ROMANTIC CAREER OF FRANK PICK

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 62, 30 August 1940, Page 14

ROMANTIC CAREER OF FRANK PICK

A talk on Frank Pick, new DirectorGeneral in the Ministry of Information in London, was given by Nelle Scanlan from 2YA on August 15. We summarise it here: F RANK PICK is a Yorkshire man, not yet sixty, and with a wonderful record of organisation and achievement behind him, Over lunch one day, he told me something of his life, which is one of those romantic careers you come across in England. He was at that time head of the London Transport Board, which controls all the trams, trains, buses, motor coaches, trolley buses and underground railways within thirty miles of Charing Cross. Not the actual head, Lord Ashfield is the head, but he is the active head. And he was getting £10,000 a year for the job. He told me that day that he would willingly take half the salary for half the work. .It was a tremendously responsible position, but there was no such thing as halving it. According to his own account, he didn’t come of rich or influential people, nor did he claim a brilliant scholastic career, medals or degrees. Perhaps that

was modesty; in any case, it isn’t always the medal winners at school who get to the top in later life. Nor would he admit whether it was finance or organisation that was his strong suit. But I believe it is his genius for organisation that has made his services so valuable. As a lad, he worked in various offices in the North of England. Then he came to London, like most ambitious men. He assured me that he had " got the sack" several times. One incident I remember. He said that he had some office job, and was set to work in a back room, with little to do but poke around. It was one of those conservative old places where most of the clerks were ancients who had spent a lifetime with the firm, and the dust of antiquity was heavy over the place. And when this quiet, North-country youth offered some bright suggestions, and stirred up the dust a bit, he was " fired." Wherever he worked, I fancy, he saw newer and better ways of doing things. It was his work with a railway company which first brought him into prominence, but it was not until he was appointed to the London Transport Board in London that he became a well-known figure.

Now, the name of Frank Pick is associated in the public mind with many great achievements, the latest being the evacuation of the children of London at the beginning of the war. It was Frank Pick who planned and carried out that stupendous task, without a single accident or mishap. Thousands and thousands of children were transferred from London to various points in the country under his direct supervision.