Let me deal here with what General Motors includes and with the responsibility that rests on its management.

First. We have approximately 60,000 stockholders. The market value of the securities that these stockholders hold at the present time exceeds $2,000,000,000 a very tidy sum. This enormous sum and the responsibility of acting as trustees throws a very great responsibility on General Motors' organization. In 1926 these stockholders received, in dividend disbursement, an amount in excess of $100,000,000. The purchasing power of this $100,000,000 has an important influence on our general business situation.

Second. We have 180,000 people in our own organization on our pay rolls and directly concerned in our prosperity. I believe it can be conservatively stated that allowing four dependents to each worker, we have approaching three quarters of a million people whose prosperity and happiness is directly concerned with ours. | Third. We have our dealer organization. There are in the aggregate something like 18,000 dealers. If we assume, and I think we have a right to assume, that each dealer would average twenty-five employees, I really think it is much higher than that, we have something like 500,000 dealers and members of their direct organization, with their dependents a total of over 2,000,000. I estimate these dealers are employing a capital of over $500,000,000. | Fourth. Next we have over 4,600 suppliers of material. I haven't any idea how many workers are involved in the organization of those suppliers applicable to General Motors production, but as you can well appreciate, it is very large. | "Fifth. We have the enormous aggregation of people number of stockholders increased to 372,000 from 1927 to 1933, whose prosperity depends, in turn, upon the prosperity of those I have mentioned above their purchasing power, in other words. As a matter of fact, there are several cities of importance in the United States whose prosperity is absolutely linked up with the prosperity of General Motors | p. 333-4: Speech by President Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., 1927 (III)