MANAGEMENT: Adventure at Aspen

In Aspen, Colo. last week a group of hardheaded U.S. executives stayed up until the small hours of the morning arguing vigorously about the nature of angels. By day they pored over the works of Aristotle, Thoreau, John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx. Inside a hexagonal building, in the midst of an alfalfa field 7,900 ft. above sea level, they met twice daily to discuss such topics as the nature of happiness, the relative merits of justice and charity, the contrasts between democracy and aristocracy.

The executives were workers in an experiment designed to bridge the gap between the practical world of U.S. business and the world of philosophical ideas. “Whether it’s so or not,” says Montgomery Ward’s President John Barr, “every executive thinks that he does not do enough thinking.” To give U.S. executives a chance to think and talk in a relaxed atmosphere. Container Corp. of America Chairman Walter Paepcke, 61, in 1950 set up the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, a nonprofit foundation that runs living quarters, executive seminars, a new health center, and a spate of lectures, forums and other cultural activities. “The Aspen idea,” says Paepcke, “is the cross-fertilization of men’s minds.”

“Here to Exercise.” Last week’s executives were the vanguard of five groups from every phase of industry—most of them lower-echelon men on the way up—who will spend two weeks each this summer at the institute, a cluster of modernistic buildings perched high in the Rockies just over the continental divide from Denver. Cost: $600 for two weeks, which is usually paid by the executive’s firm. (Wives may come along for $250 extra.) As soon as the executive signs up, he gets a copy of all reading material for two weeks, with a strong hint that he get to work on it at once. As last week’s group arrived at Aspen, they were greeted by Philosopher Mortimer Adler (TIME, March 17, 1952), who moderates executive seminars with Corporation Lawyer and Author Louis Kelso. Said Adler: “You are here to exercise—in the seminar building as well as in the health center.”

Neither phase is neglected at Aspen. During a day that begins at 7 a.m., Aspen’s executives go through several workouts in the health center, two or three hours of heavy reading, daily seminars, in which they trade ideas with fellow executives and moderators, and a round of lectures, concerts and other cultural activities. The round-table discussions may start as one did last week, high in the abstractions of Aristotelian logic, and plunge hotly down into a labor-management debate on productivity. Executives are encouraged to express their views vigorously, apply the ideas culled from their readings to the present world of business and politics. Discussions often run over into the exercise room or into the sauna (Finnish bath), where Philosopher Adler last week led a lively argument on justice and charity in 175° heat. Only occasionally do discussions get hotter: one chairman of a large corporation threatened to pull his money out of a bank represented by a glib young vice president who differed with him in a discussion of the profit motive.

The Great Unwashed. Walter Paepcke’s crusade to bring culture to the American businessman is a reflection of his own background and personality. As a boy, he spent as much time being tutored in the arts at home as he did in a Chicago private school. Starting out young in business, he put together the Container Corp. combine, pushed the idea of modern design into such areas as annual reports and office interiors, pioneered a new type of institutional advertising with his series on the “Great Ideas of Western Man.” Paepcke started to develop Aspen as a sort of all-round cultural and sport center; he has already sunk $800,000 of his own money into the project.

Since he began pursuing what some intellectuals call “The Great Unwashed American Businessman,” Paepcke has discovered that though most executives are worried about their lack of contact with art, letters and ideas, they will plunge into such matters with the same gusto they show in business, if they get the chance to do so without embarrassment. This summer Paepcke expects to play host to USIA Boss Arthur Larson, Boston & Maine President Patrick McGinnis, CBS Commentator Eric Sevareid, U.A.W. Vice President Leonard Woodcock, and a host of presidents and heirs apparent from some of the nation’s largest companies. As for the 225 executives who have already attended Aspen, they consider the institute their second alma mater. Says Steelman Clarence Randall: “I am still in a very warm glow over my adventure at Aspen. It ought to be required for every man holding substantial responsibility in the business world.”