Page Two THE MICHIGAN DAILY Thursday, January 15,1 y t Page Two THE MICHIGAN DAILY Meeting shows OAU weakness f l ' ' .. R -? SAM'S Store SALE Hals Begun ADDIS ABABA OP) - Many' African leaders fear their failure to agree on a peace plan for Angola leaves the future of the embattled nation up to deci- sions in Washington and Mos- cow, further weakening African unity and defense against out- side exploitation. Nevertheless, Africa's com- mitment to unity and control of its own affairs remains high. Peter Onu of Nigeria, assistant secretary-general of the Orani- zation of African Unity (OAU), declared. "The OAU will sur- vive. Africa will try again on Angola." LESS OPTIMISTIC leaders shared the disappointment ofl Zambia's President Kenneth Kaunda who complained thatt decision - making powers hadt been surrendered to the Unitedi States and the Soviet Union be- cause Africans lack the power, and will to solve the problemsc themselves.t Many delegates to the just- concluded. OAU summit heref said the conference exposed and1 deepened differences among Af-5 ricans, and showed that the1 OAU is helpless to prevent thef cold war from spreading to the continent.t "You can add Angola to thel long list of African failures," a Western analyst said. "From the1 Nigerian civil war to Spanishi Sahara, the OAU has ignored or papered over Africa's tough- est political problems. In the crunch, African unity crum- bles." UNDERLYING African rhe- toric about African brotherhood is recognition that, without the OAU, Africa would be a collec- tion of nearly 50 separate na- tions even more open to foreign exploitation than they are now. Even at ,the OAU, most dele- gates address each other in European languages-English or French. In its 12 years, the OAU has been unable to build a high- way across Africa, establish a communications system so that East Africans can telephone tion confirms that the OAU has West Africans without going no power to shape the destiny through a European switch- of Africa," he added. board, or lower customs bar- - The summit ended Tuesday riers between its members. in deadlock, an East African Yet Africans see the OAU as observer said, partly because, their only chance to speak with like the United Nations in the one voice in world councils and Middle East, the OAU is unable to achieve true nonalignment to end the war unless the An- between East and West. Despite golans want to stop fighting. No the anti-Western stance of some OAU proclamation would have leaders, many Africans say pri- legal validity in Angola and an vately the continent can pros- OAU peacekeeping force would per only by remaining apart pose huge problems of command from both blocs. and supply. "IMPERIALISM knows nei- Further, the observer said, ther race, color nor ideology," divisions proved unexpectedly Kaunda told the OAU summit. strong between delegates who "All nations that seek to im- want a revolutionary Angolan pose their will on others are regime with Soviet ties and imperialists. others who seek a moderate, "Our failure to find a solu- West-leaning government. Kis singer Angola' m--ay affect SALuT -- _ . - . _ (Continued from Page 1) posal," he said. Again, Kissin- 'ger declared: "We do not know the details of the Soviet pro- posal." Kigsinger read the hard line' statement only an hour after the State Department announced SAMS Sr 207 E. Liberty 663-8611 ARE YOU COLOR BLIND?] If so, we need your participation paidvision experiments. CALL 764-0574 or come to VISION LAB Rm. 5080 - KRESGE II *; . In colleges or industry.. does "big" mean "bad"? he will travel to Moscow, ap- parently to seek a hoped for breakthrough in the SALT talks. He is expected to meet with Soviet Leader Leonid Brezhnev. Kissinger said President Ford had decided' he should go to Moscow despite the failure of U.S. diplomatic efforts to halt Russian aid to leftist factions fighting for control of Angola in the African country's bl.ody civil war. HE CHARGED Russian man- euvering for advantage in An- gola, 'where it has no historical or traditional interest, is rem- iniscent of previous historical periods where great powers sought advantages only to be blocked by the counteractioas of other powers. THlE MICHIG~AN DAILY Volume LXXXVI, No. 90 Thursday, January 15, 1976 is edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan. News l'hone 764-0562. Second class postage paid at Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106. Published d a iI y Tuesday through Sunday morning during the Univer- sity year at 420 Maynard Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109. Subscription rates: $12 Sept. thru April (2 semes- ters); $13 by mail outside Ann Ar- bor. Summer session published Tues- day through Saturday morning. Subscription rates: $6.50 in Ann Arbor; $7.50 by mail, outside Ann Arbor. The Feathered Serpent IMPORTS & CRAFTS FROM THE AMERICAS 309 E. Liberty { Ann Arbor. Michicion 48103 Telephone (313) 995-4222 You go to a big college, because it offers you certain advantages you want and need. You may have a brother or sister who prefers a small college-and for their own very good reasons, too. Shouldn't we be as open-minded when we weigh the merits of big vs. little (or medium-sized) business? Realizing every citizen has "a need to know," The Business Roundtable sponsors messages on how our American free enterprise system works. This month they will reason with the country's largest reading audience, in Reader's Digest. ADVERTISEMENT Too Big It's time for facts- rather than illogical about "big busines or Not Too Big? FUNNY thing happened to John Hertz's little car- rental lot in Chicago ... to Roland H. Macy's "fancy dry goods" store in New York .. . and to the Hoover people, in Ohio, once they started making that tin and wood "electric suction" sweeper." Their small businesses became big businesses. Why? Because they filled a need. They did the job. People liked the way they did business, and their businesses grew. Such growth, a logical and even necessary phenomenon in the private-enterprise system, seems sore- ly misunderstood today. "A grow, ing volume of criticism equates big- ness with badness," says Randall Meyer, president of Exxon Co. U.S.A. "Big business" is portrayed as a monster born full-grown, deter- mined to snuff out little competitors and run roughshod over consumers. Neither the historical record nor the economic and social realities of America today support such a view. Big business has not "cornered" the U.S.- marketplace and work force. Bureau of Census statistics show that only 12,169 of more than three million U.S. businesses are "big"- that is, employ more than 500 .peo- ple--while there are 1,722,250 small businesses with one to three em- ployes. The "big" businesses employ 15.6 million workers out of a total work force of 86.6 million. Nor has big business cornered the nation's wealth. The approximately 5 percent of American wealth (prop- erty,, plant and equipment, and turing corporations with assets of $i billion or more is slightly less than those companies had a decade ago. Fears of big business often stem from lack of understanding of the basic economic reasons why 'some businesses grow big and others stay small.' Big jobs, like the produc- tion of steel, chemicals or great quantities of such complex products as automobiles or television sets, re- quire huge investments of capital, raw materials and managerial and technical skills. Indeed, looking to the world problems of energy, natu- ral resources and the environment, .one must conclude, as has noted his- torian C. Northcote Parkinson, that big business must grow bigger be-, cause "the research that underlies the discoveries, whether geophysical in Alaska, or chemical in West Ger- many, demands a scale of invest- ment that is beyond the reach of the family firm." But sometimes even relatively simple products, like razor blades or chocolate bars, require "bigness" be- cause of the enormous markets that exist for them. Then, too, we are living in af age when the effi- ciency of bigness, the "economy of scale" as it is called, is vital if com- .panies are to remain competitive. This is especially true where the competition consists of huge foreign combines backed heavily by their governments' treasuries. General Motors may account for 43 percent of U.S. auto sales, but it has only 22 percent of the world market. U.S. Steel is a domestic giant, but it has a tough time against such Steel, the world's largest steelmaker. This same situation is faced by big American companies in other fields as they compete in a global market against giants such as Royal Dutch Shell, in petroleum and chemicals; Unilever, the huge British-Dutch food and detergent firm; Nestle, the vast Swiss corporation. The enor- mous research and development re- quired to compete in such markets is simply beyond the means of small companies. On the other hand, there are in- numerable tasks-the sale of con- sumer goods and services, home and automobile repairs, restaurants, to name ,a few-that can be handled efficiently by both small and large businesses in a local area. It is important to realize that businesses big and little carry out their tasks in a vital atmosphere of interdependence. Small businesses; for example, would be much less prosperous without the tools, raw materials, finished and semi-finished products they purchase from big firms. As Leo McDonough, execu- tive vice president of the Smaller Manufacturers Council (comprising 575 companies), says, "If there weren't a U.S. Steel or a Jones & Laughlin spitting out fantastic amounts of steel and keeping prices down, our basic-materials costs would be out of reach." But big companies need little companies, too. In a typical year, 3M Co. uses products and services from more than 30,000 small busi- nesses-such as Gopher Electronics Co., in Minneapolis, and Calumet Screw Machine Co., in Chicpgo. Hewlett-Packard Co. deals with 6ooo small American companies in its electronics business. But what about competition? Aren't the big boys stamping it out and virtually dictating prices? No. There are many energetic, clever people making a success in business despite the presence of "big guys" in the same field. Robert Cuff, president of Entron Controls,'Inc., in Carol Stream, Ill., proudly points out that his industrial-controls man- ufacturing firm can and does com- pete with the giants in certain areas. It has even sold control devices to some of General Electric's own cor- ears- porate divisions. Says Cuff, "They buy from us-even though GE makes a similar product-because we can build it at a lower price and give faster delivery." Remarks Irvine Robbins, of giant Baskin-Robbins Ice Cream Co.: "Sometimes when we get big, we get a little lazy, a little complacent." When his company grew big bycon- centrating on "walk-in, walk-out" ice-cream stores, Farrell's of Port- land, Ore., moved profitably into the same market as BR with sit- down soda-fountain -parlors. "They woke us up," says Robbins. "So we started concentrating on the foun- tain end of our business. The result was that we improved a little, and Farrell's is doing fine, too." As to the charge that big business artificially keeps prices high, the facts again rip apart the rhetoric. A study by economist J. Fred Weston, of the University of California, Los An- geles, reveals that the heavily con- centrated industries (big business) have held prices down better than smaller and less concentrated ones. In industries where the top four companies had at least 75 percent of the business, prices rose an average of 47 percent during the inflationary period 1967-1975. But in the least- concentrated sectors of industry, prices rose 70 percent in the same period. Leonard Woodcock, presi- dent of the United Auto Workers, admits: "The old anti-trust notion -that, if you break things up into small competitive units, you will have lower competitive'prices -may be wrong. General Motors, the big- gest car producer, is without ques- tion the most efficient and most able to hold down the cost of its products." Whatever their size, in the end, businesses in America must pass the test imposed by the most affluent and sophisticated consumers in the world. Any business must affirma- tively answer those old questions: Does it do the job? Does it deliver the goods? Does it satisfy you? For reprints, write: Reprint Editor, The Reader's Digest, Pleasantville, N.Y. 10570. Prices: 10-75 ; 50-$2.50; oo-$4; 500-$15;1 o-$5. Prices for larger quantities upon request. r I tr 1i "*.* .r r ..3r?,r3 PE DELTA Restaurant & Pizzeria Greek and American Food " Breakfast anytime s Different Specials every day ! Complete Dinners on Sunday for $2.75 . Special Room for groups " Pizza HOURS: 7 a.m.-l a.m. 7 days a week BEST BAKLAVA IN TOWN COMPLETE CARRY OUT SERVICE 640 PACKARD (corner of State) 662-7811 U U U U U U U I I |P"/ )\ WE'D LIKE TO TRY TO STRAIGHT- EN OUT THAT PROBLEM, BUT WE CAN'T IF YOU DON'T LET US KNOW ABOUT IT. I aI I.