Alas.

"And I'm sure there are jobs where you can be your own man, but those are unusual jobs, not the rule..."

If it's not right for General Motors, it's not right for the country.

"But the good jobs come and go, you know. For instance what is the job that's most popular today? Why prob- ably going to help Negroes in the ghettos. Well, that is a job like any other job, and we think it's very important . . ."

We do?

"But in 10 years or 20 years, some other job will be the fad, and then it won't matter whether or not you worked in the ghetto, but whether you have security for your wife and kids."

He is wearing a long, extra long, shiny gray suit, white shirt, thin red tie, short hair, and, notable among his expressionless features, straight-staring, hard-looking eyes. While speaking, he lines up his green blotter with the bottom of his desk. He runs his thumb along the ridge to make sure the blotter edge are even. Then he places his square pen stand in the bottom right hand corner of the blotter. That leaves him, finally, with only my information sheet, with which he improvises, placing it on top or to the left of the pen stand, perfectly even with the blotter edge. All this time, his feet are planted wide beneath the desk on the plastic shield. Always he looks srtaight at me, never glancing at his geometric handiwork. Blink, damn, you, blink.

"Now this is not to say we are not concerned with the quality of our jobs. There are positions, like that of Factory Superviosr, which could be called creative . . .

"And we certainly do have jobs for liberal arts graduates. Of course these non-technical people start out a lower salaries -- $700 a month instead of $780--and, uh, generally they progress slower, and end up with lower salaries. Also, you'll find very few executives who were not specialists of one sort or another . . ."

Yes, I remember, the corporate registers.

"But we don't discriminate. If you show that you can do the job, we'll swoop right down and pick you up. We review all our employees every year. We'll come into your factory and ask your supervisor about you, whether you've shown the ability to work together with other people. Here, we all work together as a team; that is one of our prime qualifications for advancement."

Ready girls! One, two, three, four, let's yell who we're fighting for, five, six, seven, eight, who do we appreciate? Geeenerrrral Motors! Yea team!

"As far as conformity, you'll find most of us conservative, especially in this building. You might find men in some of the branch offices--mod men, Nehru jackets. But here you'll find pretty much nothing but conservative, except possibly in the advertising department, you know, ad men . . ."

Do NOT, REPEAT, DO NOT LOOSEN YOUR TIE. DEVIATION CAN SPRING UP ANYWHERE. BE ON THE ALERT. REMEMBER, ONLY YOU CAN PREVENT NON-CONFORMITY! No Sir, I didn't mean conservative like that, like mod-men and ad-men: I mean political.

"Well, I'll tell you, I myself used to consider myself a liberal. But you get more conservative with life, believe me. But, as for your questions, I'm sure there are some liberals in General Motors. . ."