Atchison's $10

Thirteen of those 15 grave men who have been directing the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway Co. to crescent prosperity last week made themselves comfortable in the directors' room of the company's Manhattan suite and, having digested the predigested reports of the road's efficacy during the past year, made a decision which they knew would be pleasing to their stockholders who are to meet at Topeka, Kan., the last Thursday of this month.

Among those Atchison directors are such bishops of U. S. finance as: William Benson Storey, President of the Atchison; Edward Julius Berwind, Manhattan holder of coal, shipping and transportation enterprises; William Chapman Potter, President of the Guaranty Trust of Manhattan; Arthur Twining Hadley, President Emeritus of Yale; Charles Steele, Morgan partner; Henry Smith Pritchett, President of the Carnegie Foundation since 1906; and Myron Charles Taylor, Chairman of U. S. Steel's finance committee.

Their prudence is undebatable. Last week they raised the dividend rate on Atchison common shares to $10 per share and no one doubted that this rate would be maintained for many a year.

The Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe is the richest of U. S. railroads. Its assets are approximately a billion and a quarter dollars. It has 2,324,095 shares of common stock outstanding. Great institutions as well as little people own that stock. It yields them now $23,240,950 each year.

And 33 years ago the road was bankrupt, made so by the panic of 1893. A foreclosure sale wiped out hobbling debts; a new management revitalized it. Someone with good persuasive powers brought the late Edward Payson Ripley (1845-1920), to be its president. Ever since, the Atchison has paid its preferred dividends. Common dividends began in 1901, with $3.50. They changed successively to $4 $4.50, $6, $5, $5.50, $6, then (3 years ago) $7. For more than a year there have been extra $3 dividends on the common stock. That extra--fruit of "Old Man" Ripley's tillage, of present President William Benson Storey's cultivation--the Atchison directors by their action last week regularized.