Business: Contract

In Holyoke, Mass, last week a Railway Express Agency truck turned into Canal Street. Finding no place to park, it drew up in the middle of the street. A crowd of curious Holyokels gathered around it for they knew that it carried a curious load, a load of history, a load of the

bitterantagonism long smoldering between two great Holyoke companies.

Two years after the panic of 1857, when industry was picking up again, there was incorporated Holyoke Water Power Co. whose canals were to be the lifeblood of the factories and mills in Holyoke and South Hadley. Through its life of three score years and twelve the company has retained its independence, grown rich on impressively steady earnings. But when the express truck drew up last week Holyoke Water Power had reason to regret something it made the very first year of its long life—a contract with American Writing Paper Co.

No friend of the power company is Sidney Louis Wilson, 63, the vigorous six-foot president of American Writing Paper Co. In 1923 he assumed the difficult task of reorganizing A. W. P., putting it on a profitable basis. From the first he considered that Holyoke Water Power Co. was too rigid in insisting upon exact adherence to old contracts. He and his company’s counsel searched for something they too could insist upon. It was discovered in this phrase: “. . . Annual rentals shall be paid in troy weight of silver of the standard value and fineness of the silver coin of 1859 … or an equivalent in gold, at the option of the grantee.” President Willson warned the power company he would insist upon a show-down unless certain modifications were made in the contract. The power company did nothing. So what was in the truck last week was a half-ton of silver bullion in payment of an $18,000 bill. At current prices the silver had cost American Writing Paper only about $5,000. The power company refused to accept the payment. Back to a bank went the silver bullion. Into the courts will now go the Battle of Holyoke.