Business & Finance: Porcupine Quartet

President Matthew Chauncey (“Matt”) Brush of American International Corp. is a potent booster of gold stocks. To celebrate Ontario’s gold boom, fortnight ago he and a platoon of Wall Street operators visited the Porcupine fields as guests of President John P. (“Jack”) Bickell of Mclntyre Porcupine Mines and Charles McCrea, Ontario’s Minister of Mines. During the inspection tour Mr. Brush got lost for a while in a deep gallery. At a dinner given in a curling rink, Mr. Bickell introduced a miner quartet, grimy, sweat-streaked, dressed in their working clothes: rubber coats, boots, breeches, helmets.

Matt Brush likes to give parties, with stunts. He collects elephants in all forms, once took a live one to a party. Back in Manhattan last week he fell to thinking what fun the Canada trip had been, especially the miner quartet. Putting deed to thought, he telephoned the mine, arranged to have the singers shipped down by special plane in time to perform next evening at a return dinner to Minister McCrea. A second message stipulated that the miners must remain dirty and wear their work clothes to earn their $1,000 fee.

The last order the Porcupine quartet had not the heart to obey. They simply had to clean up when they went to the big city. They appeared at the dinner in store clothes with faces bright & shining. Vexed, Matt Brush would not let them sing. He and jovial Speculator Bernard E. (“Ben”) Smith, upon whom the quartet had also made a profound impression and who had helped finance the stunt, were deeply disappointed over the whole business.

The Porcupine songsters sent for their work clothes. Four days later they earned their pay by singing for the American Institute of Mining & Metallurgical Engineers.