Platform Writer's Platform

Of the new breed of socially conscious U.S. executives, Charles Harting Percy, youthful (39) president of Chicago's camera making Bell & Howell Co., is perhaps the most fervent preacher of the thesis that "the responsibility of business goes beyond making products for a profit." Businessmen are also obliged, says Percy, to serve society. While running Bell & Howell, the world's biggest producer of motion-picture equipment (1958 sales: $59 million), cleft-chinned Chuck Percy has found plenty of time to serve society. He sits on the board of the University of Chicago ("I am a better businessman for getting my head up in the clouds with the academic people") and is the chairman of the Ford Foundation's Fund for Adult Education ("If all of us in industry learned better the world in which we live, we'd all be better individuals"). He had a hand in the Rockefeller brothers' special studies of national security problems and foreign economic policy, is the first chairman of the Republican Party's policy Committee on Program and Progress. Last week Percy opened the first working meeting of his committee to chart the G.O.P.'s future goals. He argues with force that businessmen should not worry, as many do, that participation in politics will hurt their business. Says he: "After six years of it, I have yet to get a single complaint from a buyer or stockholder." PERCY'S dedication to responsibility also includes broadening the intellectual horizons of Bell & Howell exec- utives. They are treated to monthly skull sessions with such world-minded figures as Henry Cabot Lodge and Paul Hoffman, get free volumes of Plato, Rousseau and John Dewey, are encouraged to take part in public affairs.

For the company's 3,741 employees, Percy has brought in profit sharing and expanded promotion possibilities.

Frequently he meets privately with a different young comer.

"I tell these fellows, 'Don't wait 20 years. Tell me what you would do if you were in my chair.' " Chuck Percy started climbing to that chair almost from the time he learned to walk. Son of the Bell & Howell office manager, he began selling magazines at the age of five, at New Trier high school he held four jobs at once. At the University of Chicago ('41), he ran a business that grossed $150,000 a year selling supplies to fraternities, and thus was, recalls former Chancellor Robert M. Hutchins, the richest kid who ever worked his way through college.

Summers, Percy clerked at Bell & Howell for $16 to $20 a week, caught the eye of benevolently despotic President Joseph McNabb, Percy's onetime Sunday school teacher. McNabb offered Percy his pick of jobs upon graduation, and Percy chose to take charge of B. & H.'s tiny defense production. Within months the U.S. went to war, and Percy at 21 was bossing B. & H.'s biggest endeavor. McNabb, who made all the company's decisions, placed Percy on the board at 23. After 35 months in the Navy (up from apprentice seaman to lieutenant), Percy became corporate secretary. When McNabb died in 1949, Percy was elected president.

PERCY'S problem was his age--29.

He won over his executives, many twice his age, by giving them real power for the first time, said: "Responsibility brings out the best in people." He concentrated on putting out easier-to-operate and cheaper cameras: his lowest-tagged camera went down from $89 to $39.95. Percy dropped Fair Trade, stumped for lower tariffs in an industry faced by the challenge of imports.

Last year Percy's company fought the slump by rushing out nine new products ahead of schedule. Result: in 1958 net earnings jumped 15% to $3,000,000 (they rose another 67% in 1959's first quarter), Percy's pay advanced to $120,900 and the stock vaulted from a low of 42 last year to 139 last week, after approval of a two-for-one split.

Chuck Percy's personal life whirs as smoothly as one of his cameras. At his two-story lakefront home in suburban Kenilworth, Percy, a Christian Scientist, begins each day at 6:30 a.m. with 15 minutes' reading of his Bible. Sharply at 6:45, his handsome wife Loraine, and his five children, aged 3 to 14, are roused by a family "captain of the week," chosen from among the three older children. Before breakfast they share more Bible reading ("We haven't found a better book yet"), hymn singing ("We like to start the morning with a song"), and praying ("The children offered prayers for John Foster Dulles lately"). So close to his family is Percy that he gave up golf because it took too much time away from them. "By no means," says he, "should the company ever be placed ahead of family life."

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