COMMUNICATIONS: Disease of the Times

One afternoon last week in the assembly room on the 23rd floor of the Manhattan headquarters of Western Union Telegraph Co., suave old Board Chairman Newcomb Carlton fingered a gavel, peered out anxiously at 200 faces, more of Western Union's 30,772 stockholders than he had ever seen at one time. Western Union's President Roy Barton White, stocky old-time railroad telegrapher, was reading a prepared statement explaining why Western Union had lost $1,637,000 in 1938. When perspiring President White lamely concluded that the report was the company's and not to be considered as "my report," an angry voice broke...

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