Chapter 7: Captains of Industry
“You show me a capitalist, I’ll show you a bloodsucker”
-Malcolm X 1
Chapter 7: Captains of Industry
“You show me a capitalist, I’ll show you a bloodsucker”
-Malcolm X 1
Long before he became the czar of the breakfast sausage industry, country
singer Jimmy Dean eulogized a coal miner in the 1962 chart topper, “Big Bad John.” John
was big because, well, he was a big guy. He was bad because he was not to be trifled with
and possessed a strength and courage that impressed his co-workers. But there was
another John, a real life John, who established a reputation for being both big and bad but
decidedly less admirable. This John wasn’t to be trifled with either. In fact, he was every
bit as cunning and dangerous as the serpent that once served as the logo for the company
he built, Standard Oil.
Big Bad John D. Rockefeller was not a lowly coal miner. He was America’s first billionaire, and one of the many enterprises which he controlled was a coal mine, ostensibly owned by his son, John, Jr.
“Competition is a sin,” Big Bad John once said,2and, as a devout Baptist, Big John was opposed to sin, so he considered it his Christian duty to destroy anyone who dared to compete with him. Ruthlessness was the key to his success as he manipulated, intimidated, and bought off his competitors in order to build his monopolistic empire.
“If you refuse to sell,” John D. allegedly told a competitor in the oil refining business, “it will end in your being crushed.”3
Nothing seemed to stop the Rockefeller bunch, not even an expose written by muckraking journalist Ida Tarbell in 1904. Tarbell’s series of reports for McClure’s magazine ultimately led to the prosecution and dismantling of Standard Oil but Rockefeller did not repent. His son, John, Jr., continued the old man’s evil ways.
A strike by the workers at the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, owned by John, Jr., almost proved his undoing, however. When the non-union workers went on strike to protest their low wages, dangerous working conditions, and lack of union representation, John, Jr. called in the state militia. Fifty-three people, including 13 women and children, were killed. Rockefeller, Jr., already widely despised, was called a murderer by the press.4 John, Jr., wasn’t pleased.
Here, folks, is wisdom and an insight into the mind of big business:
Big Bad John, Jr., who was just as devout a Baptist as his big, bad daddy, did not repent. But unlike Papa Bear, who said, “Let the world wag”5 after Ida Tarbell’s expose of his business tactics, Junior was incensed at the way he was characterized by the press. So what did he do?
What else would a power-mad billionaire do?
He set out to control his image as it was portrayed in the media.
Big Bad John, Jr. hired himself a newspaperman named Ivy Lee who recommended that Rockefeller publish a “fact sheet” giving his side of the story, a story that the public bought. With newsreel cameras in tow, John, Jr. also paid a visit to the striking miners, talking to them about their various woes, dancing with their wives, and generally feigning interest in their lives and problems.
Presto!
It worked.
Big Bad John, Jr. was suddenly a nice guy!
Ivy Lee’s next step was a wholesale cleaning of the dreaded Rockefeller name.
Even Big Bad John, Sr.’s image was purified. Why, it was just like Dickens’s A
Christmas Carol! Only John, Sr. (pictured, at left) didn’t need a visit from the ghosts of Christmas past,
present, and future to cleanse his blackened soul. He had a public relations expert on his
payroll now. The mean, crafty, greedy old man was suddenly a kindly benefactor of
mankind, giving lavishly to charities, mainly through his tax free foundations. By golly,
there even exists old newsreel footage of the old geezer, gaunt and so chalky white that he
resembles a large calcified dog turd, dispensing nice, shiny dimes to the “youngins.”
This was the same man who once said, “The way to make money is to buy when blood is running in the streets.”6
The moral of this story?
Big business has not changed since the days of Big Bad John.
It is still big.
It is still bad.
It has simply learned the value of having a public relations department.
And the way to make money is still to buy when the blood is running in the streets.
If, when the Y2K bug strikes, it creates as bad a mess as the most ardent doomsayers are saying it will, the blood will surely be running through the streets. Many businesses may go down but someone, somewhere, is bound to survive and emerge as a bigger, badder bloodsucker than it is now.
It is silly to think that the Y2K bug was a plot from the beginning. It is less silly to think that big business may welcome the bug in the hope that it will devour smaller competitors and make the big guns bigger and badder than ever.
“We could lose a lot of small businesses,” John Koskinen, the federal government’s Y2K czar, wisely states.7
Big business, not governments, run this world. The late Paddy Chayefsky laid it on the line clearly enough in his 1976 screenplay for Network:
“There are no nations. There are no peoples...There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and Dupont, Dow, Union Carbide and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today...The world is a business....”8
Since the world is a business, there should be no mystery as to why it is often said that this is a dog-eat-dog world.
But, in business, it’s not dogs eating dogs but sharks devouring minnows.
Sure, the Y2K bug has infected every business reliant on computers (and what business is not reliant on computers?), but just as the rich can afford better medical care than the poor, and are more likely not only to survive a medical crisis but to even seek treatment, the big guns of corporate America can afford endless rounds of ammunition, as well as the sharpshooting programmers needed to accurately hit the target.
Small businesses are not only less equipped to deal with the kind of crisis that the bug may bring about but are competing with the giants for the same skilled workers to take on the mission.
If the big guns win the shootout with the bug and the derringers don’t, the king of the mountain will still be standing, perhaps not as tall as before, but there will be much more to see at the bottom: the competition.
“Y2K is a conspiracy between government and big business to consolidate power and establish a New World Order,” a man who described himself as a “rainbow gypsy” told a reporter.1
Could be.
Birds of a feather do flock together, and that includes pigeons.
With the aid of the Y2K computer bug, a flock of pigeons may very well be planning to drop a load of you know what on small businesses everywhere.
Small businesses are far behind the big corporations in preparing for the arrival of the millennium bug, one news report says.2 Of the 23% of companies that haven’t even started their debuggings, 80% are small companies.3
Still another report, this one from the National Federation of Independent Business, states that more than half of small businesses have yet to do anything about Y2K and do not plan to take any steps whatsoever at any time, often in the belief that having new operating systems and applications will keep the bug away.
Hey, why worry about a computer bug when only one Congressman stood to applaud President Clinton when he issued his Y2K battle-cry during the State of the Union Address?
A lot of those same Congressmen laughed at the mere mention of Y2K.
A conspiracy between government and big business to usher in a “New World Order”?
Sounds like the “Same Old World Order” to me.
David beats Goliath, so Goliath returns with his Big Brother.
“Small business owners seldom go running to the federal government for protection when competition threatens their market position,” Karen Kerrigan, president of the Small Business Survival Committee, writes. “But that has unfortunately become the strategy for some big businesses who see their market share eroding due to aggressive competition from a rival.”
Big government and big business are allies at heart, not so secretly working together to perpetuate and protect their own power against challenges from smaller and often smarter entrepreneurs.
Do the facts support any other possible view?
No matter how much a candidate for public office attacks “fat-cats” and monopolies, no candidate would be able to buy his way to victory without generous contributions from the very corporations he or she campaigns against in order to win the votes of the “little people.”
And that’s true of democrats just as much as it is of republicans. (The two-party system is a myth, or, more accurately, a deceit.)
Author Gore Vidal may have written a play about a presidential contest with the title, The Best Man, but having twice sought public office himself, this astute social commentator and observer of politics learned that it’s not the “best man” who wins, but the one with the most cash.
Most of that money comes from corporate giants. It is not an interest in the public good that motivates big business to make contributions to political candidates. On the most superficial level, it indicates a concern for their public image. Gone are the days when business could claw its way to the top of the heap, indifferent to charges of ruthlessness or unfair tactics. Mr. Rockefeller changed that with the help of Ivy Lee, and his competitors and colleagues picked up where he left off, as did the leaders of organized crime. (Al Capone’s soup kitchens and John Gotti’s neighborhood picnics won them fans among ordinary citizens.)
But the main reason for big business to stuff its pockets with Congressmen is to reign in favors in return for financial support.
Thanks to the passage of various “free-trade” agreements, corporations like Nike and Reebok are able to manufacture their exorbitantly priced “athletic shoes” (a fancy term for plain old sneakers) in countries like Indonesia where workers with neither union representation nor the right to strike, slave away for wages so low they can barely meet their most basic survival needs. Corporations line their pockets in this manner with the full cooperation of both the president and the congress who pay lip service to human rights but otherwise let the money interests call the shots.
If they can do it in Indonesia, doesn’t it make sense that they would also do it in America if given the chance? The trend toward downsizing, in which veteran employees are kicked out to be replaced with younger, less expensive workers, should be ample proof that the words of Malcolm X need no modification: “You show me a capitalist, I’ll show you a bloodsucker.”
We cannot prove that big business is licking its lips in anticipation of consuming the small companies that will be fatally bitten by the bug, but fatally bitten many will be if things turn out as badly as anticipated. Someone will profit from the disaster. Now, who do you think that will be?
On July 15, 1998, the House Small Business Committee held what was called a congressional hearing but, considering the testimony about the lack of preparedness among small businesses for the year 2000, it sounded more like preparation for a memorial service.
“Our own contact with customers suggests that so far only about 25% of small businesses are moving to deal with the issue,” Debra W. Taufen, manager of Global Small and Medium Business Initiatives told the committee. “When we speak to small business owners, there is a surprising lack of urgency. Some think they are ready, some think they have plenty of time, and some feel the issue is all hype and they will not be affected.”
Harris N. Miller, president of Information Technology Association of America provided an echo to Taufen, saying, “Despite our galloping across the nation and around the globe, many countries and many small and mid-sized businesses--including far too many in the U.S.--have turned a deaf ear to this issue.”
Miller then offered this warning to small businesses: “...if you are not vigilant, if you do not identify your risks and take steps to avoid them, the Year 2000 may take your business away. Permanently.”
Another echo: William J. Dennis, Jr., senior research fellow at the National Federation of Independent Businesses Education Foundation, said “...that while most small employers are aware of the Y2K problems, they are largely unconcerned. One in five has taken action (or is in the process) to identify and resolve any Y2K problems in their business; another one in five plans to take action before the year 2000; two in five do not intend to do anything; and, the final one in five is unaware of the problem.”
Why are so many small businesses either unconcerned or unaware of the Y2K problem?
The only sensible answer is that they have not been properly informed, or were informed so late that they are now baffled as to why it’s so important.
Who failed to make the bug a priority?
Certainly, the federal government dragged its feet, making little noise about the bug when there was still plenty of time to fix it.
In his testimony before Congress on July 15, 1998, the ITAA’s Miller said, “For several years, ITAA has called upon the President to address the Year 2000 topic, and we are very pleased he did so yesterday. It takes the ‘bully pulpit’ of the Presidency to give this challenge the attention it deserves.”
Darn right it takes the “’bully pulpit of the Presidency’,” but the Y2K problem obviously didn’t receive the “bully pulpit” treatment when it could have done some good. “For several years” the ITAA sought the participation of the president, and, man, did he come through--“yesterday,” July 14, 1998, a day before the committee hearing at which Miller spoke.
In making his first public statement concerning the Y2K bug, Clinton said, “Far too many businesses, especially small and medium sized firms, will not be ready unless they begin to act.” But it was a lack of action from the president that contributed to the complacency of the businesses of which he spoke.
As for Congress, well, they left the bug alone until it had circled their heads like a buzzard, which it may still become the next time it passes their way.
That leaves the world of corporate America.
Did they sound an alarm?
No.
Why get people excited about something other than a pricey new product?
Did they recognize the bug early and set out to trap it?
Uh, no.
The thought of spending millions, or billions, simply to repair a problem that is still a few years away is distasteful to big shots in charge of big business.
Small businesses may very well be wiped out by the bug, but it seems that even the big guns of the corporate world are in a mad rush to reach compliance.
Who knows? Some may wake up on January 1, 2000 to find themselves like Gulliver in the Jonathan Swift classic: flat on their backs and tightly bound by the tiny Lilliputians.
“Small businesses must be innovative,” Dr. Allen Burgess, president of Data Integrity, Inc., a small business, told the committee, “they need to ‘think outside of the box.’”
By following Burgess’s advice, a clever small business may be the one to not only survive but thrive, boxing in the big boys and replacing one at the peak of the mountain.
Until the clock strikes 12 on January 1, 2000, however, it is impossible to tell who is ahead of the pack or dangerously behind with doomsday on their tail. The web sites of most major corporations have a “Year 2000 Readiness Disclosure,” as required by the government. They often summarize their plan of action and always, always, always post a disclaimer similar to this one found at Visa:
THIS INFORMATION, TOGETHER WITH ANY OTHER INFORMATION AND MATERIALS PROVIDED TO YOU BY VISA, ITS EMPLOYEES OR REPRESENTATIVES IN CONNECTION HEREWITH, IS PROVIDED TO YOU WITHOUT CHARGE, AS A COURTESY OF VISA AND IS BEING PROVIDED "AS IS" WITH NO WARRANTY OR GUARANTEE OF ANY KIND, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION ANY WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. WITHOUT LIMITING THE FOREGOING, NOTHING HEREIN OR IN ANY ACCOMPANYING INFORMATION OR MATERIALS PROVIDED BY VISA OR BY ANY VISA EMPLOYEE OR REPRESENTATIVE (WHETHER SUCH INFORMATION IS PROVIDED ORALLY OR IN WRITING) SHALL BE CONSTRUED IN ANY WAY AS A WARRANTY OR GUARANTEE AS TO THE COMPLIANCE OF ANY SOFTWARE, FIRMWARE, HARDWARE, DATA, PRODUCTS OR SERVICES WITH ANY YEAR 2000 REQUIREMENTS, OR AS AN OBLIGATION ON VISA'S PART TO TAKE ANY ACTION ON YOUR BEHALF WITH REGARD TO YEAR 2000 COMPLIANCE. NOTHING CONTAINED HEREIN OR IN ANY RELATED INFORMATION OR MATERIALS PROVIDED TO YOU BY VISA OR BY ANY VISA EMPLOYEE OR REPRESENTATIVE (WHETHER SUCH INFORMATION IS PROVIDED ORALLY OR IN WRITING) SHALL BE CONSTRUED AS ANY ADMISSION OF LIABILITY ON THE PART OF VISA UNDER THE LAW OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE.
The fact is, when it comes to the Y2K bug, most of the information that big business is doling out to the public is--what else?--public relations, as pioneered by Ivy Lee for Mr. Rockefeller.
The Internet, where just about every corporation has a web site, is the dumping ground for the carefully worded information concerning big business and “Year 2000 Readiness.”
A stop at some randomly selected corporate web sites can be encouraging for their stockholders, providing the information found there is accurate.
Is it?
“Major corporations have roles beyond example setting,” Miller of ITAA said. “Greater public disclosure is one. While companies hold back for competitive advantage or fear of downstream litigation, the greater good demands rethinking of this policy.”
One company seems downright giddy about their handling of the bug. A company named after an apple may have taken preventative steps right from the start because who, after all, wants to find a worm in the center? Apple Computers doesn’t, and they don’t want any bugs either.
“We may not have got everything right, but at least we knew the century was going to end,” Douglas Adams states in Apple Computer’s Year 2000 Readiness Disclosure.12 The maker of the Macintosh whose current ad campaign urges us to “Think different” has apparently done that all along. “The older Macintoshes will be good under (sic) February 6, 2040,” Bill Shurliss, director of Information Technology in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellen told Ray Suarez on National Public Radio’s Talk of the Nation. “Most modern Macintoshes are good until the year 29,940. So generally we don’t have to worry about Macintoshes.”
(But what will Mac owners do in the year 29,941? Hmm?)
Although Apple takes the same approach as other companies with regard to the Y2K information they provide (“all Year 2000 information is provided without warranty”), they do seem to be “boasting,”14 as Newsweek’s Steven Levy told Suarez, that their products will work glitch free past the year 2000 providing it is “used with accurate date data in accordance with its documentation, provided all other products (e.g., other software, firmware and hardware) used with it properly exchange date data with the Apple product.”
At Ameritech, the bug also appears to be in the process of being squashed. Their goal to “make Year 2000 seamless and transparent for all Ameritech customers” was put into action in 1996. By January 1,1999, most of its mission-critical systems will, the company says, be ready to meet the millennium. The rest of the year will be devoted to bringing other systems up to date and to performing tests to determine the success of the project.
Other notes:
Citizen’s Bank has had a project team working to battle the bug since 1996
The Bank Administration Institute has joined with 40 U.S. banks to release a list meant to ease the fears that consumers have about financial institutions and Y2K
Xerox has five Year 2000 Program Management Offices and assessment of the problem is “essentially complete.” Xerox plans to complete one phase of their Y2K readiness program by December 31, 1998, and another by July 1999
3M is “making excellent progress,” but Mary Cripe, the program manager for the company’s Year 2000 Project, points out that “Unless our suppliers, customers and other business partners are also ready in time, 3M can fix all its internal systems and still have significant problems.”
Dell has joined with the U.S. Small Business Administration SBA) to co-sponser a Y2K awareness and training program (“The support given by SBA to this activity does not constitute an expressed or implied endorsement of any cosponsor’s or participant’s opinions, products, or services”)
Poor AT&T. The telecommunications company spent some $375 million in 1998 and expects to invest another $225 million in 1999 to battle the bug, but they still have some “disgruntled customers” who are not satisfied with the Y2K information they’ve been sharing on their web site. An October 8, 1998 e-mail, posted on their site, expressed this complaint:
“This has got to be the worst effort I have seen by a large corporation in regards to year 2000 information. The cheesy survey letter is a joke. AT&T should get their (sic) act together and look at what some other companies have done; 3 Com, Trane and Panasonic to name a few. There isn’t even an e-mail address to write to someone, but that should be obvious since there is no phone number either....”
Oh well, what can you do?
What would Microsoft do?
When selecting Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates as one of the most influential “Builders and Titans” of the 20th century, Time described the bland, bespectacled computer software king as a man whose career suggests “It can be wiser to follow than to lead.” According to the news weekly, Gates built his empire by borrowing a little here and mixing it with something borrowed there. The Microsoft Year 2000 Readiness Disclosure and Resource Center on the web seems to support that theory. It’s the same old song and wobbly dance that most corporations are offering:
“A Year 2000 Compliant product from Microsoft will not produce errors processing date data in connection with the year change from December 31, 1999 to January 1, 2000 when used with....”
You get the picture.
What separates Microsoft from all other corporations is that it currently occupies the lofty position of being numero uno in the computer software trade. The U.S. Department of Justice thinks Microsoft’s standing is partly due to unfair and illegal competitive (or non-competitive) practices. Executives from Intel Corporation testified that Microsoft vowed to “embrace and smother” its leading competitor, Netscape, in order to monopolize the computer software industry. A former Microsoft executive (disgruntled or merely honest?) describes Gates as more interested in “flattening competition” than in creating the best product.
True or not, the monopoly charge and dark characterization of Gates is reminiscent of the government’s view of John D. Rockefeller who, like Gates today, was once the world’s richest and most despised man. If the U.S. government is right about Gates, maybe he’ll be the one to make the bug’s bite work to his advantage.
Maybe. But I doubt it.
Today’s computer kingpins may be big, and they may even be bad, but they don’t appear to possess the rock solid willpower and sheer cunning to be Big and Bad the way Big Bad John was, nor are they as rich. (At his peak in 1913, John D. was worth what would now be $190 billion, almost triple what Bill Gates is worth today.)
A recent poll found that most executives with hi-tech companies are as weak-kneed as anyone when the bug is brought up.
Are they confident that the problem will be solved by New Year’s Eve 1999?
A whopping 56% said “no.”
Would they spend the first day of the year 2000 aboard a commercial airplane?
Are you kidding?
An even more whopping 60% said hell no, we won’t go.
I doubt that Big Bad John would have been as fearful.
Nope, it’ll take an old-timer to capitalize on Y2K chaos. Someone who’s not afraid to get his hands dirty with oil.
Or pork.
“What makes Jimmy Dean so darn special?” the home page at Jimmy Dean Foods asks.27
Maybe it’s his web site’s lack of any reference to the Year 2000, or of that bug threatening to make an appearance at that time.
Does that mean that Jimmy Dean Foods is fully prepared for the next century?
Are all those sausage factories in prime Year 2000 working order?
Or does the lack of a reference to Y2K suggest that Jimmy Dean just ain’t worried about some damn big city bred bug?
That hit song he recorded was about “Big Bad John,” not “Big Bad Jimmy,” right?
On his TV commercials, Jimmy seems to be a tall guy, but is he tall enough to cast an oppressive shadow over the entire world of big business?
I predict (with my index finger pointing skyward) that long after Microsoft has been reduced to mega-bytes, Jimmy Dean’s delicious sausage will still be sizzlin.’
On wood-burning stoves everywhere.
Through doomsday and beyond.
BACK TO SURVIVING Y2K
BACK TO
