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In their spare time, the boys worked to help make ends meet, in line with the family philosophy: "God will provide if you will get out and scratch." Neil mowed lawns, shoveled snow, wrapped bundles in a laundry, worked in a can factory. By the time he finished high school, he had saved $1,000. Like his brothers before him, he applied for a Harvard Club scholarship ("because it was available"), took a competitive exam and won.
At Harvard, he earned part of his way playing for dances at Wellesley with a band of his own (he played piccolo and piano). He played center on the basketball team, headed Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Harvard's last remaining national fraternity. He majored in economics (B average), neither smoked nor drank (he likes an occasional drink now), but was not above staying up all night playing low-stake bridge and poker.
Running Hop. After college, McElroy got a job at P. & G. as mail clerk in the advertising department, learned the ins & outs by reading mail from P. & G.'s house-to-house selling crews, ad agency and distributors. He planned to go back to Harvard Business School, but he traveled so fast in P. & G. that he never did. After a stint selling soap, he was made manager of the company's then small promotion department. At 26, he was sent abroad to help take over a small soap plant in England, there got a good education in a diversity of problems: manufacturing, purchasing, delivery.
Back in the U.S., McElroy got his first big chance in P. & G.'s advertising department. His boss, tending a sick wife, was often absent, so it was up to McElroy to run things. Says he: "It was the kind of a situation bound to lead to the hothouse development of a man—or break him completely." Gradually McElroy's ability caught the eye of P. & G.'s longtime President Richard R. Deupree.
For years P. & G. products had gone their separate ways, taking care not to step on one another's toes. But in the late '20s, the company had brought out Ivory Flakes, started production of granulated soap, bought up Oxydol, Lava, Duz. McElroy had a new idea for selling them: Why not have a free-for-all, with no holds barred? "At first," says he, "some of the more conservative members of the company cringed at the idea of having a punch taken at ourselves by ourselves." But eventually McElroy won his point, persuaded his elders that the way to keep fast-growing P. & G. from becoming too clumsy was to have it compete with itself.
President Deupree. a supersalesman who played a big part in P. & G.'s big expansion, liked the idea. He also pushed the company heavily into radio and soap opera. As McElroy moved up to advertising manager, vice president and president (Deupree became chairman in 1948), he built the individual "brand management" system that gives P. & G. its competitive drive today, and the research staff that has kept new P. & G. products rolling on to the market.