PERSONAL FILE

sb When brusque, burly Dr. Richard Beeching, 48, was named chairman of Britain's nationalized railways three months ago, he took the job only on condition that he get the same salary he had received as a director of Imperial Chemical Industries--$67,000 a year. Besides making him the highest paid civil servant in British history, Beeching's salary scale made him the target of loud salvos from outraged taxpayers. Last week, at his first press conference, Beeching coldly declared that British rail fares in general and London commuter fares in particular were "too low" and ought to be raised. Wailed London's Daily Sketch:

It's no good beseeching

Dr. Beeching.

He has banged the commuter

Right in the hooter.

sb When John Andrew Barr, 52, took over direction of Montgomery Ward & Co. six years ago, the mail-order house had survived 24 years of Autocrat Sewell Avery, whose dictatorial rule had driven four presidents and 40 vice presidents to resign. Barr set out to give Ward's a new face and new morale. But last week Ward's President Paul M. Hammaker, 58, in office only two years, abruptly resigned his $90,000 job. The same day, Personnel Vice President Anthony Eastman, 52, followed suit. The most widely rumored reason: pressure from Board Chairman Barr in response to stockholder dissatisfaction over the 51% drop in Ward's earnings last year.

sb To the chagrin of private-power advocates, the Senate last week confirmed as a member of the Federal Power Commission Joseph C. Swidler, 54, longtime (1945-57) general counsel for the TVA. President Kennedy would like to install Swidler immediately as FPC chairman, though the term of current Chairman Jerome K. Kuykendall, an Eisenhower appointee, runs for another year. Republican Senators threaten to go to court over the matter. Swidler insists that he believes in the "present dual system of private and public ownership" because it "encourages competition," thus increasing efficiency.

sb Accepting an honorary LL.D. from Pacific University in Forest Grove, Ore., Reed O. Hunt, 56, president of Crown Zellerbach Corp. advised U.S. corporations to "abolish the elaborate system of personality tests we have built up." Explained Hunt: "I say this out of a certain amount of self-interest, since I understand there is not a corporation president in the country who could pass one of them."

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