GOVERNMENT REGULATION OF BUSINESS: A CASEBOOK.
Edited by EdwinA. Bock '43. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.:Prentice-Hall Inc., 1965. 448 pp. $9.95
The phrase "Government regulation of business" covers a number of highly diverse aspects of a complex relationship between public and private interests in this nation, a relationship which is apparently becoming ever more pervasive and even intimate. The seven case studies in this informative and timely volume cut across a wide range of types of such regulation, from the formal and almost ritualized process of a hearing before the Interstate Commerce Commission ("Generally, the applicants' testimony was matter-of-fact and according to formula. Most of the witnesses and all of the practitioners representing them had gone through similar proceedings many times."), to the temporary and voluntary arrangements designed to meet Europe's need for oil during the Suez crisis of 1956.
The volume deserves review on these pages not only because the College can claim the editor as a "Dartmouth author," but also because two of the seven studies, including one of nearly book length in its own right, were contributed by Joseph C. Palamountain Jr. '42, now President of Skidmore College. In his first case study, Dr. Palamountain reviews and discusses the efforts of the Federal Trade Commission to restrain what it held to be false and misleading advertising by Dolcin and other manufacturers of non-prescription anti-arthritic preparations. His second and longer study is a comprehensive treatment of the incredibly protracted case brought under the Robinson-Patman Act against the Standard Oil Company of Indiana.
The Standard of Indiana case is an important one in development of interpretation of the Robinson-Patman Act as well as a fascinating one from the viewpoint of a study in public administration; and Dr. Palamountain's research and analysis into the monumental record, which ran from an initial complaint in 1939 through a second and final decision by the Supreme Court in 1958, is a valuable piece of original scholarship as well as an intriguing case study.
One of the most interesting and curious accounts is that of the controversy in the early 1950s surrounding the battery additive AD-X2. The case study makes it clear that, far from playing the heavy role of villain in a clear-cut confrontation between scientific objectivity and political expediency, Secretary of Commerce Sinclair Weeks had a most convincing reason for doubting the findings of the National Bureau of Standards. A business firm, of which Weeks was a director, had put AD-X2 into a dead $1300 battery and reported complete success in rejuvenating it despite the NBS's insistence that the compound was worthless. Indeed, numerous knowledgeable and technically competent industrial users reported complete satisfaction with the product while controlled laboratory tests indicated that AD-X2 had no significant effects on batteries. One is reminded of the old and probably apocryphal story that it can be proven by known principles of aerodynamics that the bumblebee is thoroughly unairworthy.
Other cases included in this collection are the cranberry crisis of 1959 and the Civil Aeronautic Board's general passenger fare investigation. The cases are all well-written, as clear and organized as the tangled facts of the situations permit, and provocative. Professor Bock has assembled a most interesting set of readings and, entirely aside from its stated purpose as a casebook for class use, one that can be strongly recommended to anyone concerned with the interaction between business and Government whether the reader is one who welcomes increased Federal responsibility in this area or deplores it.
Associate Professor of Economics
