ABSTRACT
Observer after observer has found the great majority of American workers convinced that business profits are at least twenty-five per cent of sales–the correct figure is five per cent in a good year. The conviction that business profits are tremendous showed in a recent wage dispute in one of the plants of the Atomic Energy Commission. An industrial system can function and survive only on a profit margin adequate to the demands of the future. The rejection of profitability is greatly intensified by the all but universal resentment of the workers against the incomes of the top executives of the large enterprises. The policies, decisions and actions of the enterprise decide the worker's livelihood and that of his family, his future and his standing in his own eyes as well as in those of the community. The worker and all that matters most to him is thus subjected to the rule of an alien if not a hostile principle.
