Wendel Snow Clough
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THE managing director of Dodge Brothers (Britain), Ltd., is one of those rare and delightful Americans who genuinely think highly of Britain and Britons. He is thus much to be welcomed in our midst. He goes so far as to say that, as a nation, we are as dynamic and forwardthinking in our manufacturing and selling methods as anyone in the world. What is more, he believes that, even if we have a desperate traffic problem on our hands in London, the traffic moves just as fast—or slowly—as in any other metropolis. He doesn't mind Our hotels, he doesn't object to our weather and he entirely approves of the manner in which we bring up our children.
He succeeded Bill Wallace on his retirement as managing director at Kew, in January, 1959, -at the age of 44. He brought with him an unusually wide knowledge of industry, and not only of the automotive branch of it. Although the theory may not be welcomed in this country, in America, a young man is encouraged to widen his. experience in as many fields as he has time to investigate, before settling down in a particular calling.
Wendell Snow Clough was born in 1914 at Barre, Vermont, by all accounts a pretty bleak part of the continent, where a man may play golf only between May and October. For the rest of the year, the course is apt to be deep in snow. From the age of 12 young Clough played a lot of golf and if he had the time he would like to play
a lot more now. Barre is a place where half the population is of Scottish extraction, which possibly accounts for the fact that this township of 10,000 hardy souls boasts no fewer than three golf links.
He went to Yale University, where he graduated in architecture. Then he came to Europe and worked for a year in an architect's office in Vienna, until that delightful city was occupied by Hitler's troops in 1938. Back home in the summer of that year, he broke away altogether from the design of houses and joined Libbey-Owens-Ford Glass Co., in Toledo, Ohio. Here, for five years, he made a study of product design, merchandising and business methods. Finally, he became assistant to the president, John D. Biggers, who, incidentally, had been managing director of Dodge Brothers before the company was absorbed by Chrysler.
When the United States went to war, Mr. Clough joined the Navy and was busy until 1946 coping with the Japanese in the Pacific. After that interlude he returned home, still imbued with the ambition to add to his commercial experience. He went first to a firm of productdesign consultants; two years later, he joined Montgomery Ward, the mail-order company, where he learned a great deal about mass selling. Then he did a five-year stand with an engineering concern specializing in heating, ventilating and air-conditioning, studying their marketing methods.