"Mr. Expansion"

"When you meet a man whose name you can't remember," advises Westinghouse's President Gwilym A. Price, "avoid embarrassment by simply asking him: 'Well, how is your company's expansion program coming along?'" To anybody who asked Gwilym Price this question last week, his answer was: "Bigger than ever."

Price, a 56-year-old Pittsburgh lawyer-turned-banker-turned-industrialist, might well be called "Mr. Expansion." He has constantly proclaimed that U.S. industry needs tremendous growth to keep abreast of rising population, bigger incomes and greater consumer wants. He envisions "an economy whose horizons will be almost as far beyond those of the present as today's are beyond those of our boyhood."

Practicing what he preaches, Price has spent $150 million boosting Westinghouse's output 50% since war's end. Last week Price announced a new program to raise Westinghouse production another 50%. He plans to spend $296 million on twelve new plants for such established Westinghouse products as jet-engine parts and lamps, will plunge deeper into such promising items as electronic tubes.

The horizons looked bleak enough for Gwilym (Welsh for William) Price in his Pennsylvania boyhood. At 16, when his father, a tin-mill worker, died, young Bill had to quit school to go to work. He studied stenography, clerked by day and read law at night. In 1917, he was the University of Pittsburgh's youngest law graduate (22). After a World War I stint overseas as a tank commander, he became a trust officer for what is now the Peoples First National Bank & Trust Co. At 44, he became the bank's president. In the following three years, it climbed from sixth to third largest in Pittsburgh. This phenomenal performance caught the eye of Westinghouse Chairman A. W. Robertson, who brought Price into the company in 1943 to groom him for the presidency.

When Price stepped into that job in 1946, Westinghouse--known before the war primarily as a maker of light bulbs, fans and heavy equipment--was virtually a new company, producing everything from jet-airplane engines to wakeless torpedoes. In Price's six years, it has undergone an even greater transformation, is now working on everything from the propulsion units for atomic submarines (at a new multimillion-dollar atomic-power plant in Pittsburgh) to tiny electronic pilots for guided missiles.

Among its new peacetime products are 1) an electronic tube which increases by 500 times the brightness of the image on doctors' fluoroscopes, and 2) gas turbines burning heavy, tarlike oil instead of more expensive diesel fuels which will enable U.S. railroads to get 4,000 h.p. out of locomotive units not much larger than 2,000-h.p. jobs.

Impressive growth is not the whole story of the new Westinghouse. Along with his expansion, Price has managed to achieve greater operating efficiency and lower unit costs. Sample: where 2,800 parts were formerly required to build Westinghouse motors, Price's engineers have standardized them so that 126 parts can now produce more than 30,000 types of motors. Where Westinghouse once printed its annual report on coated stock, profusely illustrated, Price now thriftily uses rough stock--and no pictures, saving 40%.

Thanks to such penny wisdom, second-place Westinghouse is gradually catching up on giant General Electric. In 1951's first half, when G.E.'s profits ($70.3 million) were down 9% in spite of a 34% gain in sales, Westinghouse not only managed to gain 28% in sales but rang up 16% more in profits ($31.5 million). But G.E. does not intend to let Price get too close. He had no sooner announced his expansion last week than G.E. announced a bigger one of its own: $450 million. Between the two, it looked as if the U.S. economy's horizons would go on rising.

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