Common Kresge

An owner of more than one share of the common stock of S. S. Kresge Co. last week bought an evening news sheet. As he turned its pages to the financial pages to investigate the condition of his investment an item caught his eye. This was its headline: KRESGE CALLED PHILANDERER. Shocked, the shareholder began to peruse the article. As he did so, his face darkened.

The story was one of those commonplace scandals so often current in this day. Told in public by lawyers for Mrs. Doris M. Kresge who is suing her husband, Sebastian Spering Kresge, for a divorce, it related an alleged instance of misconduct performed in Manhattan by S. S. Kresge and one Gladys Ardelle Fish. But the shareholder was certain that the charge was untrue. Himself morally immaculate, he had made sure that the head of the company in which he was about to invest was ethically as well as financially unimpeachable. He had discovered that Mr. Kresge was well known, not only as an able millionaire, but also as a philanthropist, a reformer, a church worker and a prohibitionist. Only last week the shareholder had read with satisfaction an account of S. S. Kresge's $500,000 gift to the Anti-Saloon League. Accordingly, he was sure that the alleged misbehavior, although it had remained undenied, was merely a hollow defamation.

His face, however, did not grow less clouded with anxiety. Was it impossible that other Kresge shareholders, less sensible than himself, reading such a headline, might be too hasty to inquire as to the truth of charges before selling their holdings, and thus reducing the value of his? Or might they, as sensible as himself, not realize that patrons of Kresge's 5 & 10-cent stores, many of them people of small tolerances and high integrity, after hearing such a rumor of scandal, might well patronize some other emporium? Might not then the shrewd shareholders sell their holdings in view of an inevitable decline, thus further depreciating the value of his own? It was not a problem for a market operator but one for a student of human nature. The shareholder, one such, turned to the financial page and there found the record of New York Stock Exchange trading in Kresge Common. The opening sale had been made at 71 1/2, the closing sale at 72 1/8. The next day's transactions were even more baffling to the student of humanity. In spite of further publicity to the alleged immoralities of Sebastian Spering Kresge, Kresge Common had closed at 72 3/8%.