Business & Finance: $48,000 Symbol

Ten years ago a graduating Yaleman named William McChesney Martin Jr. polled three votes as “most likely to succeed” in his class. Last week 31-year-old Bill Martin was unanimously elected to the No. 1financial job of Wall Street— president of the New York Stock Exchange. To the general public, which had heard rumors that the Exchange was considering for its first paid president such assorted personages as North Carolina’s onetime Governor O. Max Gardner ex-Brain Truster Raymond Moley, and University of Chicago President Robert Hutchins, this was something of a surprise. To Wall Street, however, it seemed the logical climax of the liberal Putsch which has conquered the Exchange in the last six months.

Bill Martin, whose father is president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, joined the liberal group of Paul V. Shields. Edward Allen Pierce and John W. Hanes soon after he bought an Exchange seat in 1931, has since lived quietly at Manhattan’s Yale Club, studied steadily at the New School for Social Research. When the reform group gained control of the reorganized Exchange this spring. Bill Martin was elected chairman of the board of governors (TIME, May 23). He immediately won a friendly press, made a hit with SEC Chairman William O. Douglas. After considering some 200 “big names,” the board of governors came to the conclusion that it could find no better symbol of a new stockmarket era than young Bill Martin. At their pleasure, he will hold the job indefinitely. Salary: $48,000 a year.