Nash Motors

Nash Motors is a stout ten-year-old stock which recently paid a 900% stock dividend, and during its life has paid its original backers-- its President Charles W. Nash, its Bankers Lee, Higginson & Co., and others-- $3,200 for every $100 they invested, plus their original $100. During recent months its Manhattan Stock Exchange quotation has hung steadily around 52.

Nevertheless, one mad morning last week, bears tried to break it below that figure. Thousands of shares were offered and promptly taken up at 52. A Nash post, around which practically every trader tried to crowd, was improvised on the Floor. Ever and anon some bedraggled trader would manage to squeeze from the press of bodies and jump on the seat to scream his offers. On the mob's fringe, for it was a veritable mob which left the rest of the Floor deserted, fubbers tried to make private deals at as low as 51. They wasted their petty time, for the Board of Governors does not countenance such illicit transactions. Finally the ticker by mistake recorded a 30,000 trade at 52 for the real trade of 3,000 at that figure. The bears then scurried to cover so hard that the stock mounted to $55.50, closed at $54.00. About 150,000 shares had been turned over.

The flurry left President Nash unmoved. Indeed he remarked publicly some time ago that in his opinion the people who were fixing the value of Nash stock on the Stock Exchange had put the price above the value. This was not cynicism or bad business; it was simply the viewpoint of a producer. Until 1891 he was a farmer and he knows that it takes time to grow a good crop. After that he became a carriage trimmer and later began to apply his crop-growing abilities to motor firms. By 1910 he was President of the Buick Motor Car Co. Later he served four years as President of General Motors. In 1916 he founded the company which bears his name, a business which is the greatest crop he ever grew. Last year its net profits were $16,256,000, and in January, 1926, resulting in the 900% stock dividend. Naturally Mr. Nash was not worried by a little excitement in a big room somewhere in Manhattan.