Business: Durant’s Dishes

Durant, Who Won and Lost Fortunes,

Starts Anew in 5-Cent Lunch Room

W. C. DURANT MOPS OWN FLOOR

Last week even readers with no great sentiment for Wall Street’s old bulls felt the poignancy of these headlines. In 1886, when Henry Ford was sawing wood on his father’s farm, William Crapo Durant was introducing mass production to the buggy business. What passed for Vision in those days was astigmatism to Durant. He crashed the gas buggy business in 1904 by taking over Buick; in 1908 he combined Buick, Oakland and Oldsmobile into General Motors. When Lee. Higginson and the Seligmans manipulated him out of it, he went after Ford with Chevrolet, in which he manipulated himself back into control of General Motors in 1916. Fatally entranced by the stockmarket, William Durant lost his General Motors shirt ($120,000,000) in 1920. The Durant car, with which he planned to recoup his fortunes in 1921, is no longer made. When Asbury Park, N. J. newshawks discovered unsinkable, 74-year-old Mr. Durant merrily washing dishes in a lunchroom last week they baked up a fine riches-to-rags story.

It took 24 hours to set the Durant dish-washing tale straight. Though declaring himself bankrupt last February, Automan Durant is no down-&-outer, still maintains offices on Park Avenue, weekends on a $100,000 estate at Deal, N. J. President of Deal Gables Corp. (real estate), he owns a one-story building in North Asbury, which was built as a salesroom for Durant cars ten years ago. Concessionaires opened a food market there last December, did so badly that one by one they had to close up. Last month Landlord Durant took the place in hand, later announced the opening of a finer North Asbury Market under “W. C. Durant—the New Manager—at Your Service.”

Capitalist, not counterman, Mr. Durant went down to North Asbury last week to see that all was swept and garnished for the grand opening. According to his nephew Wallace R. Willett, he went through the new concessions “like a whirlwind.” Mr. Durant took up a mop in one shop, a dish cloth in another, to show concessionaires his ideas of spotlessness. Next day he departed for his old home town of Flint, Mich, on other business while North Asbury housewives stormed the Market’s debut, attracted by Mr. Durant’s special lunches at 5¢ an item, his special offers of bread at two loaves for 12¢, five pounds of sugar for 15¢, potatoes at 2¢ a pound.

Said faithful Nephew Willett: “Mr. Durant is just as enthusiastic over building up the Food Market as he ever was over automobiles. In fact he no longer can bear the thought of an automobile. . . .”