Business: Radiator Salesman

One of Manhattan's best-known buildings is the neo-Gothic tower of funereal black brick, topped by a gold-leafed crown, which houses the world's largest supplier of heating and plumbing equipment, American Radiator and Standard Sanitary Corp. One of Manhattan's least-known tycoons is American Radiator's massive President and Board Chairman Clarence Mott Woolley, 75, a grey-haired 225-pounder, whose life story reads like Horatio Alger. At 23 he started lugging a 50-lb., cast-iron radiator sample through the Midwest, presently became the world's No. i radiator salesman. Good-natured, paternalistic, Clarence Woolley has been with American Radiator...

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