Word: fairless
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...Fairless hasn't got all the answers. On any top decision, he has to get the approval of Board Chairman Irving S. Olds, 64, and 60-year-old Enders M. ("Van") Voorhees, chairman of the powerful Finance Committee. Olds is a Yale man ('07) who distinguished himself at Harvard Law ('10), served as secretary to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, later worked for the Morgans, and now specializes in policy. Voorhees is a crack financier who did so well at Johns-Manville, another Morgan-influenced firm, that he was moved over to Big Steel; he has financed...
...Fairless lives with his second wife, the former Mrs. Hazel Hatfield Sproul (his first wife died in 1942), and two servants in a rambling red brick, twelve-room house near Ligonier, 50 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. He had known Mrs. Sproul casually for years. In 1944, Fairless' only son Elaine married Caroline Sproul, Mrs. Sproul's only daughter. Three months after Blaine married Caroline, Fairless married her mother, a divorcee...
Ride into Steel. The town of Pigeon Run, where Ben Fairless was born, was a small cluster of sooty frame houses hard by the hillside coal pits where Fairless' father, David Williams, grubbed out a meager living for his wife and four children. Williams had such a hard time making ends meet that his wife's sister, Sarah Fairless, took five-year-old Ben to live with her in nearby Justus. In the front room of their house by the railroad tracks, her husband, Jacob Fairless, ran a grocery. The couple adopted Ben, and he took their name...
...General Manager Fred Griffiths into keeping him on as a field engineer. Ben knew little about steel, but a lot about baseball, and that knowledge came in handy. Ohio companies, rich with war profits, had organized the famed "outlaw" Midwest League, and were recruiting Big Leaguers for their teams. Fairless was given the job of rounding up a team, the "Agathons." He managed it so well-smoothing" over the constant squabbling of the stars-that the Agathons won the league pennant. Fred Griffiths, impressed by Fairless' peacemaking talents, threw him a trickier pitch...
...Army was complaining about faulty steel, and Fairless was told to settle the trouble. Fairless, demonstrating his ability to find common-sense solutions to problems, broke a paper clip in half, handed half to the Army inspector and suggested: "If any steel has pits big enough for us to poke this clip in, let's agree it's faulty." The officer, delighted with the idea's simplicity, agreed; most of the steel passed the test. Griffiths, who later became president of Central Steel was delighted too: he boosted this promising youngster to superintendent, then general manager...