Word: volkswagen
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...fresh, irreverent eye and his breezy, gag-filled style. Unlike most gossip columnists, Herb Caen seldom rumples through dirty linen or tries to scoop the city desk, but concentrates instead on the San Franciscana he calls "sightems" or "babble-by-the-bay." Sample Caenanities: "Sign on a Volkswagen: Help Stamp Out Cads"; classified ad for a new home: "All-electric family kitchen, including natural-birth cabinets"; one matron to another matron: "No, she's not keeping the car any more. Just the chauffeur...
Bilingual Spellbinder. No simple tribesman, Mboya bounces around the countryside in a Volkswagen. His library is studded with the works of Mark Twain, Tom Paine and Plato, and his politics have the pinkish hue of the Nye Bevan Laborites who have taken him up in Britain. He is articulate in English and a spellbinder in Swahili. Last year he toured the U.S. and returned home with $35,000 from the C.I.O.-A.F.L. to build a headquarters for his Kenya Labor Federation...
...Wider Ownership." Erhard's plan is to sell 10 million shares at about $12 each over the next several years. This would bring the government $120 million, which is close to Volkswagen's plant investment but well below its estimated assets of $250 million. Erhard aims for "wider ownership of the means of production" by making special provisions for wage earners. The government will give 10% to 20% discounts to Germans earning up to $3,500 a year. To prevent stock control from going to big companies, especially foreign ones, Bonn will limit stock purchases by any buyer...
Before the sale can start, the government may have to prove its rightful ownership. Claims of ownership are being advanced by Volkswagen's original financiers -Germans who paid Hitler's Labor Front $233 each for the "people's car" they never got. Of 300,000 Germans taken in on the deal, a group of 130,000 is still suing in federal courts for some return, although lower courts ruled against them...
Vote Getter. The state of Lower Saxony also claims to own Volkswagen because the British occupation authorities named it to administer the company in 1949. But Lower Saxony has done little to build up Volkswagen, and the federal government expects to knock out this claim with its private ownership bill. The Bundestag is likely to pass the bill this fall, unless Chancellor Konrad Adenauer is upset in September's elections by the Socialists, who favor continued nationalization. But German politicians believe that the very announcement of the stock ownership plan will pick up votes for the Adenauer-Erhard team...