Business: Chicago Buyers

When anything extraordinary and un-accountable has happened lately on the New York Stock Exchange it has become more or less of a habit to account for it airily by saying: “That’s Chicago buying.” Many an offerer of this glib information when asked what he means by Chicago, answers: “Oh,Arthur Cutten and the rest—yon know.” Two announcements from Chicago last fortnight illustrated in part of whom “the rest” consist. One was the announcement of a new investment corporation — Manhattan-Dearborn Corp. The other news was sale of new stock by Chicago Investors’ Corp. The directorates of these new invest ment trusts each represent a distinct “set” in Chicago finance. One represents the Loop.* the other the North Shore; one represents a self-made generation, the other a second generation of inherited wealth and social prominence. Loop Team (Manhattan-Dearborn Corp.) John Daniel Hertz, Austrian born, “re tired” at 50, is the man who brought the Yellow Cab to Chicago and collected a fortune from its clicking meters. Once he wrote about sportsmen for the Chicago Record (extinct). Now he is himself a sportsman (chiefly horses) and winters in a cream-colored house on the Florida bank of the Atlantic Ocean. Albert Davis Lasker, chairman of Lord & Thomas and Logan (erstwhile Lord & Thomas) is head of the advertising agency which numbers among its accounts American Tobacco Co., Radio Corp. of America and many another. Once an $18 a week messenger boy in a Chicago agency, he now has a private barber shop in his agency office. Every morning he seats himself in a Koch barber chair and is shaved so close that he nearly bleeds. He always tips the barber $1. Mr. Lasker winters in a stucco house next door to Mr. Hertz’s. President Harding was his good friend. For a time (1921-23) he ran the U. S. Shipping Board.

William Wrigley Jr. of Catalina Island, baseball (Chicago ”Cubs”), gum and the Wrigley Building, is stout, bluff, good-natured, always ready to clasp the hand, to pass the Spearmint. He is fond of telling how, many years ago, he paused before a South Clark street restaurant, with holes in his shoes and snow on the ground, and spent his last dime for the “Biggest Bowl of Bean Soup in Chicago.” Mr. Wrigley will be 68 on the last day of the present month.

Charles A. McCulloch is chairman of Parmalee Co., whose buses take trunks and travelers to and fro between Chicago’s many railroad stations. He is largely interested in both the Chicago and New York Yellow Cabs. A onetime newsboy, he took part (in 1915) in an Old Newsboys’ Day, stood on a corner with his newspapers, sold them out swiftly by the expedient of crying, falsely, facetiously, “Doubleuxtree! Charlie Ross is found!” There is a Loop story that when the late J. Ogden Armour was in a state of acute financial difficulty, Mr. McCulloch offered him a check for one million dollars. “Thank you, Charlie,” said Mr. Armour, “but it wouldn’t be a drop in the bucket.” Mr. McCulloch lives at No. 936 Lake Shore Drive.

Herbert (“Hub”) Stern is head of Balaban & Katz, in which house are many cinemansions. He has a year-round sunburn and a passion for travel, sightseeing. Once he went to Mexico with a party of friends most of whose interest in things Mexican was the fact that Volstead and several other U. S. regulations are nonoperative south of the Rio Grande. Mr. Stern, however, tripped from pueblo to statue to relic, insisted upon seeing the sights rather than drinking the drinks. Before selling entertainment, he sold bonds (for S. W. Straus & Co.). His brother, Lawrence Stern, is a director of Lawrence Stern & Co., brokers and offerers of Manhattan-Dearborn stock.

Herbert Bayard Swope, redheaded, Missouri-born, onetime executive editor of the New York World, seems the chief Manhattan representative on Manhattan-Dearborn’s directorate. Since leaving the World Mr. Swope’s chief public activity was accompanying big Thomas Lincoln Chadbourne to Europe and persuading Sir Hugo Hirst not to discriminate against U. S. stockholders in General Electric of England (TIME, April i). John Daniel Hertz is his good friend. North Shore Team (Chicago Investor’s Corp.)

Edward Aloysius Cudahy Jr. is son of the founder of Cudahy Packing Co., of which Father Edward is Chairman and Son Edward is President (since 1926). He is 6 ft. 2 in. tall, spent 20 years working his way up from the stockyards, saw overseas War service. His clubs include: Chicago, Chicago Athletic, Old Elm, Shoreacres, Onwentsia, Racquet, Saddle & Cycle.

W’. McCormick Blair of Lee, Higginson & Co. belongs to the famed and numerous Chicago Blairs. The Blair foundation was laid in the plumbing business. A more dashing Blair is William Mitchell Blair, poloist. W. McCormick Blair is quiet, immaculately dressed, sedate.

Donald B. Douglas is a director o£ Quaker Oats Co. That cereal company is numerously represented on the C. I. C. board. Another Quaker Oatman is R. Douglas Stuart, vice president of Quaker Oats, and a near-Quaker Oatman is James H. Douglas Jr. (Princeton, 1920, Cambridge and Harvard Law), whose father is chairman of Quaker Oats’ executive com-mittee. Good-looking, good-golfing James H. Douglas Jr. is a member of Field, Glore & Co., brokers offering C. I. C. stock. Field, Glore & Co. is also Represented on the C. I. C. directorate by Charles F. Glare, horseman, polo novice.

Clement Studebaker Jr., son of the late motors man; graduate of Northwestern University, onetime treasurer of Studebaker Bros. Mfg. Co., shifted from automobiles to watches to utilities to investment trusts. He is head of South Bend Watch Co., also of North American Light & Power Co. His clubs, widely scattered, include Abenaqui (Rye Beach, N. Y.), Union League (Chicago), Algonquin (Boston), Lotus and Union League (New York), Knollwood (Lake Forest, Ill.).

Ralph Austin Bard, partner in Bard & Co., President of C. I. C., was a three-letter man (Baseball, Basketball, Football) at Princeton (class of 1906). His club list includes Chicago, University, Attic, Industrial, Commonwealth, Exmoor, Monterey Peninsula Country (California), Mountain Lake (Florida). Other C. I. C. men include James B. Forgan Jr., of the famed Scotch banking family, vice president of Chicago’s First National; Alfred Ernest Hamill, of Hathaway & Co. (commercial paper), also of Scotch-Irish banking ancestry; William H. Mitchell of Mitchell, Hutchins & Co. (brokers) ; Dudley Gates, vice president of Marsh & McLennan, Inc. (insurance) ; Henry L. Hanley, executive vice president of North American Light & Power; Arthur Andersen, of Arthur Andersen & Co. (certified public accountants) and William Blair Baggaley.

* Central business district, bounded by a loop of the elevated railway.