Document YDELOzZmyqgBpvO7pxK5bN990

Tm^JAI PI II TpJT LiV/l S5000 STLCOPCB0019630 HARTOLDMONOOOQ469 Expansion in a Perilous Era 79 SWANN In two steps (in 1933 and 1935), Monsanto took an even bigger jump-- this time into almost $9,000,000 (mostly stock) worth of expansion and diversification. Earlier reaches for diversification and growth had been across the Mississippi River (Commercial Acid, 1913); and to Graesser-Monsanto in London and Raubon, North Wales (1920 for 50 percent and 1928 for the remaining 50 percent); to a caffeine intermediate plant in Norfolk, Virginia (1925); to Akron and Nitro (1929) and to New England (1929). The new jump was "down South".--to Birmingham and Anniston, Alabama, for, initially, the controlling stock equity of the Swann Cor poration and, two years later, the full acquisition of Swann. This was a larger milestone than Monsanto realized at the lime. It involved the introduction into the Monsanto family of new products, new technology, new customers and new people, many of whom would in the years ahead take over positions of commanding importance-- up to and including chairman of the board (Edward A. O'Neal), exec utive vice president (Robert R. Cole), senior vice president (John L. Christian), vice president (Felix N. Williams) and even a president (Edward J. Bock). Ultimately the Swann group would become known within Monsanto as the Phosphate Division and, later, as the Inorganic Division. It would bring a unique kind of "school spirit" to affairs of the company in what was called "the era of the 'sand and gravel' boys." Why "sand and gravel"? This was a group accustomed to making heavy chemicals, dealing with large volumes of solids, gases and liquids, often under conditions of small but important profit margins. John L. Christian once bragged, "No bulk is too big and no volume too great to discourage me and my boys." In trying to find one word to sum up the attitude of the group sired by the Swann Corporation, Edgar Queeny once decided that "swashbuckling" might come near the mark. Earlier acquirees into the Monsanto family had not been exactly prim and prissy. Granted, the New Englanders brought with them their northeast idioms and figures of speech and an unusual way of pro nouncing certain words. But, by and large, they were not garrulous people. Many in the early Swann crew, on the other hand, were a bit on the extrovert side. Also they brought bits and pieces of Southern culture and tradition into the Monsanto mix, along with a rather extreme divisional pride and an occasional tendency toward cronyism. Retro spective comments range from "the greatest morale and team spirit in the history of the company" to "the Inorganic Mafia." The word most frequently used to describe the Swann-rooted people 80 Faith, Hops and $5,000 is "unorthodox," In the late thirties, forties and fifties there were instances when Phosphate (and, later. Inorganic) Division people went to such extremes in expressing pride in their own performance and "example" that they'd often be tempted to be a bit condescending toward the rest of the company, to "tolerate" others--with some South ern charm and politeness, to he sure. Edgar Queeny had, one might say, asked for it. He not only wanted diversification into new business but he wanted diversification into new people. He couldn't stand yes-men, and on occasion he'd tel! those who specialized in subservience that they were limiting their personal careers by not airing their convictions. The Swann-rooted crowd had few yes-men. Under encouragement from some of its divisional leaders, and to some degree the encourage ment of Queeny himself, they practiced what Mae West once suggested: "When you got it, Haunt it." They were not only proficient in phosphorus- and phosphate-related product lines. They also developed a singular expertise in poker and gin rummy and the ability to cope with copious quantities of nori-watered- down jack Daniel's Black Label Tennessee whisky. One young Phosphate Division plant manager once said, "I have to be good in running my plant and I better also be good in the extracurricular requirements, too." There seems to be general agreement that the Swarm/Phosphate/ Inorganic group was not particularly inhibited by the formalities of a corporate infrastructure. The group's attitude seldom reached the point of noncooperation or revolt and never reached the point of secession, but it did involve a certain sense of unbridled spontaneity. In large measure, the pluses bom more conspicuously--or at least more memo rably--than the minuses, particularly since this group had an outstand ing record in contributing to growth, to profitability and to the art of developing new managers. Indeed, after Edward j. Bock, an Inorganic alumnus, moved into the Monsanto presidency in 1968 and when he presided over the reorganization of 1971, his principal lieutenants were those who had cut their teeth somewhere along the line on the policies and practices of Inorganic's "sand and gravel" traditions. The roots of the Swann Corporation trace to World War I days, when an energetic promoter named Theodore Swann began to manufacture ferromanganese and other steel-making chemicals at Anniston. In the early twenties Swann began manufacturing phosphoric acid, importing phosphate rock from Florida and Tennessee for the purpose. Phosphorus--a major element and "gift from the earth"--and its compounds were seen by Theodore Swann to hold exceptional promise. Further, he realized phosphoric acid was a door opening into a growing , market for phosphates iri foods, drugs and detergents, - As his company grew. It branched into calcium carbide, abrasives and lampblack. As entrepreneur behind this mushrooming enterprise, Swann iliH had an office in Birmingham and a principal plant at Anniston, in. STLCOPCBOOI9632 HARTOLDMONOOOQ471 Expansion in a Perilous Era 81 addition, he had smaller manufacturing units in South St. Louis (Carondelet) for the manufacture of monocalcium and dicalcium phosphate for baking powders, and another small plant gt Camden, New Jersey, for making lampblack and bone ash. Owner Swann's managerial capabilities had limitations. Even when his company was soundly in the black, his personal finances were shaky, due in no small measure to his investment in a "miilion-dollar home" on Red Mountain overlooking the city of Birmingham, an edifice his asso ciates called--somewhat sarcastically--"the palace." By 1933 he had involved his company in a 3700,000 debt. When several New York banks became insistent, he turned northward for help--and to Monsanto to "bail him out," to use Edgar Queeny's lan guage. With high transportation costs and with sources for phosphate rock running out, the Swann organization's fortunes were' marginal at best in 1935, when Monsanto acquired it and embarked upon a path to make Swann, ultimately, the world's largest producer (at Columbia, Tennes see, and Soda Springs, Idaho) of elemental phosphorus, one of the most versatile of all chemicals, and of many derivadves of elemental phos phorus. A graphic picture of pre-Monsanto Swann and Monsanto Swann is painted by Felix N. Williams, seventy-six, now retired and living the life of a Southern gentleman at Boca Raton, Florida. Williams, who was a Monsanto vice president and member of the board when he took early retirement in 1964, recently expressed the following recollections: My family was living in Anniston in 1923, when I received a chemical engineering degree from the University of Virginia. I de cided [ ought to try out my technical talents in the local area--and I very well remember the day I went rolling out to Swann's plant in my red Stutz Bearcat to see if I could get a job. I was all dressed up in my white flannel trousers, eager to make a good impression and to show them what a chemical engineering graduate from the University of Virginia looked tike. I was told right promptly they didn't need any chemical engineers bui they were tak ing on a few laborers. F was in no position to be choosy so i signed on as a laborer. Without ado, they handed this dandy dude a shovel and pointed to a wheelbarrow and told this upstart to get to work. My pay was twenty-five cents an hour, which wasn't bad considering the stan dard schedule was eighty-four hours a week and included all seven days of the week. It was my job to dig crystallized ammonium phosphate out of a big drying pan and to wheel chunks of crystal over and dump them in a centrifuge. In the process, some of the "mother liquid" bounced out and got on me. The first night when I got home and took oil my flannel trousers and tossed them into a corner, I had to laugh when I noticed the trousers were so stiff they stood up by themselves. STLCOPCB0019633 HARTOLDMONOOOQ472 Faith, Hope and $5,000 Shortly after Monsanto took over and started its Phosphate Divi sion, I was told it would be my job to go to Columbia, Tennessee, and help build the elemental phosphorus plant, I'll never forget when Edgar Queeny brought his directors down to Tennessee for the first time--on a private L8tN parlor car which was shunted into the Columbia plant site on a new spur. There were no roads into the plant then. We had just started to build. Everyone knew it would be impossible to show the distinguished visitors the soggy phosphate fields by automobile, In the soft Ten nessee clay, an automobile would bog down. Theodore Swann and his principal assistant, Rush Cole, bad the idea of giving the visitors a royal welcome, and accordingly they had ordered that a big wooden sled be built for the occasion--with benches and even with seat belts. That was the first time I ever saw the meticulous Edgar Queeny--sitting there on a bench on a sled while a bulldozer pulled him through the rich and gummy fields of phosphorus ore he had just purchased. Later I became pLant manager at Columbia, Tennessee, and sub sequently became production manager for the Phosphate Division before moving up to Springfield, Massachusetts, to learn about plastics. Why did Phosphate contribute so many leadership people into We gave people a job and let them do it. Give Rush Cole a lot of credit for this. Rush didn't make a let of noise but he made a lot of common sense. When he'd give someone a job to do, if that someone would ask "how? " Rush would say, "That's your business. If I didn't think you could figure out the 'how' of it I would not have assigned you to the task in the first place." He didn't withhold advice if it would be needed, but he'd never hold his people on a tight rein and he'd never nag them with a lot of da's and don't's. 1965. He really flowered when he went to England in 1946. Ed's an ideal example of someone who started down South and became an international figure for Monsanto. John Christian was the most vocal of the Phosphate group. He was an unusual fellow. I once told John Christian and Ed Bock if they didn't shape up I'd fire them. But they both came around, Edward A, O'Neal, former chairman, who retired as a Monsanto board member in 1975, divides his time between residences in England, the Pennsylvania Poconos and Skinker Boulevard in St. Louis, He earned an A.B. degree in physics ("You can't hardly get that degree any more''} at Davidson College, and in 1926 he knocked on Swann's door at Anniston, in search of a job. He remembers the early days, to wit: STLCOPCBOOI9634 HARTOLDMONOOOQ473 Expansion in a Perilous Era 83 was hired, but later on Rush Cole told me that he and Dr. Carothers had flipped a coin after seeing me for the first time. It seems the loser was to take O'Neal. Poor Dr. Carothers, he lost--so he brought me into the control lab, where I washed beakers. About six months later someone down there noticed the tab job didn't seem to be my turn of hand, so I was given a few odd jobs in the plant, and then I progressed to foreman, supervisor and superintendent of the abrasives operation. Pretty soon I was plant manager. And then I tyj>c cgrjf Pq f +q rtjis tjig StSlt'ilp f|igrg Looking hack on the Phosphate days, I surely give Rush Cole a lot of credit for the spirit of the group and for developing so many good people who went upstairs within Monsanto. THOMAS AND HOCHWALT The 1936 Annual Report contained the following demonstration of Edgar Queeny's ability to make a terse, on-target statement: 'The sub stance from which our industry obtains its growth is research." . Queeny added: "A fundamental and long-range research program is necessary to attain leadership. Toward this objective, the well-known Thomas and Hochwalt Laboratories of Dayton, Ohio, were acquired early in the year. Having evaluated their talent and experience through several years' use of their services, the staff and facilities of these labo ratories were well-known to us, and compatibility of our organization and theirs, as to both executive and laboratory personnel, was assured. We believe that a fresh point of view can be obtained by a group of research workers not directly attached to any manufacturing unit and who, therefore, can concentrate without distraction on fundamental and long-range research." The text went on to say Monsanto was at the threshold of such new fields as "synthetic resins and other derivatives of petroleum .. . and synthetic detergents, wetting agents, wood preservatives and insecti cides." That sums up the so-called "Dayton acquisition" and one of the major reasons behind it: a fresh point of view. If one would pick the "top ten milestones of Monsanto's 75 years," much as one would select the top ten motion pictures of the year or the top ten rock records, it would be difficult to omit the acquisition of the Thomas and Hochwalt Laboratories. The significance may have been somewhat appreciated in 1936, but in fact this acquisition was only the firming up of an R&D foundation upon which Monsanto later built a body of new technology that Messrs. Thomas and Hochwalt could scarcely have dreamed of in the thirties. In 1977 much of Monsanto's proprietary and patented chemical know how traces back to Dayton, but even more to the succession of research ers nurtured in the spirit of Thomas and Hochwalt. 106 Faith, Hope and $5,000 Westinghouse Electric Corporation deliberately and specifically called to Monsanto's attention the shortcomings of high-sudsing detergents in the front-loading Westinghouse washers and asked Monsanto if it could come up with an efficient detergent which wouldn't create a heavy mass of suds. Voila--Sferox low-sudsing detergent! A dilemma. On the one hand, the Phosphate Division's No. 1 customer was the detergent industry--"the soapers." Companies like Procter & Gamble, Colgate and Lever Brothers were crucial to Monsanto's present and fu ture. These companies were busily and profitably advertising their highsudsing detergents all over the land, high-sudsing detergents which were doing a heroic job in a wide variety of household and industrial uses, affording a dramatic improvement over the earlier era of soaps made from animal and vegetable fats. On the other hand, here came Monsanto with a low-sudsing detergent which would work more efficiently in front-loading automatic washing machines with a water level lower than that in top-loaders. It was a good-news-and-bad-news situation. Monsanto's technological breakthrough was the good news. But a bit of a customer relations problem began to loom on the horizon, and this of course was the bad news. What, Monsanto wondered, will the soapers say about low sudsing at the very time they are trumpeting, via millions of dollars' worth of advertising, the virtues of high sudsing? Procter & Gamble's late-forties advertising campaign for the general purpose household detergent Tide showed how a small amount would fill a railroad boxcar full of suds, Monsanto was totally in cahoots-- and ran its own ad captioned "The Day Niagara Falls Flowed Over," an ad that depicted an overpowering cascade of cleansing suds. Monsanto was, after all, a principal supplier for the high-sudsing phenomenon. The new low-sudsing product thus developed into a mixed blessing for Monsanto, which had traditionally avoided head-on competition with its major customers. After all, the company's slogan was "Serving Indus try Which Serves Mankind." Here was a company which was the world's largest manufacturer of acetylsalieylie acid, selling this product to drug houses, which packaged it by its more popular name, aspirin. But Monsanto would never dare to compete with those drug houses fay taking aspirin tablets straight to the corner supermarket. Here was a company making plastic raw materials, but one which would never dare to compete with the manufacturers of plastic countertops, toys, toothbrushes, appliance parts. Here was a company calling itself the world's largest in the mining and general technology of elemental phosphorus, and a company basic in phosphate raw materials, which would never dare to alienate a major segment of its industrial phosphates market, namely: the soapers. The product called Sterox low-sudsing detergent--later to be chris- STLCOPCBOOI9636 HARTOLDMONOOOQ475 The Perils of Consumer Products 137 matic washing machines was a specialty product compared to the highvolume, high-sudsing, all-purpose detergents- made and marketed by Procter 8c Gamble, Colgate, Lever Brothers and other soapers--all im portant Monsanto customers for such detergent raw materials as surfaceactive agents and phosphate builders. Monsanto lost no time in approaching the soapers to find out the nature of their interest, if any, in its low-sudsing discovery. At the time, the regular detergents were moving heroically in the marketplace. Understandably, the soapers weren't too impressed by Monsanto's "nov elty" product, None wanted to take it over. None wanted to champion the "contradictory cause" of a low-sudser against the popular highsudsers. The people in Monsanto's Phosphate Division, notably the outspoken John Christian, were cool on "all" from the start. Executive Vice Presi dent Charlie Thomas and Vice President Ted Hochwak, from whose Dayton, laboratory the product had sprung, were inclined to take the opposite view. "You can't stand in the path of scientific achievement" was their attitude. President Bill Rand had apprehensions but in the final analysis was inclined to go along when serious discussions got under way to explore the possibility that "we might have to take this to the consumer market ourselves." And when Edgar Queeny cast his vote the same way, the fork-in-the-road problem ceased to be a problem. It was full steam ahead to find the right way to market the low-sudsing detergent at the consumer level. Monsanto had initially decided to sell "all" through an erstwhile small customer, Detergents, Inc., of Columbus, Ohio, This company had some advantages as the vehicle for marketing. A few (though not many) observers thought Monsanto was picking a straw party to handle "air in order to hide its new consumer-oriented strategy from the soapers. This was not the case, for two reasons: 1) The detergent manufacturers had been informed about "all" by Monsanto early in the game and were aware of Monsanto's quandary; 2) the manufacturers had pretty good avenues of commercial intelli gence and would not be easily fooled by something as simple as the name of a Columbus company, Detergents, Inc., on a box of Monsanto detergent. Such matters notwithstanding, Monsanto's entry into consumer mar keting with "all" began with Monsanto making the product and Deter gents, Inc., marketing it. Perhaps the most noteworthy idea contributed by Detergents, Inc., was a massive advertising campaign involving fullpage, semi-monthly exposure for "ail" in almost 100 major metropolitan markets. The Columbus merchandisers suggested that the impact of high-exposure advertising would be necessary to successfully launch the daring new detergent. A multimiilion-dollar advertising program was as revolutionary to Monsanto as its entry into consumer goods. The Trenton, Michigan, plant's production capacity for the low- STICOPCBOOI9637 HARTOLDMONOOOQ476 H! J44 Faith, Hope and $5,000 The various KriLium-related complications, plus the challenges of marketing the increasingly popular "all" detergent, provided a full plate for the embryo Merchandising Division, formed for the purpose of put ting Monsanto consumer products on Main Street. There were several fundamental problems: 1) Monsanto wasn't steeped in consumer merchandising experience. 2) It had a limited line of merchandise. 3) Krilium and "all" didn't lend themselves to the same marketing techniques or outlets. At least two regular operating divisions were involved in supporting the Merchandising Division. The Organic Division developed a program to license formulators under Monsanto's Krilium patents. The Phosphate Division developed, at considerable speed, a concentrated, water-soluble, 20-20-20 fertilizer. Folium, to round out the Merchandising Division's so-called agricultural line. ' Subsequently, the Laucks-developed Rez brand of wood primers and sealers was also added to the new division's product catalogue to provide breadth. In the hurry and scurry to give the new division a more compre hensive array, Monsanto reached deep into its resources and considered a wide variety of supplementary retail products. It test-marketed a li quid starch product, called "all starch," and learned--among other things--that bottling the liquid with a screw-on cap made it virtually impossible to remove the cap from the bottle. To demonstrate that there was no loss of humor during those tense days, Sam Ballard, Gardner Advertising Company's longtime account executive for Monsanto, had a creative solution to the problem of the stubborn bottle cap. "Let's put a Stillson wrench in each box with the bottle of starch," was Sam's contribution. During 1953 and 1954 "aU" saved the day for the brave new division. But Krilium, despite heroic production and marketing efforts, continued to have problems. At one time the division general manager was so desperate he wondered out loud whether it might: help to add the word "miracle" to the Krilium label. A colleague reminded him, "It's a good product but unrelated to Lourdes." To begin with, Krilium was expensive, partly because at the start if was made in small quantities. The full-strength powder cost $3.45 a pound and would treat only 50 square feet of soil to a depth of 6 inches. A blend called the "Merloam formulation," 20 percent Krilium. and 80 percent inert powder, cost less and was easier to handle. It was ideal for use around the home--around shrubbery beds and in flowerpots. The Merloam product didn't gum up as fast when used in moist ground, and this too was a distinct advantage. It was almost foolproof. A homeowner seeking the benefits of Krilium for his lawn (assuming he had an established lawn, and most homeowners did) had to begin by having his lawn area Rototilled or otherwise churned up. Not every- STLCOPCB0019638 HARTOLDMONOOOQ477 Faith, Hope and $5,000 been the only nortbeadache in the short but tempestuous life of Krilium. Charlie Thomas recently recalled, "As president, I took the rap for Krilium--and I should have. It wasn't handled right. It was an example of taking something that was 'half-baked' and pushing it prematurely. The newspapers took hold and got excited. Normally, no product should be forced. When the timing is right, a meritorious product will bloom. With Krilium I wound up with egg on my face, particularly with se curity analysts who kept asking, 'Where are the profits?' Inventions have to be shepherded quietly and not exploited prematurely." Thomas added, "X am surely glad we never tried to market aspirin the same way. But don't forget it's a changing world. You'll find today there is practically no field in the consumer business where we'd not collide with the interest of some of our industrial customers. It's not as much of a shock today when basic industrial manufacturers decide to try their wings in the consumer field, However, the same old basic cautions still have to be reckoned with." When the Consumer Products Division folded its tent following the 1957 safe of "all" to Lever Brothers, no epitaph was discussed. Yet by now Monsanto had dropped its slogan, "Serving Industry Which Serves Mankind," even though the experiment with consumer goods had served to confirm that "serving industry" should, more than ever, be the company's policy. Fewest tears during the Consumer Products Division's requiem period came from Phosphate (renamed Inorganic) Division General Manager John. L. Christian, who had continuously objected to the company's com peting with his division's principal customers, the soapers. Christian had continued to hammer away at Edgar Queeny and to assert, "We ought to get out of this damn foolishness while the getting's good." Both Chris tian and the events, as they occurred, were persuasive. With Charlie Thomas convinced that the ground was getting shakier all the time under the Consumer Products Division, it was Edgar Queeny, no less, who finally pulled (he plug, And in those days, when Edgar Queeny pulled the plug, a certain air of finality was involved. And so the rest of Monsanto, which had in the meantime been doing nicely, inherited the benefit of top management's total concern. The dis traction of the consumer products era was gone, hut not forgotten. STLCOPCBOOI9639 HARTOLDMONOOOQ478 Meanwhile, Back at the Rest of the Company .., 149 Both Fetzner and Schuler grimaced when they were asked, "Did you regard yourselves as salesmen or as marketing experts during your long West Coast careers?" They both insisted, "We were neither; we were peddlers," Irreverent as both can be, they were quite serious recently when asked, 'In balance, didn't you enjoy your Monsanto careers even though the company didn't see the light in the West sufficiently?" Fetzner summed it up as "a simply fantastic experience." Schuler went a bit further: "The best thing about it all was being able to say, Tm Ed Schuler from Monsanto.' That's all you had to say. I may be an alumnus, technically, but I'm a part of Monsanto until I die. Sure, 1 get a pension check from St, Louis every month plus dividends on my Monsanto stack four times a year. But that's not the reason. My heart was in Monsanto for all those years. My heart will be in Monsanto as long as I live." That Little plastics plant at Long Beach, which was so important to Messrs. Fetzner and Schuler in 1850, has an expanded line of products today, and the California market is--whether or not the "Gold Dust twins" would ever admit it--taken very seriously by all of Monsanto ; in 1977. Herbicides, in particular, find a growing market in the Western states' (and Hawaii's) burgeoning agricultural sectors. The Long Beach plastics plant was not the only item in the 1950 Annual Report which telegraphed its punch with respect to future growth. There was also a hint of moving ahead in agricultural chemi cals, and there was the initial surfacing of a new piece of chemical language, "isocyanates." In the former area, capital expenditures were authorized for produc ing sodium trichloracetate and for expanding the capacity for 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T, AO three of these are in the herbicide family--an area where the company was destined to become highly profitable and highly pro ficient in the development of sophisticated, proprietary, patent-protected products necessary for farmers to attain maximum yields, As regards the latter, the new word---isocyanates--appearing in an Annual Report for the first time indicated the company's interest in a promising field of chemistry which had been developed in Germany immediately after World War II. The responsibility for isocyanate re search was initially given to the Phosphate Division at Anniston, Ala bama, but the big news was to come a few years later, when Monsanto entered into a joint venture with Farbenfabriken Bayer, A. G., of Lever kusen, Germany, in the formation of Mobay Chemical Company. Pur pose: the manufacture of polyurethane foam from isocyanates. In the basic product lines, the year 1950 saw the completion of a sixth electric furnace at the elemental phosphorus plant at Columbia, Tennessee, as well as ground breaking for a major Texas City installa tion to manufacture acrylonitrile, the basic raw material for Chemstrand's Acrilan fiber. Increases in plastics production included but went beyond the little Meanwhile, Back at the Rest of the Company .. . 351 large piece of news on the home front came from John L. Christian, general manager of the Phosphate Division. Psyched by the booming success of the expansive elemental phosphorus complex at Columbia, Tennessee, Christian looked west for more of the same kind of profitable manufacturing, west to Soda Springs, Idaho, where--it was decided in 1951--electric furnace technology from Tennessee could be used to establish a plant in the heart of a smaller yet equally rich field of phos phate ore. The plant was scheduled to go on stream in 1953 with one electric furnace like the six in Tennessee, yet larger than the largest in Ten nessee, To John Christian, "scheduled to go on stream" meant actually going on stream when promised, if not before. He was impatient with short falls and particularly sensitive that his Phosphate Division should break no promises, internal or external surprises notwithstanding. During 1S51 one of his fastest-rising, high-potential proteges was the plant manager at Columbia, Tennessee, Edward J. Bock, who would in 1968 become Monsanto's president and chief executive officer, Bock :recently recalled the challenges of the "John Christian era" in the early fifties. Bock remembers that Christian was quite demanding. Bock said, "He could drive you up the wall. If you didn't stand up to John Christian he'd walk all over you. Quite often ail he was doing was testing people in his own hard-boiled way." Whether or not Christian intended to intimidate people is a moot point, and whether or not everyone knew of the "testing game" is also a moot point, but there seems to be no disagreement that in the early fifties Christian was feeling his oats, no doubt encouraged by the profita bility, growth and razzle-da2zle spirit of his operating division. People meeting him for the first time discerned he was no run-of-the-mill execu tive. The "real" John Christian was a spirited leader who had his own style and his own set of disciplines within his Phosphate group. He could be, and quite often was, a soft-spoken and ultra-polite Southern charmer when business or social formalities so dictated. He could also be a martinet within his own division, spurring people on to accomplish ments they might not otherwise have achieved--or driving people "up the wall." Bock recalls both sides of Christian: the impatient, insistent, harsh, seemingly opinionated ruler of his own divisional roost who could be merciless in his demands; and the softer John Christian, who would go out of his way to make sure those who performed best were rewarded best. Christian was elected a vice president in 1951 and was gaining rapidly in influence at the time the decision was made to broaden the base of his division by going out to Soda Springs--on schedule. Politically astute as well as performance-oriented, John Christian made no bones about the need to stay "in cahoots" with Edgar Queeny, Meanwhile, Back at the Rest of the Company , , . 155 As is true in all such organizational overhauls, some units won and others lost. The Merrimac Division, Texas Division and Western Division were summarily obliterated. Least surprising was the elimination of the Western Division, which had sprung from the I, F. Laucks acquisition. It had the very com mendable purpose of establishing Monsanto more firmly on the West Coast. But its product line was limited. The elimination of the Texas Division was understandable in that its holdings were mainly at one location, Texas City. The much older Merrimac Division, headquartered at Everett, Massachusetts, and known as the "cradle of presidents" (two: Belknap and Rand) was simply not growing as fast as the rest of the company, and it was suffering from disadvantageous freight rates in commerce beyond New England. It too had a limited product line of industrial chemicals. One of the winners in the new lineup was the Plastics Division, which heretofore had had a plant only at Springfield, Massachusetts, and newer installations at Addyston, Ohio, and Long Beach, California. As the result of the reorganization it picked up the crown jewel of the Texas Division at Texas City and also the Seattle and Santa Clara, California, locations of the Western Division. Another winner was the Phosphate Division, which was rechristened the Inorganic Chemicals Division. In addition to its plants at Columbia, Tennessee, Carondelet, Missouri, Soda Springs, Idaho, and Trenton, Michigan, it picked up (from Merrimac) the Everett, Massachusetts, arid Camden, New Jersey, locations. In anticipation of growing multinational markets--even though that word "multinational'' was not in general use in 1953--Edward A. O'Neal was brought back from London to head up a new Overseas Division. He had earned his stripes running the British company. One other divisional unit was established, a Research and Engineering Division; and the ill-fated Consumer Products Division was temporarily continued. Personnel moves abounded in the wake of the organizational changes. Starting at the new EOP level, John L, Gillis left the general manager ship at Organic to make way for upcoming Charlie Sommer and to move into corporate marketing responsibilities--the first such thrust in tMs direction in the company's history. W. W. Schneider became general counsel; Edgar Queeny, of course, continued to call the shots in finance; Felix Williams took ova: the functional portfolio for production; Frank Curtis the same foT personnel; and Ted Hochwalt for research, develop ment and engineering, with the new Research and Engineering Division reporting to him. The seven general staff departments remained essentially the same as they had been and were the least affected by the reorganization. But that wasn't the end of it. A new echelon was established for regional vice presidents. These were later to be nicknamed "Kentucky