Voice with a Smile

"The business recession should be bottoming out now," American Telephone & Telegraph President Frederick R. Kappel last week said to some 2,600 stockholders crowded into the annual meeting in Manhattan. Other cheery news: A.T. & T.'s 1957 profits were up to $852,904,000 v. $777,791,000 in 1956, would probably stay up in 1958. "As to our growth," said Kappel, "I think the significant point right now is that we are furnishing more service despite the general slowing down of the nation's economy." To expand service, A.T. & T.:

P: Added 1,400,000 phones since September, and is handling 5,000,000 more phone conversations a day.

P: Plans to spend $2.2 billion to add 2,000,000 new phones this year, add facilities to handle 130 million additional toll calls annually.

To cut costs, even in some relatively small ways, A.T. & T. is:

P: Sweeping its office floors with a specially treated, dust-gathering cloth to save $1,000,000 a year.

P: Training information operators in a new reading method that has cut the time needed to look up a number from 37.6 to 33.3 sec. Potential saving: $8,000,000 a year.

During the 4 3/4-hour meeting, stockholder after stockholder popped up to ask questions of Kappel. When one weary stockholder finally asked that some stockholders be kept to parliamentary rules, Kappel replied: "That would be the last thing I would want to do to stockholders, who are entitled to have their say."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.