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Anti-Communism and the Corporations
- Abstract
THROUGHOUT the United States today, hundreds of corporations are energetically engaged in programs to “educate” Americans about the nature and threat of Communism. Among those managing this enterprise are local hardware distributors and General Motors, fruit growers and Tidewater Oil, exterminator companies and R. J. Reynolds Tobacco. It is hard to fix the cost of these programs in cash outlays, executive man-hours, and work-time lost by participating employees, but the total cannot be less than twenty-five million dollars a year.
These corporate programs fall into two different categories (though many companies promote both simultaneously). First are “in-plant” materials for employees and management, ranging from distribution of anti-Communist literature in company book-racks or features in company newspapers to full-dress lecture courses and film cycles held on company property during company time. Second are “out-of-plant” programs, aimed at customers and at the communities in which the company has plants or main offices. Sometimes these efforts will be limited to distribution of anti-Communist literature, but often they take the form of corporate underwriting of “schools” and “seminars” on Communism for local teachers, clergymen, professional and businessmen, and civic leaders, with the companies supply- ing not only executives, films, and pamphlets, but also “scholarships” for community participants.
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