In this space last week, we carried an excerpt from a speech by W. R. A. Aitken, executive vice-president, Inco Ltd., in which Mr Aitken called on the mining industry to tell the public the story of the industry as it is today — the story of a new, more sophisticated, much more technologically advanced kind of industry, vastly different from its “pick and shovel” image of past years.
No doubt about the fact that the industry has a great story to tell, and should tell it. No disagreement on that, Mr Aitken.
Where we have trouble, though, is in believing that the industry either can or will (at least in the near future) pull up its collective socks and actually do something very effective about the Inco executive’s advice.
First, there’s the all-important question of money. Programs to inform a broad spectrum of the public about anything, especially now in the era of television, cost a lot of money if they are going to have any effect whatsoever. It’s money the industry right now just simply doesn’t have to spare for this kind of effort. These are not the palmy days of the ’50s, for instance, when profits were big and many of the corporate giants were funnelling literally millions into public information programs both on their own account and through associations.
The other problem lies in the remaining vestiges of a kind of “the public be damned” mind-set the industry once had. It is much less pervasive today. The industry has learned, slowly, to accommodate to public attitudes and demands, and in an industrially democratic society, it must. But we think it still has a way to go before Mr Aitken’s rallying cry will have the full effect it needs.
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