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Satisfy Appetites. One of the bugaboos of the recession is the theory that the nation's industrial plant has become overbuilt, now has too much capacity. "I doubt that this is true," said Harry A. Bullis, chairman of the board of General
Mills, Inc. "We need to keep foremost in mind the appetites of the consumer and the capital needs of our businesses to keep those appetites satisfied." In the food industry alone, said Bullis. there is a huge market for foods with "built-in maid service" as a result of the increasing number of housewives who are working and the shortage of domestic help.
What such consumer needs mean to the food industry this year, said Franklin J. Lunding, chairman of the board of jewel Tea Co., is an expansion program despite the recession. Some 2,000 new stores will be built in 1958 by food chains and another 1,700 stores remodeled, creating approximately 50,000 new jobs.
Perhaps the best example of confidence in the inevitable increase of consumer needs was given by Frederick R. Kappel, president of American Telephone & Telegraph Co. Though the rate at which A.T. & T. is installing phones is down about 40% this year, "we have chosen to go ahead with our modernization program virtually without change." This year A.T. & T. will spend about $1.3 billion on added capacity to take care of more customers, more long-distance calls. In the 1949 recession A.T. & T.'s employment force declined nearly 10% when business fell off. Today the company has about 25,000 more people at work than in the boom year of 1955, this year intends to recruit 1,500 college graduates. Said Kappel: "We are adding capacity faster today, in relation to the growth we foresee in the months ahead, than we have done for quite a while. We are sure the capacity will all be used, but some of it will not be used immediately."