Industrialist Boycotts Germany; Labor Appeals to German Unions

A growing campaign on the part of American business to boycott West German industry in protest against the Bonn Government’s cancellation of arms shipments to Israel gained momentum here today with the announcement by the head of a major apparel concern–the third in the past week–that it would no longer purchase goods from Germany.

Michael Daroff, chairman and president of Botany Industries, comprising textile, clothing and retail enterprises, said he had ordered his buyers, about to leave for Europe, to remove West German companies from their list in shopping for sportswear. The orders with the German firms removed from the Botany lists, he noted, might have amounted to “a couple of hundred thousand dollars” during the coming year. He who predicted that other major companies might join in the boycott, said that his firm was also canceling plans to buy German-made machines.

In a move emanating from the laborside of the apparel field, Jacob S. Potofsky, president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, A.F.L.-C.I.O., appealed to organized labor in West Germany to urge the Bonn Government to reverse the decision ending the arms shipments to Israel. In a telegram to the secretary of the Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund, Mr. Potofsky said that any disturbance of the current balance of power in the Middle East “could become an invitation to war.”