Business: Avery Out, Expansion Up

From a Chicago hospital bed last week, cancer-stricken Sewell Lee Avery, 85, cut his final tie to Montgomery Ward & Co. as a new era of expansion began for the giant mail-order house. Avery, the reactionary chairman of Ward's for 23 years until he resigned under pressure in 1955, finally quit as a director. At the annual meeting, shortly after the news was announced, Chairman John Andrew Barr, 50, told about the aggressive expansion program. It will use up the last of the $226 million that Sewell Avery hoarded from 1947 to 1955 in...