Business: Personal File: Jul. 28, 1961

∙ Blunt-spoken Donald J. Russell, 61, president of the Southern Pacific railroad, geared last week for battle. Testifying before an Interstate Commerce Commission hearing in San Francisco about the fight between the Southern Pacific and the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe for control of the small but strategic Western Pacific Railroad, Don Russell argued that S.P. control of the Western would eliminate “wasteful duplication of facilities.” Russell, head of the railroad with the biggest profits in the U.S. (1960 earnings: $65,400,000), is an ardent champion of mergers of competing “side-by-side” railroads. But the rival Santa Fe, whose tracks tie to Western’s, contends that “side-by-side” mergers create monopolies, advocates instead “end-to-end” mergers.

∙ Shaken by this month’s loss of the $12 million Texaco advertising account that it has held for 26 years and that brought more than 20% of its billings, Manhattan’s Cunningham & Walsh agency put in a new, young management team. Founder John P. Cunningham, 63, moved upstairs to chairman of the executive committee. New head of the agency is softspoken, Kansas-born Carl W. Nichols Jr., 37, a World War II Marine combat lieutenant who joined C. & W. in 1946 as a market researcher, later supervised the Johns-Manville account. Nichols promptly began an austerity program, will drop 10% of the agency’s employees.

∙ Whether the stock market goes up or down, one man who can hardly lose—provided the volume of trading stays high—is Norman Hirschfield, 51, new chairman of Teleregister Corp., which makes and operates stock market quotation boards. Last week Hirschfield had bullish news for his stockholders: first-half 1961 earnings reached nearly $500,000, v. a $20,000 deficit in first-half 1960. A Wall Street office boy at 14, Hirschfield became vice president of a brokerage house at 20, got friendly with Big Investor Charles Allen (who holds a dominant interest in Teleregister), was made chairman of Allen’s ACF-Wrigley food stores before taking his new job. Hirschfield now plans to market stock boards that will include over-the-counter securities.

∙ For half a dozen years, Pan American World Airways’ aggressive President Juan Terry Trippe, 62, has been hoping to open a direct New York-Moscow air route. Last week in Washington, U.S. and Russian negotiators sat down again to discuss the subject, and Trippe was on hand to advise the U.S. team. Both sides are agreed on twice-weekly flights, but the Soviets are demanding “on beyond” rights for their Aeroflot line to fly from New York to Castro’s Havana—something that the U.S. refuses to grant.