Chopper

In dry weather its incendiary bullets are handy. They drive the enemy out of his flaming cover into the open where he can be mowed down by gunners firing at the rate of 600 lead-cored slugs a minute. Within 600 yards the shocking power of its standard bullets is terrific--one burst can tear away a man's face, one slug in shoulder or ankle can knock him sprawling.

For mop-up work it does a grand job. For in-fighting in riots its shot cartridges are murderous--at 25 yards they hurl birdshot into a circular pattern six feet in diameter.

These eulogistic claims of the deadliest weapon, pound for pound, ever devised by man, were studied last week by Manhattan stock salesmen who had never fired a shot in anger. They were planning neither to fight a war nor put down riots, but to sell 300,000 shares of stock (at $2.75 a share) in Thompson Automatic Arms Corp.

To most U. S. cinemaddicts the Thompson submachine gun is a gangsters' weapon. The late black-browed John Dillinger, potbellied "Killer" Burke, the late Charlie Birger of Southern Illinois were virtuosos with the Thompson, called it, with utility in mind, a chopper. But gangsters got their choppers by stealing them from policemen who had found them wonderfully effective for erasing hoodlums from the public slate. For the Thompson, only a few ounces heavier than a Springfield rifle, is an amazingly potent weapon.

In 1919 when Annapolis Man John Blish and West Pointer John Taliafer Thompson whipped up the first submachine gun, they knew they had something. By the time Commander Blish died in 1926, Brigadier General Thompson, full of honors from long service, had long since retired from the army to become chief advisory engineer of Auto-Ordnance Co. Chief financial backers were Capitalist Thomas Fortune Ryan, who held 51% of the stock, and George Harvey, who held a smaller block. Onetime Ambassador to the Court of St. James's, Harvey went to his grave soft-pedaling his interest in the company which sold 750 choppers to the Irish Republic, to be used against British soldiers.

To police forces, to private protective agencies (which now have to get approval of the U. S. Attorney General for purchase of a Tommy gun), to the U. S. Marines, to many a European and South American army, Thompsons were sold. The General's son, Colonel Marcellus H. Thompson, third in the family line to graduate from West Point, resigned from the army and went into the business as vice president and general manager.

Between 1921 and 1928 Auto-Ordnance, doing a small, tidy business, sold more than 6,000 Thompsons for a gross of $1,330,000. In 1928, however, death came to Thomas Fortune Ryan. Manhattan's Guaranty Trust Co. became executor, Elder Statesman Elihu Root the lawyer, of the $135,000,000 Ryan estate. In kindly Pacifist Root's scheme of things, the sale of man-killers had no place. Quietly he put Auto-Ordnance on the shelf. The Thompsons, father and son, had done a good selling job, were on the way to making it better, but under Elihu Root's benign influence, sales were turned over to an agency. Auto-Ordnance went after no business. The Thompsons left the company.

The world grew more & more war-busy, but Auto-Ordnance had no salesmen in Spain, in China, in other places of slaughter. Thompsons, manufactured by Colt Arms under contract from Auto-Ordnance, lay in boxes packed in cosmolene, waiting for uninvited buyers. But the demand for them began to grow. The U. S. mechanized cavalry now has 400 of them. Mechanized units in many another up-&-coming army bought them.

A few months ago Colonel Thompson finally reached an agreement with the Ryan estate. For $529,000 the heirs of Thomas Fortune Ryan agreed to sell their Auto-Ordnance stock, write off $1,090,000 in notes for money advanced to the old company. Other stockholders (including the heirs of Commander Blish) agreed to trade their shares for stock in new Thompson Automatic Arms Corp.

Today Thompsons can be made for $50 to $60 each, sold at $200 to $225. Well-grounded in military tactics, well-acquainted with soldiering men, rumpled, Kentucky-born Colonel Marcellus Thompson sees the day near when there will be a Thompson in every infantry squad, a chopper or two in every armored car. Pacifists still object to war, but few of them still object to arming against it. Old General Thompson, living among his memories in the modest home of his son at Great Neck, L. I., will have some advice to give as an unofficial technical consultant. At 80, he thinks his knowledge may come in handy.

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