Index

N. Y. Stock Exchange seats went to a new high last week when an unannounced purchaser bought from, an undisclosed seller a seat for $595,000.

The "Hoover Market" had a big slump. (See p. 46).

Airplanes. Formation of North American, Inc., a $25,000,000 holding company to specialize in aviation stocks was announced last week by C. M. Keys, President of Curtiss, and also head of the new company. Among the backers are National Aviation Corp., Hemphill, Noyes & Co., Blair & Co.

Cow counters last week announced that there were 23,000,000 milk cows in the U. S. Roy C. Potts, of the Department of Agriculture, said each U. S. inhabitant drinks an average of 1 1/2 lbs. of milk per day; consumes another 1 1/2 lbs. in butter, cheese and bread.

British shipbuilding, long depressed, is active again, with Clyde, Mersey and Tyne River shipyards expecting an active winter. Clyde shipyards have contracts for 30 vessels, including the Empress of Britain, a 40,000-ton liner to be built for Canadian Pacific. Seven whaling ships, one of 20,000 tons, are building for Norwegian whalers, which are rapidly driving British whalers from the Antarctic.

Cigarets are headed for a 100,000,000,000-year, if output of November and December is proportional to production during the first ten months of the year, which shows a 9.3% increase over corresponding period in 1927. Reason: women. Cigar production was 2% off.

Constantinople may soon be the Detroit of the Orient. For the Turkish Government has granted to Henry Ford a 25-year concession by which he may erect a Constantinople plant for assembling automobiles, trucks, tractors, planes. Ford must use Turkish coal, Turkish workmen.

Gum. Few gum chewers who will chew Wrigley's Doublemint gum in 1929 will realize that the use of the word "Doublemint" is costing the Wrigley company almost $2,000,000. Back in 1911 the L. P. Larson gum company, claiming prior rights to the word "Doublemint," sued Wrigley for its use of this brand name. After a -year battle, Wrigley Gum and Larson Gum have settled the quarrel by payment of $1,900,000 to the Larson company.

John Moody, President of Moody's Investment Service, last week predicted that the next few years would see "the greatest boom in the history of this country." He foresaw the greatest advance in commodity prices since 1921, a large increase in per capita consumption of leading products, and a redistribution of prosperity which would include the small merchant and manufacturer as well as the large corporation.

Grain. Forty-four years ago Chicagoans took pride in their new Board of Trade Building at Jackson Boulevard and La Salle Street. Antiquated, this building was last week abandoned, to be replaced by a $20,000,000 building on the same site. Centre of grain trading for 44 years, the old building has seen trading in eleven billion bushels of "cash" grain, amounting to 6,000,000 full freight cars. Here P. D. Armour, Joseph Leiter, James A. Patten and many another operator became famous. Here Arthur Cutten, prominent in Wall Street's late bull market, took the title of Corn King from J. Ogden Armour. Here "Old Hutch"--P. B. Hutchinson--ran the price of wheat from 89 3/4-c- a bushel to $2.00, then watched the market collapse to 60-c-. Present value of a Trade seat is $45,000. When the building opened it was $2,400. Even further back, in 1848, when a few pioneers organized the first grain exchange, they had to supply free lunches and beer to get traders to attend.

Metal Exchange. From 60% to 75% of the world's tin supply is produced in the British Empire, but more than half of it it used in the U. S. The only Tin Exchange in the world was in London until, last week, the National Metal Exchange opened at No. 27 William St., Manhattan. Tin futures ranged from 53.50 (cents per pound) on December deliveries to 52.60 on May deliveries. A pig of tin was ceremoniously installed in a glass case in the Exchange rooms.

Banks. In Chicago the First National Bank and its subsidiary, the First Trust and Savings Bank, absorbed the Union Trust Co. The merger created the ninth largest bank in the U. S.*

Patten: Board of Trade. Chicago grain traders last week mourned the passing of the old Board of Trade building at Jackson Boulevard and LaSalle Street and the death of James A. Patten, one of the men who did most to make that building famed. Operating on a large scale from 1890 to his retirement in 1910, Mr. Patten is credited with being the only man who ever established corners in all four of the major markets--wheat, corn, oats and cotton. Though prosecuted under the Sherman Law for acting "in restraint of trade" Mr. Patten always denied that he was a "speculator," maintaining that his ability to forecast grain prices resulted from his thorough knowledge of crop conditions.

* Largest bank: National City, Manhattan. Largest under one roof: Continental-Illinois, Chicago.