PERSONNEL: 40 Years Later

Forty years ago able Will Keith Kellogg quit the business managership of his brother Dr. John Harvey’s Michigan Sanitarium and Benevolent Association in Battle Creek, founded the Sanitas Nut Food Do., Ltd., to manufacture the health foods the doctor fed his patients. His little firm, now the Kellogg Company, became the No. 1 U. S. packaged cereal maker, which has factories on three continents and does upwards of $30,000,000 business every year. In all that time gloomy, barrel-tested, bald Will Keith has kept a mighty grip on his firm’s affairs. When he appointed executives, he is reputed to have made them give him undated resignations. When he wanted to tell them something, he called them to him, whether he was in his office or at his Gull Lake estate. Last week, however, it appeared that the autocrat of the breakfast foods, 79, had picked his successor.

Into the presidency of Kellogg stepped tall, grey-haired, grey-eyed William H. Vanderploeg (rhymes with Kalamazoo). Plucked from a vice-presidency in Chicago’s Harris Trust & Savings Bank last July, he had been Kellogg’s executive vice president. To the chairmanship retired Will Keith, hoping to devote the rest of his life to his two big hobbies: 1) W. K. Kellogg Foundation in Battle Creek, which he established nine years ago to improve children’s health (endowed with $46,000,000); 2) W. K. Kellogg Institute of Animal Husbandry (with 80-odd pure-bred Arabian horses) at Pomona, Calif., which he gave to the University of California in 1932 and endowed with $600,000.

Able Banker Vanderploeg’s big job will be to restore Kellogg’s profits, down last year to $2,174,581 (less than half of 1934-35-36) due mainly to a $2,000,000 increase in operating expenses. Directors last week made it appear that profits are already mounting by doubling Kellogg’s 50¢ October dividend.