MANAGEMENT: Efficiency Plus

The biggest U.S. firm of efficiency experts, Chicago’s George S. May Co., passed a minor milestone. In Manhattan’s Chanin Building, where once it could not pay its office rent, the May Co. opened an entire floor of dazzling new red, blue and chartreuse offices, celebrated with a gay get-together. Chief speaker, as usual, was the company’s florid, talkative president, George Storr May. Topic: Mr. May.

Mr. May, who advertises his personality by wearing $32 shirts, lurid handkerchiefs and horse-blanket-striped suits, likes to talk about himself, and knows that every word is money in the bank. He has his fast-growing business, which grossed $3,000,000 last year and his income of $676,000* prove it.

Medicine Man. When Mr. May was an Illinois farm boy, his parents wanted him to be a preacher. He compromised by joining Evangelist Billy Sunday, and learned from him the technique of the freehanded overstatement. Later, May took a two-week course in “business engineering,” and went to work as an efficiency expert. Soon he was a crack salesman of efficiency systems and able to set up for himself in Chicago in 1925. His sales clincher: “If you will let us put in a production-control system, about all you will have to do, Mr. President, is come down and open the mail and go home.”

Greatly aided by the number of U.S. businessmen who wanted to be told how to run their own businesses, Expert May soon expanded his company throughout the U.S. and Canada. He developed cures for almost every business ailment. Said he: “One day (in 1931) an elderly gentleman came in and wanted to see me about ‘Market Analysis.’ I didn’t know what Market Analysis was, but I hired him. In 1931, of the total business of $644,000 done, Market Analysis alone ran $200,000.”

May, the Man. To keep up with his expanding company, May started his own schools to train his own efficiency experts. To become an expert, the student takes a two-week course. One requirement for graduation (according to an ex-student): an essay on George S. May, the Man. One of May’s honor graduates last June was handsome, Jew-baiting Joe McWilliams, ex-head of the so-called Christian Mobilizers. After McWilliams spent two months installing May efficiency systems in wai plants, the FBI called on May, caused him reluctantly to fire McWilliams. Said May later: “I think he’s all right. . . .”

May Facts. A favorite May slogan is: “You’ve got to spend money to make money.” May does. He floods businessmen with 10,000 pieces of direct mail daily. One of his best mailings is a persuasive, graph-studded pamphlet called “May Facts.” (Typical May fact: After calling in the May Co., an unnamed war plant increased production 3,866%.)

Golf Facts. Month ago, May came up with his newest publicity scheme the American Golf Foundation, which would furnish golf clubs with free advice on management problems. Since 1936, May has poured $552,000 into managing Chicago’s famed Tam O’Shanter Golf Club, he claims, mainly to stage razzle-dazzle tournaments like his All-American Open tournament there last summer. May picked up yards of publicity and the firm belief that most U.S. businessmen are golf-minded. So May feels that any businessman who might escape the mail-order barrage is still within an easy chip shot of his new foundation.

All of these publicity shenanigans grate on many a conservative industrial engineer. But recently Mayphobes had reason to chortle at two May prattfalls: 1) the Arkansas Utilities Commission, which hired the May Co. to make a survey to help develop postwar industries, angrily called the preliminary May survey a valueless rehash of what it already knew; 2) with his usual fanfare, May made a free survey for WPB on “What is holding up production?” Last week he announced that WPB was acting on his report. WPB-sters said it was promptly pigeonholed.

To complaints ebullient Mr. May has a pat answer: “If you’re aggressive like we are, you run into things. You ought to hear what some of these guys say about us.”

* Shared by his wife and three children, who

are his partners.