Word: cushion
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Dead. In general, there was little worry over the effects on business of a truce. The stock market, for example, seemed to have a cushion against a further sharp decline. Many investors who had been selling stocks and taking their profits at higher levels were looking around for likely buys at last week's lower prices. Furthermore, on the basis of past performance, companies could suffer some drop in profits without any damage to their dividends. Prewar, corporate dividends averaged 74% of earnings, whereas recently they have averaged only 58%. Another hopeful market portent; despite Dwight Eisenhower...
Southern customs are still largely based on the assumption that the Negro is an inferior being. But that assumption lacks the pseudo-scientific backing it still had a generation ago. For decades, the South's preoccupation with the Negro was a kind of cushion against reality, a diversion from the facts of poverty and stagnation. Southern "poor whites" had nothing if they could not feel superior to the Negro. During the past ten years, the South has been caught up in a great industrial boom; reality has become a little easier to face...
...employment. In hard times, Deupree points out, few companies can keep up the prosperity-level payrolls now being paid. Therefore, either the emphasis must be placed on regular employment (as at P. & G.), or else the wage guaranteed must be well below existing rates. Either method serves as a cushion during economic crises. Deupree credits P. & G.'s program as one of the main factors for keeping the company free of major strikes for more than 60 years. Says he : "Workers want security above all else. A man with a job is potentially a good citizen; a man without...
Hands on the Tiller. Swiftly but quietly, the Soviet world put on mourning. The momentous news had come piece by piece over 48 hours, every word carefully prepared and timed to cushion the shock. Everything about it suggested that a fresh, firm hand had taken over the instant Joseph Stalin's had begun to falter...
Furthermore, the economy has a great many built-in supports - mostly devised by the New Deal - to keep up buying power and cushion the severity of a slump. Government price supports keep the farmer's income relatively stable ; federal deposit insurance helps prevent any 1932-type bank panics. Strong unions keep a floor under wages; unemployment insurance tides the jobless over short layoffs. While only 15% of the U.S. labor force was covered by pension systems in the '30s, today 90% are covered, and private pension plans have grown from 720 in 1930 to 14,000, covering more...