Young Man Out of Macy's

Sewell Lee Avery, the president of United States Gypsum Co. who was put in as chairman of Montgomery Ward & Co. (TIME, Dec. 7) and then president, has a peculiar way of talking. It is a slow, somewhat sarcastic and testy way. Men who sit with him on his numerous directorates know that before they get down to the agenda they are likely to hear Mr. Avery launch into often irrelevant, always amusing discourse.

Lately Mr. Avery has treated friends to remarks about Montgomery Ward. "It was such a delightful place when I got there," he has said. "Just everybody sitting around and disturbing nobody else." Without a chuckle he has related how "One day I sent for the bosses. 'Send me all the bosses,' I said. And what do you know? Why, at least 250 men came into my office."

To do away with 250 bosses (a figure perhaps exaggerated for the good of the tale), Mr. Avery has been trimming Montgomery Ward, grouping its functions. Henceforth there will be but four big bosses under him. First to be selected were Harry E. Hughes, vice president in charge of all operations, and David Thomas Webb, vice president in charge of merchandising. Still to be appointed is a vice president in charge of finance; Robert Guy Bear is acting in that capacity now. Last week Boss No. 3 was appointed. He was Walter Hoving, 34, executive vice president of R. H. Macy & Co., whose new position in Montgomery Ward will be vice president & general salesmanager.*

Walter Hoving is a Swede from Stockholm. He was brought to the U. S. when very young; his father, Dr. Johannes Walter Wilhelm Hoving, is a prominent Manhattan physician. Although he has been out of college (Brown) for twelve years, friends always recall his college record when asked about him. The record includes a chairmanship of the promenade committee, four years as a football centre. After working for an insurance company and then an importing concern, Mr. Hoving entered Macy's "training school" in 1924. Once he was asked to make a report on linoleum for a vice president and did so well he became the executive's assistant. He refers to this with studied modesty: "I made a few suggestions and became his assistant."

A theory of which Mr. Hoving is very fond is that executives should have no desks, that desks make visitors afraid. His office is fitted as a reception room where he and visitors can relax while they talk. But Mr. Hoving does not relax so very much, at that. Outside of office hours, he has been kept busy with courses at Columbia in philosophy and psychology, courses in art at the Metropolitan Museum. And he has not neglected his social life. Last week he said: "Of course it's hard on Mrs. Hoving, pulling up winter stakes at 45 East 85 and summer stakes at Tuxedo Park, but we intend to go out to Lake Forest as the Chicago equivalent to Tuxedo Park."

--Grossly condemned last year by the American Medical Association as a "menace to the user" was a new Montgomery Ward departure--the examining of urine by mail, for $1.50.

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