Toward Better Understanding

"The time has come when more & more women must go into business . . . The manpower barrel has been scraped clean . . . Let the men laugh at woman's intuition if they will ... If your husband owns a business or owns a factory, YOU learn how to run it."

In the Starlight Roof of Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel last week, Cinemactress Ginger Rogers chirped out this call to American women. It was the 56th annual convention of the National Association of Manufacturers. The presence of Ginger Rogers, addressing a room jam-packed with delegates' wives (and a few furtive men), wasn't the only new thing about this year's N.A.M. convention. Also present were 296 top industrialists brought by ECA from 18 foreign countries.

Plain Talk. N.A.M. members helped show them some production tricks on a nationwide tour of U.S. industry. Last week the time had come for some frank talk. Up to a conference platform stepped ex-ECA Boss Paul G. Hoffman, now director of the Ford Foundation. The trouble with European industry, said Hoffman, is that productivity is too low and competition is hamstrung. Hoffman said that the U.S. doesn't want to tell Europe how to run its business, but if Europe wants to step up its output, perhaps it "should abandon the highly civilized competition that prevails in most of your countries in favor of the very uncomfortable form of competition that we have . . . The degree of your shift will determine the extent of your improvement."

The N.A.M. turned its attention to domestic problems, heard a forthright attack by Price Boss Mike Di Salle on N.A.M. policies. Even though he knew NA.M.'s arguments against price controls, e.g., free competition is more effective than Government meddling, Di Salle didn't think they stood up. Besides, said he: "I am not convinced that spokesmen for the N.A.M. speak for the majority of American businessmen." U.S. Chamber of Commerce Economist Emerson P. Schmidt fired back. Said he: "OPS has had little to do with stopping price increases, and in all conscience should not grab credit for below-ceiling prices." Schmidt thought that controls have been a failure.

Plain Talker. But no one was truer to the image of the ruggedly free businessman N.A.M. likes to see than its new president, William J. Grede (rhymes with Brady), 54, boss of Milwaukee's Grede Foundries, Inc. Elected to replay William H. Ruffin, president of Durham, N.C.'s Erwin Mills, Inc., Bill Grede describes himself as a "foundry man or sand rat, as we call it." By selling pots & pans, he worked his way through two years at the University of Wisconsin, then quit to invest in a small foundry. Ever since, he has been running his own business, and now has 1,100 employees. Grede has refused to bargain collectively, and has no union contracts. He has licked the C.I.O. steel workers in strikes, or has headed off organizers by wage boosts, pensions, vacations and pay scales at the industry level. Says Grede: "Any group which destroys individual judgment makes for a static economy. To the extent unions do this, they're bad."

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