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"I've Made Mistakes." Not everyone shares this fondness for the telephone company, but almost everyone has an opinion about it. To U.S. military chiefs it is a first-class defense contractor, and scientists consider its Bell Labs to be the finest industrial-research establish ment anywhere. A.T.&T. has become so much a part of the American scene that it is at once a source of envy and admiration and a butt of jokes. Says Cartoonist Al Capp, whose Li'I Abner delights in needling Mother Bell: "In this country, if we don't like our wives, or even our Government, we can change them. But have you ever tried to change your phone company?"
Fred Kappel does not take kindly to such impertinent questions. He likes to think of A.T.&T. as a warm and faithful creature, and of anyone who does not like its predominance as something of an ingrate. He lists his own home-phone number in the directory —and so do the presidents of the 23 regional operating companies that
A.T.&T. embraces in the Bell System. He also takes time out from each busy day to study stacks of mail from customers and stockholders on the the ory that "it's a good way to get a feel for what people are thinking," has ordered that every letter must be answered within seven days.
Kappel is convinced that life's biggest kicks and greatest challenges come from working in the large corporation. "This 'Organization Man' thing makes me disgusted," says he. "When someone talks that to me I say he doesn't know what he's talking about. Somebody who is really running a railroad must do his job and not be afraid about making mistakes. I've made all kinds of mistakes.
Somebody who never makes a mistake is sitting on his fanny not doing anything. But a man ought to be right more than half the time."
Percentage Player. Kappel has seen to it that he has been right more often than that. A barber's son who worked his way to an electrical-engineering degree at the University of Minnesota ('24), he joined A.T.&T. 40 years ago at $25-a-week. He was soon promoted from pole-hole digger to such jobs as "interference engineer" and "foreign wire relations engineer" and spotted by his superiors as a cool, unflappable fellow not given to snap decisions. Every night he took home a briefcase heavy with homework, and even when he went to the ballpark he took along other A.T.&T. people to talk operations and engineering. He steadily moved up 14 levels on the corporate escalator to a vice-presidency of A.T.& T.'s Northwestern Bell. He was called to New York headquarters, became president in 1954 of A.T.&T.'s manufacturing arm, Western Electric, and took over as president and chief executive of A.T.&T. in 1956. Says Kappel, who became board chairman in 1961: "I've