Beauty Over Bullets

From youthful radicals to such eminent Establishmentarians as Dwight Eisenhower, critics have assailed the military-industrial complex as too powerful for the nation's good. Former FAA administrator E.R. ("Pete") Quesada claims that at least in monetary terms, the vastness of the complex is a myth. He bet a colleague one box of cigars that the value of common stock of the ten largest companies commonly assumed to be part of the complex was less than that of a single cosmetics firm.

Quesada is now smoking contentedly. He produced figures proving that as of April 26, the common stock of the ten companies (Lockheed Aircraft, General Dynamics, McDonnell Douglas, United Aircraft, North American Rockwell, Litton Industries, Grumman, Ling-Temco-Vought, Boeing and Raytheon) was worth $4,723,814,437. On the same date the common stock of Avon Products was valued at $5,618,240,682. It is comforting to learn that the nation values beauty above bullets. It is also disconcerting to think that American women need all that much help to look pretty. But in fact, by a more traditional measure of economic impact, the military-industrial companies far outrank Avon. Avon sales last year were $759 million; Quesada's ten companies did nearly $24 billion worth of business.

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