The Waterbury Democrat., 1944-08-07

I 1t, what theni It was their business. wasn't it9
 Those days have gone, probably forever. They began to go ever before the great depression, ailt they disappeared fast when the de- pression bred an intense if not al' ways intelligent public interest n economies and business practices.
 For a while the men of big busi' nesSnegs were honestly puzzled py the hearty hatred that threatened to engulf them. Then they were honestly exasperated by 1t. They knew that the whole economy ol the country was based upon em. ployment. If employers were ruined employment would disappear and there would be no economy. Couldn't the public understand anything as simple as that?
 It was several years before some business began to realize that the public did not understand. One ma for reason for the public's fall. ure was the high and mighty atu. tude that business as a whole had been taking-its failure to let the man in the street know, by specific illustration, what business contri- butes to the American way Of lie. THEY'RE BRINGING
 THE MESSAGE HOME
 From the time that this realiza- ton permeated business skulls, there was a campaign. still expand- ing. to sell to the public the funda- mental importance of bushes sto the prosperity and happiness Of labor. A fair job has been done. Progress is being made.
 That campaign. however, has been mostly on the broad. overall national scale. Some of the keener minds have awakened to the fact that this is not enough. A worker can be fully persuaded that ms own prosperity depends. generally. upon an economy Of free enterprise. and yet can be completely blind to the contribution being madeA by the very company on whose payroll he is employed.
 One of the country's biggest pub. lie relations firms has co-operated in preparing a series of advertise ments for use by businesses in their home town papers. One of the men who helped to prepare the ad- veFtisementg tells a personal eXperi. ence that helped formulate the ap- proach:
 T grew up in a Pennsylvania city that had three or four really large industrial employers. Yet even to" day I do not know what any one of them contributed to that city and to my family and me.
 T realize that they must have been important. They hired lot of men, who supported families on their wages. Those families paid rent, patronized grocers, clothieTs, furniture stores, picture houses, trolley companies and bus lines, drugstores, cobbleFs' shops. automo- bile salesrooms. garages and tlll- ing stations, tailors and baFbers and beauty paFlors. The employees of those Industries. and the own. CTS and workers in the stores and service industries. all bought insuF- ance, put savings into the banks, used checking accounts, etc.
 THEY JUST DIDN'T BOTHER
 Almost everything spread out from those four shops. but I didn't know 1t then. They never troubled to tell us. ! might not realize 1t now, except that a railroad that Ina dshops there asked the City Council for some tax relief, The Council, which didn't know any more than ! did about what the shops meant to the town, refused, The shops were moved, They took with them Q lot Of families, and left other Wage-eaTners jobless,
 GIt's my guess that if that Tallv road had told the townspe0ple some cold facts about what t was doing f0P our city, some way would have been found to keep the shps there"
 Preparation Of these advertise ments, designed 10 be localized by employers, probably Is the first OFRanlzed attempt to help industries sell themselves in their home towns, It grew out of a rOundrtable sp0Hy soEed last January by Editor & PubIlsher, the newspaper trade journal,
 The step Is significant because 1t marks the first active recognition on behalf 0f business generally that no business ID these times can remain blggeP 0T more prosperous oV safer than It's place in the affees tl0ns Of the city ID which t Is located,