Business & Finance: Rainbow Man

When Commander Richard Evelyn Byrd named an Antarctic range the Charles Bob Mountains, most people were mystified. The Rockefeller Mountains and Marie Byrd Land had been understandable. But who was Charles Bob? Investigators learned that he was a tall, broad-shouldered, genial man of 42 with the middle name of Victor who had come to Manhattan’s financial district from the West, maintained luxurious offices at 120 Broadway. In these offices he busied himself over the affairs of many enterprises, three of which especially stood out. One was Rainbow Luminous Products, Inc., long involved in a raucous patent squabble with Claude Neon Lights, recently suspended from trading on the Curb (TIME, Oct. 13). The others were Metal & Mining Shares, recipient of much publicity last week, and Gold Center Mines, Inc., holding company for properties from British Columbia to Bolivia, still valid and going strong last week. Popular among potent friends, apparently rich and a zestful spender, Mr. Bob was a typical “boom era” newcomer. Knowing this one could understand why he had been willing to pay in on the much-publicized Byrd expedition. Indeed, it was not his first attempt at national publicity. Shortly after Colonel Lindbergh’s return to the U. S., Mr. Bob had announced that he was forming a $50,000,000 airways company to control all U. S. lines, that the Government was in back of him, that Colonel Lindbergh would head the great enterprise. Authoritative sources speedily denied the airy scheme and Charles Victor Bob’s rise to fame was postponed.

Last week it became apparent how little was really known about ambitious Mr. Bob. His mysteriousness was accentuated when suddenly he vanished. Thq first report was that, accompanied by pilot and secretary, he was lost in flight between Chicago and New York. Discovery of his airplane in Chicago spoiled this theory, but the continued absence of any word from the three men heightened interest. In Manhattan, Mrs. Bob said she knew nothing of her husband’s whereabouts, became prostrate. A son said that lately his father had feared a personal attack. Then mysterious telephone calls began. The secretary, apparently intoxicated, telephoned the Bob offices from Chicago, said he was no longer with Mr. Bob, that he was not quite sure whether he was going to come back to New York or not, that in five minutes he was going to be so far away that tracing the call would be useless. A few days later another man claiming to be Mr. Bob’s secretary (but giving a different name) called a Washington newspaper to say the missing man would show up in a few days. But Charles Victor Bob stayed missing. It was learned that he had cashed a check for $108,000 the day before he vanished.

Soon after Bob disappeared, New York’s Assistant Attorney-General Watson Washburn announced that he had beea looking into the affairs of Metal & Mining Shares for some months. Gradually grave irregularities were disclosed. By the end of last week Assistant Attorney-General Washburn had made at least three disclosures of so grave a nature as to justify talk of warrants for arrest, indictments. Metal & Mining Shares had falsified an earnings report by which it showed $324,000 profit for the first half of the year. The list of investments which it reported was likewise falsified. The high-grade bluechips said to constitute the $6,000,000 portfolio had been syphoned out, many securities of speculative Bob mining promotions sucked in. And in the company’s safe reposed none of the securities it owned.

After asserting they had no part in the irregularities, Mr. Bob’s associates held long, mysterious meetings, still maintained their chief’s return was not far distant. In the offices of Rainbow Lumi nous Products, directors met for hours, hinted that new, strong interests were about to take hold, found the company decidedly solvent With these events the upward climb of Charles V. Bob seemed gravely impeded if not permanently halted. His whole story is the tale of a mining man who turned from the search of natural metals for the easier gold that lies at the end of the financial rainbow.

The arc of Mr. Bob’s career started in Ely, Nevada, where around 1906 he was a practical mining man. In 1920 with Thomas F. Cole he raised enough money to finance the Comstock merger. He be came head of the combined companies, retained the position after the Cecil Rhodes South African group bought control.

With this impetus, he began promoting many deals. He began to be known in Salt Lake City as a big-deal mining man.

In 1922 he made his first business appear ance in Manhattan where he was identified with Boundary Red Mountains, a stock which, in the words of the Better Business Bureau, “skyrocketed away off the Curb.” Investigations followed, but he seemed clear of guilt. The same story followed with Engineers Gold.

With the formation of Charles V. Bob & Co. and a large personal investment in Rainbow Luminous Products he started the grand financial pace which he maintained until last week.

In seeking reasons for the story’s end, a remark by Assistant Attorney-General Washburn was significant: “Until after the stockmarket crash, Metal & Mining Shares seems to have been a well managed investment trust.”