PERSONALITIES

ALONG with the other paraphernalia on his round marble-top executive desk, Union Carbide President Birny Mason Jr., 54, keeps both a crystal ball and a slide rule. The crystal ball, a gift from Predecessor Morse G. Dial, is a conversation piece. The slide rule helps onetime Research Engineer Mason keep track of finances in the nation's second largest chemical firm, which last week announced earnings of $160 million on 1963 sales of $1.67 billion. Another figure that enters into Mason's current calculations is $200 million--the amount that Union Carbide intends to borrow from insurance companies over the next two years to finance capital improvements. To determine how the funds will be spent, Mason last year put aside his paper work, traveled 40,000 miles to inspect some of Carbide's plants in 26 countries; this year, so far, he has made a tour of India to scrutinize operations there. As improvements are completed, Mason intends to make Carbide more and more a marketer of profitable consumer products rather than just a vast supplier to industrial customers.

AN old axiom was one reason that lean, lively Rupert C. Thompson Jr., 58, accepted an invitation seven years ago to succeed Royal Little as head of Rhode Island's vast Textron Inc. Whenever bankers run a company, so went the axiom, the company goes to pot; Thompson, who had spent 28 years in New England banking, wanted to prove that it isn't so. As chairman, he completed Textron's move out of low-profit textiles and into broadly diversified manufacturing. Last week, grown to 26 divisions that produce everything from eyeglasses and iron cookware to rocket engines and rolling mills, Textron added a 27th by buying for $7,000,000 a small Vermont toolmaking firm called Jones & Lamson. Management meetings are brief at Textron because the chairman dislikes rambling conversation, sets a wristwatch alarm to make sure that he does not ramble him self. Shattering the old axiom, Textron, under Banker Thompson, last year earned $18 million on sales of $587 million, is now New England's second biggest company after United Aircraft.

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