Word: rearguard
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...Rearguard Action. On the average, U.S. corporations pass out nearly two-thirds of their profits to shareholders. To many businessmen, this seems too much; they contend that firms often give out money that really should be used to expand and improve operations."There are some companies paying out dividends that would actually be showing no profit at all if they were making the proper set-aside for depreciation of their facilities," says Charles B. ("Tex") Thornton, chairman of California's fast-rising Litton Industries. Litton has never in its ten-year history declared a cash dividend, preferring-as many...
...outlay. This is all right, says Harvard Business School Economist John Lintner, "when the earnings decline is pretty surely temporary. Management will be very often serving stockholders best by maintaining dividend payments and protecting the price of the stock." But some industries have persisted too long in this rearguard action-and steel is one of them. While earnings dropped year after year and the industry lagged in modernization, steelmen kept rewarding stockholders at the same level in order to present an outward picture of stability. Result: dividends amounted to 50.1% of profits in 1957 but accounted for 79.8% of profits...
Fireman Gilbert's character and personal style are marvelously well suited to his role as a rearguard battler, a staver-off of the future. He is, says an official of Gilbert's union, "oldfashioned, unsophisticated and basic." He does not smoke or drink, and rarely swears. He once joined a country club but soon quit because he disapproved of the drinking the other members did. His recreations center on his home in a suburb of Cleveland: broiling steaks in the yard, playing pingpong, showing home movies. He and his wife sometimes have guests for square dancing...
...Rearguard Action. The explosion of vital statistics is amply evident from the island of Sylt, where pneumatic nudists jounce across the beaches, to the Spanish coastline, where bulgy Brünnhildes have already made the authorities regret their decision not to enforce a longtime ban on bikinis. West Germany's men's wear industry in recent years has had to add a new clothing classification, tactfully dubbed Boss or Manager size; nearly a quarter of all new clothes are now bought by customers of managerial girth, while sales of "normal" sizes are diminishing...
Many German women are fighting a determined rearguard action, nonetheless. Sales of foundation garments have quadrupled since 1950, and slimming parlors have become almost as thick as Germany's beloved whipped cream. In Bonn, where a session at the stylish Salon der Figur ranges from $6 for a plump pubescent to $125 for a well-marbled dowager, Owner Helga Pietsch sighs: "Ninety percent of the German women who come in here don't even know what a calorie...