PERSONAL FILE

sbUnlike many temporary soldiers, Charles H. Bell, son of the founder of General Mills Inc., developed vast respect for the executive ability of his World War II superior, Air Force General Edwin W. Rowlings. Two years ago, when Rawlings retired from the service with four stars, Bell signed him on as financial vice president of the giant Minnesota-based food company. Last week Bell stepped up to the chairmanship of General Mills, turned over to Rawlings the job of president and chief executive officer. For burly Ed Rawlings, 57, the next trick will be to stay on top of a diversification program that has already extended the General Mills product line from cereals to two-man subs.

sbFull of courtly cheer, James C. Penney, 86, was back in his hometown of Hamilton, Mo., nostalgically tending a counter at the very store where he got his start as a $2.27-a-month clerk--and which he bought in 1923 as No. 500 in his retailing chain (current count on Penney stores: 1,695). While Penney minded the store, his company was dickering to buy Aldens, Inc., a Chicago-based mail-order house and discount chain with 1960 sales of $126 million. By buying Aldens, the Penney Co. would get a mail-order business exceeded only by Sears, Ward's and Spiegel.

sbAs evidence that his company was finally emerging from its long slump, Smith-Corona Marchant's President Emerson E. Mead, 44, cheerfully reported that in S.C.M.'s most recent quarter, sales went up only slightly, to $23.6 million--but profits jumped to 25-c- per share v. 11-c- a year ago. Joining S.C.M. five years ago, Bud Mead, a hardened go-getter who headed his own electrical firm at 28, stepped up the struggling typewriter maker's diversification into data-processing and business machines, even though it meant running in the red for a time. But with 15 new products introduced within the past year, Mead expects sales to climb to about $105 million for the current fiscal year.

sbAny hopes the financial community might have had that the forthcoming yearlong investigation of U.S. stock exchanges might prove only a once-over-lightly were finally dashed. Picked for the $18,500 job of heading the 65-man special investigating staff of the SEC was intense, thoroughgoing Milton H. Cohen, 50, a Chicago attorney who specializes in corporate and financial law. As an SEC staff member during eleven New Deal years, Harvard-man (class of '32) Cohen strove to untangle the interlaced tentacles of the nation's public utilities holding companies with a doggedness that suggests that his probe of the securities business is likely to be the most far-reaching in SEC's 27-year history.

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