A Fine Climate

Though U.S. businessmen were shaken by President Eisenhower's heart attack last September, it actually made little difference in their corporate planning. They had based plant expansions and product additions not on politics but on a growing population, an expanding economy, a rising standard of living. Republic Steel, for example, reviewed growth plans after the cardiac break, but changed nothing.

In the last few weeks before Ike's announcement, businessmen became confident that he would indeed say yes. Thus, when the final decision came last week, the news had already been discounted, and it caused little stir in the business world. The only flurry was in Wall Street, where small investors bought heavily. At week's end the Dow Jones industrial average broke through all previous records to a new alltime high of 488.84.

There was little doubt that a "no" from Ike would have hit business hard. "A lot of businesses," said Edward Eagle Brown, board chairman of Chicago's First National Bank, "would have cut back on their expansion plans." What Ike's "affirmative" answer did was to convince U.S. industry that governmental encouragement of free enterprise would continue. Said Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. Board Chairman P. W. Litchfield: "Our economy does better when the political climate is favorable to giving the American system of free enterprise a full chance to produce. The three Eisenhower years have provided this improved climate, and business has responded by producing and selling more goods, hiring more people, paying higher wages and benefits than ever before."

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