PERSONNEL: ABOVE AVERAGE

Last week the Social Security Board announced that for 30,165,694 U. S. wage earners on its rolls during 1937 average pay was $890 a year. Also last week, the House Ways & Means Committee published the names and salaries of some 50,000 wage earners who brought up that average by drawing $15,000 or more from their employers during 1937. It was the longest list the Committee has released since the practice was instituted in 1936. It was also the last of its kind, since the 1938 tax bill upped the publicity requirement to exclude salaries under $75,000-a-year.

Some newsworthy 1937 salaries:

Cinema, always the most open-handed U. S. industry, outdid itself in 1937. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corp. alone paid 240 salaries of $15,000 or more, and M. G. M. and its parent company, Loew’s Inc., paid the two biggest salaries of all: $1,296,503 in salary and bonus to Production Executive Louis B. Mayer, $694,123 to Loew’s Vice President J. Robert Rubin. Loew’s President Nicholas M. Schenck got $489,602. Highest paid performers: Actress Greta Garbo, $472,499; Actor Fredric March (who deserted Hollywood for Broadway), $484,687. No. 1 Box-office Star Shirley Temple drew $110,256 and her mother got $52,166 as her guardian. Notable absence from the list: Mae West, who was paid $323,000 in 1936. Perennial cinema dark horses: Theatre Operators Spyros P. and Charles P. Skouras, who got $320,054 and $242,054, respectively from their National Theatres Amusement Corp.

Automobiles. General Motors’ Alfred P. Sloan, No. 1 in 1936 with $561,311, dropped to $183,708. (His company sold 4% more cars in 1937 than in 1936.) G. M.’s President William S. Knudsen dropped from $459,878 to $247,210. Ford Motor Co. paid Chairman Henry Ford nothing, President Edsel Ford $146,056, Vice President Peter Martin $171,465, Superintendent Charles E. Sorensen $166,071. Nash-Kelvinator Corp. paid its President George Walter Mason $233,957; Chrysler Corp.’s Chairman Walter P. Chrysler drew $189,136.

Bankers were led by Chase National’s Chairman Winthrop W. Aldrich, with $175,000.

Publishing. William Randolph Hearst’s $500,000 salary* from Hearst Consoli dated Publications made him the press’s No. 1 hired hand. Hearst papers made a point of computing the approximate Federal income tax of their boss: $306,000 (“There was also a State income tax”). Next to Hearst were President Mortimer Berkowitz of Hearst’s American Weekly ($265,225), Publisher Joseph Pulitzer of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch ($255,000). Robert R. McCormick of the Chicago Tribune got $50,000, same sum his cousin Joseph Medill Patterson drew from New York’s tabloid Daily News. Others: Publisher William Franklin Knox of the Chicago Daily News, $75,000; Robert L. (“Believe It or Not”) Ripley from King Features Syndicate, $149,777; New York Daily News Managing Editor Harvey Deuel, $130,567; Publisher Frank Gannett from the Gannett Co. Inc., $60,000; General Manager Kent Cooper of the Associated Press, $63,947. President Marion (Davies) Douras of Hearst’s Cosmopolitan Productions Inc. (cinema distributors) was paid $106,000.

Steel, at 72%, capacity during 1937, helped to give Bethlehem’s President Eugene Grace $394,586 in salary and bonuses, compared to the salary and bonus of $1,645,000 that he got in 1929. Myron Taylor of U. S. Steel, who negotiated a contract with John L. Lewis’ C. I. O., received $167,662.

Manufacturing. Thomas J. Watson of International Business Machines, whose salary contract was last week extended for the fifth time by his stockholders, was paid $419,938 in 1937, top for ordinary businessmen (outside of the amusement industries and W. R. Hearst). American Tobacco Co. paid President George Washington Hill $380,976, three vice presidents (Paul M. Hahn, Charles Neiley, Vincent Riggio) $206,585 each. General Electric paid $235,000 to Chairman Owen D. Young and President Gerard Swope. Johns-Manville’s public-relations-conscious Lewis H. Brown earned $112,649. E. I. du Pont de Nemours paid 196 salaries over $15,000, its highest ($150,280) to President Lammot du Pont.

Utilities, which were snugly locked in the New Deal’s doghouse during 1937, made scant salary news. President Wendell L. Willkie of Commonwealth & Southern drew $75,000. Electric Bond & Share gave its President C. E. Groesbeck $60,220; Consolidated Edison, its Chairman Floyd L. Carlisle $53,250.

Transport. In 1937, $134,000 went to President D. S. Iglehart of W. R. Grace & Co. Pennsylvania’s President Martin W. Clement drew $100,450. Southern Pacific’s Chairman Hale Holden got $60,000; Baltimore & Ohio’s President Daniel Willard, $60,000.

Merchandising. J. C. Penney Co. paid $15,000 or more to 133 employes, including store managers in such cities as Mankato, Minn.; Greenville, S. C.; Marshalltown, Iowa; Petoskey, Mich. Penney’s biggest salaries ($50,900) went to Chairman J. C. Penney and six of his top executives. Sears, Roebuck & Co. paid President Robert E. Wood $100,000, Chairman Lessing J. Rosenwald $75,000. From Montgomery Ward & Co. Sewell Lee Avery received $100,390. To President C. W. Deyo of F. W. Woolworth Co. went $200,414.

Communications. American Telephone & Telegraph’s President Walter Sherman Gifford received $209,650. Columbia Broadcasting System paid President William S. Paley $190,196; National Broadcasting Co., its Lenox R. Lohr $50,239. Radio’s biggest earner was “Major” Edward Bowes, whose total paycheck was for $453,817.

Insurance. Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. had 167 salaries over $15,000, biggest ($150,000) to Board Chairman Frederick H. Ecker. Prudential’s Edward D. Duffield drew a round $100,000. New York Life’s President Alfred L. Aiken got $75,000, Board Chairman Thomas A. Buckner exactly $99,999.

Miscellany. Mickey Cochrane as manager of the Detroit Tigers received $36,000 and a $9,000 bonus; James J. Braddock, from Braddock-Gould Enterprises, $51,983; Lou Gehrig, New York Yankees, $36,000; Kirsten Flagstad, Metropolitan Opera, $39,000—and from Paramount Pictures, $20,000; Actress Lynn Fontanne and Actor Alfred Lunt, The Theatre Guild, $99,674 and $101,674.

>McKesson & Robbins paid F. Donald Coster-Musica, $40,280.

*Since cut to $100,000.