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Sir: Your April 10 article in U.S. Business, "The Rise of the Cheapies," is incorrect in saying that private brands of automobile tires are generally built to less demanding specifications than the brands with the names of the major tire-manufacturing companies.
Atlas, as the largest maker of the private-brand tires mentioned in your article, strongly protests. Our lines are comparable in quality to any brand, are built for unlimited use, and are backed by one of the strongest guarantees in the industry. J
OHN Y. MAY
President
Atlas Supply Co.
Springfield, N.J.
Sir: Anyone in the tire business who is genuinely concerned with safety will agree with the general point you conveyed, i. e., beware of cheapies. A consumer reading this item gets the strong implication that all "name brand" tires provide satisfactory performance, while all private brands are built to "less demanding specifications." Actually, this is not the case. While your article has done a service in steering consumers away from unsafe tires, it has done a great disservice to the private brands that sincerely strive to provide an equal or superior tire when compared to the majors.
R. M. GARDNER
Florham Park, N.J.
> TIME was in error in not pointing out that many private-brand tires are of top quality, and that, as with name brands, they have a wide range of price and performance.—ED.
Lustrous, Not Lacking
Sir: News about the quality of our orchestras seems to take a long time to cross the Atlantic. Your story [April 17] lumps the London Symphony together with other London orchestras as being "sound, if occasionally lackluster." I have searched in vain through our press cuttings for the last two years to discover when and whether a critic has called the playing of the London Symphony "lackluster," but instead I discovered hundreds of enthusiastic press comments, such as the [London] Times's comment last year: "Let there be no mistake about it; the London Symphony is one of the world's great orchestras."
ERNEST FLEISCHMANN
General Secretary
London Symphony Orchestra, Ltd.
London
Sension About Titheses
Sir: The Society for the Preservation of Titheses commends your ebriated and scrutable use of delible and defatigable [April 10], which are gainly, sipid and couth. We are gruntled and consolate that you have the ertia and the eptitude to choose such putably pensable titheses, which we parage.
Away with an, in, un, dis-and especially indis-!
PETER JONES
Melbourne, Australia