Word: auto
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...office pull. Next week the Moiseyev will give Americans their first close look at a major Soviet dance company. For a color preview of what Russian dance looks like when it is not poised on pointe, see Music, Soviet Pop Ballet. r RAGGED down by the auto indus-'-' try's slump, Detroit is the most recession-battered big city in the U.S. What worries thoughtful Detroiters even more than the current acute chill is a chronic malaise that afflicted the city even before the nationwide recession started, and will still be nagging it after the recession...
...WITH the auto industry braked down, Detroit is the U.S.'s most recession-ridden big city (metropolitan pop. 3,650,000). Across the nation unemployment averages 6.7% of the labor force; in Detroit the figure comes to 15.1%. Some 230,000 Detroiters are jobless, and 40,000 of them have run out of unemployment benefits, with the low-seniority, generally unskilled Negroes getting the worst of it. The monthly relief bill runs to $740,000, triple the year-ago outlay. Unemployed workers in debt for cars, furniture and appliances usually find that stores and finance companies are willing...
Detroit's pessimism, like its unemployment, is more than merely a symptom of the U.S.'s current recession. The recession only made chronic trouble acute. Memories of dead or departed auto companies-Hudson, Packard, Kaiser-Frazer-remind Detroiters that trouble in the auto industry can have something to do with bad management. "You know," says a businessman, "when we were the arsenal of democracy, there was a great premium put on inefficiency of operation. The more payroll a company had, the more profit it would make on the cost-plus arrangement. And when the war ended, there...
...city's failure to hold on to the auto industry or attract replacements, many Detroit businessmen blame United Auto Workers President Walter Reuther and his close ally, Governor G. Mennen ("Soapy") Williams. Reuther, the arguments run, discourages industry by pushing labor costs higher and higher, and Democrat Williams discourages it by committing himself to Big Labor and the ever higher taxes of the welfare state. Says outspoken Harvey Campbell, vice president of the powerful Detroit Board of Commerce: "Businessmen won't talk about it in public. They are afraid of reprisal. They stand behind me and cheer...
Capitalism can fall into some unexpected pitfalls in its travels around the world, but none more surprising than in Guinée, French West Africa. Recently, so goes the tale, a wealthy chieftain bought a brand-new car from a local auto dealer, proudly drove it away, filled with his numerous family. A few miles down the road, he skidded into a ditch and overturned. Though no one was badly hurt, the car was wrecked. Wrathfully. the chief returned to the dealer and demanded a new car because, he said, the wrecked one had been bewitched. As an expert witness...