I liked this story and I thought you would enjoy it, too. It concerns a man named Dallas E Winslow.

Besides a one-letter middle name, there are a number of other unusual things about Winslow. He is a businessman who finds himself at home in almost any kind of business. When he makes a success of one, he casts about for another, buys it, injects his vitality into it and gets it to show a profit. He does all this while bestowing gifts and wage increases on his employees with a lavish hand. In the past 19 months he has given 380 automobiles to workers who have been with him for at least a year, and he pays for trade-ins when the cars are a year old.

Such economic unorthodoxy made it only logical for him to come to an uncommon decision in the early spring of 1950, when, with cash on hand, he was faced with an apparent dearth of companies for sale. If advertising works for people who want to sell something, he reasoned, it ought to work for those who want to buy something.

Winslow bought a third of a page in TIME magazine, not too sure it would work, but convinced it was worth a try. "My associates and I want to buy a manufacturing company," the ad began. What happened next came as a surprise to Winslow, a man who had always taken a benevolent pride in surprising others. The sellers' market he had envisioned turned quickly into a buyers' market.

Within a month he had more than 400 replies, had bought two companies, was negotiating for two others. Letters and telegrams continued to come for months, finally brought the total to 530, plus more than a score of phone calls. Last April Winslow tried it again with a one-column TIME ad. It brought more than 300 written replies and a dozen or more calls.

As a result of the two ads, he bought five plants at a total cost of approximately $2,000,000 and is forming a sixth company whose plant will cost $764,000. Their products include outboard motorboats, carpet sweepers, motor-driven handsaws, machine tools and pipe fittings. All these were incorporated into the Mast-Foos Manufacturing Co. of Springfield, Ohio, Winslow's parent firm, which itself makes hand and power lawn mowers.

Other subsidiaries include a farm equipment firm, a pump company and a company holding the dies, blueprints and inventories for almost 25 makes of cars now off the market.

Winslow has owned other businesses whose products have ranged from candy bars to refrigerators and excavating equipment.

When Winslow buys a plant, he first invests in new equipment if he thinks it's needed. He installs a new operations manager, instructs him to make the rounds every day, saying good morning to everyone. He often raises wages immediately and tries to hold his working force intact by keeping employees on the job during slack periods to build up inventories. "We believe in high inventory," he says. "You can't do business from an empty wagon."

Of TIME he says: "There's just no better advertising medium. There may be some around that are as good . . . but I do know there's none better. The ads did everything for me I expected and more."

As for ourselves, we are pleased to know TIME reached the people Winslow had in mind and thus played a part in the enterprising career of a man who shows such initiative, resourcefulness and the never-dead spirit of the pioneer.

Cordially yours,

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