Changes of the Week

Sosthenes Behn, 74, stepped down as chairman and chief executive of International Telephone & Telegraph Corp., but will continue as a member of the board and the executive committee. Chief executive will be I.T. & T.'s new president, Edmond H. Leavey (TIME, May 7). Hawk-faced Sosthenes Behn founded I.T. & T. in 1920, when he and brother Hernand bought a struggling Puerto Rican telephone company, built it into a $687 million communications empire that operates radiotelegraph circuits from Moscow to New Zealand, owns 33 manufacturing and research affiliates throughout the world. Behn came under fire from stock holders who charged that I.T. & T. should never have acquired ailing Postal Telegraph (which was sold to Western Union in 1943) or ventured into consumer-goods manufacturing, which turned out unprofitable. After a proxy fight in 1947, Behn relaxed his iron grip on the company, resigned as president in 1948. Following record 1955 sales of $448 million, I.T. & T. in the first quarter of 1956 reported a 6% jump in earnings per share over the same period last year, landed contracts to man and maintain the Air Force's radar Dew line in the arctic and the "White Alice" system in Alaska.

Clyde E. Weed, 65, was elected president of Anaconda Co., succeeding Robert Emmett Dwyer, 70, who is retiring after 53 years with the company. Weed, the company's mining boss since 1938, will be the first engineer in 41 years to head Anaconda, the world's biggest copper mining concern and No. 1 U.S. manganese producer. A graduate of the Michigan State College of Mining and Technology, Weed started at the bottom of a mine as a pick-and-shovel hand in 1911, later managed copper properties throughout Michigan, Arizona and Mexico. In 1935 he was named president of Cananea Consolidated Copper Co., a Mexican subsidiary of Ana conda, has been a vice president of the parent company since 1942.

John Monroe Johnson, 78, acting chairman of the Interstate Commerce Commission since 1950, retired. "Steamboat" Johnson was appointed to the regulatory agency by President Roosevelt in 1940, won President Truman's blessing after he refused to step down at the mandatory retirement age of 70. A civil engineer, Johnson served as a sergeant in the Spanish-American War, was chief engineer in the Rainbow Division in France during World War I. He went to Washington as Assistant Secretary of Commerce in 1935, later earned a reputation as one of the slow-moving ICC's most effective members. His resignation, long sought by the Administration, will pave the way for a younger chairman and thorough overhaul of ICC's creaking machinery.

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