Up Stettinius

Last week a remarkable old man resigned as finance committee chairman of U. S. Steel Corp. He will be succeeded in this No. 2 job in the biggest industrial enterprise in the U. S. by a remarkable young man just half his age. The old man was William J. Filbert, bald, popeyed, secretive master of Steel's endless columns of statistics. Presumably he was 70, Steel's compulsory retirement age, since it was inconceivable that Mr. Filbert would quit voluntarily. One of the few ascertainable dates in Mr. Filbert's virtually dateless career is 1881, the year he went to work for Chicago & North Western Ry. By 1901 when the Steel Corp. was founded, Mr. Filbert was already marshalling facts & figures in one of the component companies. A legendary figure listed in neither Social Register nor Who's Who, he has been sitting on Steel's directorate since 1919 as the equal of such men as Myron Charles Taylor, John Pierpont Morgan, Sewell Lee Avery, Walter Gifford, George Fisher Baker, Thomas W. Lament. He will continue to sit there after he starts drawing his pension Jan. 1.*

Mr. Filbert's successor is Edward Riley Stettinius Jr., who is handsome, likable, supercharged with energy and white-haired at 35. His services were acquired by Steel Corp. last year after a meteoric rise to a General Motors vice-presidency and a brief but intense interlude in NRA. Son of the late Morgan Partner who directed Allied purchasing in the U. S. during the War, he is an executive by inheritance as well as by choice. Long on organization, strong on public relations, he has attended so many conferences and meetings that he habitually says "Gentlemen" even when talking to only two people.

Edward Riley Stettinius will probably never know so much about steel making as Steel's President William A. Irvin. He certainly will never know so much about Steel's finances as the fabulous Mr. Filbert. Yet he is apparently being groomed to succeed Chairman Myron Taylor. And Mr. Taylor, like his predecessor, is not a steel man but a lawyer. The Steel Corp.'s prime requirement is executive talent. If pure essence of executive potency can move brontosaurian Steel Corp., Edward Riley Stettinius will surely move it.

* Hardiest of the Filbertian legends concerns his middle name. This originated' with the late Judge Elbert Gary, who once declared that after knowing Mr. Filbert 35 years he was still unable to discover what the "J" stood for. The story was perpetuated in dozens of press, biographies of Steelman Filbert. As anyone could discover by asking Mrs. Filbert, the "J'' stands for James.

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