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"Let's Charge." Friends of Bob Wood think so highly of him that once they would have liked to see him President of the U.S., in 1938 even tried to start a boom. The son of a Kansan who had fought with John Brown's raiders, Bob Wood graduated from West Point, served in the Philippines, spent ten years in Panama when the Canal was being built. He survived the discipline of General Goethals, escaped yellow fever, and made a name as chief quartermaster. When the U.S. entered World War I he returned to service, sailed for France as a colonel. His old boss, Goethals, called him back to Washington and made him Acting Quartermaster General and Director of Purchase & Storage.
Again he made a name for himself among the men who knew. The private merchandising business opened up to him like an oyster at war's end. After a time in a job with Montgomery Ward & Co. he went to Sears, Roebuck & Co., whose head was the late Julius Rosenwald, Jewish philanthropist.
It was as an executive of Sears, Roebuck & Co. that Chicago came to know Robert Wood best. In much the same way that he gobbled caramels, sometimes without removing the wrappers, the General gobbled up statistics, grazing through U.S. Census reports and the U.S. Statistical Abstracts like a goat chewing his way through a garden.
Out of these bewildering thickets of information he chewed many a regurgit-able flower of price fluctuations, buying habits, population trends. In 1925, seeing the mail-order business begin to dwindle as car-borne customers started shopping in town, he began putting Sears into the retail-store field. He was immediately successful. Last year the company grossed $749,000,000 of sales, 65% of which were made in its 600 retail stores.
He rose to the presidency. His employes respected him, though they sometimes misconstrued the scowl which masked him as he quick-stepped through his well-disciplined offices. He had a sudden and choleric temper. He was terrifyingly positive. But he was quick to give credit where credit was due, would take back every word when once convinced that he was wrong. The misleading scowl covered his absorption in his own thoughts. He was a friendly man, even a backslapper, and like many another tough U.S. businessman, a sentimentalist.
For years he carried in a pocket of his sloppy, ill-fitting clothes ("off the pile" at Sears) a copy of Kipling's If. His greatest pride is still his large and handsome family, which is being steadily increased by grandchildren, whose births the General always celebrates by presenting each new infant with a block of Sears, Roebuck stock. He takes time out to manage Grandchildren, Inc., a corporation set up with seven of his oldest grandchildren (he now has twelve), serving as president, vice president, etc. Their chief enterprise: caring for a flock of chickens and selling eggs to members of the family, who continue to live near each other in suburban Highland Park.