With corporate profits before taxes running about $45 billion, corporate contributions could have been about $2.2 billion in 1951. Actually such gifts run about one-fifth of what the law allows.
"The basis on which a specific corporation might give would be on the social basis rather than the specific--quid pro quo--return to the corporation," Dana M. Doten '39, Publication Agent for the University, said yesterday.
Assails Shortsightedness
Walter P. Paepcke, Chairman of the Container Corporation of America, recently voiced the pressing need: "Corporation managers have, broadly speaking, not gotten much beyond the Community Chest and the Red Cross stage in their thinking...Heads of companies who are not essentially gift-minded hide behind their boards of directors, the board of directors pontifically asserts that 'the money in the treasury belongs to the shareholder...'"
Private support to education is also lagging. Currently a person can contribute up to 15 percent of his income and have it tax-deductable; actually individuals are contributing about three or four percent.
To increase this trickle, Senator Edward Martin (R-Pa.) proposed to introduce to congress in the next few days a bill increasing the maximum tax-reduction to 25 percent. It will be attached as a rider to a current bill in the House permitting the Red Cross to give free benefit performances.
Although President Conant is in favor of Federal aid to education, most college heads agree with Princeton's President Dodd who recently called on Tiger alumnl to help preserve the "islands of independence in education without political accountability... The moment we federal underpinning we loose our dependence," he warned.
A report issued last fall by the Nationel Planning Association emphasized need for unrestricted educational gift "Existing tax incentives are hasten this process," it predicted, "The timid (companies) will evidently be judged the five-percent programs of their more energetic competitors and, in time, they too will be compelled by the logic of the situation to reappraise their own five-percent expenditures."