Army & Navy – MANPOWER: Captains of Industry

The Army got set this week to teach American businessmen a thing or two. At month’s end 100 hand-picked top business executives will report to the General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kans. for a tough, 30-day “orientation” course. Stated object: to teach businessmen about the Army and vice versa. Collateral object: to let the Army look over businessmen whose talents it can use, in uniform.

Some of the businessmen who will attend: Walter S. Montgomery, president of Spartan Mills, Spartansburg, S.C. (cotton goods); Meyer Kestnbaum, executive vice president and treasurer of Hart Schaffner & Marx; Noble A. Cathcart, assistant to the president of Crowell-Collier Publishing Co.; Roy E. Larsen, president of Time Inc.; Byron Gray, president of International Shoe Co.; H. Leslie Atlass, vice president of Columbia Broadcasting System; Joseph Hazen, vice president of Warner Bros. Also represented is labor by A.F. of L.’s Arnold Zander, C.I.O.’s Richard Deveraux.

While at school, the executives will sleep in regular barracks, eat Army chow, learn to salute (the War Department would not say whether they would have to snap out of bunks at reveille), and learn something about the military side of fighting. Meanwhile the officers with whom they rub elbows will learn about business, from priority headaches to defects in Army contracts.

Lieut. General Brehon B. Somervell, head of SOS, thinks business and the housekeeping part (supply, service, transport) of the Army are much the same. “After all,” said a major last week, “there is no reason for misunderstanding on either side. This move certainly ought to make for a smoother pushing of the war.”