Corporations: Dow Drops Napalm

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A group of students at Notre Dame last week locked up a Dow Chemical Co. recruiter to protest the company's manufacture of napalm. This time there was a special irony to the encounter: Dow has quietly stopped producing the sticky incendiary jelly.

Dow's contract expired last May. but the fact remained generally unknown. Though napalm accounted for only about one-half of 1% of Dow's $1.6 billion annual sales, the company had become a target for acrimony. Clergymen led picket lines at Dow's annual meetings. A nationwide boycott was organized against its other products. Raiders splattered its Washington office with red ink.

American Electric Inc., which underbid Dow for Washington's latest napalm contract, may be in a better position. A subsidiary of City Investing Co., American Electric makes no consumer products— and it has no plans to recruit on college campuses.