To the Editor:

I was interested in Martin Mayer’s quite devastating review of Global Reach by Richard J. Bar-net and Ronald E. Müller [Books in Review, April] because the authors have relied rather heavily on a 1972 study of mine to support their thesis that multinational corporations have been a force for evil. My study is cited not only in the book, but also in the briefer versions of it that appeared in the New Yorker and the New York Times.

My study reported a 1958-70 trend toward inequality for earned income (wages, salaries, and self-employment income) of individuals. In Global Reach this conclusion was used carelessly as applying to total income (including dividends, interest, etc.) for families. Of course, distribution of the latter is affected by quite different forces (such as the increasing flow of government social security and other transfer payments) from the former.

Of more concern to me was the complete failure of the authors to relate my work to the effects of the multinationals. As far as I could ascertain, the jumbled discussion of trends began in midair and wandered aimlessly from there without any logical link to the case the authors were trying to prove.

Peter Henle
The Library of Congress
Washington, D.C.

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