(4 of 9)
Robinson runs his life on a prearranged schedule as exact as a balance sheet. In his 15-room stucco home in Brookline, he rises at precisely 7:05 each morning, hops onto his Exercycle for a 15-minute ride. He breakfasts alone over the Boston Herald, drives himself to work. At 9:30, he enters M.I.T.'s modern offices on the 25th floor of Boston's John Hancock building, the city's highest, from which he has an eagle's view of what he considers God's Own Country: the gold-domed State House, the Common, the sparkling Charles River Basin.
Endless Flood. All day Robinson pores over financial statements, reads market letters and industry reports, tries-to keep a knowing eye on the management of dozens of corporations. M.I.T. usually votes with management, but does not hesitate to fight when necessary for -its stockholders' rights. The trust battled with Sewell Avery's management of Montgomery Ward in 1948, eventually sold its 104,000 shares of stock when he did not quit.
Robinson is out of the office by 4:30, dines at 7 with his wife, a Boston girl (Mary Helen Gass) whom he married in 1943 when he was 43. The Robinson house is so well ordered—Mrs. Robinson keeps two maids—that guests may be asked in advance at what time they would like a drink.
"They're Gentlemen." An expert sailor since boyhood (he rode out Hurricane Carol in 1954 in his 34-ft. cutter the Mari-bee), Robinson runs a tight, well-disciplined ship at M.I.T. As lean as Robinson himself, it has only 47 employees, from Robinson down to the cook who prepares meals for the trust's small dining room. Like most mutual funds, M.I.T. devotes itself entirely to the job of deciding what to buy and sell; it does not handle the selling of its own shares or even its money. M.I.T.'s bookkeeping is done by Boston's Second Bank-State Street Trust, the job of selling its shares by Boston's Vance, Sanders & Co., the leader in a new industry that has sprung up just to sell shares in the funds.
Though virtually all its trustees and officers invest in the market on their own (Robinson himself owns stock in a dozen companies), M.I.T. sternly forbids them to deal in whatever stocks they are handling for the trust. None of them would think of asking another what stocks he owns. "The thing about the people at M.I.T.," says a New Orleans broker, "is that they not only have high-grade management. They're gentlemen."
M.I.T.'s gentlemen constantly carry on a detective-like search for the clues and facts that point the way to a good investment. Seven industry specialists follow their own beats in M.I.T.'s portfolio of 123 stocks in search of a company's strengths and weaknesses. To get firsthand information, M.I.T.'s specialists and trustees last year traveled a quarter of a million miles, interviewed 3,000 corporate executives. Robinson himself frequently travels to inspect industries, sits on the boards of several companies in which M.I.T. owns stock, e.g., Texaco, Inc., Illinois Central Railroad.