Executive Suite (44 page)

Dwight Prince's long face contorted in a forced grin. “Yes, he'd traded a duodenal ulcer for a DC 3—which hardly makes me think he'd gotten the best of it. As a matter of fact—” he hesitated as if he were enjoying the attention he was receiving,”—it's a little difficult for me to understand why any man would want to be the president of a large corporation these days. As far as I'm concerned it's one of the least rewarding forms of suicide.”

Mary Walling was not surprised to see Shaw's head snap up and her husband's shoulders square, but she was puzzled by George Caswell's squinting frown.

“Oh, hardly as bad as that,” Caswell said, his poise quickly recovered. “In a properly organized corporation, with adequate delegation of authority, there's no reason why the right man should be under too great a strain.”

“The right man,” Shaw repeated as if it were a point to be driven home. “And it does take the right man these days—a very different type of man than was required in the past.”

There was a warning in Shaw's purposeful tone and Mary Walling glanced anxiously at the back of her husband's head. His shoulders were hunched and he seemed to have no interest in anything except his clasped hands.

“I'm not certain that I understand you, Mr. Shaw,” Julia Tredway Prince said.

Shaw seemed surprised. “It's the point that I made last evening.”

There was something close to shock in Caswell's quick side glance, but Shaw was looking at Mrs. Prince and didn't see it.

“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Prince said. “It's quite an interesting theory. You see—well, suppose you explain it to the others, Mr. Shaw.”

There was the stillness of tense expectancy and Mary Walling saw Loren Shaw shake out a fresh handkerchief. It was the second time that she had seen him do the same thing during the bare five minutes they had been in the room.

“Well, it's a bit more than a theory,” Shaw said. “The point I was making was that—well, there was a time, of course, when most of our company presidents came up on the manufacturing side of the business. In those days that was excellent preparation for general executive responsibility, because most of the problems that came to the president's desk were concerned with manufacturing. Later, as distribution problems became more important, we sometimes saw a president rise from the sales organization—and again that was quite appropriate. Today, however, we have a very different situation. The problems that come to the president's office are predominantly
financial
in character. Matters concerning manufacturing and distribution are largely handled at lower levels in the organization. The president—who we must always remember is the agent of the stockholders—must now concern himself largely with the primary interest of the stockholders.”

“And the typical stockholder isn't interested in anything but dividends?” Julia Tredway Prince asked, more as a prompt than a question.

“Exactly,” Shaw said. “Of course you're an exception, Mrs. Prince. You still have what we might call a sense of
ownership
. The average stockholder doesn't think of his stockholdings as ownership—any more than he thinks of himself as the part owner of the bank where he has a savings account—or the part owner of the government because he has some Defense bonds. When he buys Tredway stock he makes an
investment
. The only reason he makes it is to get a return. Thus, at the top level, the corporation must now be governed to be what its owners want it to be—a
financial institution
in which they can invest their money and receive a safe return with the emphasis on
safety
. As a matter of fact—well, you know this, Mr. Caswell—there isn't one stockholder out of ten who could even name the cities where we have our principal factories.”

“You're absolutely right,” George Caswell said—and the strength of the support that he offered Shaw made Mary Walling feel the hard clutch of despair. “There's no doubt that the emphasis in corporation management has gone over on the financial side. I'm sure that's why it has become so common during these last few years for men to step from investment or banking into corporation management.”

Loren Shaw hesitated as if his caution had been aroused, but then quickly went ahead. “Yes, there have been cases like that—where a corporation was so unfortunate as to find itself without a major executive who was trained in financial control and modern management methods. More typically, of course, there's such a man available right within the organization.”

It was a direct bid, a challenge, a throwing down of the gauntlet, and Mary Walling's heart sank as she saw that her husband wasn't going to respond. She leaned far forward attempting to see the expression on his face and, looking up, her eyes met Julia Tredway Prince's.

“Oh, Mrs. Walling, you aren't very comfortable there, are you?” Mrs. Prince said quickly. “Won't you come up here?”

It was an invitation that could not be denied and as Mary Walling moved forward Julia Tredway Prince rose from the chair behind the desk and she sat down beside her on the sofa in front of the window.

“I don't know that I get you completely, Loren,” Walt Dudley said in a petulant grumble. “I can see that we have to keep the stockholders happy—got to earn a profit—but I don't see how you can say that selling isn't important—or manufacturing either.”

“Of course they're important,” Shaw said, his voice tinged with the forbearance of a teacher for a not-so-bright pupil. “But don't you see, Walt, they're not ends in themselves, only the means to the end. Then, too, it's a matter of management levels. As I said a moment ago, by the time you get to the presidential level, the emphasis must be predominantly financial. Take income tax as only one example. To a far greater degree than most people realize, income tax has become a primary governing factor in corporation management. In our own case—well, over the past year I've devoted a substantial amount of time to the development of a new relationship between the parent company and some of our wholly owned subsidiaries in order to give us a more favorable tax situation. Here's the point—that one piece of work, all purely financial in character, will contribute more to our net earnings than the total profit we'll make from one of our smaller factories.

“Take another example—one that I'm sure will interest Mr. Walling. Don and his associates have done a very capable job of reducing cost on our finishing operation at Water Street—producing some very nice savings—but, unfortunately, it will add little to our net earnings, less than a quarter as much as we will gain from a new accounting procedure that I was fortunate enough to get the government to approve in connection with the depreciation of the assets of our lumber company. Do you see what I mean, Walt—that top management has to be largely financial these days?”

Dudley said something and Shaw went on talking, but Mary Walling's ears were blocked with the realization that Don's hopes were blasted. What Shaw said was true. The world was changing. The Bullards were defeated and the Shaws were inheriting the earth. The accountants and the calculators had risen to power. The slide rule had become the scepter. The world was being overrun with the ever-spawning swarm of figure-jugglers who were fly-specking the earth with their decimal points, proving over and over again that nothing mattered except what could be proved true by a clerk with a comptometer.

Julia Tredway Prince cleared her throat. “Are you suggesting, Mr. Shaw, that there's no place any more for corporation presidents of Mr. Bullard's type?”

It was the first mention of Avery Bullard's name and it came like an unexpected clap of thunder. Every eye in the room was on Loren Shaw. Even Don Walling, as Mary noticed gratefully, was watching him sharply.

Shaw was balling his handkerchief in the palm of his right hand but his voice, when he spoke after a moment's hesitation, carried no trace of the nervous tension that his fingers betrayed. “I was speaking in general terms, of course—not specifically about the Tredway Corporation.”

“I'd still be interested in having your viewpoint,” Julia Tredway Prince said pleasantly. “I'm sure the others would, too.”

The handkerchief was a hard ball, tight-clutched in Shaw's hand, but his voice was still carefully casual. “No one can deny that men of Mr. Bullard's type played a great part in our industrial past. They belonged to an important phase of our commercial history. I would be the first to acknowledge the great debt that we owe Mr. Bullard for his leadership in the initial formation and early development of the Tredway Corporation.”

The way in which Shaw had relegated Avery Bullard to the distant past was so purposeful that Mary Walling was certain that Don couldn't have missed it. She glanced at him and caught the fading of an odd half-smile that seemed to recall some memory in her mind, yet despite the quick, frantic racking of her brain she could not remember when she had seen it before, nor what special meaning it had in the lexicon of their intimacy. Then, suddenly, she forgot everything else in the realization that Don was about to speak, that he was going to fight back. Hopeless or not, he would make the try! She knew that the effort might make his defeat all the more bitter, but that realization could not dim the elation that made her heart pound wildly as she waited for his first words.

“As I get your point, Loren,” Don said, “you're maintaining that Avery Bullard was the right man to build the company, but now that the company has been built we need a different type of management in order to make the company produce the maximum amount of profit for the stockholders.”

Mary Walling watched her husband intently, surprised at his composure. She had been expecting the flare of half-anger but his voice was cleanly dispassionate.

Shaw, too, seemed surprised, his hesitance betraying his search for a hidden trap. “I don't know that I'd express it in exactly those terms—but, yes, that's substantially what I mean.”

An expectant hush had fallen over the room and George Caswell broke it by saying nervously, an undertone of near-embarrassment shading his voice. “I don't know that this is anything we have to thresh out here today—too soon for any of us to see the situation clearly. After all—” He had glanced at his wrist watch and suddenly stiffened, his eyes fixed and staring, and there was a long pause before he said in a low voice. “Coincidence, of course—happened to look at my watch—exactly two-thirty.”

Mary saw other blank looks that matched her own.

“Just twenty-four hours,” Caswell said in whispered explanation. “He died yesterday at two-thirty.”

Mary Walling's heart sank—afraid that Don had lost his chance, afraid that the cloud of grief that now shadowed the room could not be broken. Then she heard Julia Tredway Prince say, “Avery Bullard is dead. Nothing can change that, no matter how long we wait to talk about it.”

There was strength in her voice but when she turned Mary saw, in puzzling contrast, that there was a mist of tears in her eyes. She knew what Julia had done—that she had purposefully saved the situation for Don—and she felt the warmth of a gratitude that was chilled only by the sensing of her own failure in not having been able to do for her husband what another woman had done.

But one thing was now clear. Don had been right about Julia Tredway Prince's support. With her vote and Alderson's, he needed only one more. Where would it come from? Her eyes polled the faces of the three men who sat facing him … Shaw, Caswell, and Dudley … close-shouldered and resolute. What could Don possibly do to break through the barrier of their tight-woven opposition.

Unexpectedly, it was Dwight Prince who spoke. “I've often wondered about men like Mr. Bullard. He was a great deal like my father, you know—willing to give his whole life to a company—lay everything on the altar like a sacrifice to the god of business. I've often asked myself what drives them to do it—whether they ever stop to ask themselves if what they get is worth the price. I don't suppose they do.”

“It's accomplishment that keeps a man going,” Dudley said in his sales-meeting voice. “That's what I always tell my boys—it isn't the money that counts, it's that old feeling of accomplishment.”

An enigmatic smile narrowed Don Walling's eyes as he looked intently at Loren Shaw. “Going back to this question of the kind of a management that you think the company ought to have from here on out, Loren—the kind of a management that measures its accomplishment entirely in terms of return to the stockholders. We'd need a strong man to head up that kind of a management, wouldn't we?”

A faint flush warmed Loren Shaw's neck. “Of course.”

“And it would be a big job, even for an able man? He'd have to throw himself into it—make a good many personal sacrifices in order to do a job?”

Shaw hesitated, wary and unblinking. “If he were the right man there'd be no worry on that score.”

“What incentive would he have?” Don Walling demanded, and for the first time there was the sharp crackle of attack in his voice. “You will grant that there'd have to be an incentive?”

Loren Shaw forced a cold smile. “I'd say that sixty thousand a year might be considered something of an incentive.”

“You would?” Don Walling's voice was whiplashed with astonishment. “Do you really think a man of that caliber would be willing to sell his life for money—for what would be left out of sixty thousand a year after taxes?”

Dwight Prince's tongue-in-cheek voice cut in unexpectedly. “You could always give him his own plane as a bonus.”

The flush on Shaw's neck spread like a seeping stain. “Of course there's more than money involved.”

“What?” Don Walling demanded. “What Walt just called a sense of accomplishment? Would that satisfy you, Loren? Just suppose that you were the man—that you were the president of the Tredway Corporation.”