CLOTHING: Biggest of the Big Four

A Fourth-of-July orator, so the oft-told story goes, was delivering a speech about Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln when, ready for the windup, he forgot their names. Glancing quickly toward the notes stuffed in his inside coat pocket, the flustered speaker hurriedly praised “those great American statesmen, Hart Schaffner and Marx.”

Chicago’s 57-year-old Meyer Kestn-baum, who has probably heard the yarn more often than anyone else, still laughs every time he hears it; it is part of his job. As president of Hart Schaffner & Marx, he heads the biggest men’s ready-to-wear company in the nation (1953 sales: $69 million). In the U.S. suit-and-coat industry, giant H.S. & M. does more business than the next four companies combined. To run the big company, Meyer Kestnbaum needs only one brief-.case; but he keeps four others packed full of work on a long list of outside projects.

Responsibility Taker. Since last spring, Kestnbaum has been dividing his time about equally between Hart Schaffner & Marx in Chicago and the President’s Intergovernmental Commission (charged with studying the whole range of federal-state relationships), which he took over when Clarence Manion resigned (TIME, May 3). In between, he has sandwiched time for the many other posts he holds: chairman of the Committee on Economic Development, director of the Ford Foundation’s Fund for the Republic, director of the Chicago Community Fund and of the Great Books Institute, overseer at Harvard. Says Kestnbaum: “If you’ll accept responsibility, you get it.”

Last week versatile “Kesty” Kestnbaum accepted some new responsibilities. On a royalty deal, Hart Schaffner & Marx took over the Society Brand line of men’s suits, thus trimming down the Big Five of the business to the Big Four.* In the men’s clothing trade, it has been no secret that Society Brand is dying on the vine, has eked out a slim profit over the past four years only by virtue of tax carrybacks and rebates from more prosperous years. Kestnbaum plans to sink $2,500,-ooo into Society Brand over the next year to rebuild its sales.

Broadway v. Ivy League. Kestnbaum started with Hart Schaffner & Marx 33 years ago as a labor supervisor, directed the company’s labor relations (considered a model for the industry) for the past 30 years. He served a term as a credit man, took over the retail end of the business when H.S. & M. began buying up shaky retail outlets in 1926 (first purchase: New York’s Wallach’s stores). In 1933 he worked with the late Mark Winfield Cresap, then president, in overhauling the company’s management and policies, has been making most of the executive decisions ever since.

Kestnbaum’s basic decision was to maintain Hart Schaffner & Marx’s conservative styles and the pioneering reputation that dates to the company’s founding by three cousins in 1887.* Among H.S. & M.’s firsts in the wholesale-clothing business: all-wool suits (1900). guaranteed color fastness (1915). Kesty put H.S. & M. into the synthetic-blend field with nylon as early as 1949, Orion in 1950 and Dacron in 1951. On occasion, Kestnbaum has matched his Ivy League styles with Broadway showmanship. When American troops marched into Paris in World War II, they were greeted by about 20 billboard posters proclaiming a message of welcome: “Congratulations on a job well done. Hart Schaffner & Marx Clothes, U.S.A.” Kestnbaum had worked the stunt through the underground.

Since Kestnbaum became president in 1941, sales have more than tripled; net profit rose from $895,000 to $1,425,000 last year. With his new Society Brand line in another price bracket (around $95, a notch higher than the $75-to-$85 range where H.S. & M. concentrates). Kestnbaum thinks sales should keep right on rising.

* The other three: B. Kuppenheimer, Fashion Park, Hickey-Freeman. * Only descendant directly connected with the company’s top management now is Director Joseph Halle Schaffner.