"Don't Be Disagreeable"

The good wife of a good corporation executive knows her job as well as any other employee on her husband's staff. She is sociable, acts as a "good, low-key stabilizer" for her husband, and knows exactly how to keep in a dead heat with the Joneses without forging ahead by a single grand piano or Buick Roadmaster.

She puts her most fashionable foot forward at company parties, keeps her drinking hand back ("Never get tight at a company party") and, above all, remembers: "Don't be disagreeable to any company people you meet. You never know."

After surveying 130 wives and more than 100 companies all over the U.S., FORTUNE reports (in a pair of articles ending in the current issue) that the wives aren't overestimating the importance of their jobs one bit. Some corporations now consider executives' wives almost as important as executives; and the wives take to their new position just as if it had been part of their marriage vows.

A Quiet Dinner. More & more companies, says FORTUNE, are interviewing wives before hiring their husbands. About half the companies surveyed have wife-screening programs and others are getting ready to start them. The practice is to make "an informal social visit" at home, invite the couple to dinner, or even ask the husband to bring his wife along to an interview for a job. One company carefully-checks the wife's credit rating and her popularity in her community. Another turns down at least 20% of its trainee applicants, who were otherwise acceptable, because of their wives.

An increasing number of films, brochures and special mailings are sent to wives. Salesmen's wives sometimes get heavy-handed reminders, that the company is running a sales contest in which their husbands can win such prizes as fur coats, refrigerators, toasters, etc. Another firm has set up a kind of finishing school for wives. "As soon as the husband reaches the $8,000-to-$10,000 bracket, his wife becomes eligible, for grooming." A vice president's wife takes her in hand, shows her where to shop, eat, vacation and how to dress and entertain.

The Ornery Wife. "It's tough," complains the wife of a 35-year-old plant manager. "You have to leave behind your old friends. You have to weigh the people you invite to parties. You have to be careful of who you send Christmas cards to and who you don't." But, on balance, most wives go along willingly. FORTUNE finds that "she does like her way of life . . . She has become such an ally of the corporation. . . it would almost appear that she and the corporation are ganging up on the husband."

Even though the wives seem to thrive on it, some still yearn for the day when "everyone could just get together in a sort of secret cartel on ambition." FORTUNE itself puts in a plug for the "ornery wife," thinks the "integration" has gone too far. "Conformity," says an editorial on the survey, "is being elevated into something akin to a religion." But there are still companies that will have no part of it. Says one auto executive: "Wives' activities are their own business. What do these companies want for their $10,000? Slavery, too?"

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