NATIONAL INDUSTRIAL CONFERENCE ARD 845 Third Avenue, New York 22, New York Feb. 1965 SUMMARY OF 9th ROCKY MOUNTAIN CONFERENCE BY E. W. LITTLEFIELD Gentlemen, you see before you a three-time loser. This is the third time that I have been called upon to act as a summarize, but it is the first time I have realized why. A summarizer must meet two qualifications. First, he must be a veteran of so many of these conferences that the Chairman is convinced that the individual in question has already, in times past, said all he has to say. Second, even on the remote chance that he still has something left to say, the Chairman must be convinced that there are others in the audience who can cover the industries in question and say it better. I qualified perfectly on both counts! Nature of This Summary In fulfilling this assignment I do not propose to burden you with a recap of what has been said these last three days, for we heard it together. Your memory is the equal of my notes. Rather, let me attempt to bring out of what we have heard certain impressions, certain trains of thought, certain common areas of concerns and of hopes that shine through our deliberations together. The first thing that sets the Ninth Rocky Mountain Conference apart from its predecessors is the universal feeling expressed of record accomplishments in the year past and the overwhelming sense of confidence in the year ahead. Pessimists were hard to find as speaker after speaker spoke of new records for his industry, higher progress for his company, and Martin's charts and tables documented further the hearty rate of growth in 1964. Certainly here was a year when the accomplishments overshadowed the problems, and this note of optimism for the most part carried over in the predictions for 1965. Never before in these conferences or those at Del Monte have I sensed so optimistic a feeling about the business outlook, nor have the problems that beset us been placed in so small a perspective. The second impression that comes to me from this conference is the degree to which realism has replaced wishful thinking, and this in turn is leading to new approaches and new solutions to old problems - solutions that hold more promise of success. I was impressed that those here today recognized that they had to function in the world as it is today, not as it was or as they wished it were. This is not to say that there was here any resignation that we should not strive for a better tomorrow, but rather that progress toward that goal lay with "doing the possible" by facing up to the problems and trying to solve them.