CORPORATIONS: A Lull at Xerox

The late Joseph C. Wilson, builder of Xerox Corp., was fond of observing that if his company continued to grow at the meteoric rates of the 1960s, its sales would soon exceed the U.S. gross national product. The implication of that self-evident absurdity: Xerox's growth would have to slow; and it has now come true. Last year the company posted record revenues of $4 billion, but its profits suffered their first decline —a gossamer 1.8% before write-offs, to $342 million—since 1951, when Xerox was a small photographic-paper maker, known as the Haloid...