Not only Japan but also West Germany, France, and in some areas even Britain

were leaving us in the dust in terms of trade. What had gone wrong? Mr. Peterson goes through a number of areas in which we have shackled ourselves with excessive government intervention. He also gives a vivid description of the differences--familiar to many Americans now, but not in 1981--between Japanese and American management practices: "There have been some fascinating studies done on Toyota versus Ford ... For example, in the Toyota plant they have only seven classifications; the Ford plant has over two hundred work classifications." WFB: "Is that an aspect of union jurisdiction?" PGP: "Yes, this is union jurisdiction. Now as a result, the Toyota employee can handle several assignments; he doesn't have a narrow definition of what he can and can't do. As

to layers of overhead and so forth, in the Toyota plant there were about five or six, and in the American plant there were nearly a dozen.... There is a much less adversarial, litigious quality to the relationship."