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PHILLIPPE 

the land, and in the future, the proportions will be higher. For the businessman, this means that the city is the place where he will continue to conduct his business, if he is going to be successful. The cities are going to be his principal marketplace, and, more importantly, the prime source for his labor supply.

Manufacturers are competing for an adequate labor supply now against the service industries. Against the government. Great changes in the employment profiles are taking place in city factories. In some factories, where ten years ago four out of five production workers white, now four out of five are Negro. The riots have made it harder to attract responsible workers of any race to work in central city factories. 

This is one aspect of our need to become involved-- the hard economics of getting and keeping a productive labor force so that we can stay in business. 

A second compelling reason for an effective involvement on our part in this problem is public expectation.

In our daily business concerns about costs and prices and penetrations of markets, we tend to lose sight of all that the public really expects of us. Good products, yes. But just as basically, the public looks to us to provide jobs--the paychecks that make everything else in our society possible. 

This is part of our basic mandate from society, and this is how we earn, year by year, society's continued acceptance and approval. Surveys show that this is what the public expects business to provide to meet this urban crisis--jobs that will turn tax consumers into taxpayers. 

There is every indication that the public will not sit idly by if the urban crisis gets worse, instead of better. General Electric recently surveyed a substantial number of national leaders in the fields of business, education, research, government and communications to see what they thought about this situation.

Here is an excerpt from their collective reply, as summarized in the report.

"There will be strong public pressure on many institutions to contribute to solutions. The public will turn to governments, 'because they have money;' to universities, because they are good at analyzing problems and education'; to businessmen, 'because they are employers and are good at getting things done efficiently.'

"The public will demand action, and fast, and will be in no mood to tolerate excuses... Failure to produce results will be punished. In the case of governments, by voting incumbents out of office. In the case of business, by governmental harassment and interference with such matters as hiring practices, employee testing, plant locations, and the like."

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