Changes of the Week

Ernest R. Breech, 57, was made board chairman of the Ford Motor Co., the first chairman in Ford's 52-year history. Though President Henry Ford II will still be top man, the new job was created for Breech as a reward for the way he has built up the company and to take some of the heavy work load off his shoulders. When Breech first went to Ford in 1946, after a 13-year stint at G.M. and four more as president of Bendix Aviation Corp., Ford was losing $9,000,000 a month. Largely as a result of his efforts, Ford's share of the auto market jumped to 30%, and profits soared. Breech's old job of executive vice president has been split between Lewis Crusoe, 59, who will move up from Ford division vice president and general manager to executive vice president in charge of all three automotive divisions, and Del S. Harder, 62, who goes from manufacturing vice president to executive vice president.

Porter M. (for Maxwell) Jarvis, 52, was elected president of Chicago's Swift & Co., replacing John Holmes, 63, who becomes board chairman and remains chief executive officer. Holmes, the first non-Swift to be president, replaced Harold Higgins Swift, 70, who becomes honorary chairman. Jarvis majored in animal husbandry at Iowa State College ('24), later took a meat-packing course at the University of Chicago. There his thesis on packaged lard caught the eye of a visiting executive from Swift, who offered him a trainee job with the company. In 1933 he became assistant to Holmes, then vice president in charge of the pork division, later moved up to vice president.

John H. Hilldring, 59, was made president of Manhattan's General Aniline & Film Corp. (Ansco), the Swiss-controlled chemical firm seized by the U.S. in World War II on suspicion of Nazi domination. Hilldring replaces ex-T.W.A. President Jack Frye, 50, friend of Elliott Roosevelt who got $97,000 a year and who will go to work on "a new aviation development" of his own. Hilldring, a career Army officer, rose to major general in 1942. During the war, he was the Army's personnel chief. After the war he served as Assistant Secretary of State for occupied countries, was a member of the U.S. delegation to Potsdam. He joined General Aniline in 1950 as foreign-operations manager, was made executive vice president last year.

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