Corporations: Filling that Defense Void

Less than a year ago, department-store parking lots in some sections of Seattle were practically deserted, and on normally busy Saturdays the aisles of southend supermarkets were almost bare. Boeing, the city's biggest employer and once the nation's largest defense contractor, was on the ropes. It had lost the multibillion-dollar TFX fighter contract to General Dynamics and had its contract for the Dyna-Soar manned spacecraft abruptly canceled. Its defense business had fallen by $150 million since 1962, and its work force had dropped by 12,000 to 92,100. Boeing was undergoing an agony...