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Sewell Avery

American businessman

Sewell Avery

Born

Sewell Lee Avery


()November 4,

Saginaw, Michigan, U.S.

DiedOctober 31, () (aged&#;85)

Chicago, Illinois, U.S.

NationalityAmerican
OccupationBusinessman
SpouseHortense Lenore Wisner (–)
Children3

Sewell Lee Avery (November 4, – October 31, ) [1] was an American businessman who achieved early prominence in gypsum mining and became president of the United States Gypsum Company (–).

At the beginning of the Depression, he was asked by J.P. Morgan & Co. to turn around the failing Montgomery Ward and succeeded in restoring its profitability by making huge changes. In , Fortune magazine said that Avery was "generally held to be the No. 1 Chicago businessman."[2] In the postwar years, however, he failed to take advantage of the demand for durable goods and did not expand Montgomery Ward, costing it prominence in the retail field.

Avery was active in Chicago civil activities, for instance, supporting the Commercial Club's plan for a Museum of Science and Industry and serving as its first president.

Montgomery ward biography Won Fight to 'Save' Grant Park". The remaining stores closed. His free catalog, printed by the most modern methods, was widely mailed to customers, allowing them to see pictures of consumer goods and imagine how they might be used. It was a time when rural consumers longed for the comforts of the city, yet all too often were victimized by monopolists and overcharged by the costs of many middlemen required to bring manufactured products to the countryside.

He was also prominent in social circles, and in founded the private Lincoln Park Gun Club with Oscar F. Mayer, Philip K. Wrigley, and other prominent Chicagoans.

Early life and education

Sewell Lee Avery was born in Saginaw, Michigan as the son of Ellen Lee and Waldo A. Avery, who were a leading business family of the region, with interests in lumber, banking and mining.[3] His father's family were considered lumber barons.

Avery attended public schools in Saginaw and Detroit, and the Michigan Military Academy.[4] He earned a bachelor of laws degree in from the University of Michigan.

Marriage and family

Avery married Hortense Lenore Wisner soon after graduation.

Montgomery Ward: Multichannel Merchant. Chatham , New Jersey, US. Buying was centralized but store operations were decentralized, under a new territory system modeled after Sears. Jump to: navigation , search.

They started out in a small flat by the lake when he was taken on at a gypsum plant in Alabaster, Michigan. (His father was an investor in it and helped him get a start.) They had the first bathtub in town.[4]

Career

In , his father gave him a role in managing a gypsum plant in a small town in Michigan. Avery changed the name to Alabaster Company, after the town, because he liked the sound of it.

This was one of several companies that in became part of the consolidated gypsum concern United States Gypsum Company. Then working as a sales manager in Buffalo, Avery became president in He kept that position until , managing the company through extended growth. After that, he served as chairman of the company until With his brother Waldo Avery, he was a % stakeholder in USG.[5]

Noticing his success, J.P.

Morgan & Co. invited him on to the board of US Steel in That same year, at the beginning of the Depression, Morgan & Co. invited Avery to take on the challenge of re-establishing the profitability of Montgomery Ward, of which it owned a majority, offering Avery a generous salary and stock options.[6] After rapid expansion of retail outlets through the s, from 10 stores in to in , it was rapidly losing money.[7] Avery began as chairman by cost cutting and closing stores, replacing catalog managers with experienced chain-store managers, and reducing lines that were losing money.[6]

He was admired; an employee later said of this time:

I never saw such a mass movement forward in a business.

Avery turned the place inside out, even to the fixtures and decorations. All the fellows were hustling and bustling to make the grade in a big way. Everyone wanted to get in there and pitch for the old man.[8]

By making the company become profitable, Avery earned great wealth in the process through significant stock options.[9] His strong control and caution worked against him as the company began to recover in the mids, when he might have allowed some expansion, but he believed the economy too fragile.[9]

As president of the Commercial Club of Chicago, Avery supported Julius Rosenwald's idea for an industrial museum as early as Rosenwald had built up Sears, Roebuck as a strong competitor to Montgomery Ward.[10] Avery followed up on his early support and served as the first president of the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.

He supported politically conservative causes. He was a financier of the American Liberty League and a national adviser for one of its front organizations, the Crusaders. Avery gave generously to the Church League of America (CLA). He was one of many successful businessmen who did not favor the New Deal of President Franklin D.

Roosevelt.[11]

Avery endowed several professorial chairs at the University of Chicago, and he financially supported research and expeditions of the Field Museum of Natural History.[12] A species of venomous coral snake, Micrurus averyi, is named in his honor.[13]

During World War II, Avery repeatedly opposed actions of Roosevelt's National War Labor Board and opposed labor unions.[14] He resisted signing a contract after a union had won representation for 7, of Montgomery Ward's employees until twice ordered by Roosevelt.

When Avery refused to settle a strike in , endangering the delivery of essential goods, Roosevelt's administration used emergency measures to remove him from office and temporarily seize the company; in April two soldiers had to pick him up by an arm each and carry him out of his office.[15][16][17] Avery yelled at the Attorney General, who had flown to meet with him and try to avert a showdown, "To hell with the government, you New Dealer!"[9]

Following the government's seizure of Montgomery Ward, Avery was asked his plans.

He said:

the government has been coercing both employers and employees to accept a brand of unionism which in all too many cases is engineered by people who are not employees of the plantthese devicesonly appear to make workers free to choose, are a disguise for leading the nation into a government of dictators.[18]

Soon back in charge of the retail company, Avery read widely on business.

Fearing more depression after World War II, which had usually followed wars, he misread the postwar economy.

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    • Demand and available private money fed a rise in the retail business for durable goods. He continued his bearish position under the Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower administrations. Unlike Sears, Avery resisted pension plans, insurance and profit sharing with employees; he refused to spend money on company expansion.[19] Soon Sears far outperformed Montgomery Ward; by it had more than double the business volume and had surpassed Montgomery Ward in retail stores, while Avery was prepared to weather a depression.[20] Even after Avery resigned in as president, MW never regained its former position.[9]

    In , Sewell retired with a fortune estimated at $ million.[11] He died in , leaving an estate of $20 million (before taxes) to two daughters and seven grandchildren, according to filed inheritance tax returns.[21]

    Legacy

    This section needs expansion.

    You can help by adding to it. (December )

    In late or early , Avery gave % of the s of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, a story his employee Robert Lewis May had written in for a company promotional assignment, back to May. During the time between and , the story had quickly become a popular part of Montgomery Ward's annual promotional campaign, with over six million copies given away.

    Avery's relinquishment of the s from Montgomery Ward to May resulted in May immediately publishing the story commercially for the first time as a popular children's book, and later, having his brother-in-law, songwriter Johnny Marks, create a song based on it, becoming one of the best selling songs in history. "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" has since become a popular part of pop culture and Christmas tradition in many parts of the world.[22]

    References

    1. ^Obituary: "Sewell Avery", Saginaw News, 1 November , pp.

      See full list on newworldencyclopedia.org The new board forced the resignation of Avery. Aaron, Henry Louis "Hank". Field Palmer and later years [ edit ]. Toggle the table of contents.

      1 and 5

    2. ^Grant (), Money of the Mind, p. 22
    3. ^The Book of Detroiters.
    4. ^ abJames Grant, Money of The Mind: Borrowing and Lending in America from the Civil War to Michael Milken, New York: Macmillan, , p.

      19

    5. ^International Directory of Company Histories, v. St. James Press.
    6. ^ abGrant (), Money of the Mind, p. 21
    7. ^Shearer, Benjamin ().

      Aaron montgomery ward biography He left for a better job in a competing store, where he worked another two years. Born in Chatham, N. General Electric. Aaron Montgomery Ward.

      Home Front Heroes: A Biographical Dictionary of Americans during Wartime v.1. Westport, Ct: Greenwood Press. ISBN&#;.

    8. ^Grant (), Money of the Mind, p. Note: Avery was 58 when he became chairman of Montgomery Ward.
    9. ^ abcdGordon, John Steele ().

      "The Perils of Success". American Heritage Magazine. v, issue 3: American Heritage Publishing Company. Retrieved April 2, : CS1 maint: location (link)

    10. ^Ascoli, Peter M. (). Julius Rosenwald: The Man Who Built Sears, Roebuck and Advanced the Cause of Black Education in the American South. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

    11. Montgomery Ward
    12. Mail-Order, Retail, Catalog - Britannica Money

    13. ISBN&#;.

    14. ^ abRichard Sanders (March ). "Facing the Corporate Roots of American Fascism: Sewell Avery ()". Press for Conversion! (53).
    15. ^"Alexander Revell Field Museum Expedition to Alaska, (reel 1)". Field Museum Library Digital Collections.

      Retrieved April 13,

    16. ^Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael ().

      Richard sears biography In , Ward encountered its first serious competition in the mail order business, when Richard Warren Sears introduced his first general catalog. Montgomery Ward. Tools Tools. Aaron David Gordon.

      The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. xiii + pp. ISBN&#; ("Avery", p. 13).

    17. ^"The Avery Problem". Time Magazine. June 19, Archived from the original on December 14,
    18. ^"FDR seizes control of Montgomery Ward".
    19. ^"Statement on the Seizure of Montgomery Ward Co.

      Properties &#; the American Presidency Project".

    20. ^"FDR seizes control of Montgomery Ward Dec. 27, ". Politico.
    21. ^James Grant, Money of The Mind, p. 26
    22. ^Grant (), Money of the Mind, p. 28
    23. ^Grant (), Money of the Mind, p.

      30

    24. ^"Sewell Avery Estate", New York Times, 1 March , p. L 29
    25. ^Bloom, Nate (11 December ). "Shining a Light on the Largely Untold Story of the Origins of Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer". . , Inc. Archived from the original on 13 December Retrieved 13 December