Soup & Chips

Lyndon Johnson once called it "the greatest group of businessmen in the world," and the Business Council is certainly the nation's leading society of business elite. Its 179 members--most of them chairmen or presidents of great corporations--can usually get the presidential ear; President Johnson last week spoke with them twice. But the private group is far less important for the occasional advice it offers the Government than for the effect its public consensus has on the nation's business psychology. Last week the council elected a new chairman, whose name, face and words will be before the public in the months to come while he acts as spokesman for the nation's top businessmen. The man: William Beverly Murphy, 57, president of Campbell Soup Co.

Cooking Up Sales. Like all the other members of the council, Murphy is first a businessman whose reputation ultimately depends on how he performs as a manager. As boss of the world's biggest soup company, which he joined in 1938 after working for the Nielsen rating service, Murphy has proved his ability. His first job at the Camden, N.J., headquarters was devising new products to cook up more sales. He has stuck to the recipe so well that Campbell's sales and profits have doubled since he became president in 1953, and profits have risen every year. In its 1963-64 fiscal year, Campbell netted $48 million on $660 million in sales, both records.

Campbell not only dominates the U.S. soup market, canned and frozen, but is the nation's largest producer of canned spaghetti (Franco-American), blended vegetable juice (V-8), frozen meat pies and TV dinners. Not content with selling 300 products in 110 nations, it has introduced 20 new items since August, is busy expanding seven of its 19 U.S. plants. Murphy, who earns a salary of $216,274 a year, also believes in personal diversification. He is a director of A.T. & T. and Merck, a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania and ;M.I.T. and co-chairman of the Greater Camden (NJ.) Movement. He is also a great soup devotee, has a can of it daily for lunch and dinner, notes proudly that the prices have remained virtually the same for a decade.

Heatless Pressure. A Republican, Murphy was among the 40% of the council members who supported Johnson for reelection. Last week he sympathetically defended Johnson's views on money, and declared after the bank rate rollback that "there was no feeling that the President was putting the heat on bankers." As for the council's future relations with Government, which were somewhat strained when it broke away from the Commerce Department in 1961 after a spat with Luther Hodges, Murphy says: "Our relations with the President are close and good, and we intend to maintain them that way."

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