The Tough Boss

Thomas Mellon Evans had a reputation as a tough boss--but hardly anyone realized quite how tough. When he took over Chicago's 104-year-old Crane Co., the nation's largest maker of valves, pipes and pipe fittings, last spring (TIME, May 11), employees braced for a shakeup. They were hardly prepared for what followed. Last week Crane announced the resignation of Norman F. Garrett, the fourth of its six vice presidents to go in three months. Five directors have resigned since Evans took over as board chairman, paring the board down to six men. Burly, rough-talking Evans, 48. has fired at least 2,000 of Crane's 18.000 employees, closed 50 of Crane's 130 branch outlets, sold eleven others.

Even wily Proxy Fighter Alfons Landa, executive committee chairman of Fairbanks Whitney Corp., who helped Evans gain his place on the Crane board, was taken aback by Evans' maneuvers, questioned whether he was housecleaning too fast and hard. But Evans, who built Pittsburgh's H. K. Porter Co. from a money-losing locomotive manufacturer to a twelve-division, $137 million industrial combine, would hear none of it. Shuffling between his Greenwich, Conn, home and several cities, he worked harder and more ruthlessly to increase profits for Crane and solidify his power. Evans shifted about Crane's operations, began plans to get into the production of valves for use in oilfields. While Crane's stock was rising, the company offered to buy shares back from stockholders, got close to 800,000 of the 2,273,224 outstanding shares by early July.

So far, Evans' aggressiveness has paid off. Crane's net income in the first half rose more than 60%, to $2,333,000. Just how much farther Evans will go toward reducing the size of Crane is a matter of wide speculation. His rift with Landa over how to run the company appears healed. If he can overcome the ill will he has generated through the drastic changes in Crane's organization, roughriding Tom Evans may well add Crane to the list of his successes.

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