PERSONALITIES

WHEN the Navy in 1960 canceled a $450 million contract for Corvus Air-to-Ground missiles, Prime Contractor James J. Ling pondered his loss for a few minutes, then said, "Well, let's get back to work." Last week Ling's Dallas-based Ling-Temco-Vought was picked to design and build a Navy light attack plane under a contract that may total $2 billion. "Well," said Chairman Ling again, "let's get back to work." Single-mindedness, along with a seasoned chess player's ability to plot moves and perceive alternatives, has brought Ling in 17 years from a young master electrician running a small contracting company to chief executive of an electronic and aerospace giant that has $325 million annual sales. Ling, 41, reached this peak not only by working out a series of mergers but by personally selling stock in his company and traveling 120,000 miles annually in search of contracts. He is still growth-conscious; already, with an eye to his three sons, Texans joke about the Ling dynasty.

SINCE becoming chairman of Chicago's Commonwealth Edison Co. in 1961, J. Harris Ward, 55, has acted somewhat atypically for a utilities magnate: he has twice cut rates. This week, Ward prepared to make another cut, if permitted, thereby passing along the benefits that the nation's third largest electric company (1963 revenues: $540 million) expects to get from a tax reduction. Commonwealth even sells its customers light bulbs for 150 a dozen. But Ward, who in 27 years at Commonwealth rotated from finance to engineering and sales, is no miracle worker; at the root of all this benevolence is the familiar "cost-price-sales spiral"--as costs drop, prices follow and sales rise. Ward is pushing cost economy with such technological advances as a planned "power-by-wire" generating plant in the southern Illinois coal fields, which will transmit power 175 miles to Chicago at a sizable saving over coal shipments. He recently rented an apartment in Chicago's new Marina City to see how its electrical space heating works. "Perfectly," says Ward. His largest monthly bill so far has been $13.

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