Here's my letter published in The Kansas CIty Star business section (April 16, 2013):
Keith Chrostowski’s recent Business Forum column titled “We want to buy cheap, be well paid" (March 12) reminded me of a story in The Little Brown Book of Anecdotes, a reference book edited by Clifton Fadiman.
An anecdote about Walter Reuther (1907-70), the labor leader who once headed the United Auto Workers and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), recounts his visit to an auto factory in Cleveland:
A young manager talked on an on about a new process they had for automating the line. It would be, he said, highly robotized, and it would work far more efficiently and cheaply than the current line…
“And tell me,” Reuther finally interrupted, “these wonderful new robots – will they go out and buy cars from your company?”
