out there. Incubator operations are a very, very tenuous; it's a very big gamble; and they are finding that out. It's the same reason, basically, that we cancelled the Institute of Inventive Research many, many years ago. Innovation is a very fragile thing. And most innovation, even those that have some semblance of a good sense behind them, fail. It's only a very few that come out the other end. And, as yet, they have had no winners. Um.Dr. Martin Goland (Tape 1 of 1)
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H: And all the losers are expensive.
G: Yeah. Now, I hope they will eventually. But it doesn't look that way. The Foundation moving out there is a very good move. And I think the Foundation will probably benefit from it, I'm sure they will. Principally because the Foundation's facilities here are now old, they're out-moded, they need a lot of money poured into them.
H: Well, do you think it can be a magnet for the type of firms that...
G: I don't know.
H: ...are needed?
END OF TAPE I, Side 1, ABOUT .. MINUTES.
TAPE I, Side 2.
H: If there's not, there's no point in doing it.
G: I tried to talk to McD.
H: Uh-huh.
G: On a number of occasions.
H: About the Research Park?
G: About the Research Park. I said, "McD, this is the wrong time to set up a research park. The age of research parks has passed. Now, you point to the Triangle Research Institute, towards the Triangle Research Park."
H: Uh-huh.
G: The Triangle Research Park was set up 30 years earlier, 25 to 30 years earlier, at a time when companies were Dr. Martin Goland (Tape 1 of 1)
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expanding their technological operations. The same upsurge in technological interests on the part of companies that helped the Institute to grow, which I've already mentioned, you see.
H: Uh-huh.
G: ...that helped us to bring clients to the Institute. It was set up...two governors of North Carolina spent the major part of their term in office traveling around to all the major companies that they could get an in with, to put a research establishment in Triangle Research Park. And they were successful. People were building research units. When the Research Park started to be conceived here, they were already closing down research laboratories; they weren't building new research laboratories. Furthermore, the fad that it's best to build a research laboratory in the vicinity or in the community of a lot of research laboratories, was the going fad.
H: Uh-huh.
G: Now the fad is to build the research laboratory near G: your operating facilities. So you have no interest in being... If they tried to establish the Triangle Research Park today, it would fail. So, I tried to convince McD that this was a...not the right direction. Well, I didn't succeed. They went ahead. I don't see... There are research parks all over the country that are empty, because Dr. Martin Goland (Tape 1 of 1)
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every University set one up.
H: All right, if not the research park, then what will work for San Antonio?
G: The thing that will work for San Antonio is, obviously, if you're after high technology, then in high technology areas you build an educational facility which is a premier organization. You have the city try in every way - and I will admit that the city has tried on a number of occasions - to encourage high technology companies to come here - tax relief and so forth and so on. But I cannot fault the city for not doing that. But the fact is, aside from Southwest Research Institute, which is an attraction of some sort, aside from the Health Science Center, if you're in the bio-medical field, we are still not a competitive environment to Austin, to Houston, to Dallas, or to many other countries, cities in the country. And until we can build that educational infra-structure, get the citizenry so that they talk, think and eat high technology,...
H: Yeah. And the workforce, educated workforce.
G: ...the educated workforce. We're not going to attract G: that type of an activity. Now, that's a very negative point of view, I guess, but...
H: But that's... We started out, from your viewpoint, San Antonio has not developed the way it should have?
G: That's correct.Dr. Martin Goland (Tape 1 of 1)
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H: From 1955 on...
G: That's correct. That is correct.
H: ...to become a mecca for research?
G: That is correct.
H: Back to the Southwest Research Institute. Are you beginning to feel the impact of reduced military spending in your military contracts?
G: No. As a matter of fact, at the moment our government - I'm talking military plus other agencies of the government ...
H: Um.
G: ...our government activity has not suffered appre-ciably. The thing that I... And our total volumn has not suffered; our total volumn is continuing to increase, as a matter of fact.
H: Let's get some statistics, though. How many people are employed at Southwest Research?
G: Well, we have about 2515 or so, permanent...
H: The majority of those - high paid?
G: ...plus another 125 or so temporaries...
H: Uh-huh.
G: Some of our drivers and some of our automotive work and so forth and so on. So that's about over 2600 people.
H: And your annual budget?
G: Is about...this year it will probably run about twoDr. Martin Goland (Tape 1 of 1)
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hundred and forty-five million.
H: So that's a significant economic impact on San Antonio.
G: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
H: From applied research.
G: Our payroll is over a hundred million.
H: Yeah.
G: Now, the thing that we are suffering from, at the moment, is first of all, like all other organizations, after all, for 48 years our progress has been a steady upward progress...
H: Um.
G: ...well, in 48 years you have a few problems on your staff that you should resolve. You have to do it, kind of, you know, based on a determination that this is the time you're going to do it, so we are going to have a very slight reduction-in-force - about three percent.
H: This year?
G: This is, yes, this is a pruning...
H: Uh-huh.
G: ...although I wouldn't like it to be talked about that way. It's a matter of just pruning the staff - which every other corporation in the country has had to do. But they G: have had to do it in a much more extreme...
H: A lot more than pruning.
G: Yeah; a lot more than three percent. The other thing Dr. Martin Goland (Tape 1 of 1)
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that is bothering us at the moment is that American industry, U.S. industry, is really not investing in long-range research. They have now pretty much surrendered that whole area to the Federal Government. It's kind of an interesting transition. But I'm sure I'm taking too much of your time.
H: No.
G: You know, at the end of the Second War, when these places were first set-up, the reason they were set-up was because at the end of the war, the government - which had built up a very substantial research and development activity - the government had no concern at that time, no responsibility at that time, for commercial research and development. And so, they shut down the whole government operation. Well, the head of the government operation, during the war, was Vannevar Bush - a very famous person. You've heard of him. He put out Sciece - a report - Science, The Endless Frontier. And he said, "The government is dismantling all of its research and development, but," he said, "the wave of the future, in terms of economic vitality, is going to be..." And he didn't call it 'high technology', but he called it 'science and advanced engineering'.
H: Uh-huh.
G: You know, the U.S., which during the war was called the Dr. Martin Goland (Tape 1 of 1)
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Arsenal of Democracy...who else could build 50,000 airplanes a year? But, it was all mechanical production-line stuff. You know, nuclear energy had come in, electronics had come in, during the war, computers came in during the war, scientific-management techniques came in during the war. The Second World War, as many wars have been, was a cornucopia of rapid development in science and technology. And he said, "Those that don't take advantage of these new areas are going to be left behind in the competitive race." Well, that's when people around the country set-up eight institutions like this, and they were private people - like Tom Slick - except in all the other cities they were groups of 100, 150, 200 citizens, who contributed the funds to get this started. They were set up to answer Vannevar Bush's message. Well, a couple of things happened since then. Number one, the U.S. was rebuilding the world; so we had time to enter these new areas. After all. we... [laughter] we supported the rest of the world for a long time, you know. The markets were all ours. Number two, the govern-ment suddenly became involved with the Cold War. At that point, the government reversed its direction. And suddenly they were the principle people who were spending money for research and development. At one time, ninety percent of the national budget came from the government. Now, it was G: for military purposes, I will admit, for space purposes Dr. Martin Goland (Tape 1 of 1)
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and so forth and so on, for which we have now been critized - too much of our military and space and other Governmental effort has been in the area of non-commercial activity. Well, so you know, the whole enviornment kept shifting during these periods. And all through the period you're talking about, it continued to shift, you see. Well, now, of course, we...I'm trying to get back the thread of what I was getting at in the beginning... But the fact is that American Industry became aware of science and technology and went into it whole-heartedly. And that's when I say these kinds of places flourished; there was government money available for the longer range research, even though it was directed toward military and space. And the whole enviornment just kept growing and growing and growing. Well, of course, during those years the other nations have gradually recovered. Japan came into the picture.
H: More than recovered.
G: Japan is now very powerful in fundemental research, as well as in the whole spectrum of activity. Europe was always powerful, except that they were decimated by the war. But they gradually have come back. So, you know, we now have a situation where there's a lot of global competition.
H: Well, then, I gather that you think American private industry is not equipped to compete in basic research?
G: Well, they're not. There have been so many G:Dr. Martin Goland (Tape 1 of 1)
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difficulties, so many restraints placed on U.S. industry. First of all, the insistence on quarterly reports showing a positive gain one quarter by the next quarter.
H: Um.
G: The gradual increase of competition from other sources, which has made it more difficult for a company to accomplish that. The fact that the government has assumed, over the years, this preponderant role in research and development. Many industries, when they had to begin to trim their operations, curtail their operations, the one way they could do that is by, obviously, curtailing their research laboratories. A research laboratory is a fixed expense.
H: Uh-huh.
G: And it's a high expense. You've got a lot of very highly paid people. It goes on, month after month. [laughter] And when you're thinking of economizing where do you look? Well...
H: And some months it doesn't have any measureable return at all.
G: And the return is there, but it is very indirect. It's not something that a Master of Business Administration can prove in a formula.
H: Uh-huh.
G: You know, if you can't prove it in a formula, that's not good, you see? So U.S. industry has gradually become Dr. Martin Goland (Tape 1 of 1)
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closer in, and closer in, in their thinking. And that's G: reflecting, not in the amount of work we do, but in the type of work we do.
H: Well, then I raise the question - consider the federal gGovernment as one large company that's four trillion dollars in debt, and how long can you expect the government to continue to fund fundamental research?
G: Well, of course, of that four trillion, the amount that's invested in science and technology, is not a large part of that. It's a hell of a lot of money, but it's not the controlling factor.
H: It's not what Everett Dirkson would call "real money?"
G: The entitlements and other major government programs are responsible for the rapidly-rising debt.
H: So the so-called uncontrollables...
G: The health, medical benefits, and so forth and so on. So, science and technology is still not a very major part of that problem. But...and the Clinton Administration, which I am not a fan of, incidently, they have tried to protect that R&D sector.
H: Uh-huh.
G: But the point is, once it gets in the hands of Congress - Congress, of course, has the impossible task of cutting it. And science and technology is not being exempted from the machinations of Congress.Dr. Martin Goland (Tape 1 of 1)
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H: Right. But, then, those funding decisions were not always pure anyway, it was...some of it was, "I need this H: for my district".
G: That's right.
H: "I need this for my State" - regardless of the merits of whatever the project might be.
G: Exactly. Exactly. But there isn't any question that American industry, as a whole, has become very closed in in their own investment.
H: Um.
G: In high technology. That, of course, makes it all the more difficult for a place like the Research Park to ever really expect to advance very rapidly.
H: Is there a good example of a...one private research company that's on the cutting edge of anything? American company?
G: Is what?
H: That is on the cutting edge of developing...
G: Oh, well...
H: ...research?
G: ...there are a lot of companies. After all, you know, you generalize for the country as a whole, but then you can pick individual companies.
H: But there are individual companies here doing research?
G: Well, let's look at the Bell Laboratories. Of course, Dr. Martin Goland (Tape 1 of 1)
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when they broke up AT&T, the Bell Laboratories essentially lost a great deal of its former flexibility. It lost a great deal of its former support, as a matter of fact.
H: Uh-huh.
G: AT&T, as a corporation, has tried to continue its fundamental work, and they have, to some extent, but they're kind of a shadow of what they used to be. Now, they're in the electronics field, obviously, and there have been a lot of private companies and a lot of them are right at the advanced state of the art - you know, INTEL and Motorola, and some of the rest of them. But I guess the grand old patrons of the arts in the private sector, such as the Bell Lab, the General Electric Central Research Laboratories - which don't exist anymore - they're disbursed. The Westinghouse Research Laboratories, they don't exist anymore, except in a disbursed form. The...well, you could go down the list. A lot of those have, just by force of circumstance, become much smaller.
H: Well, just from my end, as a newspaper editor, we are a user of technology, and I have found some of the industry very spastic, particularly in the laptop computers.
G: Uh-huh.
H: Which we need for our people in the field, and I have one myself. And a company who'll get into it, develop something and then drop it...Dr. Martin Goland (Tape 1 of 1)
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G: Um.
H: And you can't get repairs, or you can't get an up-graded model, and somebody else will come in...
G: Yeah.
H: ...and then they're gone...
G: It's a very fast moving...
H: Yeah. Well, you buy something and it's obsolete.
G: Things are obsoleted much more quickly than they used to be. And particularly in communications. I mean, after all, you buy a computer today, you buy a computer five years from now, they're not going to look anywhere like the same thing.
H: You don't have to wait five years, Martin. Sometimes it's a matter of months. [laughter]
G: You don't have to wait five minutes. Well, look at this place. Half of our capital expenditures over the year, which is on the order of seventeen to twenty million, from one year to the next, you know, are for computers.
H: Uh-huh.
G: And we're continually giving away old computers. Of course, a new one comes in, and you've got to have the new one! [laughter] It's faster. It's more economical. It can do more. [laughter]
H: And sometimes has more bells and whistles than you really need.Dr. Martin Goland (Tape 1 of 1)
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G: Ah, well, sometimes. But, even forgetting that, in fact, in our business, which is a very competitive business, this is no ivory tower...
H: Right.
G: ...when we do a job for a company, they also have bids G: from other people who do the same job. It may be other research institutes, it may be a university. So, we have to really supply an efficient service.
H: Is there an information superhighway in existence now? Or, I keep reading about, talking about... Is there?
G: Well, the beginnings. There's certainly the beginnings. You have, of course, in the science and technology field, you have as much of a developed system as perhaps we have today, in that you have all these research capabilities, world-wide. You can...I can call over to our library there, which has like about eighty or ninety, like about eighty thousand volumes, but we don't use those, very many of those volumes anymore. And they have all these computer terminals, by which we can search the world literature...
H: Uh-huh.
G: ...and we can run searches and do it right from here and get the answer back right away.
H: Right.
G: Two or three hundred, four hundred dollars, you have a Dr. Martin Goland (Tape 1 of 1)
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major search accomplished, you know. [laughter] Well, that's an information superhighway.
H: Right.
G: Now, when you start to talk about it in terms of the population, in general, you go into any public library today, they will have search...any one of major proportions ...they will have search capabilities which can do for a good part, excuse me, of the general literature, the same thing we can do for science and technology. The New York Times' search business and the Library of Congress...can search the Library of Congress from the downtown library now. So, you know, there is an information superhighway coming. How many of the people are going to be able to take advantage of it?
H: How many will be able to afford...?
G: ...except for the Five Hundred... Well, it's not all that expensive.
H: Afford or understand how to use it? And get plugged into it.
G: Well that...oh, yes...well, that's correct. Of course, the Five Hundred TV Section Information Superhighway, I don't know about that. And I don't...
H: I don't know if it's be any better than three TV stations, by and large. [laughter]
G: Yeah. Yeah.Dr. Martin Goland (Tape 1 of 1)
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H: Yeah.
G: Well, I haven't painted a terribly optimistic picture of San Antonio's development in the high-tech area. But that's because I feel that the community has never really had that as its goal. You know, until the community thinks that way, until they're ready to invest that way, there isn't going to be much progress.
H: Yeah. And that's endowing chairs at UTSA and Trinity, rather than at Yale or Princeton or...
G: Yeah.
H: ...UT-Austin.
G: Yeah.
H: Or major contributions.
G: Of course, yes, I think so.
H: Well, let's go, just briefly to the city of San Antonio. You said it was a small, pleasant place when you moved here - out in the middle of practically nowhere. Are you still comfortable in San Antonio, as you go about town?
G: Oh, yes. I think San Antonio is still a very nice place to live. I still think it's a very excellent place to live. Of course, it shakes you up a little when you read about drive-by shootings, but that's a disease of a major metropolis. Everyone of them seems to have pretty much the same problem.
H: And it's spreading to the smaller towns, too.Dr. Martin Goland (Tape 1 of 1)
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G: Yeah. Even the small towns. I think San Antonio... Of course, tourism, which as I say, has been one of the main concentrations of the city, has personally removed downtown from pretty much my agenda. [laughter]
H: Um.
G: But, I'm...that's no problem there, that's fine. People who visit us, and we have a continual stream of visitors, you know, from all over the world, incidently. G: They love to come to San Antonio. It's a bilingual city; it's a wonderful city.
H: Do you put them up downtown?
G: [Inaudible]
H: Do they want on the River Walk? To stay on the River Walk. when they come?
G: I stay away from the River Walk. [laughter]
H: But your visitors stay there?
G: [laughter] I've seen the River Walk.
H: But do your visitors want to stay there?
G: Oh, yes. Oh, yes.
H: They want to stay downtown when they're in town.
G: Oh, you bet. Well, not a hundred percent. A lot of them are traveling now, and have much more strict schedules, and they like to stay out near the airport.
H: Um. Come in and out.
G: But, yes, they love to stay downtown, whenever they Dr. Martin Goland (Tape 1 of 1)
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can. And it is a wonderful place to come. It's like New Orleans used to be. I hope we don't go in the same direction as New Orleans, but...
H: Well, maybe we will have some limits on sleaze.
G: Yeah. Yeah. I hope so.
H: I appreciate your time immensely; I know it's valuable, to you and the Institute. Is there anything you'd like to add? We're about to wrap this one up. Anything further you'd like to, thoughts you'd like to put down?
G: Well, no, except I'm very regretful that I have to be ...I can't be quite as positive enough and optimistic about San Antonio and high-technology in the future. I don't like to say that. I've been honest with you, Sterlin. Because that's the way I do feel. But it hurts me to feel that way. And I do not think that the Hospitality Sector is as...the kind of a significant economic base for this city. That does not need to accompanying it...development and these other areas...
H: Another leg for the economy.
G: Another leg, yeah. I think the military, of course, is very strong, but as we know, it's going to dwindle somewhat. You know, the thing that hits the front page is a new hotel.
H: Um.
G: It's the intellectual side of the city that's really Dr. Martin Goland (Tape 1 of 1)
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not advancing. I don't think so. Of course, you're in a better position. You have a better overall cultural view. But...
H: I don't know. I do think the Medical Center has changed the city a lot more than we realize.
G: Oh, well, the Med Center I've already acknowledge.
H: Yeah. I mean...but economically, as well as the level of research and everything, there are 18,000 well-paying jobs that weren't here...
G: I agree.
H: ...some years ago.
G: I agree.
H: And I would like to see more interchange between that community and the rest of San Antonio. There's still a tendency towards isolation, although John Howe has done very hard to break that isolation, there's still an element of it there - community participation.
G: The Medical Center has been a tremendous success; there's just no question about it; there's no question about it. It's over more on the side of industry, the attraction of industry, it's manufacturing sector, we're still a city of very small businesses.
H: Right. Well, so many of these hospitality industry jobs are minimum wage, but high turnover...
G: Yeah.Dr. Martin Goland (Tape 1 of 1)
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H: ...and very little future...
G: Right.
H: ...for people.
G: You know, you take the airbases here. Around the airbases in San Antonio, there should have grown up a large number of industrial organizations feeding those airbases.
H: Uh-huh.
G: Instead everything goes from the airbase, not everything but mostly, goes out of town. We do nothing in San Antonio.
H: You have no connections to any of the bases? No contracts?
G: Oh, yeah. That's the military, yeah, we do a lot with the military. But we do nothing with San Antonio otherwise.
H: Right.
G: We have no sponsors here, we have no clients here and so forth and so on. We brought one or two industries to San Antonio, that's true. But not anywhere near what we could have brought, if there was an enviornment that was conducive to this type of thing. And certainly there's no excuse for our not having any development around the various airbases.
H: Right.
G: The reason is it's, you know, it's a...the workforce is just not here, the entrepreneurs are not here...
H: The venture capital is not here.Dr. Martin Goland (Tape 1 of 1)
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G: The venture capital is not here. So there we are.
H: I appreciate your time, I appreciate your candor...
G: Yeah. Well, I've been pretty candid.
H: Well, I think a good dose of reality will be welcome in this collection. [laughter]
G: Okay.
H: Thank you so much; I appreciate it, Martin.
G: All right.
END OF TAPE I, Side 2, ABOUT .. MINUTES.