Retirements

Middle Schoolman. Between the old school of Hill and Harriman and the new school of the Van Sweringens, railroading had its middle school of able, hardheaded, now somewhat old-fashioned gentlemen. Last week when William Benson Storey, 75, resigned his job as president of Atchison. Topeka & Santa Fe. one of the biggest members of the Middle School retired from railroading. Born in San Francisco eight years after the gold rush, initiated in transportation by loading gold on a stage coach of which his father was freight agent. Mr. Storey--six feet tall, broad-shouldered, mustached and amply goateed--was no "high-powered" executive, never had a push button on his desk. When he went to Manhattan directors' meetings, his directors (among them such men as Myron Charles Taylor of U. S. Steel and Charles Steele of J. P. Morgan) did not enter the board room until he led the way, always greeted him with "How do you do, Mr. President?", did not smoke at meetings. (He smoked cigars only on proper occasions, sometimes a pipe while riding in his Packard.) In Chicago, his headquarters, he lived modestly in a 20-year-old apartment building. No. 199 Lake Shore Drive (where the Insulls lived years ago), walked down every morning to his office on Jackson Boulevard, lunched daily at the exclusive Chicago Club at what used to be known as the Railroad Presidents' Table. In the old days Edward P. Ripley, his great predecessor as head of the Atchison, and Paul Morton, Atchison man. Secretary of the Navy under the first Roosevelt, used to be his usual lunch companions. Never a publicity seeker, Mr. Storey kept his mouth shut about economics, attended to his job quietly, without worry, and brought the Atchison's earnings up to $23 a share in 1926. Thus he grew old gracefully, remained, until he shut his 40-year-old desk (inherited from Mr. Ripley), a big man in the railroad world if not in headlines. Samuel Thomas Bledsoe, 65, general counsel of the Atchison, last week elected his successor, arrived in Chicago from Manhattan as Mr. Storey, not yet too old to enjoy life, prepared to start for a six-week visit in England to be followed by six weeks in Santa Barbara, with swimming.

Choice by Decree. Far different was the retirement of a much better publicized gentleman, Owen D. Young, 58, as director and chairman of the executive committee of Radio Corp. Public-spirited citizen though he is, a court decree had ordered him off the board of either General Electric or Radio Corp. (in order to unlock their directorates). Pointing out that he had gone into Radio Corp. to represent General Electric's former interest, Mr. Young said in his written resignation that therefore it seemed ''not only logical but my plain duty to remain with General Electric. . . . My leaving it [Radio] is the greatest wrench in my affectionate relationships, in satisfaction of things done, and in hopes and ambitions of things to be done, which has ever occurred in my business life." The wrench, however, was not the wrench of parting from past successes. Radio Corp., by far the largest unit in the radio industry, with dominating command of radio patents, has never paid a common dividend, has lost heavily in Depression (deficit for the first quarter of 1933, $478,000). On that very account many a businessman had suspected that Mr. Young, rather than remain with strong General Electric, might stick with Radio Corp. in hope of yet making it a success.

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