Television digest with electronic reports (Jan-Dec 1953)

Editor’s Note: Willard Kiplinger’s Washington newsletter and his magazine Changing Times are stalwarts of American business journalism. 7,e also confess to a predilection for his brand of reporting because his counsel was of inestimable aid in getting Television Digest started just after VJ-Day. Moreover, this article so patly states what we ourselves learned on a recent business tour, during which we visited with many telecasters, distributors and dealers, that we felt it ought to be read by all management in the TV-radio-electronics fields, among whom Television Digest enjoys the bulk of its circulation. Accordingly, we secured permission from Mr. Kiplinger and the New York Times to reprint it in full. From The New York Times Sunday Magazine, October 18, 1S53 What's on the Mind Of the Business Man His attitude on business, politics and economics is important because of the power he wields. By W. M. KIPLINGER IMAGINE yourself quitting your regular job and traveling out around the country for three or four months, north, south, east and west, talking to business men about what they think. Talk to some big shots that head up the big corporations. Talk to a lot of little fellows who run stores along the streets of the cities you visit, some with the aid of their families as store help. Talk to the men who run little factories, with fifty men or women working for them. Or talk to the women, too, for it’s getting so that plenty of them are "business men.” Why do this? What does it matter? Who cares what business men think? They don’t control elections, for there aren’t enough of them to outweigh the other voters. They often don’t control the city or county government. If a small community, yes, but if a big city with factories, no, for back behind the scenes the labor unions are more likely to control. Then why bother to find out what business men think? The answer is this: They are the bosses of their groups of workers. They may have five or fifty or five thousand employes, but they are the bosses who sit in indirect control of that number of families. They are custodians of this separate portion of the economy, which is a fancy wav of putting it. They don’t rule, but they govern, at that all-important point, the job point. They exercise more influence, for good or for bad, than all the politicians and all the law-makers. You might not think this from reading the newspapers, for the news is full of the doings at the court house, the city hall, the state capital, or Washington, or the United Nations. But back behind all these news fronts, working on you every hour of every day, is the boss of your job, and the line of responsibility heads up in some business man. That’s why the business man is a V. I. P. T A HE first thing you realize after your visiting with business men is that they are not all alike, they think different things, they are not homogeneous, they really are not a "group” at all. Yes, but there are things they think more or less in common. Your impressions of these may be as follows : On the outlook for business next year, half the business men you talk to think there will be a falling off, or a slide, or a softening next year. The other half don’t say or think much about it, for they are too busy handling the business of the present. They haven’t time to study the charts or the statistics, and they do not employ economists. You notice that the half who expected some sort of a decline were the bigger shots, the heads of the bigger corporations who normally have facilities for looking further ahead than the average man. On the severity of the slide next year, three-fourths are not alarmed. They think it will be mild, or moderate, or shallow, certainly not a “depression” or even a “recession,” which is the medium word used by the sophisticated folks when they speak of a business “down.” The bulk of business men are making their plans on the assumption that the business decline in 1954 will be a gentle down-rolling sort of thing, not a steep dip, not a bust. By thinking of a slide, do they make a worse slide f No, it works to the contrary. By anticipating a downgrade they slacken their business speed to avoid a possible crash. They are lightening their inventories. They are avoiding the possibility of being caught j with stocks of high-priced stuff which they might have to dump at lower prices. They are preparing against inventory panic, which means price panic. The advance sensing of a | change in the business curve is the best j assurance that the curve will be taken on all four wheels, instead of two. On politics, two-thirds say they are Republicans, and probably threefourths voted Republican last year. Not all of these are habitual Republicans. Quite a number voted merely as a protest against the New Deal or Truman Deal, or because “we needed a change,” rather than out of enthusiasm for the Republican party. They do not say they are “conservative,” ; for they think that is a term invented by fancy people who have more time to think than to do productive work. M At AANY of them claim they are truly “liberal,” more so than they are given credit for. They insist they think and work for the common good, not just for their own profits. You can’t help noticing that many of the truly big business men are more “liberal” than the middle-sized or small. The reason is that their big corporations are strongly influenced by the currents of public thought. Although managed “privately,” these corporations do a service which is essentially “public service.” Nevertheless, on the average, the typical business man is what you’d call a political conservative. As for Eisenhower, 90 per cent of them are for him, and wish him well. They think he hasn't had enough time to demonstrate. They tell you what they think he can do vvhen he has a year or two more. What you discover is that they think he can do what they have previously thought he ought to do. You suspect that they have created Eisenhower in their own image. You have a vague feeling that they