Milky Way

A distinguished structure is the 40-story Equitable Office Building at No. 120 Broadway. It is the only office building listed on the New York Stock Exchange; it has Francis V. du Pont as president, Matthew Chauncey Brush and August Heckscher as vice presidents; its tenants include many famed brokers, bankers and industrial concerns.* One of its most distinguished tenants is the big company on the 13th floor. When the directors of this company meet, they test its products as well as discuss its affairs. Orange juice from National Juice Corp. slakes their thirst. Dietician Marye Dahnk of Kraft-Phenix Cheese Corp. sometimes makes them cheese sandwiches on a special griddle. Sheffield milk, butter and ice-cream are served from the big refrigerator which adjoins the president's office. For these foods and many others are the stock-in-trade of National Dairy Products Corp., brightest star in the industrial milky way. Thirty-one directors sit on National's board. Among them are Jerome H. Remick of Detroit, longtime head of the famed song publishing company bearing his name ("Smiles;" " 'Til We Meet Again;" "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles"); Banker George Franklin Rand of Marine Midland Corp.; Sidney J. Weinberg of Goldman, Sachs & Co., whose trading corporation owns 23,000 National shares; James Lewis Kraft, the cheese man. But the director whose word carries the most weight is Thomas Henry McInnerney, 64, founder and president of the company.

An ideal success-story would show President McInnerney setting out on his march to dairy tycoonship along a pretty, rural cow path. But he admits and does not lament the fact that he has never milked a cow, never attempted it. He was raised in Dubuque, went to University of Illinois where he studied pharmacy. For five years he owned and ran a drugstore in Chicago. This he found less to his liking than he had expected and his next experience was the general managership of Siegel, Cooper & Co., Manhattan department store. In 1914 he returned to Chicago, formed Consumers Co. (coal, ice, building materials). Later Consumers bought Hydrox Ice Cream Co. In 1917 Thomas McInnerney bought Hydrox away from Consumers and planned a dairy products combination on a scale that would have pleased even Paul Bunyan.* Contrary to downtown Manhattan legend, President McInnerney does not sit at his desk munching Kraft-Phenix cheese all day and quaffing Sheffield milk. The quaffing and munching at directors' meetings are only a stunt. Mr. McInnerney's office is a luxurious, paneled room containing much Florentine leather. Next to his interest in music (one of Mrs. McInnerney's closest friends is Soprano Queena Mario), Mr. McInnerney's favorite indulgence is the collection of Florentine furniture. His Fifth Avenue apartment and his Winnetka, Ill., summer home are filled with Florentine pieces gathered on his annual trips with Mrs. McInnerney to Montecatini. Last week President McInnerney had much business before him. National Juice Corp. was expanding its business of making orange juice in Florida, quick-freezing it, shipping it north to be delivered with the morning's milk. The National laboratories, headed by vitamin-expert Dr. Elmer Verner McCollum (TIME, April 6), were experimenting with two new products; soft curd milk and sweet acidophilus. More important, National was pressing, on two fronts, its bold expansion policy. For though people may weep during Depression, still they must eat and drink and National Dairy is marching steadily on.

An important ice-cream distributor in the New Jersey-New York-Connecticut area is Consolidated Dairy Products Corp., which also sells dairy products, soda fountains. Mr. McInnerney knew last week that Beatrice Creamery Co., third largest U. S. dairy company (1930 sales: $82,000,000) and an ice-cream specialist, was after Consolidated. But he also knew that Consolidated's shareholders had adjourned their meeting because National also had bid for Consolidated. The Beatrice bid approximated $8.45 a share for Consolidated stock which sold as low as $3 1/4 this year. The National bid approximated $9.93. Through Kraft-Phenix Cheese, National has properties in California. But not until last week did it really enter the Pacific Coast field. This it did by acquiring Golden State Milk Products Co., a concern with 3,200 employes, sales of $34,000,000 and a net income of $1,062,000 last year. That National should acquire Golden State, with its poppy trademark, was not unnatural, for Goldman Sachs Trading has working control of the company with 175,686 out of 472,052 shares.

It is through deals such as these that President McInnerney has put National Dairy Products at the forefront of the $4,000,000,000 dairy industry, an industry whose products have greater value than any manufacturing industry. National has not, of course, been without competition. Biggest rival has been Borden Co., started in 1857. Since National's formation in 1923 the struggle between it and Borden for supremacy has been written in sales and net: National Borden (figures in millions of dollars) Sales Net Sales Net 1923 13 1 100 5 1924 20 2 109 5 1925 105 5 123 6 1926 134 10 124 6 1927 145 10 132 7 1928 212 16 180 11 1929 300 21 328 20 1930 374 26 345 21 At the end of last year the consolidated assets of Borden and its 125 subsidiaries came to $188,000,000; those of National and its 160 subsidiaries were $233,000,000. National has 36,000 employes, Borden 34,538. National paid $12,486,000 in common dividends last year against Borden's $12,079,000.

Last week the battle continued intense. When National invaded the Pacific Coast by acquiring Golden State, Borden announced that its Pacific Coast group had been enlarged with the purchase of Golden Gate Ice Cream and Fountain Supply Co.

Other big U. S. dairy units besides National, Borden and Beatrice: Carnation Co. of Wisconsin, specializing in evaporated milk; selling dairy products from the

Pacific to Tulsa; Western Dairy Products; Foremost Dairy Products, Inc. of Florida, headed by James Cash Penney, famed Methodist and booster for scientific farming; Pet Milk Co. of St. Louis.

*Indicative of rising Wall Street rents, Equitable charged $2.50 per square foot in 1919, $7 last year. It has 1,250,000-sq. ft. of rentable space. *Paul Bunyan's four queenly milkers at his Old Home Camp had no fancy names. They were just Suke, Boss, Baldy and S'manthy. Their clover pastures were so big that Paul's two bees, Bum and Bill, could get there all the honey the loggers needed all winter (3,500 bbl.). Some idea of the amounts of milk Paul's four cows gave may be obtained from the fact that to haul it from stable to table he had to invent the tank steamer. S'manthy's milk was pretty thin stuff, but her hankering for balsam boughs resulted in a fine supply of potent cough medicine for the camp.

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