I simply had to acknowledge the politeness and good manners of your letter. In an era when it is almost impossible to find either of these virtues, it was pleasant to receive a reply from a corporation as gigantic as yours.

SO wrote Author Paul Gallico (Mrs. Arris Goes to Paris) from Monaco recently. Gallico was one of many readers who have been moved to correspond with TIME, for we make it a practice to answer every letter--whether it is written to praise or criticize, to point out an error or to offer information. The great volume of letters to the editor--55,000 last year--is handled by a staff of eight letter correspondents headed by Maria Luisa Cisneros.

In a review of 1968's mail, TIME'S letter writers found that it was largely concerned with the more serious news--Viet Nam, the capture of the Pueblo, politics at home and abroad, student protest, urban unrest, assassination. In other years, readers seemed more concerned with lighter stories. In 1967 the article that drew the most mail was the cover story about Playboy's Hugh Hefner; in 1968, it was the cover that reported on the violence at the Democratic Convention in Chicago.

Readers did not hesitate to take TIME to task. Some complained about color pictures of Viet Nam casualties; many were appalled at what they saw as a growing permissiveness in just about every section. One reader was even disturbed by a picture of mating linden-bugs that ran in Science. "And after the housefly, what?" she asked. "The housewife?"

Readers who spotted errors, or thought they did, seemed more than anxious to point them out. When the magazine seated Charles de Gaulle in a Louis XV rather than a Louis XVI chair, we heard about it. And we were sternly reprimanded for ascribing a brief quote to Aeschylus. (The author was Hesiod.)

Letters commenting on letters that had already been published came in at a steady rate. Hard put to keep up with the unending flow of correspondence, one of TIME'S letter writers nevertheless found time to devise a new title for her boss. After reading a World story on a recent German drive to shorten titles, she decided that Maria Luisa Cisneros rated just the opposite treatment and coined the name zustaend-igee Leserbriefeflutabteilungsoberleiterin. In other words: Chief supervisor of the department for answering the flood of letters to the editor.

TIME'S cover this week deals with a critical point in the tense relationship between black and white in the U.S. Time Inc. President James Linen discussed another facet of the same subject as he acknowledged his "Man in Management" award from Pace College. "When we speak of the current crisis in our cities," said Linen, "we are speaking about racial crisis. When we speak of poverty, we mean Negro poverty. When we say disadvantaged neighborhoods, we mean black ghettos." For all the progress that has been made, "the dimension of the problem does not lessen." As president of the National Urban League, said Linen, he has come to understand better some of the anger of black people. To deal with that anger, he argued, takes more than promises. Led by business management, "the business community must undertake the urban challenge." The Negro must be given his place in the business world. "Just as American men have shared power with American women--just as management has shared power with labor--white Americans must now share power with black Americans. In every sense, we must replace the feeling of powerlessness that now prevails in the ghetto with a piece of the action."

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