Chemical & Nickel Tycoon

(See front cover.)

Last month, an unmirthful man smiled mechanically for photographers, took off his hat and put it on again, glanced with interest at New Jersey's Palisades, and walked down the gangplank of the Homeric to Manhattan. From beneath his drooping mustache, he mumbled that "only suffering came from the World War." He then hastened to take a train for Toronto, where he knew that more newsgatherers, more photographers, would make progress difficult. For to no great city of the world could Alfred Moritz Mond, first Baron Melchett, come unobserved, unheralded.

Action follows in the wake of the Mond pilgrimages. As every Britisher knows. Father Ludwig Mond had come to England from Germany with 40,000 marks, a device for making and bottling soda-water, and infinite faith. That faith was somewhat tremulously shared by Fraulein Henrietta Herz, daughter of Father Ludwig's German landlady, who had loaned him her small capital. As a speculative venture, the loan was one of the most successful in history. Fraulein Herz lived to be repaid 200% each year on her advance. Father Ludwig lived to see his British factory a spectacular success, to create the Brunner Mond Co. and the Mond Nickel Co., to amass a large and surprisingly good collection of Italian Madonnas, and to beget Alfred Moritz Mond.

When Lord Melchett landed in Manhattan, last month, no sophisticated observer believed he would repeat Father Ludwig's career and start building a factory to make soda-water. He had, in a manner of speaking, quite enough factories already. Less than two years ago, he had linked Brunner Mond Co. with Nobel Industries, Inc. (explosives) and British Dyestuffs, Ltd., to create England's largest holding company. As chairman of the board of Imperial Chemical Industries. Ltd. (I. C. I.), he presides over a corporation with an authorized capital of nearly $325,000,000.

But sophisticated observers, familiar with Tycoon Melchett's known passion for consolidation, amalgamation, did believe he had come to the U. S. to tie up his vast British interests with U. S. enterprise. To newsgatherers, he denied all reports of new I. C. I. deals with Allied Chemical in the U. S., or with the mighty German I. G. Farbenindustrie. Most obvious of remaining possibilities, therefore, was a merger of Mond Nickel with the "biggest" International Nickel Co., owning adjoining properties in the Froude Mines of Ontario.

Lord Melchett returned from Canada, conferred privately and lengthily in Manhattan. Speculators, scorning merger denials, made hasty calculations. Assets of International Nickel total $75,000,000. Together with the Mond company's assets of $40,000,000, the new international nickel trust would be worth between $115,000,000 and $125,000,000. It would control all but a small fraction of the nickel supply of the world. To close the deal, speculators foresaw a split-up of International Nickel common stock, followed by an exchange of both International and Mond stock for shares in the new trust. Trading in securities of both companies, the Toronto Stock Exchange went through the busiest day in its history.

So great was the commotion in the stock exchanges that few heard Tycoon Melchett's pronouncements on world affairs. As a Tory, he will support Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin's government in the coming British elections. Students of English politics recalled, however, that his Toryism is of curiously recent vintage. His was the influence and his the bank account which helped the Liberal Lloyd George to power and kept him there. As Sir Alfred Mond, he took the Ministry of Public Works in the first Lloyd George cabinet.

In Manhattan, last week, none asked him to explain his politics. But bankers asked him of the progress of the Finance Company of Great Britain and America, Ltd., which is the few-months old international child of a luncheon-party with Tycoon Albert Henry Wiggin, Chairman of the Board of the Chase National Bank (Manhattan).

Thus the Melchett month ended. Having possibly merged, having certainly titillated, Tycoon Melchett prepared to stride unmirthfully up the gangplank, take off his hat and put it on again, glance at the dark Palisades, and sail"for England.