The Army had learned by experience: the way to subdue Sewell Avery was by envelopment, not frontal attack. In Chicago last week, Major General Joseph Wilson Byron politely stepped up to Montgomery Ward & Co.'s efficient receptionist Helen Love, asked to see Ward's stubborn $100,000-a-year president Sewell Lee Avery. Over an interoffice phone, she conveyed General Byron's message. It was: the Army's here agin.
A secretary led the General into Avery's paneled office. General Byron handed Avery President Roosevelt's order directing the U.S. Army to seize Ward's $302 million mail order and...