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APRIL 14, 1947 How Much Did We Make This T ime? * by Harold Wolff Patience, a degree in accounting, and a cynical nature are needed to pry the truth out of annual corporate reports HIS YEAR, about twenty million T “‘see-how-wonderful-we-are”’ gems, otherwise known as Annual Repotts, will wend their way, to the owners of United States corpcrate business. How many avoid the quick road from mail- box to wastebasket, no one will ever know. But these documents, the products of some of America’s brightest business brains, deserve something more than the indifference with which they are often rewarded. So great a degree of care, ‘ingenuity ‘and pure art is lavished in the prepa- ration of most annual reports that by now their appearance has become as fiercely competitive as Hollywood. Each year. the Financial World offers awards for the best reports in each industry, and the boys vie for them as producers do for Oscars. Some reports, to be sure, are pretty dull stuff. The American Agricultural. Chemical Ccmpany takes only four prim pages of figures to tell its stock- holders its 43-million-dollar story. On the other hand, the Diamond Match Company once went to the lerigth of 272 pages of lushly illustrated text to tell its tale of the great north woods and the lore of the lumberman. General Mills this year produced a supplementary re- port in the form of a Technicolor short. Harold Wolff served in the Overseas Branch of the OWI during the war and ts now an economist for a large national corporation. As a free-lance writer he has contributed to Life, Liberty, Coronet «ud other magazines, Pepsi-Cola’s president, Walter Mack, invited stockholders to a series of ‘‘Pepsi- Cola family parties” at which the annual report was discussed .and sandwiches and Pepsi-Cola were served to all. The annual report is supposed to tell ‘the stockholders, with appropriate fig- ures, how well or ill the business they own has fared and what its prospects appear to be, But in setting out to do this it finds itself caught in a dilemma over how much or how little to tell. On one hand therd i is the older close- - fisted, business tradition, nurtured in the front office, of telling little or nothing. On the other there is the newer ap- proach of the public-relations chief, who has a story to sell and wants to make the whole world share his enthusiasm | for the ins and outs of his business. 17, After all, the public-relations man tells the.corporation,.every firm listed on the exchange has to file* with the Securities and Exchange Commission a form, 10K, that must make a lot of relevant information available to the _ public. Why not, then, let the president take down his corporate hair and tell the fclks something about the’ com- pany? About the outlook for next year? About the new plants? About the new products? Why not Ict the president make a statement about how taxes ate - stifling business? Why not dress the whole thing up pretty? Reproduce a George Inness on the front cover in full color, like General Foods. Or maybe _ both Technicolor like General Mills avd sandwiches @ /a Pepsi-Cola. But the difficulty is that you cannot tell five, 10 or 160,000 stockholders just how you are managing their busi- ness without making the same informa- tion available ‘o the curious eyes of labor leaders, consumers and competi- tors, all of whom are constantly trying ~ to learn everything they can about how you do things. Can National Dairy tell how much it is making from its tex- tiles-from-milk Aralac operations with- out .whetting the appetites of other milk companies? Should Coca-Cola dis- cuss with its stockholders the runs, hits’ and errors of the Atlanta base- ball team which the company owns? Should General Tire discuss the plans . for its six radio stations? Is silence really golden, or is it wiser to talk? All the ultimate answers that appear Drawings by Robert Osborn ONE SELF-PORTRAIT FOR THE TAX PEOPLE—ANOTHER FOR THE INVESTOR ‘ Steer RS SEs iaosnen.c