Personnel

Last week the following were news: P: The late John Davison Rockefeller was a member of the New York Stock Exchange for the last 54 years of his long life. Only once did he enter the building, when he appeared before the admissions committee. The seat entitled thrifty Mr. Rockefeller to reduced commissions. Last week it was announced that the Rockefeller seat would be transferred to Grandson Laurance Spelman Rockefeller, one of the five strapping sons of John D. Jr. (see cut).

No speculator is Son Laurance, who received third place in a poll for the "most pious" member of his class at Princeton. He works in his father's office in Manhattan's Rockefeller Center along with three of his brothers. Brother John D. Ill helps on Rockefeller policies. Brother Nelson, supposed to have been the apple of his grandfather's eye, specializes in real estate. Brother Winthrop is the first Rockefeller to take a first-hand interest in oil since the dynasty was founded. Having just completed a year of postgraduate work at Harvard, young Brother David has not yet settled down.*

Apparently there was no particular reason why the Rockefeller Stock Exchange seat went to Son Laurance except that he seems to be his father's general understudy. As long as the seat was to remain in the family, it had to be transferred to one of them, and Son, Laurance was picked. Asked what Son Laurance expected to do with it, a Rockefeller associate declared: "He doesn't know himself."

All the Rockefeller boys take life pretty seriously. Story is that once when playmates teased them about their dilapidated rowboat, suggesting that they get their father to buy them an outboard motor, Brothers Winthrop & David replied in unison: "Who do you think we are, Vanderbilts?"

P: Elected to that august senior society of Big Business, the board of directors of American Telephone & Telegraph Co., was S, (for Samuel) Clay Williams, slow-spoken chairman of R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. (Camels). A native Carolinian, Tobaccoman Williams once rendered what President Roosevelt called "devoted, impartial service" on the National Industrial Recovery Board. He fills the vacant seat of the late Banker George Fisher Baker. Some other A. T. & T. directors: U. S. Steel's Myron Taylor, Baltimore & Ohio's Daniel Willard, Southern Pacific's Hale Holden, Lawyer John W. Davis, Boston's Charles Francis Adams, Banker Winthrop Aldrich.

*ln June for the first time since Recovery set in, residential building failed to show a gain over the year before.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.