"Business and the Urban Crisis", 1968

~"Absolutely terrifying. No wonder people riot."
So said William Day, president of Michigan
Bell Telephone, looking over the ghettos in Detroit after last summer's riots.
Bill Day said it well. The urban ghettos are
terrifying-in Detroit and in dozens of other cities.
And until positive steps are taken to solve the
ghetto problem, this country of ours faces social
and economic chaos.
And unless business takes the lead-now-the
problem will not be solved.
Yet what business can do is neither easy nor
immediately clear. The problem of the cities is
complex, of long duration, and made up of issues
that range from lack of jobs to bad housing, from
faulty education to inadequate police protection.
In some areas of the problem, business has
already made a fine start. In others, there still are
only glimmers of what can be done.
This special report, distributed through
McGraw-Hill publications to their millions of
business and professional readers1 focuses on what
must be done in the three most critidal areas: jobs,
housing, and education. It was written by a task
force of McGraw-Hill editors, drawing upon the
editorial resources of our 44 business publications
and 19 U.S. news bureaus.
We believe we are especially qualified to gather,
edit, and disseminate vital information on this
subject-what companies and industries have
done, are doing; plan to do. Hence this report. We
hope to convey some of our own feelings about
the terrible urgency for action, and thus to stimulate and encourage other business organizations
to do what each is best qualified to do.
We would like to hear of action your company
has taken or plans to take. We shall continue our
reporting on this subject, and we offer the editorial pages of all our publications as a forum for
the exchange of constructive thinking on this
massive problem we share.
We all face this urban crisis together; together
we must solve it.
Sincerely,
JOSEPH H. ALLEN
PRESIDENT
MCGRAW-HILL PUBLICATIONS

Cl A McGraw-Hill Special Report