Guardian & Proteges

Twenty-nine years ago a swarthy little Armenian urchin named Mike Devlet sold foreign language newspapers in the cheap restaurants of Manhattan's East Side. He discovered that although he did not know how to pronounce their names customers would pay 10-c- to hear him try. Then, after a brief career delivering eggs, he went to high school. His teachers were not impressed with his Latin. So Michael Jeremiah Devlet went to work as an errand boy in a bond house. At 16 he was earning $14 a week; at 17, only $5. But he had become a runner. Four years later, when he was a successful bond trader, the biggest and best known government bond house in Wall Street, C. F. Childs & Co., hired him, at a reduced salary. After a while Mike Devlet walked out to team up with a chubby blue-eyed bond salesman named John H. Gertler, who had also been an errand boy. Gertler, Devlet & Co. started in 1928 with $2,500 capital. For the last five years the firm has had a big chunk of the municipal bond business and has made more money than its members could spend--or so Mike Devlet said.

Last week, at 34, Mike Devlet thought it was again time to change jobs. He dissolved his partnership with John Gertler and walked out with a small army of Gertler, Devlet employes. Partner Gertler added "& Co." to his name and continued the old business with branches in eight U. S. cities. Mike Devlet organized his own municipal bond house as follows: he set up six individual concerns each operated by its own partners, and each a specialist in a particular branch of the business. One was to sell high grade bonds, another land bank and Home Owners Loan bonds, a third Southern municipals. One was to act as broker for the others. Reports on municipal bonds were to be furnished by a bureau known as the Municipal Yardstick. Over all was to preside The National Marketplace for Municipal Securities, Inc., with Michael Devlet as president. Its purpose : "To provide the paternal guardianship of ... Michael J. Devlet for deserving proteges."

Proteges and companies will share profits 50-50 with their guardian. Municipal Yardstick, wholly subsidized by him, will be run by the woman who helped teach Mr. Devlet how to trade in bonds-- shrewd, plump Mrs. Irma Eggleston, one-time manager of trading at C. F. Childs & Co. Most notable protege is Richard George Brennan, owner of his own bond house before Depression, whom Guardian Devlet rescued last year from a career as longshoreman and salesman of lumber jackets.

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