RETAIL TRADE: Head-Chopping, As Usual

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Rising young executives at Montgomery Ward & Co. have one big incentive: they know there is always room near the top. This is the settled policy of terrible-tempered Chairman Sewell Avery. In the 21 years since he took over, Avery has lost, through resignations or firings, no fewer than 60 top-level Ward officials, including four presidents and 31 vice presidents.

But in Ward's ever-changing palace guard, President Stuart Ball has always felt secure. He has been with Ward's for 20 years; no executive was closer to Avery.

It was Ball, as company counsel, who advised Avery to provoke the U.S. Government into carrying him out of his plant in 1944, thus getting the case into court—where Avery wanted to be. Three years ago it was Ball who prompted Avery to use the phrase "a very real conspiracy" to explain why he had lost so many of his top men. And at a meeting in 1950, when stockholders objected to Avery's iron-fisted rule, it was Ball who sprang to the defense of the boss. "We know each of us is under a test," said Ball. "There are weaknesses in all of us, and we expect Mr. Avery to point them out to us ... But we are not working here in fear. We are working in a spirit exactly opposite that which is represented."

Situation Normal. One day last week, Sewell Avery called a three-man quorum of his executive committee without telling President Ball about his plans. In the office next day, Stu Ball got the shock of a lifetime. In strode Controller Edmund A. Krider, 40, with the word that Ball was out as president and that Krider was in. Sewell Avery let it be known that so far as he was concerned. Lawyer Ball had never got "comfortable" in his retailing job. But Ward employees gossiped that Stu Ball had simply become a mite too independent for the boss's liking. Out with Ball went Ward Treasurer Arthur Cahill, who was replaced by 42-year-old Assistant Controller Howard S. Kambestad. Said new President Krider calmly: "We regard these things as normal here. It goes on all the time."

Such "normal" head-chopping of executives has made Montgomery Ward a merchandising oddity. Though it is the second largest general retailer in the world, not one of its top-echelon men has had solid retailing experience. Half of its six-man top operating committee, including new President Krider, came up through the accounting department—men who are scornfully referred to in the company as "scorekeepers." Sewell Avery has put most of the emphasis on cost-cutting rather than selling.