New Voices for a New Era

By Charles Alexander

A fresh battalion carries the banner of corporate America in Washington

When Big Business wanted to nake noise in Washington in recent years, it called on an elite corps of corporate chieftains. Not content to leave the lobbying to hired hands, members of the Business Roundtable, composed of chief executive officers from some 200 major corporations, personally trod White House and congressional corridors to press for business tax breaks or to protest nitpicking Government regulations. Du Pont Chairman Irving Shapiro, General Motors Chairman Thomas Murphy, Chase Manhattan Chairman David Rockefeller and General Electric Chairman Reginald Jones became almost as familiar around the capital as the Marine Band, promoting not only tax relief for their companies but also job programs and reforms of the legal system. Says Shapiro: "We wanted to demonstrate that there are sensible human beings running big companies, people who can think beyond their own personal business interests."

But now the business guard in Washington is changing. Because of their almost simultaneous retirement, Shapiro, Rockefeller, Jones, Murphy and several other corporate leaders are being replaced by a new group of top corporate lobbyists. Meanwhile, other groups, representing smaller companies and entrepreneurs, are also attempting to establish close relations with an Administration already favorably disposed toward business.

Despite Jimmy Carter's obvious coolness toward businessmen from large companies, the Business Roundtable had a good record during the last Administration. Carter frequently turned to Shapiro and Jones, two leading Roundtable officials, for their advice. Before the appointment of G. William Miller as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, the White House conferred with both men on the merits of various candidates. Jones, who turned down an offer from Carter to be Secretary of the Treasury, played a major role in formulating the business part of the 1978 tax cut.

It is too soon to know whether the new corporate leaders will have the same influence, but they come with impressive records. Some of the leading new spokesmen for Big Business in Washington:

Clifton C. Garvin Jr., 60. Last year the Business Roundtable tapped the folksy but forceful head of Exxon to replace Thomas Murphy as its chairman and chief public spokesman. That was a surprising move, considering the unpopularity of oil companies, but Garvin had long since proved his ability to defend business. In the summer of 1979, even as Americans were stuck in gasoline lines across the country, he appeared on the Phil Donahue television show and calmly argued that the shortage was not contrived. A chemical engineer and an Exxon man for 34 years, Garvin believes that energy price controls have promoted profligacy and impeded production. Says he: "If we can shift the underlying bias in U.S. economic policy away from consumption and toward production, we can solve our problems."

Theodore F. Brophy, 58. With bushy white eyebrows that give him the appearance of a wise owl, Brophy is the consummate advocate, equally at home in a courtroom and before a congressional subcommittee. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he became general counsel for General Telephone & Electronics in 1959. He rose through the ranks by negotiating the acquisition of independent telephone companies. Brophy, who chairs the Roundtable's taxation task force, has urged incentives to encourage capital formation. One of his proposals: income taxes on stock dividends that are automatically reinvested in the company should be deferred until the shares are sold.

James H. Evans, 61. The son of a Kentucky Baptist preacher, Evans has been law clerk to former Supreme Court Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson, financial vice president of Dun & Bradstreet and president of New York's Seamen's Bank for Savings. As chairman of the Union Pacific Corp., he rules an empire encompassing the U.S.'s eighth largest railroad, oil and gas operations, uranium and coal mines and 1 million acres of real estate. Like Brophy, Evans argues that reducing the business tax burden is crucial to boosting America's sagging productivity. Says he: "People want to put in a day's work for a day's pay. We just need the dollars to give them the tools to do the job."

Walter B. Wriston, 61. Already well known as the chairman of Citibank, the U.S.'s second largest bank ($102 billion in assets), Wriston has replaced David Rockefeller as the premier spokesman for America's moneymen. A graduate of Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Wriston has pushed Citibank into the forefront of the banking revolution symbolized by automatic teller machines. Low interest rate ceilings on passbook deposits, he maintains, discourage the savings that are desperately needed to spur investment. Says he with characteristic bluntness: "We're being forced to rip off the public. The savers are subsidizing the borrowers."

Ruben F. Mettler, 57. As a young aeronautical engineer working for Ramo-Wooldridge Corp. in the 1950s, Mettler supervised the development of Pioneer I, the first satellite launched by a private firm. He is now chairman of TRW, the aerospace and automotive giant that resulted when Ramo-Wooldridge merged with Thompson Products. Mettler heads the Roundtable's employment task force.

Says he: "Businessmen can participate more in special training programs for the hard-to-employ. That is a way to increase productivity where it counts the most."

Robert A. Beck, 55. Beck joined Prudential Insurance Co. in 1951 as a sales agent and during the next 27 years clambered to the pinnacle of the "Rock." Only one other chairman had ever started out selling policies--John Dryden, who founded the firm in 1875. Still driven by a door-to-door salesman's enthusiasm, Beck works standing up at a desk built into his office wall. He will be arguing the Business Roundtable's views on Social Security and pensions. As a lifelong insurance man, he naturally stresses the importance of future planning for businesses as well as individuals. Says he: "Executives have been so busy fighting fires that they haven't had time for the longer-term view. But business is now very conscious of the critical need to have new plant and equipment, new technology and research."

In addition to supporting Reagan's package of tax cuts, reductions in Government spending and regulatory reform, the Roundtable has its own ambitious agenda. A top priority is encouraging programs that boost U.S. exports. The business leaders, for example, assert that the procedures for obtaining a Government export license should be simplified and that federal taxes on Americans working abroad should be lowered.

Another Roundtable goal is to establish better relations with organized labor.

Business and union leaders have joined together to form a new labor-management group with the help of Harvard Professor John Dunlop, who was President Ford's Secretary of Labor. The Roundtable's Garvin will head a management contingent that will also include Evans, Wriston and Mettler. The alliance will search for ways to create new jobs, boost industrial productivity and bolster U.S. competitiveness in world markets.

While the Business Roundtable has been a particularly effective lobbyist for corporate America in Washington, it is not the only one. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Feder ation of Independent Business also plead the cause of business, especially for medium-and small-size companies. The Reagan White House is expected to give all these groups equal access. Before his economic message to Congress in February, the President called in representatives from the Roundtable and the other organizations for conversation, coffee and jelly beans. Says James ("Mike") McKevitt, a director of the NFIB: "To the President's credit, we were at the table along with Big Business. I've never seen that be fore in my ten years in Washington."

Now still another voice has been add ed to what is rapidly becoming a busi ness babel in Washington: the American Business Conference was formed to speak for medium-size growth companies.

(Membership is limited to chief executives from 100 firms that have annual sales be tween $20 million and $1 billion and have expanded by at least 15% in each of the past five years.) ABC is lobbying for a sharp reduction in the capital gains tax, which would stimulate investment in rapidly growing companies. The members also strongly oppose federal aid to ailing industries. Says Arthur Levitt Jr., chairman of the American Stock Exchange and ABC's founder: "I believe in economic Darwinism, a system that permits win ners to win and losers to lose."

A I the official, card-carrying corpo rate leaders will have to compete for the President's ear with the so-called kitchen Cabinet, a band of businessmen who are Reagan's longtime cro nies and fund raisers. Among them: Justin Dart of Dart & Kraft, the diversified Illinois-based food, housewares and chem ical concern; William Wilson, a Southern California real estate developer; Holmes Tuttle, a Los Angeles Ford dealer; and Jo seph Coors, the Colorado brewer. All have access to Reagan. Says Tuttle: "The morn ing after the Inauguration, Dart and I sat down with the President and gave our impression of the budget. We keep saying the same thing: cut, cut and then cut some more."

Reagan's buddies went a bit too far last month when they began putting the arm on corporations for outsize contributions to mount a public relations campaign touting the President's economic policies. Reagan scuttled his friends' fund raising after deciding that it could be politically embarrassing. Shortly there after the kitchen Cabinet lost its quarters -- an office in the Old Executive Office Building across from the White House -- when Presidential Counsellor Edwin Meese III ordered the group to move, on the grounds that private individuals should not be occupying Government property. But no matter. Even without a base practically next door to the Oval Office, the many spokesmen for American business in Washington can count on comfortable surroundings for the next four years.

-- By Charles Alexander.

Reported by David Beckwith/ Washington and Janice C. Simpson/New York

With reporting by David Beckwith, JANICE C. SIMPSON

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