To take the temperature of the U.S. economy and to gauge at the same time the mood of the men who are most important in making it run, TIME this week called on every one of its U.S. bureaus. Correspondents from New York to Los Angeles and from Detroit to Houston interviewed some 200 businessmen, economists and public officials up to and including the President of the United States. Out of the 400 pages of copy that the correspondents sent to New York, plus a mass of other research and reports, Senior Editor Edward L. Jamieson, Writer Marshall Loeb and Researcher Piri Halasz reached the consensus reported in the cover story on the new and exuberant U.S. economy. The new mood of confidence and optimism offers a striking contrast to the temper reported exactly one year ago this week in our June 1, 1962 issue when the cover featured Bear v. Bull on Wall Street, and the story accurately charted the unhappy market trend that became the year's most dramatic business news.

It was clear that no one businessman represented the whole story of the new economy, so we chose twelve key executives in dynamic companies that range all across the broad sweep of U.S. business and industry. The choices were pointed but not necessarily exclusive--a good many of the colleagues and competitors of these twelve might have been included. The twelve we chose:

Monroe Jackson Rathbone, president, Standard Oil Co. (New Jersey)

Joseph L. Block, chairman. Inland Steel Co.

Michael W. McCarthy, chairman, Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith

Mark Cresap, president, Westinghouse Electric Corp.

Rudolph A. Peterson, vice chairman, Bank of America

Gilbert Fitzhugh, president, Metropolitan Life Insurance Co.

William Allan Patterson, president. United Air Lines

John F. Gordon, president. General Motors Corp.

Charles Thornton, chairman, Litton Industries, Inc.

Lammot du Pont Copeland, president, E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co.

Courtlandt Gross, chairman, Lock heed Aircraft Corp.

Ralph Lazarus, president. Federated Department Stores

"THIS twelve-man cover will present ' a special challenge to the growing number of readers who collect the autographs of cover subjects: they will have to use a series of mailings to get twelve signatures on one copy of the cover. The process may go on for years. How long it goes on in much less involved circumstances was noted last week by Theologian Karl Earth as he was being interviewed for this week's story in Religion. Ever since he appeared on the cover (April 20, 1962), said Earth, he has been receiving "a never-ending flow of envelopes from America, containing my TIME cover picture, with requests to return it, duly signed. The only way I can find to sign it is by writing Karl on the left side, and Earth on the right side of my collar. This is the only white on the picture, and the signature makes me look like a Salvation Army officer. I guess that cover really made me famous, like Jack Dempsey."

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