Like Ike

Last week Ike got his industrial counterpart. To William Rogers ("Rod") Herod, a large, amiably impatient man of 52, president of International General Electric Co., Inc., went the post of Coordinator of Industrial Production of the twelve NATO nations. Herod would have to decide what defense item each NATO member could best produce, then get it produced so that the West's armies would have the largest possible flow of tanks, mess kits, T-shirts, drawn from twelve nations. It was a unique job. Generals had commanded international armies before; never before had there been a Herod investigating foreign factories, redirecting their efforts, allocating them money and material, spurring them if they lagged.

Rod Herod came to General Electric Co. in 1919 from Yale (after a short interlude in the Army) with a tool kit full of honors in mechanical engineering, an extrovert's drive. He asked such questions as: "What does a fellow have to do to become president of a company like G.E.?" In 1945, Herod partially answered his own question. He took over as head of G.E.'s far-reaching subsidiary which runs factories in half a dozen foreign countries (Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Turkey, the Union of South Africa) and sells over $100 million worth of equipment a year.

Herod will have his new headquarters in London, work with a twelve-member Defense Production Board. Last week, following his appointment, he went into the hospital for a minor operation, said: "The NATO industrial structure, properly integrated with our own, can arrive at a potential far in excess of anything that Russia and its satellites, including China, are capable of. The problem is to organize the contributions to that potential."

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