Kup's Chicago - Irv Kupcinet [16]
(And, after listening to our tale of woe, MacArthur – without a second’s hesitation – pledged the necessary $10,000.)
About as wealthy as MacArthur, if not so unconventional, is printing magnate John Cuneo, owner of the Cuneo Press, one of the world’s largest printing firms. He is also directly or indirectly in control of many other large corporations, including the National Tea Company. His home – the former Samuel Insull estate, near suburban Libertyville – is one of the showplaces of the State, and the Hawthorn-Mellody Farms Dairy, which is part of it, features one of the most popular zoos in the Chicago area. Cuneo’s interests range all the way from business to art, from horsemanship to philanthropy. (He is a Knight of Malta, an honor reserved for individuals distinguished for their activities in Roman Catholic charity work.)
Not many men today are able to lay down the money to set up a huge institution single-handed, as did John D. Rockefeller for the University of Chicago, A. Watson Armour for the Illinois Institute of Technology, or Sears, Roebuck’s Max Adler for the lakefront planetarium named for him. But that does not mean that Chicago businessmen are not still research- and education-minded. Only recently, in fact, a committee of Chicago businessmen, led by Chairman David M. Kennedy of the Continental Illinois National Bank, joined with union, educational, and city government officials in organizing a major study of one of the most pressing economic problems of the day – automation. This nationally significant study is the first of its kind to be initiated by a major city. Combining the talents and facilities of the Association of Commerce & Industry, the City Department of Planning, and the Armour Research Foundation of the Illinois Institute of Technology, it is being financed by funds raised largely from such local sources as the People’s Gas, Light & Coke Company, Harris Trust and Savings Bank, and the Inland Steel-Ryerson Foundation.
One of the most dramatic demonstrations of this nonconformity came last spring after Chairman Roger Blough of the United States Steel Corporation announced his firm was raising steel prices by $6.00 a ton. One by one, major steel firms also raised their prices. But Chairman Joseph L. Block of Inland Steel Company, the nation’s eighth largest steel producer, refused to follow the lead. Vacationing in Japan, he told Chicago Daily News correspondent Keyes Beech:
“Even though steel profits are not adequate, we do not feel an advance in steel prices at this time would be in the national interest.”
It is this type of independence which has made Inland executives known as community leaders in Chicago, which has given Inland a record of having lost money in only one year (1933) since its founding in 1893, and which led to a retraction of Big Steel’s price increase, and one of President Kennedy’s most gratifying moments. Joe Block’s brother Leigh and his cousin Philip are equally independent as Inland vice-presidents.
This nonconformity also is a reason why the Chicago phone book lists page after page of headquarters for firms whose names have become nationally famous: Kraft, Libby, Quaker Oats, National Tea, Morton Salt, Curtiss, and Wrigley in food products; Motorola, Zenith, Admiral, Webcor, and many more in electronics; Toni, Helene Curtis, Murine, Maybelline, and Alberto-Culver in cosmetics; Bell & Howell and Revere in