Banish Your Fears

"No one has ever made a more stirring address to businessmen," said Wall Street Broker Sidney Weinberg, "and in 30 years I've heard a lot of them."

Ninety top businessmen who are members of the Business Council, a liaison group between business and Government, had just emerged from the Fish Room of the White House. There, in their first meeting with the new President, Lyndon Johnson made an impassioned plea for their support.

"We need the can-do spirit of the American businessmen," the President told the group, which is headed by A.T. & T. Chairman Frederick Kappel and includes such prominent executives as Henry Ford II, Roger Blough and Ralph Cordiner. "So I ask you: banish your fears, shed your doubts, renew your hopes. We have much work to do."

New Outpouring. U.S. businessmen have been bullish about the economy for many months, but President Johnson's plea for help, his take-charge demeanor and his conservative appearance seem to have released a whole new outpouring of great expectations for the economy. Said Fred Kappel after the Washington meeting: "We have undiminished confidence in the economic and moral strength of the country." In Manhattan the normally undemonstrative National Association of Manufac turers pledged Johnson its "loyal support and cooperation," then predicted that 1964 would be as good for business as 1963 has been. At a Florida meeting of the Investment Bankers Association, President David J. Harris predicted a high-level economy next year and plenty of business for securities underwriters. In their annual forecast, economists of the giant Prudential Insurance Co. looked for "a continued high level of consumer and business confidence." And many top-drawer economists at a New York meeting of the National Association of Business Economists said that they were inclined .to boost their forecasts of 1964 business activity.

Renewed Promise. The optimism came from far more than faith in Lyndon Johnson's smooth transition: it was backed by some pretty impressive figures. Last week steel output rose for the sixth week in a row, and automakers scheduled record production for the month. Manufacturers' new orders in October rose to their highest level in five months ($35.3 billion) and construction in the first ten months jumped 10% ahead of last year. Buoyed by renewed promise of a tax cut early next year, the stock market momentarily broke through to a new high of 763.86 on the Dow-Jones industrial average.

Predictably, retail sales dropped 5% in November's last two weeks as the nation mourned President Kennedy, and there was still the persistent problem of unemployment, which rose in November to 5.9% of the work force. But businessmen could find little cause to complain--and Washington did not seem in the mood to give them any.

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