Twin of Prosperity

Last week Tri-Utilities Corp., a $400,000,000 holding company for public utilities, went into "friendly receivership." Big as it was, great as is its fall, it was a young company built by a young man. On March 4, 1929, while bands and flags and soldiers led Herbert Hoover to his oath of office, young George Lewis Ohrstrom, 35 then, was interested in a less publicized matter. On that historic day he was occupied with incorporation details at Wilmington, Del. Birthday of Hoover Prosperity, it was also birthday of Mr.

Ohrstrom's big utility.* Both died young.

Neither Mr. Hoover nor young Mr. Ohrstrom could look forward to Oct. 29, 1929 and the days beyond that day. Children study about the properties under President Hoover in geography books. Stockholders also needed geographies to study the properties under President Ohrstrom. They are almost coextensive. The properties of Tri-Utilities' four big subsidiaries (and their subsidiaries) extend from waterworks for householders in Flatbush to power lines in the Arizona desert, from mains of natural gas in Atlanta and Birmingham to acres of gas wells in Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas. All were listed by President Ohrstrom's accountants, under the head of Total Assets in 1929 and at the end of 1930, when Depression had lifted its hungry head, as $397.487,420. The company served 4.565,000 citizens in 650 cities in 26 states. Tri-Utilities common stock sold up once to $61 per share. Last week, on the company's deathbed, the same shares were down to $1.

George Ohrstrom was born at Ford River, Mich., a dark and precocious child of Teutonic-Scandinavian parents. The Ohrstroms moved west, to Washington where the son was educated in Tacoma High School. After some youthful experience in lumbering and railroad construction, he went back to Michigan, to the university at Ann Arbor. He left Michigan during the War to fly. (As an aviator in the Argonne, he is credited with bringing down the last German plane of the War.) After the War he went back to Michigan and took his degree. In New York he took his first and only subordinate job, in the offices of P. W. Chapman & Co. Inc. Here he acquired experience in distributing securities. He married the daughter of a professor in Ann Arbor, took her to live in affluent Greenwich, Conn.

He became vice president in charge of Banker Chapman's New York office. He was just 32 in 1926 when he formed his own enterprise, G. L. Ohrstrom & Co. Inc. with his own offices in Wall Street. Now his organization has offices in every important trade center. He was responsible for important financing: the towering Bank of Manhattan Co. Building; Allerton Corporation (residential hotels for unattached ladies and gentlemen); and, biggest and most important, Tri-Utilities. With a strong face, a bold eye, an athletic demeanor (golf, horseback), young Banker Ohrstrom became a popular topic among Wall Street journalists and conversationalists. They talked, rather to his embarrassment, of his brilliance and his youth.

Old or young, dull or brilliant, Mr. Ohrstrom could scarcely have foreseen in March 1929 that it would rain hardly at all in the summer of 1930. The dryness that year had a desiccating effect upon the revenues of Tri-Utilities' Federal Water Service Corp. This damper summer the president of Federal Water (Christopher Tompkins Chenery) has announced that while earnings are lower, they are steady.

But this news came too late. Already Federal Water's three brother units in Tri-Utilities had come upon bad times in the light and gas businesses. One after another American Natural Gas Corp., Southern Natural Gas Corp. and Peoples Light & Power Corp. paid their preferred dividends in later-maturing script or not at all. As early as May there were rumors of difficulties in Tri-Utilities financing. Added troubles were the legal efforts of Governor William Henry ("Cocklebur Bill") Murray to drive the corporation's subsidiaries out of Oklahoma, confiscate their properties on charges that they sought to make themselves a monopoly. Last week Tri-Utilities, faced with the payment of interest due on $11,197,000 of 5% debentures, and with some $2,000,000 notes falling due Dec. 15, beheld a problem in financing that not even brilliant young Mr. Ohrstrom could solve. The result was the biggest public utility failure (and one of few) in the present Depression, far overshadowing the demise of the

$20,000,000 W. B. Foshay utility system (Minneapolis) which crashed into receivership with the stockmarket in 1929. To his offices at No. 36 Wall Street, George Ohrstrom called help one night last week. There came : Richard Carley Hunt, utility-experienced member of the legal firm of Chadbourne, Hunt, Jaeckel & Brown; William Buchsbaum, utility executive and sportsman; and young, heavy-set Medley G. B. Whelpley, president of American Express Bank & Trust Co. As a reorganization committee (Mr. Hunt, chairman), they hoped to have an announcement to make by the middle of September, hoped the properties might continue to operate intact. The United States District Court of Delaware ap pointed former U. S. Judge Hugh Martin Morris receiver to conserve the rights of creditors and security holders.

* Tri-Utilities Corp. was originally, more lengthily christened United Power, Gas & Water Corp.

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