Personnel

Last week the following were news:

Zalmon Gilbert Simmons retired as president of Simmons Co-- (beds & bedding, some general furniture) to become board chairman. He was succeeded by his able son Grant G. Simmons, previously a vice president and secretary-treasurer.

Col. J. S. Ervin, superior salesman, was elected president of Mackintosh-Hemphill Co. The company is 129 years old and one of the most respected in steeldom, constructing plants and mill equipment. One of its presidents put up the first foundry west of the Alleghenies. Another built the first locomotive in that territory. A third made the first chilled rolls in the territory. Others cast great cannon, then biggest in the world, for Perry's fleet in the War of 1812, for the Mexican War, for the Union Army in the Civil War.' When the steel industry began, Mackintosh-Hemphill invented much of the machinery used, shipped it from Pittsburgh to India. Japan, Australia, Russia. Belgium and other nations. Epoch in the company's venerable history was when Andrew Carnegie came to it and President James Hemphill, irked by Europe's supremacy in steel, offered to build him the greatest plant in the world on the instalment plan. That plant was Homestead Steel Works. James Hemphill almost went blind on it, finished the work in a dark room with bandages over his eyes, giving orders from his memory of the plans he could not see. New President Ervin has sold road materials, electrical appliances, skylights and sheet metal. His job now is to sell the sick steel industry the idea of building new plants, modernizing old ones.

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