DeWitt's Statement at Kodak Meeting
Diocesan Press Service. May 5, 1967 [54-9]
The following is a statement made by the Rt. Rev. Robert L. De Witt, Bishop of Pennsylvania, representing the Episcopal Church at the annual stockholder's meeting of the Eastman Kodak Company in Flemington, N.J., April 25. Warren H. Turner, Jr., second vice president of the Executive Council, also represented the society.
"The Episcopal Church has investments both in Eastman Kodak and in the Negro community organization known as FIGHT, as we have in many companies and community organizations in other cities.
"We stand with Negro communities in their very real grievances and their urgent need for organizational power to participate fully in an open society.
"And we stand with the management of corporate enterprises which seek to manage their affairs for the well-being of the total community.
"The Episcopal Church takes the position that both parties to the dispute between FIGHT and Kodak have made mistakes and that each owes a responsibility to the community to find a resolution of their disagreement.
"Possession of power conveys the obligation to use that power responsibly. Corporations - and indeed investing Churches - must measure the responsible use of their resources by social as well as financial yardsticks.
"All segments of today's society - private enterprise, community organizations, churches, government - depend on each other. None can go it alone. All must relate responsibly to each other.
"The facts of our attendance at the annual stockholders' meeting of the Eastman Kodak Company in Flemington are these:
--- The Episcopal Church, through the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society, Inc., presently holds 5, 614 shares of Eastman stock as one of our valued investments.
--- The proxies for this stock were not routinely returned, in order that we who are members of the Society's Board of Directors could come here to attend the meeting and to vote the shares ourselves. We have come here to observe and to learn first-hand how the company plans to discharge its corporate responsibility.
--- As authorized by the Standing Committee of the Society's Board of Directors, we have voted the Church's stock for the five company directors proposed by management and for the appointment of Price Waterhouse Company as auditors. In other matters we have sought to be guided by the counsel of the Bishop of Rochester and the findings of his Diocesan Executive Council.
"We commend the leadership of Rochester, including both Eastman Kodak and FIGHT, for their roles in developing Rochester Jobs, Inc. This important pledge to provide job opportunities over the next eighteen months for 1, 500 presently unemployed persons and to prepare victims of inadequate education to fill those positions with the voice and assistance of the community organizations is a significant achievement indeed. It may well be emulated by other communities.
"We shall continue to look to firms in which we invest, like Eastman Kodak, to be pacesetters in the exercise of corporate responsibility in society."