THE housing industry is a significant part of the U.S. economy. New housing alone accounted for $32 billion, or 3% of the gross national product last year. It is also such a diverse business that its leaders rarely have an opportunity to meet and exchange views. The one common forum for top management is the Housing Industry Presidents Conference, which has been sponsored by Time Inc. since 1954. The conference brings together heads of trade associations and corporations, mortgage bankers and Government officials, for three days of frank, off-the-record discussion.

This year the conference was held in the relaxed atmosphere of a resort near Acapulco, Mexico. Among the Government officials attending were George Romney, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Counsellor to the President; Charles Walker, Under Secretary of the Treasury; Preston Martin, chairman of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board; and Allan Oakley Hunter, president of the Federal National Mortgage Association. They were joined by 80 leaders from every sector of the housing industry. That is quite an increase since the first meeting at Pebble Beach, Calif., when the presidents of the National Association of Home Builders and the U.S. Savings and Loan League were brought together by P.I. Prentice, a retired vice president of Time Inc. and publisher of TIME, who began this letter back in 1942.

Our cover story this week deals with a particularly poignant aspect of the war, yet one unusually difficult to report: the U.S. prisoners in North Viet Nam. From Saigon, Correspondent James Willwerth cabled that he was personally convinced that there had been no security leak on the abortive Son Tay raid: "Most military and intelligence people in Saigon simply weren't given the details of the air strikes or the commando raid. They hadn't seen the script." In Washington, Correspondent William Mader, who has followed the plight of the prisoners all along, talked with concerned Government officials and with the wives of the men. "What impressed me most was the immense quiet courage and fortitude of the wives," he says. Adds Keith Johnson, who wrote the story and talked at length with a group of wives last summer: "One of them had not heard from her husband for four years."

The Cover: Photo design by Fred Burrell, from pictures supplied by Communist sources to Associated Press and United Press International. The prisoners were identified as U.S. Navy Lieut. Commander William M. Tschudy at top left, and at bottom, left to right, Airmen James Hutton and James Young and Commander Charles Tanner.

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