WHEN R. Lee Waterman joined the Corning Glass Works nine years ago as general manager of the consumer-products division, it hardly seemed a promising post. Consumer products were only a small sideline in a company that concentrated on industrial and scientific products, and the top managerial posts were usually occupied by members of the Houghton family, which founded and still controls the company. But Waterman made Corning Ware a household word by developing kitchen products and selling them aggressively. Last week, at 57, he was rewarded for the transformation: he was elected Corning's president, replacing Amory Houghton Jr., 37, who became chairman and chief executive officer. Taciturn, Massachusetts-born Lee Waterman fits easily into the company-town atmosphere of Corning, N.Y., where he lives with his wife and two children. An accomplished musician, he played the French horn in the Corning Philharmonic until recently, still continues on Sunday afternoons to toot with four neighbors in a Dixieland jazz combo called "the Fifth Street Five."

THE U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which recently has been speaking with a strong, anti-big-government voice, last week began talking in the well-modulated tones of its newly elected president, Detroit Trucking Tycoon Walter F. Carey, 58. Unlike his predecessor, Delaware Banker Edwin P. Neilan, who cried out against federal spending and call Congressmen "bagmen," Carey aims "to make the idea of a great business-government partnership less a cliche and more a productive reality" during his one-year term. Carey, who built a $20 million business fiefdom by pioneering the trucking of new cars from plants to dealers and now has interests in a maze of trucking companies, is a political conservative. He spoke in friendly terms of the Johnson Administration, immediately announced plans to set up a task force to study the problems of automation and unemployment. He also indicated that under his rule the Chamber will try to come up with some answers of its own instead of only criticizing the Government programs.

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