Directed Growth of College Plant
LATE H. B. THAYER '79, EVEN WHILE HEAD OF WORLD'S LARGESTCORPORATION, FILLED IMMEASURABLE TRUSTEE ROLE
THE ranks of Dartmouth men lost an eminent and beloved figure with the death on September 3 of Harry B. Thayer '79, former president of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company and a life trustee of the College from 1917 until his resignation last June. Mr. Thayer, who was 78 years old, had been ill for more than a year, and died at his home in New Canaan, Conn., after being brought by special train from his summer home in Sullivan, Maine.
At the funeral services on September 5, President Hopkins was an honorary pallbearer, along with Walter S. Gifford, president of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company; Abraham Lincoln Salt, former president of the Graybar Electric Company; and John D. Fearhake of New Canaan.
Mr. Thayer, always active in Dartmouth affairs, was elected an Alumni Trustee of the College in 1915, and two years later was elected a Life Trustee. After serving on the education, business administration, and executive committees of the Board, he was appointed in 1926 to the chairmanship of the newly created Committee on the Physical Development and Maintenance of the Plant, a post which he filled continuously until ill health forced him to ask to be relieved in 1935. The tremendous growth in the Dartmouth plant during the past decade was effected largely under Mr. Thayer's guidance, the new library, the new Tuck School group, Sanborn Hall, Carpenter Hall, Silsby Natural Science Building, and many new dormitories heading a program that increased the value of the Dartmouth plant by millions of dollars.
With his physical strength at low ebb, Mr. Thayer felt that he was not performing the duties of a Dartmouth trustee the way he should and last spring tendered his resignation. The Board reluctantly accepted this at its June meeting and passed a special resolution of appreciation for the service which Mr. Thayer had rendered to the College. At the time of his withdrawal from the Board, Mr. Thayer was second ranking trustee in point of seniority, being surpassed only by Lewis Parkhurst '78, who became a trustee in 1908.
Following his retirement from the American Telephone and Telegraph Company in 1928, Mr. Thayer spent a great deal of his time in travel and circled the earth several times. His last trip abroad was taken last year, when he joined President and Mrs. Hopkins in Italy and conducted them about Egypt, in which land he was particularly at home.
His career as a business executive took place in the best Horatio Alger manner, young Mr. Thayer, just out of Dartmouth, starting as a shipping clerk in the Chicago office of the Western Electric Company in 1881, rising to the presidency of that company in 1908, and finally, in 1919, becoming head of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, one of the colossal financial organizations in America. Under Mr. Thayer's regime as president, the A. T. & T. became one of the two greatest companies in the country, and in 1924 finally eclipsed the United States Steel Corporation, the country's first billion-dollar corporation.
Mr. Thayer was born August 17, 1858 at Northfield, Vt., the son of James Carey Barrell Thayer and Martha Jane Pratt Thayer. Both families were of old New England stock who could trace their ancestry to the Mayflower. Following his graduation from Dartmouth, his first employment was with a bank in his home town, the Northfield Savings Bank. From July 19, 1880 to January, 1881 he worked for the Central Vermont Railroad Company at Bellows Falls, Vt., leaving there for Chicago.
Had Administrative Genius
Mr. Thayer had studied mostly Greek and Latin in college, and knew little of technical problems when he started with the Bell system, but he knew how to handle men and his insight into organization was amazing. He had ample opportunity with the Bell system to put his theory of organization into operation, and his handling of the situation when Chicago deliveries began to slacken was directly responsible for his advancement to the vice presidency of the Western Electric Company. When the Russo-Japanese war broke out in 1904, he figured that there would be a serious shortage of platinum, most of which came from Russia and which his company needed for contact metal, so he cornered every available ounce and then set the Western Electric research staff to work to find a substitute. Ten years of research, kept going with Mr. Thayer's encouragement, brought success in a group of alloys of gold, silver, palladium, and a small amount of platinum—and incidentally saved telephone users millions of dollars.
The late Theodore Vail, then head of the A. T. & T., had kept his eye on the young New Englander who was making things hum in the Western Electric Company, and a year after Mr. Thayer became head of the Western Electric he was brought into the parent company as vice president. When Mr. Vail became chairman of the board in 1919, Mr. Thayer supplanted him as president.
During the war, when the government took over all utilities, Mr. Thayer continued to direct the A. T. & T. and also served on the Aircraft Board, a si-a-year job. During the next decade the A. T. & T. enjoyed its greatest growth, and with the introduction of radio-telephony in 1923, Mr. Thayer opened the first ship-to-shore telephone service and talked to London. In 1925 Mr. Thayer relinquished the presidency to Walter S. Gifford and became chairman of the board. Three years later he reached 70, the retiring age, and after nearly fifty years with the Bell System his resignation was accepted and his post discontinued.
Mr. Thayer was a member of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers and was a former president of the Telephone Pioneers of America. He was also a member of the New York Chamber of Commerce, and had been a member of numerous New York clubs from which he resigned because of ill health. He was a member of the Dartmouth chapters of Delta Kappa Epsilon and Phi Beta Kappa.
He received the degree of Master of Arts from Dartmouth in 1915, and in 1929, upon the occasion of his fiftieth reunion, was honored by the College with the Doctorate of Laws. In conferring the honorary LL.D., President Hopkins made the following citation:
"Deviser of the policies and builder of the organization from which evolved one of the country's great industrial enterprises, the efficiency of which in production was matched alone by its fruitfulness as a training school from which other great corporations have drawn executives; later in the critical post-war period as head of the world's greatest public utility, conservator of its strength and eliminator of its war-imposed weaknesses to a degree that restored internal morale and gained public confidence to an unprecedented degree: of you, Dartmouth men say now, in deep appreciation of the continuing magnitude of your service to the College, as has been said before to you in formal address by your business associates, 'You have had more than our confidence, more than our loyalty, and more than our respect. You have had, and you always will have, our deep and sincere affection.' Today, on occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of your graduation from this college, Dartmouth confers upon you the deferred honor your modesty has long made you reluctant to accept, and in recognition of your contribution to the economic forces of this nation, in admiration for the great administrative genius which is yours, and in gratitude for the incalculable value of your service to the College as alumnus and trustee, declares that you are preeminently entitled to be, and that you are, a Doctor of Laws."
THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES WHEN H. B. THAYER PLAYED A VITAL ROLE This group on the Board in 1930 carried through Dartmouth's extensive building program. Mr. Thayer was chairman of the Trustee committee on the plant. The members ofthe Board pictured here: left to right, President Hopkins '01; John R. McLane '07; LewisParkhurst '7B; Albert O. Brown '78; H. B. Thayer '79; Clarence B. Little '81; Morton C.Tuttle '97; Charles G. Dubois '91; William R. Gray '04; Edward W. Knight '87; Fred A.Howland '87.
Two YEARS AGO MR. THAYER ENJOYED FINE HEALTH (Top) Mr. Thayer (left) and William W. Grant '03, of Denver (center), listen to dryhumor of Philip S. Mar den '94, of Lowell, Mass. (Bottom) A group of Trustees: EdwardW. Knight '87, of Charleston, W. Va.; Morton C. Tuttle '97, of Boston; Dean William R.Gray '04, of Hanover; and Mr. Thayer.
