GENERAL MOTORS

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

I have been much interested in your recent discussions of stockholder participation in the management of General Motors Corporation, and Harvard's use of its voting rights in the Corporation as a large stockholder.

Just the magnitude of General Motors makes it an enterprise of the highest public concern. The dollar sales of all products in 1968 reached the level of $22.775 billions. This was 47 per cent higher than that of the next biggest American firm. Standard Oil of New Jersey, more than 50 per cent higher than that of the Ford Motor Company which stood fourth in revenues, and more than the business done by the four largest non-U.S. corporations combined. It amounted to more than 1/8 of the gross receipts of the United States Government in 1968. It is hard to view such an enterprise as "private." conceding even the stockholders no effective role in guiding the policy of the company.

Perhaps another view of this situation will clarify it somewhat. The gross national product of South Vietnam in 1968 was $2.5 billion, a piddling sum compared with the sales in that year of General Motors. The gross national product of the whole of South East Asia- South Vietnam, North Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand, with a combined population of 80 million persons, amounted in that year to $11.3 billion, just half the sales of General Motors.

When Senator Proxime a few months ago listed General Motors as the 10th largest defense contractor in this country, I had supposed that that involved only the sale of vehicles to the Department of Defense.

A few months ago however I arrived in Cleveland to speak to Western Reserve. That day the newspapers in Cleveland were announcing the happy news that a new contract of $1.3 billion had just been awarded by the Department of Defense to the General Motors Tank Division in Cleveland which makes the Sheridan tank. The newspaper announcements spoke of some snide comments on the Sheridan tank that had shortly before been voiced in Congress. I wondered what was meant. As I understand it from my reading since, there is some trouble with the way the ammunition fits the gun in the Sheridan tank, such that firing the gun sometimes kills the men inside the tank, $1.3 billion is a lot of money. It exceeds the combined gross national products of Laos and Cambodia in 1968.