Retailer's Hard Words

Besides being chairman of the big May Department Stores Co., Stanley J Goodman, 63, is a crisp tennis player, a wine connoisseur and a good enough "living-room" violinist to have played with Isaac Stern and the St. Louis Symphony. To all these talents, Goodman added another last week. Addressing the annual convention of the National Retail Merchants Association, he proved to be a candid critic of something he knows well and loves deeply -- American business.

Goodman cited polls showing that only 29% of the public has confidence in business today. The problem goes beyond a simple rejection of the Establishment or a distrust of growth that provides too much quantity and too little quality, he said. A more basic explanation is that business has "an almost unbroken record of opposing legislation that the public thinks is good. The Sherman Antitrust Act, the Federal Reserve Act, the Federal Trade Commission Acts, the Securities Exchange Act -- we fought every one and lost."

Watergate has harmed business's image. "I shudder to think what a public-opinion survey taken today would score on business motives and integrity. Now on top of all this, the energy crisis raises doubts as to how good business is in planning its own sphere." Goodman also criticized retailers for selling shoddy products and ignoring employees' needs to find meaning in their work. If business is again to become "a creative force in our lives," Goodman concluded, it must learn that "what's good for people is good for business."

Why did he make such an unexpected speech? Well, says Goodman, "we retailers spend our time watching the public. We're closest to the consumer, and should be the most responsive. I also have a 23-year-old son, and others have youngsters, too. I know how they feel about business and about the world. We have to confront those attitudes."

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