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Chairman Kappel now earns $271,667 a year and lives in a four-bedroom, six-telephone house in Bronxville, a New York suburb. He allows few ex pensive tastes to enter his well-modulated life. His wife does the cooking, except for parties. Kappel doesn't smoke, rarely drinks, and faithfully attends Bronxville's Dutch Reformed Church, whose 3,000 members make it the largest church of that denomination in the U.S. He does not openly participate in party politics ("I don't believe that I should"), but he likes to read books of a political nature. Among his recent favorites: J. Edgar Hoover's Masters of Deceit and Victor Lasky's J.F.K.: the Man & the Myth. Regularly, every two weeks, he plays with a bridge club, also enjoys an occasional shrewd game of poker. "He is a percentage player, not a chance taker," says a man who has often watched his game.
Much Like the Army. Kappel is the prototype of the A.T.&T. executive, that particular type of U.S. manager whose training and abilities make the telephone company about the best-managed firm anywhere. One former A.T.&T. vice president wrote that the company's management system "is much the same as the Army's." A.T.&T. is a pure meritocracy, run by men who started at the bottom and worked up, step by step, winning the nod of many bosses along the way. The executives at A.T.&T. combine in themselves dedication, sense of service, awareness of public responsibility, invocation of old-fashioned virtues, puritan earnestness, Rotary Club friendliness, and a touch of self-righteousness They consider themselves a breed apart —and they are. They value continuity and gradualism in management more than most, and, though at ease in handling vast sums, run their company with a peasant's fear of debt and the thrifty conviction that every piece of installed equipment ought to be good for 40 years. Most of all, they view their job—helping the people to speak —as an almost priestly calling.
To make sure of a continued supply of such men—they are not born, but made—A.T.&T. has developed one of U.S. business's most advanced programs of management training and evaluation. Every year it deploys 300 recruiters to search out 2,500 to 3,000 trainees on the nation's campuses. They pick their men only from the top half of the graduating classes, and look for those who have spent more time in the libraries than in the stadiums: A.T.&T.'s studies show that marks are the best indicator of how a candidate works out later, extracurricular activities the least reliable. The headhunters offer good starting salaries ($6,300 to $7,200) and a stock-purchase plan. Half of all employees own A.T.&T. shares, most of them bought at 85% of the market price and sometimes in installments; but no one in the company ever gets a stock option. About 900 men in Bell's system make $25,000 or more.
The new recruit soon learns that A.T.&T. insists on making one man —any man—ultimately responsible for every single project, however big or small, and that he stands to take the blame if that project sours. As soon as he joins the organization, each candidate is tossed into the decision-making maelstrom, perhaps as chief of a smalltown office or traffic department, where his