Flowers from Avery

Almost any topnotch businessman could have qualified for the big title and the $65,000-a-year salary just by getting along with The Boss. But among candidates for the presidency of Chicago's Montgomery Ward & Co., Inc. that one qualification was rare indeed. After cross-grained old Sewell Avery goaded Wilbur Norton into throwing up the job last spring, no one rushed to apply for it. Outsiders shunned the opening with a firm: "Not me! Not there!" Most of the No. 2 men in the company quit faster than they could be replaced, until all eight vice-presidencies were vacant (TIME, April 25).

Last week, Chairman Sewell Avery finally filled the job with an insider. He was Stuart Scoble Ball, 45, the only experienced senior officer (secretary until last month, when he also became a vice president) who had remained true to Avery and, up to now, had always got along with him.

A bright young Northwestern-trained lawyer, Stu Ball went to Ward's at 28, after five years of private practice. Quick to catch on, he was named assistant secretary within three weeks, secretary in less than a year and a half. Avery, who was often in trouble with New Deal bureaus, soon found that he had plenty of use for a keen legal mind. Ball, a big (6 ft. 2 1/2 in.) man with a smooth courtroom manner, saw Avery safely through his many scrapes with NLRB--including the one that led to the U.S. Army's wartime eviction of Avery and Government seizure of his plant.

When President Ball took over his new office last week, Chairman Avery sent him a bunch of roses with a note: "With affection and confidence."

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