Business: Gloomy Singer

Habitually gloomy on the subject of world trade is Singer Manufacturing Co.’s venerable President Sir Douglas Alexander. At annual stockholders’ meetings held in Manhattan by Singer in September, because it takes accountants eight months to make a report on Singer’s outlandish business, Sir Douglas has seldom beamed since Singer lost $106,000,000 in the War ($84,300,000 in Russia). Black depression crept into Sir Douglas’s cultivated voice in September 1933, when he had to report that Singer profits in the preceding year hit a low of $2,412,698. Last week Sir Douglas gave Singer stockholders the moderately good news that the company made $16,291,206 in 1935, compared to $13,833,917 in 1934. But he warned that peaceful penetration was getting more & more difficult for the sewing machine business.

Gloomed he: “The world is in such a chaotic state and conditions change so rapidly that it is impossible to formulate plans with confidence that they can be carried out. . . . Penalties in one country are followed by retaliation in others and we are really engaged in a commercial war. . . .”

From Singer representatives in Spain, he said, no word had been received about possible damage to Singer sales units or the Singer Building in Madrid. The company has called off all Spanish shipments. Sir Douglas did not say how much business Singer did in Spain last year.

Last week another great world-spanning company, International Telephone & Telegraph, reported a net income of $3,353,813 for the first six months of 1936, no less than $1,691,439 of which came from Spanish units. On the I. T. & T. report appeared the signature of President Lieutenant-Colonel Sosthenes Behn. Skeptical stockholders who knew that Colonel Behn had been in Madrid for two months looking after I. T. & T.’s valuable subsidiary, Spanish National Telephone Co., were informed that Colonel Behn’s approval was no fiction. The report had been radioed to him by way of South America and returned by the same route.