MANAGEMENT: No Time for Gloating

How do businessmen want to be treated by the new Administration? Do they expect special privileges because so many worked for Eisenhower? Do they expect to benefit from the selection of businessmen in the Cabinet? To these questions, the nation got some statesmanlike answers from businessmen last week. They came at the Manhattan convention of the National Association of Manufacturers.

The New Gospel. “How tragic it would be,” said U.S. Rubber’s President H. E. (for Harry Elmer) Humphreys Jr.,* “if the next Administration were to be as partial to business as the present one has been to labor. How tragic it would be if the N.A.M. should ever feel that its mission is to speak only for manufacturers. We must speak . . . for all men. For our power to succeed in serving our customers better will depend on their power to act as free individuals.

“Furthermore, we must do more than speak. We must also act. We must continue to be sure that wise words are backed by sound deeds. It is now time to rededicate ourselves to our responsibilities as businessmen. Businessmen are responsible to all the people who have a stake in their enterprises. That includes stockholders and employees and customers. It also includes the general public . . .

“For all too long business has been the whipping boy of Government. Now that we have the opportunity to be treated as respectable equals on the American team, let us be fully worthy of our trust. This is no time for gloating. It is no time for talk about turning back the clock, or even thinking about it. The only thing we can ask—and the greatest thing we can ask—of the new Administration is that businessmen be accepted as equal partners with labor and farmers and other groups in the task of carrying America forward as the land of freedom and opportunity for all …”

Carrier Corp.’s Vice President Howard M. Dirks interpreted the NAMsters’ new gospel as to their dealings with labor. Said he: “Let’s hope that none of us thinks . . . that we can now return to some of the autocratic or paternalistic methods of dealing with employees . . . practiced in the past. We have learned a lot … in recent years . . . and we dare not step backward.” Said N.A.M.’s Managing Director Earl Bunting: “Self-interest dictates the highest order of industrial statesmanship … in the public interest.”

“Start Buying.” NAMsters felt strongly that industrial statesmanship calls for “trade, not aid” in the nation’s dealing abroad. N.A.M., which years ago was a prime backer of high tariffs, seemed to agree with such other business groups as the Detroit Board of Commerce (TIME, Nov. 17) that it is time for a change. Said Jersey Standard’s Vice President John R. Suman, a top man in N.A.M.’s foreign policymaking: “As we stop giving and start buying more from our friends abroad, we will be helping them along the road to economic recovery. And we can do that most effectively by reducing our own trade restrictions.”

It was McGraw-Hill Publishing Co.’s Executive Vice President Willard Chevalier who summed up N.A.M.’s new goals—and its enlightened means of reaching them. Said he: “Government [should] recognize . . . that no act of Government can increase the national wealth, insure the national security, or raise the living standards of the people unless that act helps to bring about a higher productivity per man-hour on every front of the economy . . . Only by a higher production of goods and services per man-hour . . . can we provide higher wages, shorter hours, longer vacations, old-age security and all the other social benefits.”

As its new president, N.A.M. elected Charles R. Sligh Jr., 46, the youngest man in 30 years to hold the post. Sligh, who was born in Grand Rapids, Mich, and still lives there, is head of four furniture companies which employ 400, will gross about $4,500,000 this year.

He quit Colgate to take a job as a construction laborer, did a stint as a blacksmith’s apprentice before joining his father’s furniture company. In 1933, when the furniture industry’s average loss was 14¢ on the sales dollar, Sligh decided to start a company of his own. With a partner and $14,000 capital, he astounded the industry by turning a profit the first year, has never since recorded a loss. Two months ago, when the A.F.L. Upholsterers International Union tried to organize one of his companies, he called a meeting of employees, and turned it over to the union organizers to make their pitch; when they were done, Sligh answered them point by point, but assured his employees they had every right to organize. In the election that afternoon, the union polled only 30% of the votes.

Like many another NAMster Sligh thinks that government spending can be cut by more than $14 billion in the next year. Such a cut, accompanied by lower taxes, says Sligh, should bring no business slump. Says he: “The people have tremendous confidence, and confidence always breeds prosperity.”

*Not to be confused with M. A. Hanna’s Chairman George Humphrey, incoming Treasury Secretary.