Chapter Three: Fortune Magazine’s Top 500

Established in 1929 by Henry R. Luce (1898-1967), Fortune Magazine quickly rose within the ranks of journalism to become a highly respected publication. Dedicated to promoting the ideals of modern-day business this magazine embodied much more than just an accurate portrayal of the most attest economic trends and the many capable leaders responsible for initiating and sustaining them. This much heralded publication appealed to an audience that extended far beyond prominent domestic bankers, outspoken government leaders and foremost industrialists. It touched the lives of thousands of everyday men and women who wanted a clearer understanding of what constituted the latest business breakthroughs and how those developments might affect their individual enterprises in the years ahead.

The formidable challenges of presenting accurate information and precise commentaries, within the context of an easily readable format, remained foremost in the minds of its energetic editors and columnists. The magazine’s thoughtfully presented think pieces afforded its readership important new insights as to how this nation’s economy truly operated. Furthermore, Fortune Magazine carefully voiced the hopes and fears of national and regional decision-makers alike during decisive periods in our nation’s history. The magazine’s meticulously presented advertisements focused on a wide variety of specialized goods and services intended for a distinct audience. Its detailed executive profiles and accurate economic forecasts further distinguished it from other business-related journals of the same era.

Being on the cutting-edge of major national and regional business changes required both resolve and resourcefulness. In particular, Fortune Magazine’s enthusiastic editorial board and passionate writers steadily advanced new approaches towards business as plugged by a host of influential interest groups nationwide. The magazine’s ingenious Assistant Managing Editor Edgar P. Smith (1920-1989) played a pivotal part in its early popularity. Smith observed that the post-war economic scene with its new precise international perspective necessitated that major U.S. corporations become more vigilant when it came to collecting and analyzing the annual financial gains and losses of their chief rivals. Repeatedly assessing and recording the recent profits and losses of their main competitors signified an important first step towards successfully achieving that essential analytical objective. Unfortunately, the shortage of reliable data, in that regards, prevented many large companies from collecting, disseminating and storing that kind of information for future use.^[1]

Hoping to resolve that nagging problem expeditiously encouraged Edgar Smith to come up with an annual list of the top 500 U.S. establishments. Introduced in the spring of 1955 and originally called the Fortune Industrial 500, this list of significant corporations was divided into three categories: energy exploitation, manufacturing and mining. To qualify for the list, a company must be incorporated and operate in the U.S. and file annual financial statements with federal officials. Over the next several years, Fortune Magazine expanded those categories to welcome banks, regional utility companies and life insurance corporations. The later inclusion of commercial and industrial service-related operations along with doubling the number of entities from 500 to 1,000 reflected the changing tempo of the domestic economy over the course of the second half of the 20th century. Other smaller, more specialized listings proved equally useful for those operations engaged in such endeavors.

Fortune 500 rankings changed periodically based on a company’s preceding year’s fortunes or misfortunes. Recent corporate actions related to such things as acquisitions and mergers, bankruptcies and closures often affected its ranking. Other developments over the previous 12 month period such as changing client preferences, as they related to the sales of goods and services provided by that individual company or its legal entanglements might also impact its annual rankings. Setting aside the variables responsible for determining the inclusion or exclusion of a certain company on that year’s listing, the national business community stills considers the Fortune 500 list to be a useful tool especially when it comes to a quick examination of winners and losers within different categories. The multiplicity of products manufactured in Cleveland by mid-century all but guaranteed its continuance as a leading Fortune 500 city. The fact that by 1955 over 50% of the products sold in the U.S. originated from Northeast Ohio only further reaffirmed that area’s growing importance as a provider.

A mid-1990s business study substantiated those much earlier findings by pointing out that 53% of this nation’s population, 54% of its retail sales and 59% of its manufactured goods occurred within a 500 mile radius of Cleveland.^[2] However, Cleveland’s long lasting economic and financial advantages extended far beyond those rigorously defined business factors mentioned above. Looking at it from a purely mid-20th century perspective, high annual production rates and repeated sales records not only ensured that iron and steel manufacturers would remain of vital importance; but also, that this robust industry would continue to offer a plethora of good paying, high quality jobs. Furthermore, it strongly suggests that good high paying jobs have not been lost over time even if the original driving economic and financial forces responsible for producing most of those top ranking jobs might have changed dramatically in both direction and scope.

Therefore, it came as no surprise to Cleveland’s business community when Fortune Magazine in 1955 announced that 15 of the 500 top companies recorded on its first listing were headquartered in Cleveland. In fact, the combined assets of those prosperous firms had surpassed the $2,500,000,000 mark that year. The Republic Steel Corporation, the Standard Oil Company of Ohio (SOHIO), Thompson Products Incorporated (TRW) and the Glidden Paint Company led the pack followed by the Eaton Corporation, the Diamond Alkali Company and the Cleveland Cliffs Incorporated. Other well-known entities found on that initial listing included the Addressograph Multigraph Corporation and the Midland Steel Product Company.

Beginning in 1957, some of the area’s most prominent lending institutions such as the Cleveland Trust Company and the National City Bank of Cleveland joined its ranks as did the Interlake Iron Company, the National Malleable & Steel Castings Company and the Reliance Electric Company. Record sales continued for most of those initial listed firms into the late 1950s and beyond. For example, in 1958 the White Motors Company and the Glidden Paint Company, ranked # 193 and # 194 with sales of $225,912,000 and $225,537,000 respectively. That same year, the Interlake Iron Company (# 347) and the Addressograph Multigraph Corporation (# 352) experienced similar solid gains of $107,422,000 and $106,280,000.

The burgeoning national economy during the early 1960s encouraged remarkable new sales records for many of Cleveland’s finest operated Fortune 500 enterprises. Extraordinarily high confidence on the part of the buying public along with consistently low annual inflation rates enabled the majority of those efficient entities to post substantial high profits year-after-year. To illustrate that last point further, those local companies, first recorded in 1955, set a new combined sales record of $4,172,195,000 in 1962. Republic Steel headed that list with sales totaling $10,067,000 while TRW followed suit at $9,405,000. Other corporations with equally impressive totals included the Standard Oil Company of Ohio at $3,829,000 and the Addressograph Multigraph at $2,895,000.

A booming economy empowered the Republic Steel Corporation (# 41) to achieve an all-time new sales mark of $1,300,000,000 in 1966.^[3] The Eaton Corporation (# 100) also did quite well that same year when its total sales surpassed the $700,000,000 mark. TRW was not far behind those two at $664,000,000 while the Standard Oil Company of Ohio (# 116) boasted of solid profit gains of $581,600,000. Prime local banking interests also did quite well with the Cleveland Trust Company leading the pack at $2,100,000 in 1966 while the National City Bank of Cleveland bettered its earlier projections of $1,000,000.

Although the recession of 1968 proved to be much milder than was first projected by the Federal Reserve Bank, that economic slowdown provided some Cleveland Fortune 500 establishments the perfect opportunity to update their conservative marketing strategies. Those engaged in such germane activities did it in lieu of the changing needs and wants of their expanding customer-base. Many succeeded in substantially reducing their overhead costs while simultaneously building up their profit levels to reach new, previously unimagined economic and financial plateaus. A recent addition to the Fortune 500 list, the Sherwin-Williams Company (# 215) reported record sales of $400,000,000 in 1968. Other Cleveland giants such as the Diamond Shamrock Corporation (# 207), the Automatic Sprinkler Corporation of America (# 321), the Parker Hannifin Corporation (# 447) and the M.A. Hanna Mining Company (# 474) showed similar impressive gains of $411,000,000; $242,000,000; $152,000,000 and $143,000,000.^[4]

That same business pattern repeated itself over the next four years as sales numbers for most leading Cleveland ventures continued to break new, all-time records. It took the OPEC Oil Embargo of 1973 followed by the Recession in 1974 to alter that once very rosy business picture. With low cost energy now a memory, many of that city’s larger firms, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, had determined that one of the best and most effective ways in which to maintain high profitability within this highly explosive international economy involved dramatically raising the prices on some of their popular products or services while at the same time slashing overhead costs. When necessary, they resorted to other, more stringent measures to maintain the status quo. Ordering major layoffs; selling under-performing subsidiaries and updating aging facilities topped that list of must changes. Anything to save a buck was their unofficial motto. Harsh new business measures, like the ones outlined above, varied substantially depending on the financial condition of the company involved at any given moment. However, such draconian actions did save some Fortune 500s from total financial ruin.

In 1977, the city boasted of having 24 Fortune 500 companies in its backyard. With combined sales now surpassing the $7,000,000,000 mark, the Eaton Corporation, the Standard Oil Company of Ohio and TRW led that prestigious list. The editors at Fortune Magazine that year also featured the Lubrizol Company and the Scott Fetzer Company. Established in 1928 by Frank A. Nason (1872-1956), F. A. Nason (1898-1989), Kent Smith (1895-1980), A. Kelvin Smith (1899-1984) and Thomas W. James (1892-1960) and originally called the Graphite Oil Products Company, the Lubrizol Company manufactured high grade oil additives, industrial lubricants and leaf springs. The Scott Fetzer Company, founded by George H. Scott (1889-1966) and Carl S. Fisher (1892-1969), offered a wide range of equally desirable household and industrial items.^[5] Even though Cleveland received consistently high marks by national business leaders when it came to offering such prized things as top quality housing; nearby airport service, top-rated educational facilities and first-class cultural venues, those obvious advantages did not always produce positive results.

Growing in-house business demands along with other, equally powerful outside economic and financial pressures often took precedent over other more immediate considerations such as the desirability or undesirability of Cleveland as a Fortune 500 center. Such was the case in September 1977 when a well-respected firm Harris Corporation announced its latest business plans that not only called for consolidating its many scattered facilities; but also, relocating its headquarters from Cleveland, OH to Melbourne, FL.^[6] Established by Alfred S. Harris (1891-1947) nearly 60 years earlier, the decision on the part of its board to move to the Sunshine state had nothing to do with Cleveland’s status as a major U.S. business community, far from it. In truth, it symbolized an austerity measure intended to fulfill one of the cardinal principles governing all business namely the need to save money whenever possible.

On a more optimistic note, another local Fortune 500 called A-T-O released the results of a national survey it had completed in June 1977. That study indicated that Cleveland ranked number one among U.S. cities as a desirable setting. Unfortunately, that positive news failed to lift the spirits of many corporate heads who were still reeling from the economic and financial devastation wrought by the recession just three years earlier. A measurable decrease in new orders made even worse by reoccurring labor strife and what appeared to be a never ending increase in the cost of precious energy marked the end of post-war prosperity for many large manufacturing concerns found in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Job losses reached an unprecedented new high by the mid-1970s with no end in sight. From 1973 to 1976, Ohio had recorded more than 132,000 industrial jobs loss with the Greater Cleveland area suffering the most with over 83,000 jobs eliminated during that three-year span. Many critics blamed the Ohio Department of Economic and Community Development for that area’s latest economic and financial misfortunes.^[7] Rather than focusing the bulk of its attention on assisting smaller companies whose very economic survival depended on successfully marketing the latest technological advances within their respective endeavors, state officials preferred to help local Fortune 500 enterprises instead. The department also failed to provide important population indicators or offer any substantial aid to community groups seeking federal dollars. That department’s inability to furnish reliable information pertaining to such things as newly issued government regulations on freight traffic and toll increases was inexcusable. Those same critics also attacked the ineptness of that agency when it came to establishing meaningful new liaisons with local business leaders, union heads and municipal officials. Their obvious lack of action in those crucial areas prevented many outside businesses from moving into this state.

One example of that agency’s ineptness presented itself in September 1979 when the White Motors Corporation and the Reliance Electric Company announced that both were planning to sell their Cleveland operations as soon as possible.^[8] Those Fortune 500s had done quite well financially for many decades although there was a notable, slump in sales at the White Motors Corporation recently. The growing popularity of imported trucks and tractors accounted for those recent losses that now exceeded the $311,000,000 mark. Rather than assisting the White Motors Company and other similar fledgling Cleveland manufacturers, the Ohio Department of Economic and Community Development did virtually nothing to help them in their hour of need. Left with no other alternatives, the White Motors Company accepted the generous merger offer made by the AB Volvo Car Corporation in 1981. Under this agreement, Volvo issued a $33,000,000 note due on December 31, 1984. In exchange, White Motors totally surrendered its retail and wholesale financial portfolio to its new owner. This newly created subsidiary called the Volvo White Truck Company soon relocated from Cleveland, OH to Greensborough, N.C.

The immediate fate of the Reliance Electric Company was far less grim when compared to what happened to the White Motors Company. Acknowledged for its superior mechanical couplers and electric motors, Reliance Electric had indeed come a long way from its earliest days when it produced light bulbs for Cleveland’s Brush Electric Company. The late 1970s found the Exxon Corporation envying Reliance Electric’s uncanny ability to not only survive this nation’s latest recession; but also, produce steady profit increases. When the opportunity presented itself, the Exxon Corporation acquired this successful enterprise. This $1,150,000,000 combined cash-stock deal, struck in 1979, called for Exxon’s newest subsidiary to focus its primary attention on the manufacturing of high energy electric motors. Again, any subsequent moves instigated by Exxon’s executives had literally nothing to do with Cleveland’s future prospects as a major U.S. center. Apparently, that issue never entered any phase of the negotiation process. Future business plans more than any other considerations affected the outcome for both of those recently purchased Fortune 500 firms.

The aforementioned business developments had no impact whatsoever on determining the future for the highly successful, Cleveland-based Diamond Shamrock Company. Following very intense discussions between prominent corporate officials and primary stakeholders, the Diamond Shamrock on May 25, 1979 announced that it planned to relocate its corporate headquarters to Dallas, TX.^[9] No sudden increase in debt or sustained profit losses occasioned that prodigious press release. Company officials explained that personal biases leveled against their firm by Cleveland Mayor Dennis Kucinich (b. 1946) had prompted such retaliatory action by their board.

However, the idea that some prejudicial remarks allegedly said by Mayor Kucinich might have precipitated such harsh action seemed highly unlikely given the fact that the Diamond Shamrock Corporation had enjoyed consistently high profits. Originally a Pittsburgh firm founded by T.R. Evans (1878-1931), Diamond Alkali had moved its corporate headquarters to Cleveland in 1948. Its merger with the well-known Texas-based Shamrock Oil & Gas led to the formation of the Diamond Shamrock Corporation in 1967. In the late 1970s, this successful enterprise changed its primary focus away from chemical manufacturing towards energy production. A well-known eastern Canadian gas and home retailer Ultramar purchased Diamond Shamrock for $1,960,000,000 in stock and assessed debt in 1996. The Valero Energy Corporation, a primary manufacturer and supplier of petrochemicals, power and transport fuels, bought that Sunbelt company for $6,000,000,000 five years later.^[10]

Following its announced departure from Cleveland, several journalists started speculating as to what factors truly contributed to the board authorizing such a drastic move. They inferred that growing business ties with its wealthy oil interests in Texas may have prompted this company to leave their downtown Cleveland headquarters for the greener pastures of Dallas, TX. That effort might have been expedited by the fact that more than 60% of its profits now emanated from those holdings. The prospects of even greater profits from the Sunbelt might also have sanctioned such decisive action. If those were indeed the prime motivations behind this relocation effort then the brutal assaults launched by Diamond Shamrock’s Board of Directors and its President William H. Bricker against Cleveland Mayor Kucinich seemed unwarranted. In all likelihood, the prospects of even greater profits and not supposed antagonistic comments made by the hierarchy at Cleveland City Hall led to that hasty decision.

Corporate America faced extraordinary new economic and financial challenges as the 1980s proceeded ahead. The irreversible financial losses sustained recently by the iron and steel industry compelled many of its most staunch investors to place greater and greater amounts of their hard earned cash into other, potentially far more lucrative options many of which were part-and-parcel of the recently burgeoning service sector. Closely following those trends as they unfolded led the editors at Fortune Magazine to expand their list of top U.S. firms. On May 27, 1983, the publication added a service industry classification to its growing list of pertinent categories.^[11] That additional category proved to be a very smart move on the part of the Fortune 500 editorial board.

By the mid-1980s, the service sector encompassed approximately 60% of this nation’s Gross National Product (GNP). It accounted for every seven out of ten non-farm related jobs. Local banking institutions, retailers and utility companies led this listing. In Cleveland’s case, its foremost commercial lender the National City Bank of Cleveland (#40) reported corporate assets of $6,800,000,000 followed by the former Cleveland Trust Bank now known as Ameritrust (#51) at $5,700,000,000. Revenues at Revco Drug (#43) totaled $1,500,000,000 while the leader in the local retail sector First National Supermarkets (#49) enjoyed an impressive lead with assets equaling $1,200,000,000. The Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company (#39) outdid all other privately-held utility companies found in that same district.

Without question, those amazing new developments greatly affected Cleveland’s future economic and financial situation. In fact, the city had experienced its greatest single reshuffling of major corporations in its nearly 200 year history. This nation’s leading business vanguard had begun what many considered to be a most unenviable task of shifting the bulk of the country’s investments away from the traditional manufacturing sector towards the all-encompassing new computer industry. Considered by some critics to be a covert act, it was initiated by some insightful business leaders during the late 1970s and early 1980s to safeguard as well as expanded their hard-earned fortunes. Unfortunately, their impulsive actions seriously undermined Cleveland’s leading iron and steel manufacturers.

The Republic Steel Corporation led that list of prominent producers negatively impacted by this rapidly changing international scene. Established in 1899, the Republic Iron & Steel Company, originally headquartered in Youngstown, OH, moved to Cleveland, OH in 1936. A major Dallas, TX conglomerate the LTV Corporation saved Republic Steel from extinction nearly a half century later. In the fall of 1983, LTV’s Board of Directors approved a $7,820,000 merger that brought Cleveland’s Republic Steel and its foremost competitor Pittsburgh’s Jones & Laughlin together. That strategically important move enabled Republic Steel to remain open. The following June, LTV executives authorized the $770,000,000 acquisition of the newly-reorganized Republic Steel.^[12] Six years later, its board sold controlling interest to a new employee stock ownership group. That group formed another company called Republic Engineering Steels.  This specific iron and steel manufacturer soon expanded its initial operations and changed its name in 2017 to Republic Technologies International.^[13]

The Glidden Paint Company exemplified yet another of the once proud Fortune 500s forced to leave the confines of Cleveland. Founded in 1878 by Francis H. Glidden (1832-1922), this resourceful manufacturer, once noted for its high quality furniture varnish, soon enlarged its plant to produce a wide variety of new paints and varnishes as well as low priced home improvement items. Formerly known as the Smith-Corona Company, the all-new SCM Corporation acquired Glidden Paints in 1967 through a special stock transfer deal worth $251,000,000. Eleven years later, an equally-respected British conglomerate called Imperial Chemical Industries purchased that same ongoing concern for $508,000,000.^[14] A multinational Dutch concern AkzoNobel NV merged with Glidden Paints in 2008. Four years later, another corporate giant called Pittsburgh Plate and Glass (PPG) bought Glidden and several other businesses for the tidy sum of $1,050,000,000. Currently, Glidden Paints is located in Pittsburgh, PA.^[15]

Significant acquisition activity, in the mid-1980s, resulted in the British Petroleum Company (BP) and the Standard Oil Company of Ohio (SOHIO) merging to become a new, worldwide energy source. A celebrated oil refiner since 1909, British Petroleum had endeavored to expand its presence within the U.S. oil market since the 1960s. However, few domestic companies showed any interest in partnering with BP prior to the OPEC Oil Embargo of 1973. That oil embargo not only demonstrated the instability and unpredictable nature of that international oil cartel; but also, reinforced in the minds of highly competitive, smaller U.S. oil producers the growing importance of aligning themselves with an international oil corporation as soon as possible as a way of hedging their bets against the possibility of bankruptcy. The question posed to the BP Board of Directors in the late 1970s was which one of the smaller oil producers in the U.S. best suited its growing economic needs. After much discussion, its board determined that the Standard Oil Company of Ohio, founded in 1860 by the legendary U.S. businessman and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937), best fulfilled its many rigorous business requirements.

Prior to the OPEC Oil Embargo, BP executives had begun the laborious process of purchasing large blocks of SOHIO stock in anticipation of just such a deal. Much of that interest in SOHIO stemmed from the fact that British Petroleum had anticipated becoming a main player in the upcoming Trans-Alaska pipeline deal.^[16] Owning half of the pipeline upfront made Standard Oil of Ohio extremely desirable in the eyes of BP’s eager board. Also, the instability of the international oil market in the 1970s and 1980s, afforded that very persuasive energy producer the exact opportunity that it had been waiting for to expand its U.S. holdings very rapidly.

With over 50% of Standard Oil of Ohio’s stock in hand, the marketing team at British Petroleum unveiled its latest business plan in March 1986. It called for acquiring this historically important, highly successful Midwest oil producer. The subsequent $7,820,000,000 merger deal provided BP with an ensured annual cash flow of $2,500,000,000. The BP leadership further announced plans to drop the SOHIO brand name.^[17] At that juncture, the new BP America operated more than 8,000 service stations in 26 states. Following its August 1998, $47,000,000 buyout of the Standard Oil Company of Indiana (AMOCO), British Petroleum let it be known that it intended to relocate its headquarters from Cleveland, OH to Chicago, IL. Like so many others, BP America spokespersons said nothing negative about Cleveland as a Fortune 500 center. Company leaders claimed that their latest move to Chicago would enable them to be closer to their newest and biggest subsidiary AMOCO.

Without a doubt, the business indecision that filtered down through the ranks of the national business community throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s posed a direct threat to Cleveland’s unwavering resilience as a steadfast major Fortune 500 hub. Those haunting doubts concerning Cleveland’s future role as a leading center for Fortune 500s extended far beyond the scope of any reasonable merger deals that might have transpired among local corporations such as Republic Steel, Glidden Paints or Standard Oil of Ohio. In fact, the majority of those transactions usually unfolded without a great deal of public fanfare. Only when an acquisition or merger radically deviated significantly from the accepted norms did the economic community take note.

However, the years following the devastating Recession of 1974 proved to be quite different from the more tranquil years of the 1950s and 1960s. Beginning in the late 1970s, the unmistakable economic and financial advances credited to outstanding technological breakthroughs made throughout the realm of business represented a harbinger of what was about to happen worldwide. No longer would world markets cater exclusively to the lowest common denominator in business as reflected through the everyday needs and wants of the average American. From that point forward, emphasizes would be placed on meeting the multitude of economic and financial demands being place on it by the growing number of capricious consumers found globally. For the first time in nearly a century, world markets were encouraged to flex their-own economic and financial muscles free of the inconveniences generated by nagging, outside economic forces many emanating directly from the U.S. That emboldened a new group of affluent, and on occasion, impulsive buyers with world ties. Many of them originated from wealthy pockets of new investors emanating from such exotic places such as Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong or Singapore. Those recognized areas of unprecedented new wealth represented the latest example of a highly flamboyant business age that had permeated the global economic scene as of late. Decided different economic and financial ground rules governed their customer-driven business platforms. That being said, those new ground rules soon outperformed as well as overshadowed the many readily identifiable U.S. models of business efficiency that had dominated the world stage for nearly fifty years. That sudden shift in paradigm, as reflected through abrupt changes in such things as economic direction and consumer focus, did not escape the attention of shrewd U.S. corporate leaders who were trying to figure out what exactly had happened to cause this unexpected development.

Such unparalleled new economic and financial enhancements lay to waste a great deal of the earlier, well-conceived business principles that had so carefully monitored global economic progress for so many years. In this case, the noticeable decline of the iron and steel industry on the heels of a financially healthy, totally revitalized international service sector astonished many conservative U.S. business leaders. Not even in their wildest dreams had they envisioned such revolutionary developments unfolding. Many conservatives found themselves ill-equipped emotionally or financially to deal with those new economic and financial actualities that were literally unfolding right before their eyes. One of the new developments that especially bothered conservative business heads concerned the widespread effort by prominent government officials to deregulate much of big business. A fundamental precept attribute to supply side economics as first expounded during the Reagan administration and again reinforced through the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1993 (NAFTA), those highly influential changes occurring within standard business practices and recognized techniques sent out an array of mixed, new signals to intransigent conservative leaders.

The often confusing, and at times, counter-productive economic and financial priorities originating from whichever political party happened to be either occupying the Oval Office or controlling the U.S. Congress greatly worried many conservative heads. Those corporate leaders expected that long-proven domestic economic policies would be automatically upheld by all politicians no matter the economic circumstances. Instead, rapidly changing economic and monetary policies, introduced anywhere from the late 1970s to the late 1990s, seemed to completely erode the abiding economic confidence once displayed by that same group in the immediate past.

The proliferation of new, wealthy international conglomerates, along with the growing insistence on the part of many influential minority and women groups for better paying, more prestigious jobs, only exacerbated this already sensitive situation. Adding into what appeared to be at the time total economic confusion were groups of highly vocal free trade supporters that suddenly barnstormed the nation. They repeatedly encouraged domestic leaders, within all ranks, to support their enlightened, new cause. In particular, they believed that those new initiatives might prove extremely useful in breaking through the communication impasse that supposedly existed between very conservative domestic business heads and their more radical, foreign counterparts. Apparently, many U.S. conservative leaders begged to differ on this most cogent issue. They contended that any major economic and financial problems currently existing among global leaders did not stem from some inborn reluctance, on their part, to converse with each other on a regular basis. That group considered such notions as terribly misleading. In the minds of arch conservatives, strong lines of communication among world leaders, first nurtured during the highly sensitive post-war era, had helped international business leaders innumerable times to resolve many of their most pressing issues.

Those same conservative leaders firmly believed that the source of many of today’s global conflicts did not begin with them at all, but rather, originated with renegade international corporate heads who had encouraged closer and closer business ties with other, similarly minded companies. Those rebellious elements, so evident throughout today’s multi-faceted world scene, were exceeding all of their earlier stated economic and financial goals and objectives by using any-and-all business tactics at their immediate disposal. Those conservative business leaders further suggested that such economic and technical reliance on the economic and financial resources of others might have been accepted by nearly everyone engaged in the global business experience had that kind of business dependency been restricted to everyday economic problems and unexpected financial necessities. Regrettably, few of those rebellious types chose to follow those carefully-laid out ground rules from an earlier time.