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Show THE AMERICAN WAyI WRONG NUMBER fffl By Gears eck. Distortion of the truth can often of-ten be more damaging than an outright lie. For instance, union labor publications recently have made some acrimonious comments com-ments regarding the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. Com-pany. While taking no sides in the recent dispute between tat company and its employees, tnis columnist does wish that the labor la-bor journal would stick to a proper pro-per interpretation of facts. Here follows a sample of what looks like a deliberate attempt to bamboozle bam-boozle the public. I quote from an Iowa labor weekly: "The A. T. & T., like other Big Corporations and Monopolies, Monopo-lies, in making their appeal for public sympathy by way of paid advertisements, point out that ownership is spread among hundreds hun-dreds of thousands of small savings sav-ings investors most of them 'grey-haired widows' and 'trusting 'trust-ing orphans.' Actually, as in the case of the A. T. & T., nearly half of the stock is owned by less than 6 per cent of the stock-i stock-i i j t Available to the labor editor quoted above, as they are to anyone, any-one, are the actual statistics. The A. T. & T, has nothing to hide. Let's see what a fair and honest interpretation of these figures does to the statement that "nearly "near-ly half of the stock is owned by less than 6 per cent of its stockholders." stock-holders." Such an examination reveals that the Iowa labor editor edi-tor has rung a "wrong number." At the end of 1946, there were 696,000 A. T. & T. stockholders. More than 207,000 of these held from one to five shares each and approximately 656,000 held less than 100 shares each. No one stockholder owned as much as Vz of 1 per cent of the total stock. It is true that 39,800 stockholders, stock-holders, who own 100 shares or more, held 47 per cent of the total stock. This, on the face of it, would seem to indicate that nearly half of the stock was owned by 6 per cent of the stockholders. stock-holders. But right there is the joker the important thing our labor' editor friend either does not. know or deliberately disregards. disre-gards. A considerable percentage of these 39,800 stockholders owning own-ing 100 snares or more, is made up of savings banks and life insurance companies. Thus through deposits in these banks and equities in life insurance policies, pol-icies, hundreds of thousands of other Americans indirectly own A. T. & T. stock. Further, some 500 churches i and religious organizations, 250 schools and colleges, 200 institutional insti-tutional homes and 150 hospitals own A. T. & T. stock, thus giving giv-ing a further spread to the ownership own-ership of same. ' Taking all. of the aforegoing facts into consideration, it is a distortion of the truth to insinuate insin-uate that 6 per cent of A. T. .& T. stockholders come close to controlling that company. And to add insult to injury, in the concluding paragraph of his editorial, the labor editor has the audacity to say, "Labor unions un-ions do not stoop to such dubious practices, . . " Again he has rung a wrong; number.' Here is a labor la-bor editor accusing A. T. &. T. a company that gives complete statistics to its stockholders, to its employees and to the public, of "stooping to dubious practices." practi-ces." Really laughable, isn't it, in view of the great reluctance on the part of most labor union officials to give financial facts regarding their unions to even their own members? . |