PERSONNEL: Changes of the Week, may 16, 1955

To U.S. Steel's Chairman Benjamin Fairless, it was something more than just another stockholders' meeting. It was the day before his 6sth birthday, and to the 1,050 Big Steel stockholders gathered in Hoboken, N.J.'s Union Club ("The only guaranteed annual audience I ever get"), he made a special announcement. After 42 years in the steel business, and three as boss of the industry's biggest company, the time had come to resign. Said Fairless: "There must always be room at the top of our management team for young men with young ideas and a fresh, new outlook." At that, the stockholders all got up and sang Happy Birthday, then sat down to a lunch of cold turkey, ham, salad, pie and coffee.

Next day, to succeed Fairless, Big Steel directors picked 51-year-old Roger M. (for Miles) Blough. a lawyer and vice chairman of U.S. Steel since 1952. Fairless will stay on as director and head of a new management advisory committee, while 61-year-old Clifford Hood will stay on as president and chief "administrative officer" under Blough, the "chief executive officer."

The son of a Pennsylvania truck farmer, husky (5 ft. 11½ in., 188 Ibs.) Roger Blough graduated from Susquehanna University, taught school for three years and then went to the Yale Law School (class of '31). He joined the Manhattan law firm of White & Case, lawyers for Big Steel, and was its associate counsel during the investigation of the steel industry by the Temporary National Economic Committee shortly before World War II. A methodical worker with a quiet wit and a knack for getting along with people, Blough became U.S. Steel's general solicitor in 1942, and executive vice president four years ago.

As Big Steel's seventh chairman,* Blough will supervise the forthcoming wage negotiations with the C.I.O. Steelworkers, who have announced that they are out for a fat raise (but no guaranteed annual wage). A longer-term goal, laid out by Ben Fairless: expanding U.S. Steel's annual capacity from 38.9 million tons to 60.9 million tons by 1975—just to keep pace with the growing population. Blough, who likes his golf and spends as much time as possible at his country home in Hawley, Pa., where he often cooks for his wife and two daughters, professed to be unexcited by his new job. Said he: "It isn't as if the Pittsburgh Pirates won a ball game."

Other executive switches last week:

¶ After two years in the job, Joseph H. McConnell. 49, resigned as president of Colgate-Palmolive Co. Though both Colgate Chairman E. H. Little and McConnell were mum on the reason, trade gossip had it that they disagreed on basic company policy. Said McConnell: "I plan to go fishing."

¶ McClure Kelley, 57, was elected president of Baldwin-Lima-Hamilton Corp., succeeding Marvin W. Smith, who stays on as chairman of the executive committee. Princeton-educated "Mac" Kelley practiced law in Washington, served as a special assistant to the U.S. Attorney General, joined Western Wheeled Scraper Co. in 1929 as a credit manager, rose to president. The company merged with Baldwin-Lima-Hamilton in 1951. As president, he will work on plans for an atomic locomotive under Chairman George A. Rentschler.