style. And although Soss drew criticism
for her acid comments, she earned enor-
mous respect as well. A front-page Wall
Street Journal article in 1963 highlights
her blistering critique of IBM’s skimpy
post-meeting report along with a resolu-
tion requiring more detail. In response,
Chairman Thomas Watson Jr. invited her
to IBM’s headquarters, where he accepted
her proposal.
By the early 1960s, the Gilberts bragged
in their annual reports of many impres-
sive turnouts: up to 10 meetings drew
more than 1,000; two dozen between 300
and 900; and AT&T, a bellwether boast-
ing millions of shareholders, set the era’s
record at 12,000. A 1964 New York Times
story reported: “The vociferous minority
shareholders helped popularize meetings
by their persistent attendance and their
keen questioning on controversial mat-
ters.” The Gilberts, who devoted a section
of their reports to press coverage, declared
in 1965: “The press throughout the nation
showed a growing interest in what takes
place at the annual meeting.”
New Yorker columnist John Brooks
reported on several annual meetings in
1966. Altogether, he found the action
lively and unruly, laced with ill-mannered
verbal dueling and removal of hecklers.
But he also heard substantial dialogue that
put a human face on corporate executives
and shareholders. His chief takeaway: pro-
fessional shareholders helped reveal exec-
utive personalities, as the Q&A “brought
the companies to life.”
Calvin Trillin made the rounds in 1972,
reporting in The New Yorker a more cyni-
cal synthesis of the era’s quest for share-
holder democracy. Critics saw the gadflies
as abetting a charade, under the pretense
that shareholders exercised control, serv-
ing management by projecting the false
appearance of democracy. But while most
shareholder proposals garnered few votes
and rarely passed, in aggregate over those
decades the gadflies—along with man-
agement—made shareholder primacy the
norm in corporate life.
Trillin also noted the arrival of a differ-
ent breed of activists at the annual meeting,
focused on social responsibility. They first
appeared in 1967 at the Eastman Kodak
meeting, where Saul Alinsky challenged
its minority hiring practices and, after
debate, the company agreed to reforms.
The approach gathered force throughout
the 1970s, as social activists won court
Wilma Soss (left) and Lewis Gilbert (right) at the 1957 New York Central annual meeting.
rulings drawing on earlier victories by the
Gilberts, insisting that management put
shareholder proposals on diverse subjects
to a vote “to give true vitality to the con-
cept of corporate democracy.”
The Project for Corporate Responsibil-
ity emerged, mounting its famous Cam-
paign GM, which used shareholder pro-
posals and the annual meeting on behalf
of the rights of others stakeholders, just as
the gadflies had in the name of sharehold-
ers. Ralph Nader advanced the interests of
consumers against corporations through
annual meetings as well. Shareholder
activist Evelyn Davis rose to fame during
16 FINANCIAL HISTORY | Fall 2018 | www.MoAF.org
this period, though running counter to
the social activists and sometimes against
the Gilberts and Soss. For instance, she
repeatedly offered shareholder proposals
to prohibit corporate donations to chari-
table organizations.
Amid this activism, proposals arose
to abolish annual meetings. Proponents
argued they were no longer useful to corpo-
rations; “crushing bores,” was a common
description. In 1972, Delaware, a leading
state of incorporation, updated its law to let
shareholders act by written consent rather
than at meetings. In a New York Times
op-ed, J.B. Fuqua of Fuqua Industries