The Corporation Becomes a Target

UNTIL recently, U.S. corporations have seemed almost immune to the outbreaks of violent dissent that have roiled universities, ghettos and city streets. In three tumultuous April weeks, strident conflict has shattered that old tranquillity. Organized activists--protesting the Viet Nam War, pollution and what they consider to be industrial irresponsibility--have disrupted the annual meetings of at least nine major companies. Angry epithets have converted some stockholder gatherings into social battlegrounds. To disperse unruly demonstrators, helmeted police have used tear gas, and company guards have sprayed disabling Mace. Last week, the confrontations, at four corporate meetings, reached an acrimonious crescendo.

-- In Chicago, Commonwealth Edison's annual meeting turned into a debate over pollution. The Rev. Leonard Dubi, a Catholic priest, led a band of 70 proxy-holding protesters and peremptorily gave directors one hour to answer their demands. They called for a halt in the construction of a nuclear power station to avoid thermal pollution of Lake Michigan, and for faster action to reduce the sulfur content of coal that the utility burns. Dubi and his followers then left the hall, thus missing a report by Commonwealth Edison President Thomas G. Ayers outlining plans to cut sulfur emissions around Chicago by 50%. Several stockholders politely urged even more effort, mindful that Chicago's Department of Environmental Control recently listed the company as first among the city's air polluters.

-- In Seattle, 700 stockholders of the Boeing Co. met in a plant cafeteria while 125 demonstrators paraded outside bearing banners that charged: BOEING PROFITS FROM DEATH AND OPPRESSION. The crowd burned a 5-ft. papier-mache model of a B-l bomber. Guards prevented all of the protesters from entering the cafeteria; one, after he was' ejected, tried to distribute leaflets urging stockholders to demand that Boeing "get out of the war business."

-- In Minneapolis, 1,500 demonstrators marched on the headquarters of Honeywell Inc. Many of them were members of Minnesota Proxies for People and the Honeywell Project, which had begun a drive months ago to force the company to stop manufacturing antipersonnel fragmentation bombs. Security kept most of the demonstrators outside, and guards pushed others from the lobby. When flying beer bottles shattered glass doors and windows, 60 city policemen wearing gas masks formed a skirmish line to clear the entrance. About 300 demonstrators, many of them stripped to the waist and daubed in red and white grease paint, managed to get inside. They shouted demands that Chairman James H. Binger accept their nominations for directors. The Rev. William Grace, a United Presbyterian minister, damned the conduct of the meeting as "immoral, irregular and illegal." As the din continued, Binger announced that he was voting 88% of Honeywell's shares for the management slate of 14 directors. Replying to protests from the floor that others wanted to air their views, Binger snapped: "You've forfeited this right."

> In Pittsburgh, where Gulf Oil Corp. held its meeting, police arrested seven persons during sidewalk disturbances. Inside the meeting hall, 50 proxy-bearing dissidents jeered, booed and shouted demands that Gulf end its defense contracts and stop doing business in Portugal's African colony of Angola. They were supported by several clergymen and professors. Defending Gulf's policies, Chairman E.D. ("Del") Brockett noted that the company supplies less than 4% of all fuel purchased by the Defense Department, and earns a lower margin of profit on it than on civilian sales. "Many derogatory public statements are being made about Gulf," said Brockett. "Many [come from] responsible adults and young people who are seriously devoted to constructive change in our society. They, and all responsible people, are grappling for solutions to the major problems mankind faces. Too often, in the act of grappling, we snag each other instead of the solutions we seek."

Uptight Management. Last week's eruptions were only replays, with minor variations, of earlier confrontations at meetings of American Telephone & Telegraph, United Aircraft, Alcoa, General Electric and Columbia Broadcasting System. The protesters were of varied persuasions--from Marxist-Maoist to Quaker--and they included many affluent young adults and teenagers. Much central guidance was supplied by the Washington-based New Mobilization Committee, which coordinates the activities of many groups opposed to the war in Viet Nam. New Mobe's avowed aims are to 1) end war production, 2) convert factories to peacetime work without layoffs and 3) gain worker control of U.S. industry.

The harassers at Honeywell and Commonwealth Edison also picked up tactical tips from Chicago's Saul Alinsky, the foundation-subsidized professional radical who regards conflict as a useful cathartic for social ills (TIME, March 2). "In all of my battles," says Alinsky, "I have never seen the other side so uptight as they have been on this."

Corporate leaders are indeed concerned. Though enraged dissidents often make dialogue impossible, they are forcing executives to think about questions that most managers once considered beyond the scope of corporate conscience. Wallace G. Taylor, president of Formica Corp., says that businessmen are "deaf, dumb and blind to a hydraheaded new-American revolution that is tearing this country asunder, value by value." How, asks Taylor, "can a country whose business is business continue to be deaf to its own youth and blind to a war that is rapidly turning this country into one of the poor nations?"

Despite--and partly because of--their theatrics, the alienated children of affluence have also confronted U.S. corporations with an immense challenge. Gulf Oil President B.R. Dorsey said that company officials were shaken by the persistent opposition of spokesmen for church groups. "Over the next ten years," Dorsey says, "the public will demand justification for just about everything American industry is doing. If we have a point to make, and I am sure we do, then we had better start finding ways to make it."

Though this spring's protesters have lost their battles to bend corporate policies by direct assault, they have nevertheless sown seeds of change among top management. The year 1970 promises to be a poor one for profits but, to judge from the new currents of thought among executives, it could prove to be rich in the beginnings of social reform in U.S. corporations.

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