Mott to Ramsey

When the president of a $10,000,000 concern resigns it is usually for one of these reasons: 1) he is old, stockholders demand younger blood; 2) he is inefficient, stockholders demand bigger returns; 3) he is dishonest, stockholders demand integrity; 4) he is unwanted, there has been a merger. But when Fred W. Ramsey, president of the Cleveland Metal Products Co. resigned six years ago he was neither 1) old, his age was 42; 2) inefficient, he had helped his concern to succeed; 3) dishonest, nor 4) unwanted. Having succeeded in business, during a quarter-century of sedulous attention to it, he is now free to go the remaining steps to the top in Y. M. C. A. work, for contemporaneously with his personal expansion in business he had grown in wisdom and understanding and position in the Association.

Thus Fred W. Ramsey became president of the National Council, assuming nominal leadership of the Y. M. C. A., which has a U. S. property value of circa $200,000,000. And, finally, he will be ready on Jan. 1, 1929, to take the General Secretaryship of the Association.

Canadian-born Fred W. Ramsey began as stockroom boy with the Perfection Stove Co. (subsequently absorbed by the Cleveland Metal Products Co.). Then in his mid-teens, he joined the Cleveland Y. M. C. A. and soon became, in sequential progression, star Boarder, among other things. At one point during his religio-business career he was about to leave business to become a "Y" secretary, but a factory manager died, Ramsey took the job of expanding the plant. As a director of the potent Cleveland Trust Co., onetime president of the Cleveland Aluminum Rolling Mills Co., Cleveland Foundry Co., financial tactician of the 1924 Y. M. C. A. drive for $3,000,000, ubiquitous figure in all Cleveland drives, onetime national treasurer of the Association, Y-Worker Ramsey qualifies also as a tycoon. Said many a lesser Y-worker: "His will be a business administration."

Largely through the work of the present incumbent, Dr. John R. Mott, the position of General Secretary of the Association has come to be regarded as "most potent lay position in the religious world." Born in Livingston Manor, N. Y., Dr. Mott spent his boyhood in Postville, Iowa. He and his father, a lumber dealer, were "converted" by a secretary from Des Moines when the younger Mott was 14 years old. He was graduated from Cornell University* in 1888 and the same year he went to Mount Hermon, Mass., attended the Bible study class of Dwight L. Moody, uneducated, forceful evangelist. Since that time Dr. Mott has had an unbroken connection with the Y. M. C. A. More than any other individual he is credited with bringing the Y. M. C. A. to its present $200,000,000 status, and to a place in world esteem which makes it, unlike many another religious or semi-religious body, internationally and provincially welcome. Abundantly energetic, Dr. Mott is that type of man who would call that day grand on which he was called dynamic. His workday begins 10 minutes before he takes a commuters' train from Montclair, N. J., to Manhattan. At the station he is met by his secretary, begins immediately to dictate letter after letter and continues dictating across the Hudson. Luncheon is to him no gastronomic interlude ; it is incidental to concurrent conferences. His secretaries have been young college men, whom he keeps until they want to go elsewhere, but meanwhile he takes them upon his many travels. He keeps personal letters, family pictures, in a safe at his Montclair home, thereby facilitating the work of a future Boswell. His resignation (made a fortnight ago, effective Jan. 1) leaves him free to give more time to his duties as chairman of the International Missionary Council, a position which takes him to Europe & Asia.

Mott & Ramsey continue the work begun by one George Williams, clerk in a London draper's establishment, before either Ramsey or Mott was born. In 1844 Clerk Williams and a dozen God-fearing fellows formed a discussion-and-prayer group which they called the Young Men's Christian Association. Six years later there were chapters in Montreal & Boston; eight years later the first collegiate "Y" was formed at the University of Virginia.

*Not Cornell College, Mount Vernon, Iowa.