WORLD’S BIGGEST SALARY

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 208, 30 May 1936, Page 24

WORLD’S BIGGEST SALARY

American Telephone King

The American spotlight is on Walter Sherman Gifford, the highest-salaried worker in the world.

He is the telephone king, ruler of the American Telephone and Telegraph' Company, one of the greatest monopolies the world has ever known. Every time the American drops his nickel in the slot he is enriching, not a Government department, but. Walter Sherman Gifford and the A.T.T. The spotlight came in Washington when the Federal Communications Commission, sitting in a walnut-pan-elled room, tried bo penetrate the thick walls of secrecy that hide the inner workings of the A.T.T.

They discovered that British ' capital is invested in A.T.T.; that telephoners’ nickels financed the films ‘‘Dangerous Waters,” “Emperor Jones,” “The Scoundrel,” and others; that A.T.T. capital went to the assistance of the Fox Film Corporation; that A.T.T. is now interested in automatic horserace timing devices, artificial larynges, photo-electric eyes, and mechanical pianos. And every day, while he sat in a blue leather armchair, listening to evidence, Walter Sherman Gifford knew he was nearly £l5O richer than the day before. Every day his creed of efficiency is ' practised by his staff of 250,000, by his 50,000,000 miles of telephone wire, his 6769 exchanges, factories, laboratories and office buildings. This perfect machine of efficiency

was made possible because ho himself was once inefficient 40 years ago. Twenty-year-old Walter Gifford, just out of Harvard University with his degree, was told that electric companies were looking for bright young men. He decided the choice lay between two—General Electric and Western Electric. He' decided on the first, and wrote them a letter of application. Thon he made his one mistake. He sent the letter in a wrongly addressed envelope—to the Western Electric. He hurriedly wrote to the Western Electric explaining his mistake. The company, which was then rapidly expanding, told him they had a job for him anyway in the accounting department at £2 a week. He flung himself into the study of mathematics, and before long he found himself a perfect mathematician. American Telephones and Telegraphs, meanwhile, was expanding with leaps and bounds. Its president, Theodore Vail, heard of young Gifford, and four years after Gifford had posted that wrong letter he was a statistician in the Boston office of the A.T.T. In 1925, when he was still only 40, he was elected president. He can go no higher. His salary of £52,000 a a year is the highest in the world, but Gifford, restless, unsatisfied. is ceaseless in bis search for new ideas.