Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street. Chapter 7. The Impacted Philosophers
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本章以1961年电气制造业价格垄断丑闻为例，深入探讨了公司沟通中错综复杂且往往充满矛盾的领域。作者首先观察到，无论是工业家还是知识分子，都普遍关注沟通挑战，并质疑为什么尽管进行了大量研究，误解仍然存在。
由参议员埃斯特斯·凯福弗领导的参议院小组委员会关于价格垄断阴谋的听证会，详细展示了通用电气（GE）内部的沟通崩溃，通用电气是涉及此案的最大公司。该丑闻揭露了GE和其他公司合谋操纵价格并操纵大型电气设备的招标，给纳税人和公用事业客户造成了数百万美元的损失。这些公司的高管们设计了周密的计划来掩盖他们的会议，但最终被司法部曝光。
本章重点强调了GE作为自由市场典范的公众形象与实际的价格垄断行为之间明显的鸿沟。它探讨了对被判有罪的高管施加的惩罚，包括监禁刑期，以及随后的反应，从最初的媒体报道到对最高公司层面的虚伪的怀疑。法官盖尼怀疑那些对公司负责的人不可能不知道这些非法活动，这表明了一种公司文化，在这种文化中，违反法律是被纵容的，甚至是通过暗示和默许来间接鼓励的。
证词显示，GE沟通问题的核心在于“指令政策20.5”，这是一项禁止与竞争对手勾结的公司规定。然而，许多员工似乎并没有认真对待它，认为它只是法律上的门面功夫。一些高管在重申20.5时，会眨眼示意，表示该规则应该被忽视。
本章重点关注了罗伯特·帕克斯顿（一位以反对“眨眼”而闻名的GE高管）和威廉·S·金（他承认无视帕克斯顿不眨眼的命令）等关键人物的证词。金声称他遵循了来自其他上级Urban和Fehrman的相互矛盾的命令，他们更“能言善辩、更具说服力、更强有力”。金的证词引入了“沟通程度”的概念，并强调了哲学上的统一在商业决策中的重要性。
本章进一步探讨了个人如何解读和执行上级的指示，以及上级如何努力辨别下属话语的实际含义。像弗兰克·E·斯泰利克这样谈论通过发自内心的“影响”进行沟通的高管，展示了对公司文化的认知如何影响决策。雷蒙德·W·史密斯描述了他与上级文森特的交往，文森特误解了史密斯所传达信息的根本性质，这种误解将影响文森特在GE中的地位。
最终，本章得出结论，GE的沟通问题是复杂的，涉及信任的崩溃、缺乏明确的道德指导以及公司文化的影响。它暗示沟通的技术层面只是问题的一部分；还必须考虑个人在公司中的身份认同。作者认为，无论是否是故意的，沟通都可以有效地发生。虽然惩罚可能在短期内阻止了价格垄断，但真正的问题仍然是有效沟通的根本能力是否得到了提高。
This chapter delves into the intricate and often paradoxical world of corporate communication, using the example of the 1961 electrical manufacturing industry price-fixing scandal as a case study. The author starts by observing a widespread preoccupation with communication challenges among industrialists and intellectuals alike, questioning why, despite numerous studies, misunderstandings persist.
The Senate subcommittee hearings led by Senator Estes Kefauver on the price-fixing conspiracies offered a detailed look into the communication breakdown within General Electric (GE), the largest company involved. The scandal revealed that GE and other companies had conspired to fix prices and rig bids on large electrical equipment, costing taxpayers and utility customers millions. Executives from these companies had devised elaborate schemes to conceal their meetings, but were eventually exposed by the Justice Department.
The chapter highlights the apparent chasm between GE's public image as a paragon of free-market virtue and the actual practice of price-fixing. It explores the penalties imposed on the convicted executives, including prison sentences, and the subsequent reactions, from initial press coverage to suspicions of hypocrisy at the highest corporate levels. Judge Gainey's skepticism that the illegal activities could have been unknown to those responsible for the corporation points to a corporate culture where violating the law was condoned, and even implicitly encouraged, through winks and nods.
The core of the communication problem at GE, as revealed in the testimony, centers around "Directive Policy 20.5," a company rule forbidding collusion with competitors. However, it appeared that many employees did not take it seriously, seeing it as mere legal window dressing. Some executives, while reiterating 20.5, would wink, signaling that the rule should be disregarded.
The chapter focuses on the testimony of key figures like Robert Paxton, a GE executive known for his opposition to "winking," and William S. Gin, who admitted to disregarding Paxton's winkless order. Gin claimed he followed conflicting orders from other superiors, Urban and Fehrman, who were more "articulate, persuasive, and forceful." Gin's testimony introduces the concept of "degrees of communication" and emphasizes the importance of philosophical alignment in business decisions.
The chapter further examines how individuals interpreted and acted upon directives from superiors, and how a superior struggled to discern the actual meaning of a subordinate's words. Executives like Frank E. Stellick, who spoke of communication through visceral "impacts," demonstrated how perceptions of company culture influenced decisions. Raymond W. Smith described encounters with his superior Vincent who misunderstood the underlying nature of what Smith was communicating, a miscommunication that would affect Vincent's own status within GE.
Ultimately, the chapter concludes that the communication problem at GE was complex, involving a breakdown in trust, a lack of clear ethical guidance, and the influence of corporate culture. It implies that the technical aspects of communication are only part of the issue; personal identity within the corporation must be considered as well. The author suggests that communication can occur effectively whether intended or not. While the penalties may have discouraged price-fixing in the short term, the real question remained whether the fundamental ability to communicate effectively had improved.
中英文字稿 
第七章 被影响的哲学家
如今，美国工业面临的最大问题之一是沟通问题。即使是一些并不以高谈阔论著称的工商业人士，也会在交谈中提到这一问题。如何将一个人的思想正确传达给其他人，不仅困扰着工业界，也同样是许多知识分子和创意作家关注的焦点。越来越多人开始认为，沟通困难不仅是工业界的问题，而是整个人类共同的大难题。有一群先锋派的作家和艺术家甚至从反面的角度强调了沟通的重要性，他们直截了当地宣称反对沟通。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Chapter 7 The Impacted Philosophers Among the greatest problems facing American industry today, one may learn by talking with any of a large number of industrialists who are not known to be especially given to pontificating is the problem of communication. This preoccupation with the difficulty of getting a thought out of one head and into another is something the industrialists share with a substantial number of intellectuals and creative writers, more and more of whom seem inclined to regard communication, or the lack of it, as one of the greatest problems not just of industry but of humanity. A group of avant-garde writers and artists have given the importance of communication a backhanded boost by flatly and unequivocally proclaiming themselves to be against it.
对于工业界人士来说，我承认，在多年来听他们几乎神秘地提到“沟通”这个词的过程中，我一直很难确切理解他们的意思。总体的观点很清楚，即如果他们能在自己组织内部彼此沟通顺畅，并且能够成功地与外界沟通，一切就会好起来。但让我困惑的是，在这个基金会不断赞助各种通讯研究的时代，个人和组织为何仍然无法清晰地表达自己，或者他们的听众为何总是无法理解他们所听到的内容？
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
As far as the industrialists are concerned, I admit that in the course of hearing them invoke the word communication, often in an almost mystical way, over a period of years, I have had a lot of trouble figuring out exactly what they meant. The general thesis is clear enough, namely that everything would be alright first if they could get through to each other within their own organizations, and second if they or their organizations could get through to everybody else. What has puzzled me is how and why, in this day when the Foundation sponsored one study of communication after another, individuals and organizations fail so consistently to express themselves understandably, or how and why their listeners fail to grasp what they hear?
几年前，我获得了一本由美国政府印刷局出版的两卷本书，书名是《美国参议院司法委员会反垄断和垄断小组委员会听证会记录》。该听证会是在第87届国会第一次会议期间，根据参议院第52号决议进行的。在比较认真地阅读完其1459页的内容后，我认为我开始了解工业界人士谈论的话题。这次听证会于1961年4月、5月和6月在田纳西州参议员埃斯特斯·凯福韦的主持下举行，讨论了如今广为人知的电气制造业中的价格操纵和围标阴谋。在前一年的二月，这些阴谋已经导致费城的一名联邦法官对29家公司及其45名员工处以总计1,924,500美元的罚款，并对其中7名员工判处30天监禁。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
A few years ago, I acquired a two-volume publication of the United States Government Printing Office entitled Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 87th Congress, First Session, Pursuant to Senate Resolution 52, and after a fairly diligent perusal of its 1,459 pages, I thought I could begin to see what the industrialists are talking about. The Hearings, conducted in April, May, in June, 1961, under the chairmanship of Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, had to do with the now-famous price-fixing and bid-rigging conspiracies in the electrical manufacturing industry, which had already resulted the previous February in the imposition by a federal judge in Philadelphia of fines totaling $1,924,500 on 29 firms and 45 of their employees, and also of 30-day prison sentences on seven of the employees.
由于所有被告都已认罪或不辩护，且未举行任何公开的证据展示，起诉他们的大陪审团记录也是保密的，公众几乎没有机会了解违规细节。因此，参议员凯法弗认为整个事件需要彻底曝光。记录显示，这次揭露确实发生了，至少在涉及的最大公司内部，曝出的情况是内部沟通极其缺乏，让巴别塔的建造都显得像是组织沟通的成功案例。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Since there had been no public presentation of evidence, all the defendants having pleaded either guilty or no defense, and since the records of the grand juries that indicted them were secret, the public had had little opportunity to hear about the details of the violations, and Senator Kefauver felt that the whole matter needed a good airing. The transcript shows that it got one, and what the airing revealed, at least within the biggest company involved, was a breakdown in intramural communication so drastic as to make the building of the Tower of Babel seem a triumph of organizational rapport.
在1960年2月至10月期间，美国政府在费城的联邦地区法院提起了一系列起诉，指控29家公司及其高管多次违反1890年《谢尔曼法》第1条。该条款规定，任何旨在限制各州之间或与外国进行贸易或商业的合同、托拉斯或其他形式的联盟和共谋行为都是非法的。《谢尔曼法》曾是西奥多·罗斯福打击垄断活动的重要工具，自此以后，它与1914年的《克莱顿法》一起成为政府对抗垄断和卡特尔的重要武器。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In a series of indictments brought by the government in the United States District Court in Philadelphia, between February and October 1960, the 29 companies and their executives were charged with having repeatedly violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act of 1890, which declares illegal, every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several states or with foreign nations. The Sherman Act was the instrument used in the celebrated trust-busting activities of Theodore Roosevelt, and along with the Clayton Act of 1914, it is served as the government's weapon against cartels and monopolies ever since.
政府指控称，这些违规行为与销售大型且昂贵的设备有关，这类设备主要被公共和私营电力公司所需。其中包括更多的变压器、开关设备和涡轮发电机组等。这些违规行为是多次会议的结果，会议参与者是那些本应竞争的公司高管，会议从最早的1956年开始，一直持续到1959年。在这些会议上，各公司商定了不具竞争力的价格水平。本应密封的投标被提前操控，每家公司被分配到一定百分比的业务份额。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The violations, the government alleged, were committed in connection with the sale of large and expensive pieces of apparatus of a variety that is required chiefly by public and private electric utility companies. More transformers, switchgear assemblies, and turbine generator units, among many others. And were the outcome of a series of meetings attended by executives of the supposedly competing companies beginning at least as early as 1956 and continuing into 1959, at which non-competitive price levels were agreed upon. Nominally sealed bids on individual contracts were rigged in advance, and each company was allocated a certain percentage of the available business.
政府进一步指控称，为了保密这些会议，高管们采取了多种手段，比如在信件中用代码来代替公司名称，用公共电话亭或他们的家庭电话而不是办公室电话进行联系，甚至在费用报表上做手脚，掩盖他们在特定日期齐聚某个城市的事实。但是，他们的计谋并未成功。在反垄断部门主管罗伯特·A·比克斯的领导下，联邦政府成功揭露了这些秘密。政府在调查中得到了相当多的帮助，这些帮助来自部分同谋。他们在1959年初秋，一家小型同谋公司的员工决定揭露这件事后，纷纷出面作证。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The government further alleged that, in an effort to preserve the secrecy of these meetings, the executives had resorted to such devices as referring to their companies by code numbers in their correspondence, making telephone calls from public booths or from their homes rather than from their offices and doctoring the expense accounts, covering their get-togethers to conceal the fact that they had all been in a certain city on a certain day. But their stratagems did not prevail. The Federals, forcefully led by Robert A. Bix, then head of the anti-trust division of the Department of Justice, succeeded in exposing them, with considerable help from some of the conspirators themselves, who, after an employee of a small conspirator company, saw fit to spill the story in the early fall of 1959, flocked to turn state's evidence.
这件事情的经济和社会意义可以通过引用一些数据清楚地展示出来。在这个阴谋事件发生的年代里，平均每年用于购买相关机器的总金额超过十七亿五千万美元，其中将近四分之一是由联邦、州和地方政府花费的，当然，这意味着这些钱来自纳税人。而其余大部分资金是由私营公用事业公司支付的，这些公司通常会通过提高收费来转嫁设备成本上涨的影响。具体来说，在一次个别交易中，一个用于将蒸汽能源转化为电力的50万千瓦涡轮发电机的标价往往高达一千六百万美元。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The economic and social significance of the whole affair may be demonstrated clearly enough by citing just a few figures. In an average year, at the time of the conspiracies, a total of more than one and three-quarters billion dollars was spent to purchase machines of the sort in question, nearly a fourth of it by federal, state, and local governments, which, of course, means the taxpayers, and most of the rest by private utility companies, which are inclined to pass along any rise in the cost of their equipment to the public in the form of rate increases. To take a specific example of the kind of money involved in an individual transaction, the list price of a 500,000 kilowatt turbine generator, a monstrous device for producing electric power from steam power, was often something like sixteen million dollars.
实际上，制造商有时会将价格下调多达25%来促成销售，因此，如果一切都是透明的，购买这台机器可能会节省四百万美元。如果制造这种发电机的公司代表们开会并统一定价，他们实际上可以将成本提高四百万美元，而最终，买单的几乎肯定是公众。在费城的起诉中，Bix表示，这些案件共同透露出一系列的违规行为，可以说是有史以来美国基础产业中最严重、最明显、最普遍的违规行为之一。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Actually, manufacturers sometimes cut their prices by as much as twenty-five percent in order to make a sale, and therefore, if everything was above board, it might have been possible to buy the machine at a saving of four million dollars. If representatives of the companies making such generators held a single meeting and agreed to fix prices, they could, in effect, increase the cost to the customer by the four million, and in the end, the customer was almost sure to be the public. In presenting the indictments in Philadelphia, Bix stated that, considered collectively, they revealed a pattern of violations which can fairly be said to range among the most serious, the most flagrant, the most pervasive that have ever marked any basic American industry.
在宣布判决之前，法官J. Cullen Gainey更进一步，认为这些违规行为对我们经济的广大部分是一次令人震惊的控诉。这里真正岌岌可危的是自由企业制度的存续。他所判处的监禁刑罚表明了他的严肃态度。虽然在谢尔曼法通过后的七十年中有过多次成功的诉讼，但企业高管被判入狱的情况确实罕见。因此，这起案件在媒体上引发了轩然大波。诚然，《新共和》杂志抱怨说，报纸和杂志有意淡化数十年来最大的商业丑闻，但这一指控似乎并没有太多依据。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Just before imposing the sentences, Judge J. Cullen Gainey went even further. In his view, the violations constituted a shocking indictment of a vast section of our economy, for what is really at stake here is the survival of the free enterprise system. The prison sentences showed that he meant it, although there had been many successful prosecutions for violation of the Sherman Act during the seven decades since its passage, it was rare indeed for executives to be jailed. Not surprisingly, therefore, the case kicked up quite a ruckus in the press. The New Republic, to be sure, complained that the newspapers and magazines were intentionally playing down the biggest business scandal in decades, but the charge did not seem to have much foundation.
考虑到公众对配电装置的冷漠、涉及反垄断法的刑事案件的乏味乏力，以及已曝光阴谋的细节相对较少，总体上媒体还是给这个故事留出了不少空间，甚至《华尔街日报》和《财富》也发表了无保留且内容详实的报道。事实上，到处都能看到一些复苏的迹象，仿佛旧时三十年代的反商业新闻精神又出现了。毕竟，看到几位来自全国最受尊敬企业之一的体面、衣着无可挑剔且薪水不菲的高管被押送到监狱，就像普通的扒手一样，还有什么比这更令人振奋的呢？
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Considering such things as the public's apathy toward switchgear, the woeful bloodlessness of criminal cases involving antitrust laws, and the relatively few details of the conspiracies that had emerged, the press in general gave the story a good deal of space, and even the Wall Street Journal and Fortune ran uncompromising and highly informative accounts of the debacle. Here and there, in fact, one could attack signs of a revival of the spirit of old-time anti-business journalism, as it existed back in the thirties. After all, what could be more exhilarating than to see several dignified, impeccably tailored, and highly paid executives of a few of the nation's most respected corporations being tripped off to jail, like common pickpockets?
这无疑是自1938年以来，对商业Beta行业来说最重要的时刻。当时，纽约证券交易所前主席理查德·惠特尼因用客户资金进行投机而被送进监狱。有些人甚至称这次事件是自茶壶山丑闻以来最大的事件。更糟糕的是，人们普遍怀疑高层领导存在虚伪。通用电气的董事长和总裁以及西屋电气，这两家最大的公司被告，均未被政府调查牵连。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
It was certainly the biggest moment for business beta since 1938, when Richard Whitney, the former president of the New York Stock Exchange, was put behind bars for speculating with his customers' money. Some called it the biggest since teapot dome. To top it all off, there was a prevalent suspicion of hypocrisy in the very highest places. Neither the chairman of the board nor the president of General Electric, the largest of the corporate defendants, had been caught in the government's dragnet, and the same was true of Westinghouse Electric, the second largest.
这四位最终的高层领导宣称，他们对自己管辖范围内发生的事情毫不知情，直到司法部首次获得相关证词为止。然而，许多人对这些否认表示不满，并且认为这些被告的高管实际上是夹在中间的角色，他们之所以违法，是因为受到实际指令的驱使，或者是在一个支持价格垄断的公司环境中被迫行事，而现在他们要为上级的罪过承担后果。在不满意的人当中，还有法官盖尼本人，他在判刑时表示，如果相信这些违反法律的行为持续了这么长时间、影响了如此大一部分行业、最终涉及数以百万计的资金，而这些事实却对负责公司管理的人来说完全未知，那将是极为天真的想法。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
These four ultimate bosses led it be known that they had been entirely ignorant of what had been going on within their commands right up to the time the first testimony on the subject was given to the Justice Department. Many people, however, were not satisfied by these disclaimers, and instead took the position that the defendant executives were men in the middle, who had broken the law only in response either to actual orders or to a corporate climate favoring price fixing, and who were now being allowed to suffer for the sins of their superiors. Among the unsatisfied was Judge Gainey himself, who said at the time of the sentencing, one would be most naive indeed to believe that these violations of the law so long persisted in, affecting so large a segment of the industry, and finally involving so many millions upon millions of dollars were facts unknown to those responsible for the conduct of the corporation.
我相信，在众多被告的案例中，他们是在良心和公司认可的政策之间挣扎，受到升职、稳定的保障和丰厚薪水的诱惑。公众自然想要找到一个主谋，并似乎在通用电气身上找到了这样的角色。通用电气公司总部设在纽约市莱克星顿大道570号，这引起了公司高层领导的极大震惊。无论是在媒体报道中还是在小组委员会的听证会上，它都成了关注的焦点。作为被指控的29家公司中规模最大的公司，通用电气拥有大约30万名员工，过去十年的年均销售额约为40亿美元。1959年的销售额使它成为美国第五大公司。同时，它被罚款的总额也最高，为437,500美元，并且有三位高管被判入狱，另外八人则获得了缓刑。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
I am convinced that in the great number of these defendant's cases they were torn between conscience and approved corporate policy, with the rewarding objectives of promotion, comfortable security, and large salaries. The public naturally wanted a ringleader in arch-conspirator, and it appeared to find what it wanted in General Electric, which, to the acute consternation of the men endeavoring to guide its destinies from company headquarters, the 570 Lexington Avenue, New York City, got the lion's share of attention, both in the press and in the subcommittee hearings. With some 300,000 employees and sales averaging some $4 billion a year over the past ten years, it was not only far and away the biggest of the 29 accused companies, but, judged on the basis of sales in 1959, the fifth biggest company in the country. It also drew a higher total of fines, $437,500 than any other company, and saw more of its executives sent to jail, three, with eight others receiving suspended sentences.
此外，仿佛是为了在危机时刻加深真正信徒的恐惧和震惊，以及嘲讽者的幸灾乐祸，多年来，其最高级别的管理人员试图将公司表现为成功美德的典范，对外宣称自由竞争体系的重要性，而实际上，价格操控会议正是建立在对这个体系的嘲弄之上。1959年，就在政府对违规行为的调查引起通用电气决策者注意后不久，公司对那些承认参与其中的高管进行了降职和减薪处理。例如，一位副总裁被告知，他的年薪将从原来的12.7万美元降至4万美元。而他几乎还没完全接受这一打击，法官Gainey就对他处以4000美元的罚款，并判处30天监禁。在他获得自由不久后，通用电气彻底将其解雇。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Furthermore, as if to intensify in this hour of crisis the horror and shock of true believers, and the glee of scoffers, its highest ranking executives had for years tried to represent it to the public as a paragon of successful virtue by issuing encomiums to the free competitive system, the very system that the price-fixing meetings were set up to mock. In 1959, shortly after the government's investigation of the violations had been brought to the attention of GE's policymakers, the company demoted and cut the pay of those of its executives who admitted that they had been involved. One vice president, for example, was informed that instead of the $127,000 a year he had been getting he would now get $40,000. He had scarcely adjusted himself to that blow when Judge Gainey fined him $4,000 and sent him to prison for 30 days, and shortly after he regained his freedom, General Electric eased him out entirely.
通用电气公司的政策是对这些员工施加额外的惩罚，而不论法院可能会判处什么样的处罚。相比之下，西屋电气并没有采取这样的措施，而是等到法官处理完案件后才决定，对其旗下的违规者施加的罚款和监禁已经足够，因此公司本身没有再给员工任何惩罚。有些人认为这种态度表明西屋电气在纵容这些阴谋，但也有人认为这是一种值得称赞的态度，尽管没有明说，即这些公司的高层管理实际上也应该对整个事件负有道德责任，因此不适合去惩罚犯错的员工。从这些人的观点来看，通用电气急于惩罚其员工的行为，似乎强烈暗示该公司试图通过牺牲一些不幸的员工来保全自己。正如密歇根州的参议员菲利普·A·哈特在听证会上更形象地说的那样，通用电气是在进行一次 "洗手不干" 的操作。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The GE policy of imposing penalties of its own on these employees, regardless of what punishment the court might prescribe, was not adopted by Westinghouse, which waited until the Judge had disposed of the case and then decided that the fines and prison sentences he had handed out to its stable of offenders were chastisement enough, and did not itself penalize them at all. Some people saw this attitude as evidence that Westinghouse was condoning the conspiracies, but others regarded it as a commendable, if tacit admission that management at the highest level in the conniving companies was responsible, morally at least, for the whole mess and was therefore in no position to discipline its erring employees. In the view of these people, GE's haste to penalize the acknowledged culprits on its payroll strongly suggested that the firm was trying to save its own skin by throwing a few luckless employees to the wolves, or, as Senator Philip A. Hart of Michigan put it, more pungently, during the hearings, to do a Pontius pilot operation.
在570 Lexington Avenue的激烈斗争期间，经过多年的努力，将公司打造成一个智慧而仁慈的企业形象，GE总部的公关人员面临一个不太光彩的选择：在价格垄断事件中，要么承认公司是个傻瓜，要么装作无知。他们更倾向于选择“傻瓜”。而Gainey法官通过他的声明表示，他认为这些阴谋不仅得到了高层的默许，还获得了公司的整体认可，因此他选择了“无知”。但他的分析是否正确尚未可知。在阅读了Kefauver小组委员会的证词后，我悲观地认为，这个事件的真相可能永远不会被揭示。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In battle days at 570 Lexington Avenue, after years of cloaking the company in the mantle of a wise and benevolent corporate institution, the public relations people at GE headquarters were faced with the ugly choice of representing its role in the price-fixing affair as that of either a fool or a nave. They tended strongly toward fool. Judge Gainey, by his statement that he assumed the conspiracies to have been not only condoned but approved by the top brass, and the company as a whole, clearly chose nave. But his analysis may or may not have been the right one, and after reading the Kefauver sub-committee testimony, I have come to the melancholy conclusion that the truth will very likely never be known.
根据证词显示，在通用电气公司（GE），道德责任的清晰界限因沟通不畅变得混乱不堪。这种混乱程度让人感觉，如果GE的一位高层命令下属违法，信息在传递过程中可能会出现混淆。而如果下属告知老板他正在与竞争对手进行秘密会谈，老板也可能误以为下属只是在闲聊草坪聚会或纸牌游戏。具体来说，一名下属如果收到了老板的直接口头指令，他需要弄清楚这是否真的是命令的字面意思，还是相反的意思。而老板在与下属交谈时，也必须判断是直接接受下属所说的内容，还是要翻译出其中可能隐藏的秘密信息，而他并不确定自己是否掌握解密的钥匙。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
For, as the testimony shows, the clear waters of moral responsibility at GE became hopelessly muddied by a struggle to communicate, a struggle so confused that in some cases it would appear if one of the big bosses at GE had ordered a subordinate to break the law, the message would somehow have been garbled in its reception, and if the subordinate had informed the boss that he was holding conspiratorial meetings with competitors, the boss might well have been under the impression that the subordinate was gossiping idly about lawn parties or penochical sessions. Specifically, it would appear that a subordinate who received a direct oral order from his boss had to figure out whether it meant what it seemed to or the exact opposite, while the boss, in conversing with a subordinate, had to figure out whether he should take what the man told him at face value, or should attempt to translate it out of a secret code, to which he was by no means sure he had the key.
问题的核心就是如此，我在此大胆地陈述出来，作为对任何可能受到基金会资助者的一项建议，他们或许正在寻找合适的项目来撰写计划书。在过去大约八年里，GE公司有一项名为第20.5号指令政策的公司规则，其中部分内容规定，任何员工不得与竞争对手达成任何关于价格、销售条款或条件、生产、分销、地区或客户的明示或暗示、正式或非正式的共识、协议、计划或方案，也不得与竞争对手交换或讨论价格、销售条款或条件，或任何其他竞争信息。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
That was the problem in a nutshell, and I stated here thus boldly, as a suggestion for any potential beneficiary of a foundation who may be casting about for a suitable project on which to draw up a prospectus. For the past eight years or so GE had had a company rule called Directive Policy 20.5, which read in part, no employee shall enter into any understanding, agreement, plan, or scheme expressed or implied, formal or informal, with any competitor in regard to prices, terms, or conditions of sale, production, distribution, territories, or customers, nor exchange or discuss with the competitor prices, terms, or conditions of sale, or any other competitive information.
事实上，这项规则实际上就是要求通用电气的员工遵守联邦反垄断法的指令，只不过在价格问题上，这项规则更加具体和全面。对于负责定价政策的通用电气高管们来说，几乎不可能不知道"20.5条例"，甚至连模糊不清的余地都没有。为了确保新上任的高管了解这项规则，同时也为了老员工能回忆起其内容，公司会定期正式重新发布并分发这项规则。所有相关高管都被要求在这份文件上签字，以表明他们当前遵守这个规定并且有意继续遵守。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In effect, this rule was simply an injunction to GE's personnel to obey the federal antitrust laws, except that it was somewhat more concrete and comprehensive in the matter of price than they are. It was almost impossible for executives with jurisdiction over pricing policies at GE to be unaware of 20.5, or even hazy about it, because to make sure that new executives were acquainted with it and to refresh the memories of old ones, the company formally reissued and distributed it at intervals. In all such executives were asked to sign their names to it as an earnest that they were currently complying with it and intended to keep on doing so.
在法院诉讼涉及的期间，甚至在这之前很长一段时间里，问题在于通用电气 (GE) 的一些人，包括那些经常在文件20.5上签字的人，根本不认为这个规定需要认真对待。他们认为20.5条款不过是表面工作，它的存在只是为了给公司和高层提供法律保护。他们觉得与竞争对手非法会面在公司内部是被认可且常见的标准做法。而且，常常当一个高管命令下属执行20.5的时候，他实际上是在告诉他违反这个条款。虽然这种情况看起来不合逻辑，但如果理解为有段时间一些高层在口头传达或重申这个命令时，显然经常会伴随着一个意味深长的眼神，那么这种假设就可以理解了。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The trouble, at least during the period covered by the court action, and apparently for a long time before that as well, was that some people at GE, including some of those who regularly signed 20.5, simply did not believe that it was to be taken seriously. They assumed that 20.5 was mere window dressing, that it was on the book solely to provide legal protection for the company and for the higher-ups, that meeting illegally with competitors was recognized and accepted as standard practice within the company. And that often when a ranking executive ordered a subordinate executive to comply with 20.5, he was actually ordering him to violate it. Illogical, as it might seem, this last assumption becomes comprehensible in light of the fact that, for a time, when some executives orally conveyed or re-conveyed the order, they were apparently in the habit of accompanying it with an unmistakable wink.
1948年5月，有一次通用电气（GE）销售经理的会议，会上公开讨论了“眨眼”的习惯。罗伯特·派克斯顿（Robert Paxton），一位后来成为公司总裁的高层主管，在会上发表了关于反垄断违规的常规警告。随后，负责变压器部门销售的威廉·S·金（William S. Gin）在派克斯顿的管辖下让他惊讶地说：“我没有看到眨眼。”派克斯顿坚定地回答：“没有眨眼。这是认真的，这些是命令。”当参议员基福弗（Kefauver）问派克斯顿，他什么时候意识到GE发出的命令有时会伴随着眨眼时，派克斯顿回答说，他早在1935年就注意到这一做法。当时，他的老板给了他一个嘱咐，并伴随着一个眨眼或类似的示意。当他稍后明白这个手势的意义时，他非常愤怒，甚至几乎难以抑制自己，没有因为打老板一拳而损害自己的职业生涯。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In May of 1948, for example, there was a meeting of GE sales managers during which the custom of winking was openly discussed. Robert Paxton, an upper-level GE executive who later became the company's president, addressed the meeting, and delivered the usual admonition about antitrust violations. Whereupon William S. Gin, then a sales executive in the transformer division, under Paxton's authority, startled him by saying, I didn't see a wink. Paxton replied firmly, there was no wink. We mean it, and these are the orders. Asked by Senator Kefauver, how long he had been aware that orders issued at GE were sometimes accompanied by winks, Paxton replied that he had first observed the practice way back in 1935, when his boss had given him an instruction along with a wink, or its equivalent, and that when, sometime later, the significance of the gesture dawned on him, he had become so incensed that he had, with difficulty, restrained himself from jeopardizing his career by punching the boss in the nose.
帕克斯顿接着表示，他对眨眼行为的反对非常强烈，以至于在公司里他被认为是反对眨眼的人，而他自己从来没有眨过眼。尽管帕克斯顿对他的1948年禁止眨眼的命令的解释似乎毫不含糊，但金却没有领会到其真正含义。因为在命令发布后不久，金就去固定价格，表现得非常成功。显然，要达成价格固定协议不只是一个公司能决定的，但所有的证词都表明，在这种事情上，通常是通用电气（GE）为整个行业设定了模式。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Paxton went on to say that his objections to the practice of winking had been so strong as to earn him a reputation in the company for being an anti-wink man, and that he, for his part, had never winked. Although Paxton would seem to have left little doubt as to how he intended his winkless order of 1948 to be interpreted, its meaning failed to get through to Gin. For not long after it was issued, he went out and fixed prices to affair thee well. Obviously it takes more than one company to make a price-fixing agreement, but all the testimony tends to indicate that it was GE that generally set the pattern for the rest of the industry in such matters.
13年后，刚刚坐完几周牢狱的Gin，失去了年薪13.5万美元的工作，出现在一个小组委员会面前，解释他对一项奇怪指令的反应。他说之所以无视这项指令，是因为他收到了来自通用电气指挥链中其他两位上司的相反命令——亨利·V.B.·厄班和弗朗西斯·费尔曼。他在解释为何听从这些命令而非帕克斯顿的指令时，提出了一个有趣的概念——沟通的等级，这也成为了一个基金会受赠人可深入研究的主题。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
13 years later, Gin, fresh from a few weeks in jail and fresh out of $135,000 a year job, appeared before the subcommittee to account for, among other things, his strange response to the winkless order. He had disregarded it, he said, because he had received a contrary order from two of his other superiors in the GE chain of command. Henry, V.B. Urban, and Francis Fehrman, and in explaining why he had heated their order rather than Paxton's, he introduced the fascinating concept of degrees of communication, another theme for a foundation grantee to get his teeth into.
金说，厄本和费尔曼在发布命令时，比帕克斯顿更加清晰、有说服力和坚定。尤其是费尔曼，金强调，他展现出了杰出的沟通能力、高深的哲学造诣，并且坦率地说，他非常看重价格的稳定。厄本和费尔曼都认为帕克斯顿过于天真，他们认为他被误导了，他提到，那些推崇邪恶的人比推崇正义的人更能说服我。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Urban and Fehrman, Gin said, had been more articulate, persuasive, and forceful in issuing their order than Paxton had been in issuing his. Fehrman, especially Gin stressed, had proved to be a great communicator, a great philosopher, and frankly, a great believer in stability of prices. Both Urban and Fehrman had dismissed Paxton as naive, gentestified, and in further summary of how he had been led astray, he said that the people who were advocating the devil were able to sell me better than the philosophers that were selling the Lord.
如果能直接拿到Urban和Fehrman本人关于他们如何成功在沟通技巧上胜过Paxton的报告，那就太好了，但遗憾的是，这两位哲学家在听证会前都去世了，因此无法在小组委员会作证。虽然Paxton还在，但Gin在证词中称他一直是站在主的一边的哲学家推销员。Gin还表示，Paxton更接近于一位亚当·斯密的倡导者，比他在美国遇到的任何商人都更为贴近。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
It would be helpful to have at hand a report from Urban and Fehrman themselves on the communication technique that enabled them to prevail over Paxton, but unfortunately neither of these philosophers could testify before the subcommittee because by the time of the hearings both of them were dead. Paxton, who was available, was described in Gin's testimony as having been at all times one of the philosopher salesman on the side of the Lord. I can clarify Mr. Paxton by saying Mr. Paxton came closer to being an Adam Smith advocate than any businessman I have met in America, Gin declared.
在1950年，Gin在与Paxton的一次随意谈话中承认自己在反垄断事务中妥协了。然而，Paxton只是对他说他真是个笨蛋，并没有向公司里的其他人报告这一承认。在作证解释他为何没有这么做时，Paxton表示，当这次谈话发生时，他已经不再是Gin的上司。根据他的个人道德观，重复一个不在自己权限范围内的人的这种承认会被视为闲话和搬弄是非。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Still, in 1950, when Gin admitted to Paxton in casual conversation that he had compromised himself in respect to antitrust matters, Paxton merely told him that he was a damned fool and did not report the confession to anyone else in the company. Testifying as to why he did not, Paxton said that when the conversation occurred he was no longer Gin's boss and that in the light of his personal ethics, repeating such an admission by a man not under his authority would be gossip and tail bearing.
与此同时，Gin 不再向 Paxton 汇报工作，他频繁与竞争对手会面，并在公司中稳步晋升。1954年11月，他被任命为总部位于马萨诸塞州皮茨菲尔德的变压器部门的总经理，这个职位让他有机会晋升为副总裁。当 Gin 转任新职位时，自1949年以来一直担任通用电气董事会主席的 Ralph J. Cordner 把他叫到纽约，明确要求他严格遵守并不偏离20.5号政策指令。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Meanwhile, Gin, no longer answerable to Paxton, was meeting with competitors at frequent intervals and moving steadily up the corporate ladder. In November 1954, he was made general manager of the transformer division whose headquarters were in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, a job that put him in line for vice presidency. At the time of Gin's shift, Ralph J. Cordner, who has been chairman of the Board of General Electric since 1949, called him down to New York for the express purpose of enjoining him to comply strictly and undeviatingly with Directive Policy 20.5.
科德纳成功地传达了这个想法，以至于吉恩在当时完全明白了他的意思。然而，当他离开主席后走到厄本的办公室时，他对刚刚听到的内容的理解变得模糊了。厄本是GE分销集团的负责人，他的职位直接在科德纳之下，而在吉恩之上。根据吉恩的证词，他们刚在办公室单独相处时，厄本就推翻了科德纳的指示，对吉恩说：“继续以你原来的方式做事，但要合理并在这个问题上动动脑筋。”
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Cordner communicated this idea so successfully that it was clear enough to Gin at the moment, but it remained only so as long as it took him, after leaving the chairman, to walk to Urban's office. There is comprehension of what he had just heard became clouded. Urban, who was head of GE's distribution group, ranked directly below Cordner and directly above Gin, and, according to Gin's testimony, no sooner were they alone in his office than he countermandered Cordner's injunction, saying, now keep on doing the way that you have been doing, but just be sensible about it and use your head on the subject.
厄本非凡的沟通能力再次发挥了重要作用，金继续与竞争对手会面。他告诉参议员凯福弗：“我知道考德纳先生可以解雇我，但我也知道我是在为厄本先生工作。” 1954年底，帕克斯顿接替了厄本的职位，从而再次成为金的上司。金仍然与竞争对手会面，但由于他知道帕克斯顿不赞成这种做法，因此没有告诉他。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Urban's extraordinary Communicative prowess again carried the day, and Gin continued to meet with competitors. I knew Mr. Cordner could fire me, he told Senator Kefauver, but I also knew I was working for Mr. Urban. At the end of 1954, Paxton took over Urban's job, and thereby became Gin's boss again. Gin went right on meeting with competitors, but, since he was aware that Paxton disapproved of the practice, didn't tell him about it.
此外，他作证说，不到一两个月，他确信无论在任何情况下都不能停止参加这些会议。因为在1955年1月，整个电气设备行业陷入了一场激烈的价格战，这场价格战因为其时机和为买家提供的折扣而被称为“白色大甩卖”。曾经友好的竞争对手开始激烈地相互压价。这种自由市场的表现恰恰是各公司之间的共谋所意图防止的。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Moreover, he testified, within a month or two, he had become convinced that he could not afford to discontinue attending the meetings under any circumstances. For, in January 1955, the entire electrical equipment industry became embroiled in a drastic price war, known as the White Sale, because of its timing and the bargains it afforded to buyers, in which the erstwhile amiable competitors began fiercely undercutting one another. Such a manifestation of free enterprise was, of course, exactly what the intercompany conspiracies were intended to prevent.
在那个时候，电气设备的供应大大超过了需求。最初只有少数参与者打破了他们自己制定的协议，但逐渐地，越来越多的人开始违背这些协议。为了尽力处理这种情况，金说，他运用了此前他学到的哲学思想，他希望通过继续举行价格协调会议，能够至少让一些达成的协议得到遵守。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
But, just at that time, the supply of electrical apparatus so greatly exceeded the demand, that first a few of the conspirators, and then more and more began breaking the agreements they themselves had made. In dealing with the situation as best he could, Gin said, he used the philosophies that had been taught me previously, by which he meant that he continued to conduct price-fixing meetings, in the hope that at least some of the agreements made at them would be honored.
关于帕克斯顿，金认为这个哲学家不仅对会议一无所知，而且他对自由和激烈竞争的理念非常执着，以至于他实际上喜欢价格战，尽管这对所有人的利润都是灾难性的。在他自己的证词中，帕克斯顿强烈否认他喜欢这种局面。在大约一年内，电气设备行业开始回暖。到了1957年1月，金成功度过了难关并获得了副总裁的职位。同时，他被调往斯克内克塔迪，成为通用电气涡轮发电机部门的总经理，科尔德纳再次把他叫到总部，并就“20.5”问题对他进行了指导。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
As for Paxton, in Gin's opinion that philosopher was not only ignorant of the meetings, but so constant in his devotion to the concept of free and aggressive competition that he actually enjoyed the price war, disastrous though it was to everybody's profits. In his own testimony, Paxton vigorously denied that he had enjoyed it. Within a year or so, the electrical equipment industry took an upturn, and in January 1957, Gin, having ridden out the storm relatively well, got his vice presidency. At the same time, he was transferred to Schenectady to become general manager of GE's turbine generator division, and Kordner again called him into headquarters and gave him a lecture on 20.5.
这样的讲座渐渐成了科德纳的常规活动。每当有新员工被分配到战略管理岗位，或老员工被晋升到这样的岗位，这位幸运者都可以预见他将被召唤到董事长办公室，聆听严格信条的传授。在他的书《日本的心》中，亚历山大·坎贝尔提到，一家大型日本电气公司制定了七条公司戒律，比如诚实和真诚。而且每天早上，在该公司旗下的30家工厂，每位员工都必须立正，齐声背诵这些戒律，然后再唱公司歌。永远提高生产，热爱工作，奉献一切。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Such lectures were getting to be a routine with Kordner. Every time a new employee was assigned to a strategic managerial post, or an old employee was promoted to such a post, the lucky fellow could be reasonably certain that he would be summoned to the chairman's office to hear a rendition of the austere creed. In his book, The Heart of Japan, Alexander Campbell reports that a large Japanese electrical concern has drawn up a list of seven company commandments, for example, bicardius and sincere, and that each morning, in each of its 30 factories, the workers are required to stand at attention and recite these in unison, and then to sing the company song. Forever increasing production, love your work, give your all.
科德纳并没有要求下属背诵或唱诵《20.5》，据我们所知，他甚至从未为这段文字谱过曲。然而，从科德纳多次让像金这样的人阅读或记住这段文字来看，他们一定已经非常熟悉，以至于能自编曲调吟唱。这一次，科德纳的信息不仅在金的脑海中留下了深刻印象，还以最纯粹的形式铭刻在心。据金的证词，他直接转变成了一个改过自新的高管，一夜之间就放弃了价格操控的习惯。不过，他的突然改变似乎不能完全归功于科德纳的沟通能力，甚至不能全归功于不断重复的滴水穿石效应。事实上，这种改变很大程度上是出于实际需要，就像亨利八世转变为新教徒一样。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Kordner did not require his subordinates to recite or sing 20.5, as far as is known, he never even had it set to music, but from the number of times men like Jin had it read to them or otherwise recalled to their attention, they must have come to know it well enough to chant it, improvising a tune as they went along. This time, Kordner's message not only made an impression on Jin's mind, but stuck there in unadulterated form. Jin, according to his testimony, became a reformed executive and dropped his price-fixing habits overnight. However, it appears that his sudden conversion cannot be attributed wholly to Kordner's powers of communication, or even to the drip-trip-trip effect of repetition. For it was to a considerable extent pragmatic in character, like the conversion of Henry VIII to Protestantism.
他改组了晋，并向小组委员会解释说，因为他的庇护消失了。你的什么消失了？参议员克福加强调。我的庇护消失了，晋回答说。我的意思是，我失去了我的庇护。厄本先生不再在旁，我的所有同事也离开了，而我现在直接为帕克斯顿先生工作，了解他对此事的看法。我以前所信奉的任何理念现在都被抛到脑后了。如果厄本（自 1954 年底以来就不是晋的上司）曾是他的庇护来源，那么晋已经在没有这种保护的情况下度过了两年多的时间。不过，大概由于价格战的激烈，他未能注意到这种庇护的缺失。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
He reformed Jin explained to the subcommittee, because his air cover was gone. Your what was gone? Senator Kefauver asked. My air cover was gone, replied Jin. I mean I had lost my air cover. Mr. Urban wasn't around anymore, and all of my colleagues had gone, and I was now working directly for Mr. Paxton, knowing his feelings on the matter. Any philosophy that I had grown up with before in the past was now out the window. If Urban, who had not been Jin's boss since late in 1954, had been the source of his air cover, Jin must have been without its protection for over two years. But presumably, in the excitement of the price war, he had failed to notice its absence.
然而，不管过去如何，现在他却成了一个突然失去了庇护和信仰的人。他迅速用一整套新的原则填补了后者的空缺，并在他的涡轮发电机部门的经理之间传播了《20.5》。除此之外，他积极推行他所谓的“麻风病政策”。也就是说，他建议下属们甚至在社交场合也要避免与竞争公司同行接触，因为经过多年的艰难经验，他认为一旦建立了这种关系，它们往往会扩散，随之而来的便是各种不当行为的开始。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
However, that may have been, here he now was, a man suddenly shorn, not only of his air cover, but of his philosophy. Swiftly filling the latter void with a whole new set of principles, he circulated copies of 20.5 among his department managers in the Turbine Generator Division, and topped this off by energetically adopting what he called a leprosy policy. That is, he advised his subordinates to avoid even casual social contacts with their counterparts in competing companies, because, once the relationships are established, I have come to the conclusion after many years of hard experience that the relationships tend to spread, and the hanky-panky begins to get going.
但现在命运对金开了个残酷的玩笑，他无意中陷入了帕克斯顿和科德纳多年来所处的境地。成为一个哲学家，徒劳地试图向一群不愿接受他信息的人推销上帝，而这些人实际上在有组织地进行他们的领袖所警告的勾当。具体来说，在整个1957年和1958年，以及1959年初，金的两个下属一边虔诚地签署20.5协议，另一边却在积极筹划价格操控协议，并举行了一系列会议。他们的聚集地点包括纽约、费城、芝加哥、弗吉尼亚州的温泉城和宾夕法尼亚州的斯凯托普等地。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
But now fate played a cruel trick on Jin, and all-unknowing, he landed in the very position that Paxton and Kordner had been in for years. That of a philosopher, vainly endeavoring to sell the Lord to a flock that declined to buy his message and was, in fact, systematically engaging in the hanky-panky its leader had warned it against. Specifically, during the whole of 1957 and 1958, and the first part of 1959, two of Jin's subordinates were piously signing the 20.5 with one hand, and with the other, briskly drawing up price-fixing agreements had a whole series of meetings. In New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Hot Springs, Virginia, and Skytop, Pennsylvania, to name a few of their gathering places.
看起来，晋未能将他闪亮的新哲学传达给其他人，而导致他困难的根本原因在于老问题——交流。 在听证会上被问及他的下属为何会严重偏离方向时，他回答说：“我必须承认我犯了一个沟通错误。我没有很好地向他们推销这个理念。价格在企业的整体运营中非常重要，从哲学上讲，我们必须向人们传达，这不仅仅是因为违法而不应该这样做，还有很多其他原因。但这需要一种哲学上和沟通上的方法。即使我告诉我的同事们不要这样做，还是有些人偏离了初衷。我必须在这里承认，在沟通方面有一个失败，我愿意为此承担部分责任。”
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
It appears that Jin had not been able to impart much of his shining new philosophy to others, and that at the root of his difficulty, lay that old jinx, the problem of communicating. Asked at the hearings how a subordinate could possibly have gone so far astray, he replied, I have got to admit that I made a communication error. I didn't sell this thing to the boys well enough. The price is so important in the complete running of a business that, philosophically, we have got to sell people not only just the fact that it is against the law, but that it shouldn't be done for many, many reasons. But, it has got to be a philosophical approach and a communication approach. Even though I told my associates not to do this, some of the boys did get off the reservation. I have to admit to myself here, an area of a failure in communications, which I am perfectly willing to accept my part of the responsibility for.
在努力分析失败原因时，金表示，他得出结论，仅仅频繁发布指令是不够的。我们需要的是一种完整的理念、一个完整的理解，以及打破人与人之间障碍的方式。如果我们希望真正理解并在公司中应用这些理念进行管理。参议员哈特对此评论说，你可以一直沟通下去，但如果你传达的信息，即使是法律，也让你的听众觉得只是个传说，你永远也无法“卖出”这个“包袱”。金苦笑着承认这是真的。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In earnestly striving to analyze the cause of the failure, Jin said, he had reached the conclusion that merely issuing directives, no matter how frequently was not enough. What was needed was a complete philosophy, a complete understanding, a complete breakdown of barriers between people. If we are going to get some understanding and really live and manage these companies within the philosophies that they should be managed in. Senator Hart permitted himself to comment, you can communicate until you are dead and gone, but if the point you are communicating about, even though it be a law of the land, strikes your audience as something that is just a folklore, he will never sell the package. Jin, roofily, conceded that that was true.
在另一位被告Frank E. Stellick的证词中，沟通程度的概念通过暗示得到了进一步的发展。Stellick曾在1956年5月到1960年2月期间担任GE低压开关设备部门的总经理。大部分电力使用者对此并不知情，开关设备用于控制和保护电能的发电、转换、传输和分配设备，美国每年销售的开关设备总价值超过一亿美元。Stellick表示，他的一部分业务指导来自传统的命令形式，如口头或书面的命令，而他通过一种不太依靠智力、更加依赖直觉的沟通方式，也获得了同样多的指导，这种方式他称之为影响。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The concept of degrees of communication was further developed by implication in the testimony of another defendant, Frank E. Stellick, who had been General Manager of the GE Low Voltage Switchgear Department from May 1956 to February 1960. Has all but a tiny minority of the users of electricity are contentedly unaware, Switchgear serves to control and protect apparatus used in the generation, conversion, transmission, and distribution of electrical energy, and more than one hundred million dollars worth of it is sold annually in the United States. Stellick received some of his business guidance in the conventional form of orders, oral and written, and some, perhaps just as much, to judge by his testimony, through a less intellectual, more visceral medium of communication that he called impacts.
显然，当公司内部发生某些让他印象深刻的事情时，他会查阅一种内部的“元物理电压表”，以确定他所受到的冲击强度，并根据这个读数来试图判断公司政策的真实走势。例如，他作证说，在1956年、1957年和大部分1958年期间，他认为通用电气公司（GE）是坦率而完全支持遵守20.5的。但后来，在1958年秋天，他的直接上司乔治·E·布伦斯告诉他，布伦斯被时任GE总裁的帕克斯顿指示，与ITE断路器公司（在配电设备市场的重要竞争对手）的总裁马克斯·斯科特共进午餐。帕克斯顿在自己的证词中说，尽管确实要求布伦斯与斯科特共进午餐，但他明确指示不要谈论价格问题。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Apparently, when something happened within the company that made an impression on him, he would consult a sort of internal metaphysical voltmeter to ascertain the force of the jolt that he had received, and, from the reading he got, would attempt to gauge the true drift of company policy. For example, he testified that during 1956, 1957, and most of 1958, he believed that GE was frankly and fully in favor of complying with 20.5. But then, in the autumn of 1958, George E. Burens, Stellick's immediate superior, told him that he, Burens, had been directed by Paxton, who by then was president of GE, to have lunch with Max Scott, president of the ITE Circuit Breaker Company, an important competitor in the switchgear market. Paxton said in his own testimony that while he had indeed asked Burens to have lunch with Scott, he had instructed him categorically not to talk about prices.
但显然布伦斯并没有向斯特利克提到这个警告。无论如何，斯特利克作证说，高层指示布伦斯与一个主要对手共进午餐的事情对他产生了很大的影响。当被要求进一步说明时，他说，在我思考公司真实态度时，有许多因素影响了我，这是其中之一。随着这些大大小小的因素不断积累，最终斯特利克意识到他之前误以为公司对20.5怀有真正的尊重是错误的。因此，当1958年末布伦斯命令斯特利克开始与竞争对手举行价格会议时，他一点也不感到惊讶。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
But apparently Burens did not mention this caveat to Stellick. In any event, the disclosure that the high command had told Burens to lunch with an archrival, Stellick testified, had a heavy impact on me. Asked to amplify this, he said, there are a great many impacts that influenced me in my thinking as to the true attitude of the company, and that was one of them. As the impacts, great and small, piled up, the cumulative effect finally communicated to Stellick that he had been wrong in supposing the company had any real respect for 20.5. Accordingly, when, late in 1958, Stellick was ordered by Burens to begin holding price meetings with the competitors, he was not in the least surprised.
斯特利克遵从伯伦的命令，最终引发了一系列全新的、更加直接的影响。1960年2月，通用电气因他违反第20.5条规定，将他的年薪从7万美元削减至2.6万美元。一年后，盖尼法官因违反《谢尔曼法》对他处以3000美元罚款，并宣判30天监禁缓刑。大约一个月后，通用电气要求并取得了他的辞职。确实，在他与公司共事的最后几年中，斯特利克似乎遭受了几乎与雷蒙德·钱德勒小说中的英雄一样多的打击。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Stellick's compliance with Burens' order ultimately brought on a whole new series of impacts, of a much more crudely communicative sort. In February 1960, General Electric cut his annual pay from $70,000 to $26,000 for violating 20.5. A year later Judge Gainey gave him a $3,000 fine and a suspended 30-day jail sentence for violating the Sherman Act. And about a month after that, GE asked for and got his resignation. Indeed, during his last years with the firm, Stellick seems to have received almost as many lacerating impacts as a Raymond Chandler hero.
在听证会上，低压开关设备部门市场部经理LB Gazon的证词表明，Stellick就像钱德勒笔下的英雄一样，不仅能发起直接冲击，也能承受这样的冲击。Gazon在指挥体系中直接听命于Stellick，他告诉小组委员会，虽然在1956年4月Stellick成为他的上司之前，他参加过价格垄断的会议，但此后直到1958年底，他都没有参与任何反垄断违法行为。而他之所以在那个时候参与，是因为受到了Stellick直截了当的影响，这种影响与Stellick早期经历中的微妙现象截然不同。显然，Stellick在与下属沟通时毫不留情，没有留下任何偶然的成分。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
But testimony given at the hearings by LB Gazon, manager of the marketing section of the low-voltage switchgear department indicated that Stellick, again like a Chandler hero, was capable of dishing out blunt impacts as well as taking them. Gazon, who was directly under Stellick in the line of command, told the subcommittee that although he had taken part in price-fixing meetings prior to April 1956, when Stellick became his boss, he did not subsequently engage in any antitrust violations until late 1958, and that he did so then only as the result of an impact that bore none of the subtlety noted by Stellick in his early experience with his phenomenon. The impact came directly from Stellick, who it seems left nothing to chance in communicating with his subordinates.
根据Gazon的说法，Stellick告诉他继续开会，因为公司的政策没有改变，风险仍然很大，如果我们的活动被发现，我个人将会被公司解雇或处分，并且还会受到政府的惩罚。因此，Gazon面临三个选择：辞职、不服从上司的直接指令（在这种情况下，他认为公司可能会找其他人来接替我的工作），或者服从指令，由此违反反垄断法，而无任何可能后果的豁免。简而言之，他的选择与国际间谍面临的情况相当。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In Gazon's words, Stellick told him to resume the meetings that the company policy was unchanged, the risk was just as great as it ever had been, and that if our activities were discovered, I personally would be dismissed or disciplined by the company as well as punished by the government. So Gazon was left with three choices. To quit, to disobey the direct order of his superior, in which case he thought they might have found somebody else to do my job, or to obey the order, and thereby violate the antitrust laws with no immunity against the possible consequences. In short, his alternatives were comparable to those faced by an international spy.
虽然加松确实恢复了会议，但他并没有被指控，可能是因为他在价格操纵中所扮演的角色较小。通用电气方面，将他降职但并没有要求他辞职。然而，假设加松没有受到他的经历影响是一个错误。在被参议员凯发询问他是否认为斯特利克的命令使他陷入了难以忍受的境地时，他回答，当时并不觉得如此。当被问到他是否认为因执行上司的命令而遭受降职是不公正时，他回答说，个人并不这样认为。根据他的回答，加松在心灵和心理上所受到的影响似乎相当沉重。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Although Gazon did resume the meetings, he was not indicted, possibly because he had been a relatively minor price-fixer. General Electric, for its part, demoted him but did not require him to resign. Yet it would be a mistake to assume that Gazon was relatively untouched by his experience. Asked by Senator Kefauver, if he did not think that Stellick's order had placed him in an intolerable position, he replied that it did not struck him that way at the time. Asked whether he thought it unjust that he had suffered demotions for carrying out the order of a superior, he replied, I personally don't consider it so. To judge by his answers, the impact on Gazon's heart and mind would seem to have been heavy indeed.
沟通问题的另一面，即上级在理解下属所说内容时可能遇到的困难，可以通过雷蒙德·W·史密斯的证词形象地说明。史密斯在1957年初至1959年年底担任GE变压器部门的总经理。而在1957年10月，亚瑟·F·文森特被任命为负责GE设备集团的副总裁，并成为公司执行委员会的成员。史密斯的职位由金担任了前两年，当文森特获得他的职位后，他就成为了史密斯的直接上司。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The other side of the communication problem, the difficulty that a superior is likely to encounter and understanding what a subordinate tells him, is graphically illustrated by the testimony of Raymond W. Smith, who was General Manager of GE's Transformer Division from the beginning of 1957 until late 1959. Anne of Arthur F. Vincent, who in October 1957 was appointed Vice President in charge of GE's apparatus group, and also a member of the company's executive committee. Smith's job was the one gin that held for the previous two years, and when Vincent got his job, he became Smith's immediate boss.
在所讨论的这段时间内，Smith的最高年薪大约为10万美元，而Vincent的基本工资达到了11万美元，并且还获得了从4.5万美元到10万美元不等的浮动奖金。Smith在证词中表示，1957年1月1日，也就是他刚接管Transformer部门的当天，他与董事长Kordner和执行副总裁Paxton进行了会面，尽管那天是个假日。Kordner当时像往常一样告诫他要遵守20.5条款。然而，在那年的稍后时间，市场竞争变得异常激烈，变压器的折扣高达35%。于是Smith自作主张地认为，是时候开始与竞争对手进行谈判，以期稳定市场了。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Smith's highest pay during the period in question was roughly $100,000 a year, while Vincent reached a basic salary of $110,000 and also got a variable bonus, ranging from $45,000 to $100,000. Smith testified that on January 1, 1957, the very day he took charge of the Transformer Division, and a holiday at that, he met with Chairman Kordner and Executive Vice President Paxton, and Kordner gave him the familiar admonition about living up to $20.5. However, later that year, the competitive going got so rough that Transformers were selling at discounts of as much as 35 percent, and Smith decided on his own hook that the time had come to begin negotiating with rival firms in the hope of stabilizing the market.
他说，他觉得这样做是有道理的，因为他相信在公司内部和整个行业中，这样的谈判是司空见惯的。到了10月，Vincent成为他的上司时，Smith已经经常参与价格协商会议。他觉得有必要让新上司知道他在做什么。因此，他告诉小组委员会，在两三次正常业务过程中，当他们两人单独在一起时，他就对Vincent说，今天早上我和一个圈子开了会。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
He felt that he was justified in doing this, he said, because he was convinced that both in company circles and in the whole industry negotiations of this kind were the order of the day. By the time Vincent became his superior in October, Smith was regularly attending price-fixing meetings, and he felt that he ought to let his new boss know what he was doing. Accordingly, he told the subcommittee, on two or three occasions, when the two men found themselves alone together in the normal course of business, he said to Vincent, I had a meeting with a clan this morning.
委员会的委员会成员询问史密斯是否曾经以更直白的方式表达此事，比如他是否曾说过诸如“我们正在与竞争对手会面商定价格，我们要在这里搞一个小阴谋，我不希望这个消息泄露出去”之类的话。史密斯回答说，他从未说过任何类似的话，只是说过像“我今天早上和家族开了个会”之类的言论。他并没有详细说明为什么没有更直接地说明，但有两个合理的解释。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Council for the subcommittee asked Smith whether he had ever put the matter more bluntly, whether, for example, he had ever said anything like, we're meeting with competitors to fix prices, we're going to have a little conspiracy here, and I don't want it to get out. Smith replied that he had never said anything remotely like that, had done nothing more than make remarks on the order of, I had a meeting with the clan this morning. He did not elaborate on why he did not speak with greater directness, but two logical possibilities present themselves.
也许他希望能够让文森特了解情况，同时保护他避免成为共犯的风险，或者他并没有这样的意图，只是用他特有的委婉口语方式表达自己。帕克斯顿是史密斯的密友之一，他曾经抱怨史密斯的言辞有些隐晦。不管怎样，根据文森特自己的说法，他完全误解了史密斯的意思。事实上，他从未听过史密斯用“家族会议”这样的表达。不过，他记得史密斯曾说过类似的话，比如“好吧，我打算把这个关于变压器的新计划展示给兄弟们。”
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Perhaps he hoped that he could keep Vincent informed about the situation and at the same time protect him from the risk of becoming an accomplice, or perhaps he had no such intention and was simply expressing himself in the oblique colloquial way that characterized much of his speaking. Paxton, a close friend of Smiths, had once complained to Smith that he was given to being somewhat cryptic in his remarks. Anyhow, Vincent, according to his own testimony, had flatly misunderstood what Smith meant. Indeed, he could not recall ever hearing Smith use the expression, meeting of the clan. Although he did recall his saying things like, well, I'm going to take this new plan on transformers and show it to the boys.
文森特作证说，他原以为那些男孩是指通用电气地区的销售人员和公司的客户，而"新计划"是指一个新的营销计划。他表示，当这件事情曝光后，几年后才得知，史密斯说的那些男孩和新计划其实是指参与价格垄断的竞争对手时，感到非常震惊。文森特作证说："我认为史密斯先生是个诚实的人，我相信他当时告诉我他要去参加某个会议，我对此没有多想。然而，史密斯却很有信心地认为文森特已经理解了他的意思。"
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Vincent testified that he had thought the boys meant the GE district salespeople and the company's customers, and that the new plan was a new marketing plan. He said that it had come as a rude shock to him to learn a couple of years later after the case had broken, that in speaking of the boys and the new plan, Smith had been referring to competitors in a price fixing scheme. I think Mr. Smith is a sincere man, Vincent testified. I am sure Mr. Smith thought he was telling me that he was going to one of these meetings. This meant nothing to me. Smith, on the other hand, was confident that his meaning had got through to Vincent.
我从未觉得他误解过我。他向小组委员会坚称。后来，质询文森特时，基福弗问一个在电气行业有三十年经验的高管，怎么可能如此天真，以至于在了解“那些人”是谁这种重要问题上误解了下属的意思。文森特回答：“我认为这并不太天真。我们有很多‘小伙子’。我可能很天真，但我确信自己说的是实话，在这类事情上，我确定自己很天真。”基福弗参议员说：“文森特先生，如果你真的天真，就不可能是年薪20万美元的副总裁。”文森特回答：“我想在这种领域，天真也许可以帮助我到达这个职位。”
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
I never got the impression that he misunderstood me. He insisted to the subcommittee. Questioning Vincent later, Kefauver asked whether an executive in his position, with 30 odd years experience in the electrical industry, could possibly be so naive as to misunderstand a subordinate on such a substantive matter as grasping who the boys were. I don't think it's too naive, replied Vincent. We have a lot of boys. I may be naive, but I'm certainly telling the truth, and in this kind of thing, I'm sure I am naive. Senator Kefauver, Mr. Vincent, you wouldn't be a vice president at $200,000 a year if you were naive. Mr. Vincent, I think I could well get there by being naive in this area. It might help.
在这里，在一个完全不同的领域，沟通问题再次浮现。文森特真的在对基富沃说他似乎在说的话吗？即关于反垄断违规的天真态度可能会帮助一个人在通用电气获得和保住年薪20万美元的工作？这似乎不太可能。然而，他还能是什么意思呢？无论答案如何，联邦反垄断人员和参议院调查人员都无法证明史密斯成功地向文森特传达了他参与价格操纵的事实。而且由于缺乏这样的证据，他们无法证明他们看起来竭力想要证明的一点，即通用电气管理层的某个高层人物，至少执行委员会中的某个成员，牵涉其中。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Here, in a different field altogether, the communication problem again comes to the fore. Was Vincent really saying to Kefauver what he seemed to be saying, that naivete about antitrust violations might be a help to a man in getting and holding a $200,000 a year job at General Electric? It seems unlikely. And yet, what else could he have meant? Whatever the answer, neither the federal antitrust men, nor the Senate investigators, were able to prove that Smith succeeded in his attempts to communicate to Vincent the fact that he was engaging in price fixing. And lacking such proof, they were unable to establish what they gave every appearance of going all out to establish if they could, namely, that at least some one man at the pinnacle of GE's management, some member of the sacred executive committee itself, was implicated.
事实上，当阴谋的故事首次被揭露时，文森特不仅同意公司决定对史密斯进行严厉降职的惩罚，而且还亲自通知了史密斯该决定。如果文森特在1957年就理解了史密斯的意思，那么这两个行为就表现出了一种非同寻常的玩世不恭和虚伪。顺便说一下，史密斯没有接受降职，而是选择了辞去通用电气的工作。之后，法官盖尼判他罚款3000美元并给予30天的缓刑，他在其他地方找到了一份年薪1万美元的工作。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Actually, when the story of the conspiracies first became known, Vincent not only concurred in a company decision to punish Smith by drastically demoting him, but personally informed him of the decision. Two acts that, if he had grasped Smith's meaning back in 1957, would have denoted a remarkable degree of cynicism and hypocrisy. Smith, by the way, rather than accept the demotion, quit General Electric, and, after being fined $3,000 and given a suspended 30-day prison sentence by Judge Gainey, found a job elsewhere, at $10,000 a year.
文森特与这个案件的联系不止于此。在引发法庭诉讼的大陪审团起诉中，他也是被指控者之一，这次并非因为他对史密斯术语的理解，而是与开关设备部门的阴谋有关。在案件的这一方面，四位开关设备主管——布伦斯、斯特里克、克拉伦斯·E·伯克和H·弗兰克·亨舍尔——在1958年7月、8月或9月的某个时候，在费城通用电气公司开关设备厂的B餐厅与文森特共进午餐，虽然他们都无法确认具体日期。他们在大陪审团和后来的小组委员会前作证，称在用餐期间，文森特指示他们与竞争对手举行价格会议。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
This was not Vincent's only brush with the case. He was also among those named in one of the grand jury indictments that precipitated the court action, this time in connection not with his comprehension of Smith's jargon, but with the conspiracy in the switchgear department. On this aspect of the case, four switchgear executives, Burens, Stellic, Clarence E. Burke and H. Frank Henschel testified before the grand jury, and later before the subcommittee, that at some time in July, August or September of 1958, none of them could establish the precise date, Vincent had had lunch with them in dining room B of GE's switchgear works in Philadelphia, and that during the meal he had instructed them to hold price meetings with competitors.
根据这一命令，他们表示，一次会议于1958年11月9日在大西洋城的特拉莫尔酒店召开，参加会议的有GE（通用电气）、西屋电气、爱丽丝查默斯制造公司、联邦太平洋电气公司和ITE断路器公司的代表。在会议上，各公司将向联邦、州和市政机构销售配电设备的市场份额进行了分配，其中通用电气获得39%的份额，西屋电气35%，ITE公司11%，爱丽丝查默斯8%，联邦太平洋电气7%。在随后的会议上，各方还就向私人买家销售配电设备的分配达成了一致，并制定了一个复杂的公式，该公式规定，参与这项协议的公司按照两周一轮的周期轮流获得向潜在客户提交最低报价的机会。因为这个安排是周期性的，所以被称为“月相公式”。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
As a result of this order, they said, a meeting attended by representatives of GE, Westinghouse, the Alice Chalmers Manufacturing Company, the Federal Pacific Electric Company, and the ITE Circuit Breaker Company was held at the Hotel Tramor in Atlantic City on November 9, 1958, at which sales of switchgear to federal, state, and municipal agencies were divvied up, with General Electric to get 39% of the business, Westinghouse 35%, ITE 11%, Alice Chalmers 8% and Federal Pacific Electric 7%. At subsequent meetings, agreement was reached on allocating sales of switchgear to private buyers as well, and an elaborate formula was worked out, whereby the privilege of submitting the lowest bid to prospective customers was rotated among the conspiring companies at two-week intervals. Because of its periodic nature, this was called the Phase of the Moon formula.
下面是这段话的中文翻译，尽量简单易读：
那个称谓最终引发了小组委员会和亚丽斯·查尔默斯执行官LW Long之间的以下对话。参议员Kefauver问：“谁是月亮计划的负责人？” Long先生回答：“据我所知，这个所谓的‘月亮计划’是在我之下的一个工作小组执行的。” Farrell先生，是小组委员会的律师，问：“他们有没有向您汇报过这个计划？” Long先生回答：“月亮计划？没有。” Vincent告诉司法部的检察官，并在小组委员会面前重申，他直到案件曝光才知道Tramor会议、月亮计划或阴谋的存在。至于在B餐厅的午餐，他坚持说从未发生过。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
A designation that in due time led to the following lyrical exchange between the subcommittee and LW Long in executive of Alice Chalmers. Senator Kefauver Who were the phasers of the Mooners? Phase of the Mooners Mr. Long, as it developed this so-called Phase of the Moon operation was carried out at a level below me, I think referred to as a working group, Mr. Farrell, counsel for the subcommittee. Did they ever report to you about it? Mr. Long, Phase of the Moon? No. Vincent told the Justice Department prosecutors and repeated to the subcommittee that he had not known about the Tramor meeting, the Phase of the Mooners, or the existence of the conspiracy itself until the case broke. As for the lunch in dining room B, he insisted that it had never taken place.
在这个问题上，布伦、斯特里克、伯克和亨舍尔接受了FBI进行的测谎测试，并通过了。而文森特拒绝参加测谎测试，一开始解释说这是根据律师的建议，与他个人的倾向相反。后来，在听说其他四个人都通过了测试后，他争辩说，如果机器没有说他们撒谎，那么这个机器就不会有用。在调查中发现，只在7月、8月和9月的八个工作日中，布伦、伯克、斯特里克和亨舍尔一起在费城工厂共进午餐，而文森特则提供了一些他的费用账单，向司法部指出，他在这些日子里都在其他地方。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
On this point, Buren's, Stellic, Burke, and Henschel submitted to lie detector tests administered by the FBI and passed them. Vincent refused to take a lie detector test, at first explaining that he was acting on advice of counsel in against his personal inclination. And later, after hearing how the four other men had fared, arguing that if the machine had not pronounced them liars, they couldn't be any good. It was established that on only eight business days during July, August, and September, had Buren's, Burke, Stellic, and Henschel all been together in the Philadelphia plant at the lunch hour, and Vincent produced some of his expense accounts, which he pointed out to the Justice Department showed that he had been elsewhere on each of those days.
面对这一证据，司法部撤销了对文森特的指控，他继续担任通用电气的副总裁。小组委员会从他那里获得的信息中，没有任何实质性因素动摇政府检察官对他的认可。因此，通用电气的高层安然无恙。记录显示，参与阴谋的人遍布公司组织的较低层级，但没有涉及到最高层。大家一致认为，加松是按照斯特利克的命令行事，而斯特利克则是遵循布伦斯的指令。然而调查到此为止，因为虽然布伦斯称他是按照文森特的命令行事，但文森特否认了这一点，并且成功坚持了自己的否认。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Confronted with this evidence, the Justice Department dropped its case against Vincent, and he stayed on as a Vice President of General Electric. Nothing that the subcommittee elicited from him cast any substantive doubt on the defense that had impressed the government prosecutors. Thus, the uppermost echelon at GE came through unscathed. The record showed that participation in the conspiracy went fairly far down in the organization, but not all the way to the top. Gazon, everybody agreed, had followed orders from Stellic, and Stellic had followed orders from Buren's. But that was the end of the trail, because although Buren said he had followed orders from Vincent, Vincent denied it and made the denial stick.
在调查结束时，政府在庭审中表示，他们无法证明，也不主张董事长科德纳或总裁帕克斯顿曾批准或知晓任何阴谋，因此正式排除了他们至少以象征性默许参与的可能性。随后，帕克斯顿和科德纳前往华盛顿，在一个小组委员会作证，该委员会的质询者同样未能证明他们曾以任何方式默许过这些事情。在金恩将帕克斯顿描述为通用电气最顽固和最忠诚的自由竞争倡导者后，帕克斯顿向小组委员会解释说，他对这个问题的看法并非直接受到亚当·斯密的影响，而是通过他曾在其下工作的前任通用电气老板的影响。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The government at the end of its investigation stated in court that it could not prove and did not claim that either Chairman Kordner or President Paxton had authorized or even known about the conspiracies, and thereby officially ruled out the possibility that they had resorted to at least a figurative wink. Later, Paxton and Kordner showed up in Washington to testify before the subcommittee, and its interrogators were similarly unable to establish that they had ever indulged in any variety of winking. After being described by Ginn as General Electric's stubbornest and most dedicated advocate of free competition, Paxton explained to the subcommittee that his thinking on the subject had been influenced not directly by Adam Smith, but rather by way of a former GE boss he had worked under.
已故的杰拉德·斯沃普。根据帕克斯顿的证词，斯沃普一直坚信商业的最终目标是以更低的成本为更多的人生产更多的商品。帕克斯顿说，我那时认同这一点，现在仍然认同。我认为这是任何实业家所表达过的最奇妙的经济理念。在他的证词中，帕克斯顿对与他名字相关的几个关于价格操纵的情况都进行了解释，无论是哲学上的还是其他方面的。例如，有人提到在1956或1957年，一位名叫杰瑞·佩奇的年轻人，他是GE开关设备部门的一名低级员工，曾直接写信给科德纳，声称GE和几家竞争公司旗下的开关设备部门参与了一场阴谋，他们通过一种基于不同颜色信纸的秘密代码来交换价格信息。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The late Gerard Swope. Swope, Paxton testified, had always believed firmly that the ultimate goal of business was to produce more goods for more people at lower cost. I bought that then, I buy it now, said Paxton. I think it is the most marvelous statement of economic philosophy that any industrialist has ever expressed. In the course of his testimony, Paxton had an explanation, philosophical or otherwise, of each of the several situations related to price fixing in which his name had earlier been mentioned. For instance, it had been brought out that in 1956 or 1957 a young man named Jerry Page, a minor employee in GE's switchgear division, had written directly to Kordner alleging that the switchgear divisions of GE and of several competitor companies were involved in a conspiracy in which information about prices was exchanged by means of a secret code based on different colors of letter paper.
科德纳将问题交给帕克斯顿处理，并命令他彻底调查。帕克斯顿随即展开调查，得出结论认为这个关于色码的阴谋完全是这个男孩的幻想。在得出这个结论时，帕克斯顿显然是正确的，尽管后来发现1956年和1957年期间，确实在开关设备部门存在一个阴谋。然而，这只是一个基于价格垄断会议的相对常规的阴谋，而不是涉及色码这样复杂的事情。由于健康原因，佩奇不能出席作证。帕克斯顿承认，有时候他可能确实相当愚钝。不管是否愚钝，作为公司总裁，他的薪酬自然远高于文森特。他的基本年薪为12.5万美元，还能获得每年大约17.5万美元的激励补偿，并享有股票期权，使其能够以较低税率获得更多收益。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Kordner had turned the matter over to Paxton with orders that he get to the bottom of it, and Paxton had thereupon conducted an investigation that led him to conclude that the color code conspiracy was wholly hallucination on the part of this boy. In arriving at that conclusion, Paxton had apparently been right, although it later came out that there had been a conspiracy in the switchgear division during 1956 and 1957. This, however, was a rather conventional one, based simply on price fixing meetings rather than on anything so godly as a color code. Page could not be called to testify because of ill health. Paxton conceded that there had been some occasions when he must have been pretty damn dumb. Dumb or not, for his services as the company's president, he was, of course, remunerated on a considerably grander scale than Vincent, receiving a basic annual salary of $125,000 plus annual incentive compensation of about $175,000, plus stock options designed to enable him to collect much more at low tax rates.
关于帕克斯顿对公司沟通的态度，他在这方面表现得相当悲观。在听证会上被要求评论1957年史密斯-文森的对话时，他表示，他了解史密斯，因此无法将他定义为一个撒谎的人，然后继续说道：在我年轻的时候，我经常打桥牌。每年冬天我们都会打大约50局桥牌，我相信我们打得还不错。如果你们几位是桥牌玩家，你们会知道在游戏进行过程中，搭档之间会交换一种信号的暗示。这是一种程式化的打牌方式。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
As for Paxton's attitude toward company communications, he emerges as a pessimist on this score. Upon being asked at the hearings to comment on the Smith-Vinson conversations of 1957, he said that knowing Smith, he could just not cast the man in the role of a liar, and went on. When I was younger, I used to play a good deal of bridge. We played about 50 rubbers of bridge for us every winter, and I think we probably played some rather good bridge. If you gentlemen are bridge players, you know that there is a code of signals that is exchanged between partners as the game progresses. It is a stylized form of playing.
现在，当我想到这件事时，我对史密斯的证词感到特别印象深刻，他提到了一次家族聚会或者是男孩们的聚会。我开始意识到，这些人在处理竞争时，可能有一种特殊的交流方式。史密斯可以说，他告诉了文森特他在做什么，而文森特可能完全不知道他在说什么。然后两个人可以在宣誓作证时，一个说是，一个说不是，而两者都在讲实话。他们不在同一个频道上，也没有相同的理解。我现在相信，这些人确实认为他们是在说实话，但他们之间没有真正理解对方的意思。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Now, as I think about this, and I was particularly impressed when I read Smith's testimony when he talked about a meeting of the clan or meeting of the boys. I begin to think that there must have been a stylized method of communication between these people who are dealing with competition. Now, Smith could say, I told Vincent what I was doing, and Vincent wouldn't have the foggiest idea what was being told to him, and both men could testify under oath, one saying yes, and the other man saying no, and both be telling the truth. They wouldn't be on the same wavelength. They wouldn't have the same meanings. I think, I believe now, that these men did think that they were telling the truth, but they weren't communicating between each other with understanding.
这里毫无疑问是对沟通问题最阴郁的分析。根据科德纳主席的证词来看，他的地位就像那首著名童谣中的波士顿卡博特家族。他为公司提供了诸多无价的服务，这些服务得到了非常丰厚的报酬。1960年，他的薪水刚超过28万美元，外加大约12万美元的或有递延收入，还有可能价值数十万美元的股票期权。然而，他的工作是在如此高的层级上进行的，至少在反垄断事务上，他似乎完全没有可能进行任何具体的交流。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Here, certainly, is the gloomiest possible analysis of the communications problem. Chairman Kordner's status, it appears from his testimony, was approximately that of the Boston Cabot's in the celebrated jingle. His services to the company, for which he was recompensed in truly handsome style, with, for 1960, a salary of just over $280,000 plus contingent deferred income of about $120,000 plus stock options, potentially worth hundreds of thousands more, were indubitably many invaluable. But they were performed on such an exalted level that, at least in antitrust matters, he does not seem to have been able to have any earthly communication at all.
当他坚定地告诉小组委员会，他从来没有对阴谋网络有丝毫的察觉时，可以推断出，他的问题不是沟通不畅，而是根本没有沟通。他没有像金和帕克斯顿那样在小组委员会上谈论哲学或哲学家，而是根据他过去重新发行20.5的记录，以及在演讲和公开声明中频繁赞美自由企业的行为来看，他显然对圣莱塞沃伊斯毫无兴趣，并且站在贩卖上帝的一边，因为没有证据表明他曾以任何形式暗示或眨眼。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
When he emphatically told the subcommittee that at no time had he so much as an inkling of the network of conspiracies, it could be deduced that his was a case not a faulty communication, but of no communication. He did not speak to the subcommittee of philosophy or philosophers, as Jin and Paxton had done, but from his past record of ordering reissues of 20.5 and of peppering his speeches and public statements with praise of free enterprise. It seems clear that he was unphyllis of San Lessevois, and one on the side of selling the Lord, since no evidence was adduced to suggest that he was given to winking in any form.
凯福弗详细列举了通用电气公司在过去半个世纪中被指控的一系列反垄断违规行为，并询问1922年加入公司的科德纳对其中每一项的了解程度。他通常回答说，他只是在事后才知道这些问题。在评论金的证词时，金提到厄本在1954年反驳了科德纳的直接命令，科德纳表示对此感到非常震惊和困惑，因为在他看来，厄本总是表现出强烈的竞争精神，而不是与竞争公司友好相处的意图。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Kefauvert ran through a long list of antitrust violations of which General Electric had been accused over the past half century, asking Kordner, who joined the company in 1922, how much he knew about each of them. Usually, he replied that he had known about them only after the fact. In commenting on Jin's testimony that Urban had countermanded Kordner's direct order in 1954, Kordner said that he had read it with great alarm and great wonderment, since Urban had always indicated to him in intense competitive spirit, rather than any disposition to be friendly with rival companies.
在整个证词中，科德纳反复使用了一个有趣的表达："响应（be responsive to）"。例如，当凯福弗不小心重复提问时，科德纳会说："我刚才已经对此作出响应了。" 或者，当凯福弗像往常一样打断他时，科德纳会礼貌地问："我可以作出响应了吗？" 这种情况也为那些想要研究“响应”与“回答”之间区别的基金会资助者提供了一个小线索。“响应”是一种被动状态，而“回答”则是一种主动行为，并且它们在沟通过程中的相对效力也是值得进一步探讨的课题。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Throughout his testimony, Kordner used the curious expression, be responsive to. If, for instance, Kefauvert inadvertently asked the same question twice, Kordner would say, I was responsive to that a moment ago. Or, if Kefauvert interrupted him as he often did, Kordner would ask politely, may I be responsive? This too offers a small lead for a foundation grantee who might want to look into the distinction between being responsive, a passive state, and answering in act, and their relative effectiveness in the process of communication.
总结他对整个案件的立场时，在回应Kefauvert关于他是否认为通用电气公司有失体面的问题时，Kordner说，不，我不会回应说通用电气公司有失体面。我想说的是，我们对此深感悲痛和担忧。这不是让我感到自豪的事情。Kordner主席能够通过讲解公司规则和国家法律来为他下属的官员辩护，但他未能让所有的官员都遵守这些规则和法律。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Summing up his position on the case as a whole, in reply to a question of Kefauvert's about whether he thought that GE had incurred corporate disgrace, Kordner said, no, I am not going to be responsive and say that General Electric had corporate disgrace. I am going to say that we are deeply grieved and concerned. I am not proud of it. Chairman Kordner then had been able to fairly defend his subordinate officers with lectures on compliance with the rules of the company and the laws of the country, but he had not been able to get all those officers to comply with either.
总统帕克斯顿可以深思，为什么他的两个下属对于他们之间的对话有着截然不同的描述，但他们不是在撒谎，而只是沟通能力不足。似乎在通用电气公司，哲学思想达到了高峰，而沟通能力却降到了低谷。大多数证人说或暗示，如果公司高层能够学会互相理解，反垄断违规的问题就能得到解决。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And President Paxton could muse thoughtfully on how it was that two of his subordinates who had given radically different accounts of a conversation between them could be not liars but merely poor communicators. Philosophy seems to have reached a high point at GE and communication a low one. If executives could just learn to understand one another, most of the witnesses said or implied the problem of antitrust violations would be solved.
也许问题不仅是技术层面的，还有文化层面的，可能与在大型组织中工作所导致的个人身份丧失有关。漫画家朱尔斯·费弗在思考非工业环境中的沟通问题时表示，实际上，这种崩溃是人与自身之间的崩溃。如果你无法在自己内部进行有效沟通，那你怎么能期待和外界的陌生人顺利交流呢？
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
But perhaps the problem is cultural as well as technical and has something to do with the loss of personal identity that comes from working in a huge organization. The cartoonist Jules Pfeiffer, contemplating the communication problem in non-industrial context, has said, actually, the breakdown is between the person and himself. If you're not able to communicate successfully between yourself and yourself, how are you supposed to make it with the strangers outside?
假设，仅作为一种假设，一个公司的老板命令下属遵守反垄断法，但他与自己的内心沟通不畅，以至于不知道自己是否真的希望这个命令被遵守。如果他的命令没有被遵守，导致价格操纵，那么公司可能会因此获利。如果命令被遵守，那么他就做了正确的事情。在第一种情况下，他本人没有直接涉及任何不当行为，而在第二种情况下，他积极参与了正确的行为。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Suppose, purely as a hypothesis, that the owner of a company who orders his subordinates to obey the antitrust laws has such poor communication with himself that he does not really know whether he wants the order to be complied with or not. If his order is disobeyed, the resulting price-fixing may benefit his company's coffers. If it is obeyed, then he has done the right thing. In the first instance, he is not personally implicated in any wrongdoing, while in the second he is positively involved in right doing.
毕竟，他能失去什么呢？我们大可以合理地假设，这样一位高管可能会更强烈地表达他的不确定性，而不是他的命令。或许，基金会的另一个受赠者应该研究一下沟通失败的反面，因为他可能会发现，发件人没有意识到自己在传递的信息，有时却非常有效地被接收了。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
What, after all, can he lose? It is perhaps reasonable to suppose that such an executive might communicate his uncertainty more forcefully than his order. Possibly yet another foundation grantee should have a look at the reverse of communication failure, where he might discover that messages the sender does not even realize he is sending sometimes turn out to have got across only too effectively.
与此同时，在调查小组结束调查后的最初几年，被告公司绝对没法忘记他们的过错。法律允许那些能证明因为反垄断行为而支付了虚高价格的顾客提起索赔诉讼。这种情况下，大多数情况下可以索取高达三倍的赔偿金，数以百万计的索赔案堆积如山，以至于首席大法官沃伦不得不成立一个由联邦法官组成的特别小组，来计划如何处理这些案件。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Meanwhile, in the first years after the subcommittee concluded its investigation, the defendant companies were by no means allowed to forget their transgressions. The law permits customers who can prove that they have paid artificially high prices as a result of antitrust violations to sue for damages, in most cases triple damages, and suits running into many millions of dollars piled up so high that Chief Justice Warren had to set up a special panel of federal judges to plan how they should all be handled.
不用说，科尔多纳也不会被允许忘记这些事情。事实上，如果他有机会考虑其他事情，那倒是令人惊讶的。因为除了面对那些诉讼，他还不得不应对一小部分股东试图罢免他的积极努力，尽管这最终没有成功。由于健康问题，帕克斯顿在1961年4月辞去了总裁职务，他的健康问题至少可以追溯到前一年一月，当时他接受了一次大手术。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Needless to say, Cordoner was not allowed to forget about them either. Indeed, it would be surprising if he was allowed a chance to think about much else. For in addition to the suits, he had to contend with active efforts, unsuccessful as it turned out, by a minority group of stockholders to unseat him. Paxton retired as president in April 1961 because of ill health dating back at least to the previous January, when he underwent a major operation.
对于那些认罪并被罚款或监禁的高管来说，大多数原本在除通用电气（GE）之外的公司工作的人仍然留在他们的公司，职位不变或从事类似的工作。而在那些曾在GE任职的人中，没有人继续留在公司。有些人永久退出了商业领域。还有一些人找到了相对较小的工作，而少数人则找到了大职位。其中最引人注目的例子是金，他在1961年6月成为重型机械制造商鲍德温-利玛-汉密尔顿公司的总裁。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
As for the executives who pleaded guilty and were fined or imprisoned, most of those who had been employed by companies other than GE remained with them, either in their old jobs or in similar ones. Of those who had been employed by GE, none remained there. Some retired permanently from business. Others settled for comparatively small jobs and a few landed big ones, most spectacularly, gin, who in June 1961 became president of Baldwin Lima Hamilton, manufacturers of heavy machinery.
至于电力行业未来价格操控的问题，可以说，由于司法部、盖尼法官、基福弗参议员以及三倍赔偿诉讼的影响，指导企业政策的决策者们以及他们的下属们，可能在相当一段时间内会更加严格地遵循法律。然而，是否在沟通能力上有所进展，则是一个完全不同的问题。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And as for the future of price fixing in the electrical industry, it seems safe to say that what with the Justice Department, Judge Gainey, Senator Kefauver, and the triple damage suits, the impact on the philosophers who guide corporate policy was such that they and even their subordinates were likely to try to hue scrupulously to the line for quite some time. Quite a different question, however, is whether they had made any headway in their ability to communicate.