(5 of 11)
From the Negro stemmers to Chairman Gray, most of the company's 14,000 employees are local folk. Like Gray, whose father and uncle were both Reynolds chairmen, many are the second or third generation to work for Reynolds. Twelve of the 15 directors are company officers who meet weekly at an informal luncheon, can be rounded up in ten minutes at any other time if anything important comes up. Reynolds' factory workers (35% 0, them Negro) are so loyal to the firm that they have kept Reynolds the only major nonunion firm in the industry, even though it pays no higher than other companies. Reynolds paternalistically rewards its employees with generous fringe benefits, including a pension plan, notably few firings, and the fulltime service of a Methodist minister, the Rev. Clifford Peace, who listens to their troubles on company time.
Reynolds' Gray is proudest of a much-abused, often misused concept known as teamwork. He freely delegates authority ("Confidence is important"), but makes certain that everyone knows precisely what is expected of him. He runs the company through seven top committees, headed by directors responsible for every function from buying tobacco leaf to setting up drugstore displays. Unhappy about the way one department was running, Gray last year walked up to its head, said softly that something had to be done, concluded: "I'll see you in six months." Exactly six months later, Gray checked up. The matter had been straightened out.
A former salesman himself, Gray takes particular pride in the sales force, has made it the industry's biggest (reported by Reynolds at 1,200 men, but estimated by the industry at up to 2,000) and most respected. Gray's taste in salesmen runs to those with a calculatingly homey counterside manner, men known at every crossroads store from New Mexico to Alaska for their friendliness, their willingness to set up displays and help the retailer in any task, their speed in filling cigarette orders. Result: the retailer often gives them a helping hand in turn, awards them choice display space. As one who knows the value of a quick flash report from the field on a new competitive situation, Gray answers his own phone, has long had standing orders that any salesman can call him directly at any time.
"Emma, Brenda, Belle." Gray sometimes tours the retailers himself (often in one of the company's three private planes), but most of his time is spent in Winston-Salem. There, he is out of bed daily at 6 a.m. sharp in the first-floor bedroom of his modified Georgian home on his 800-acre Brookberry Farm, where he lives with his wife and family (five sons, ranging from 9 to 22). He eats breakfast alone at 7:20 because "I made a deal with my wife when we were first married.
I'm not in the best humor at breakfast, and we wanted to stay married." For years, he usually prowled the farm before breakfast. But he gave up the custom when a disorder of his leg muscles forced him to walk with a cane. Now he usually does some paperwork in the library before being chauffeured to work in his 1958 grey Oldsmobile station wagon. The watchful eyes of his father and uncle stare down at him from the walls of his 19th-floor office.