In 1968, securities analyst Alice Tepper Marlin was asked by a Boston pension fund to compile her first “peace portfolio.” She did “arduous research.” When it came to their involvement in Vietnam, most American corporations were less forthcoming than a Victorian pillar box. But Mrs. Marlin soldiered on. She already had the look and sound of a young Eleanor Roosevelt (if that isn’t oxymoronic); now she had her liberal cause to go with them. Afterward more than six hundred church and civic fora expressed interest in this pacifist document. Soon Mrs. Marlin would found her Council on Economic Priorities (CEP). Those priorities, to be sure, were the priorities of Alice Tepper Marlin.
It’s 1987. Corporate America has been out of Vietnam for a long time, but now Mrs. Marlin and CEP want it to withdraw from Fort Dix also. At a dismal club-disco known as 4D (4F would be more apt), CEP held the first annual Corporate Conscience Awards. If, as a pre-written release said, “more than a thousand people” showed up, the PR staff must’ve given credit for split personalities. “Just think,” the coltish Mrs. Marlin said, “let each of us base only 5 per cent of our buying on socially conscious scorekeeping, and corporate leadership will take notice.” These were “the Grammies of the corporate world.”
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