Business: Radiator Salesman

One of Manhattan’s best-known buildings is the neo-Gothic tower of funereal black brick, topped by a gold-leafed crown, which houses the world’s largest supplier of heating and plumbing equipment, American Radiator and Standard Sanitary Corp. One of Manhattan’s least-known tycoons is American Radiator’s massive President and Board Chairman Clarence Mott Woolley, 75, a grey-haired 225-pounder, whose life story reads like Horatio Alger. At 23 he started lugging a 50-lb., cast-iron radiator sample through the Midwest, presently became the world’s No. i radiator salesman. Good-natured, paternalistic, Clarence Woolley has been with American Radiator for 46 years, has headed it for 36. Last week he resigned. Into his place stepped Henry M. Reed, president of the subsidiary Standard Sanitary Manufacturing Co. Son of a Standard Sanitary plant superintendent, Henry Reed, 58, began working for the plumbing company in 1900, was elected president in 1930.

Genial, self-made, industrious, he is as obscure and as popular as his predecessor.