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To save time, V.E. and his wife (they have two sons) live only a few blocks from his office, in a small Park Avenue apartment cluttered with hunting prints, a 1,000-volume sporting library, piles of personal scrap books. He also has a 475-acre farm outside Ithaca, N.Y. He very seldom touches liquor, favors lemonade. His only vice is chain-smoking. To match his thinking, the cigarets are king-sized.
So is his personal empire. In addition to running AVCO, he is a director in six other companies, has a chunk of stock in mammoth Standard Gas & Electric Co., of which he was once board chairman, and is a special partner in a brokerage house, Emanuel. Deetjen & Co.
The New Dealers. As a side line, he cultivates politics—and politicos. He probably knows his way around Washington better than any other businessman. In these days when political storms determine so much of the business climate, he feels that the views of businessmen are poorly represented where they count. The National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, he likes to say, "spend a lot of money saying only what will please their members."
V.E. has seldom failed to present his case adequately to Washington. In his capacity for making friends easily, he has made a close friend of many a once-obscure person, and found him useful later, when he was not so obscure. V.E. met Leo Crowley before he rose to prominence as FDIC chairman, in 1939 put him in as the $50,000-a-year chairman of sprawling Standard Gas & Electric Co.
When Crowley later became Alien Property Custodian, he in turn appointed V.E. to the board of two of the richest plums in his hands, General Aniline & Dye Corp. and General Dyestuff Corp. Similarly, V.E. met George Allen ten-odd years ago, when the President's jester was just a man around Washington. Says V.E.: "He was a very amusing fellow and I took a liking to him."
This liking took the form, in 1943, of putting Allen on AVCO's board and, in 1944, Convair's board at $6,000 a year for each. No one seems to know exactly how V.E. benefits from such friendly gestures. In fact, V.E.'s friends at court do not seem to have been able to keep him from being handled, occasionally, as roughly as the N.A.M. Example: last spring CAB forced him to reduce AVCO's 20% interest in American Airlines to 4% under its rule that no company can operate airlines and also build planes.
Nor is George Allen, apparently, entirely sure what he does to earn his $12,000 a year. He has often laughed at what a corporation has bought when it has employed him as a director. Said he recently: "I wouldn't have the slightest idea of where to go to buy an airplane. . . . Hell, I don't even know where [Convair's office] is around here."
But both V.E. and Allen seem to find their association satisfactory.