Business: Longest

:’Longest”

The Manhattan banking firms of Speyer & Co. and J. & W. Seligman & Co. now control the St. Louis-San Francisco Railway Co. (the Frisco). In the past two months, they have quietly been buying up a substantial interest in the Rock Island & Pacific Railway Co. (the Rock Island), an interest which the directors of the Frisco announced last week had been acquired by them with a view to merging the two systems. The new system will have the longest trackage in the world—13,585 miles, 5,546 in the Frisco and 8,039 in the Rock Island—overrunning by more than 1,000 miles the 12,447 miles of the Southern Pacific System. The combined assets will total $875,000,000. The merger also will put the two banking houses on a peerage as really great railroad bankers with J. P. Morgan & Co. and Kuhn, Loeb & Co. But the Interstate Commerce Commission must approve such a merger.* The Frisco has two principal lines, which cross at right angles. One starts at St. Louis and extends southwesterly with its fork reaching into Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. Another line extends southeasterly from Kansas City to Birmingham, Ala., where by arrangement with the Southern Railway it makes connection with the 147 miles of the Muscle Shoals, Birmingham & Pensacola, of which the Frisco recently got control. This branch gives it tappage to the present Florida flood of shipments. The main line of the Rock Island runs from Chicago to Denver and Colorado Springs, with another line going from Chicago to Santa Rosa, N. M., where it joins the El Paso & Southwestern (a branch of the Southern Pacific). Other lines stretch from St. Louis to Kansas City, St. Paul and Minneapolis. Altogether it covers 14 Midland states. At St. Louis, Kansas City, Memphis and elsewhere it makes contact with the Frisco. Thus the southern termini of the merged lines will be Pensacola, Fla., on the east, and Fort Worth, Tex., on the west; in the north Chicago, St. Paul and Minneapolis; in the west Denver; and in the near east, St. Louis. The proposed merger brings out some intricacies of railroad financing. The Rock Island and the Southern Pacific have long worked together; have run through trains from Chicago to the Pacific Coast. These two roads had the same bankers until the late Edward Henry Harriman (died 1909) bought the Southern Pacific with the desire of merging it with the Union Pacific. He took his business to Kuhn, Loeb & Co., where it had remained until this new development. The Frisco used to be one of the Gould roads, until the intricate financial strength of that family became unloosed and scattered.

Coc’

“What’ll y’ ‘ave?” asks the grubby clerk behind the soft-drink counter. The customer leans against the clammy marble; looks at rows of bottles partly filled, murky glasses, fruits heaped; sniffs, smells a sour counter rag, decomposed synthetic fruit juices, sweetish syrups; exclaims: “Oh, give me a coc’.” Clerk Phillipos Kakosmios pushes a thumb at a pump plunger, which emits into a small tumbler to a depth of half an inch a brownish liquid, adds thereto a squirt or two of carbonated water and some cracked ice, stirs all, and serves a glass of Coca-Cola. The customer nuzzles at the bursting gas bubbles, gulps down the drink, and away. He considers himself refreshed. In his mouth he has a sweetish, saccharine, yet astringent, puckering taste.

To tease out that “Oh, give me a coc’,” the Coca-Cola Co., with headquarters in Atlanta, Ga., spent during the past four years $20,000,000, the public learned from financial reports last week. Last year was the most successful of that concern in business. It is expected to report earnings of around $15 a share on the 500,000 shares of no par value common stock outstanding. The year before, actual earnings were $10 a share; in 1923, $11.14. Gross sales approximated the record of 1920 when they were $32,341,429. The company has manufacturing plants (it sells its syrup to bottlers and soda fountains) and branch offices in eight cities, sales offices in 16, warehouses in 24. Its large profits were due to shrewd purchases of sugar at low prices, to improved manufacturing and distribution methods, and mostly to advertising.

* The Commission is now considering the consolidation, into the Van Sweringens’ eastern Nickel Plate System, of the Nickel Plate, Erie, Pere Marquette, Hocking Valley and Chesapeake & Ohio railroads (TIME, Jan. 11, BUSINESS).