PERSONNEL: Repair Job

For National Can Corp., 1952 was a hard year. Because of the steel strike, a lost decision on an old breach-of-contract suit, and a costly adjustment in freight rates, the company lost $491,241 in the first nine months. National, deciding that what it needed was new management, literally bought a new president.

In a stock-swap deal, National agreed to buy a smaller rival named Cans, Inc. so that it could get Cans, Inc.’s founder and president, Robert Sam Solinsky, 58. When the deal goes through this week (stockholders’ approval seems assured), Solinsky will become president of National, replacing C. L. (for Charles Lewis) Thompson, 65, who stays on as chairman. A bustling go-getter, Solinsky should be right at home in his new job. A onetime executive at giant Continental Can, he was assistant vice president of National in 1939, when he quit to form his own company.

With time out to do a turn with WPB during World War II, Solinskj’ built his little Cans, Inc. into an $8,000,000-a-year business making containers for Perk Dog Food (TIME, Sept. 29), popcorn, potato chips and beer. Competitors think the trouble with National Can is that it has been run too long by men who have been sitting on their own product. By exploiting such new markets as canned whole milk, Solinsky hopes to get the company back on its feet, boost it from fourth to third in the industry. Says he: “You don’t mind doing repairs on a house that’s basically sound.”

Other personnel changes:

¶T.W.A.’s Chairman Warren Lee Pierson, 56, was elected chairman of the U.S. Council of the International Chamber of Commerce, American industry’s chief policymaking body on foreign-trade matters. Long a figure in international trade, Pierson, a Harvard-trained lawyer, is a past president of the International Air Transport Association, served on the Tripartite Commission unscrambling German debts (TIME, Aug. 18), and was president of the Export-Import Bank for ten years. He is a firm believer in “two-way trade, not oneway aid.”

¶ To replace George M. Humphrey, the new Treasury Secretary, directors of the M. A. Hanna Co. turned over the chairman’s duties to Vice Chairman George H. Love, 52. A Princeton man and a veteran of 26 years in the coal business, Love will stay on as president of the Hanna-con-trolled Pittsburgh Consolidation Coal Co., world’s biggest bituminous coal company.