Cord in Control

From the 47th floor of Manhattan's Chanin Building and the top floor of St. Louis' Rialto Building, two migrations were in progress last week with a common destination: Chicago. Famed and farflung Aviation Corp. and its operating subsidiary. American Airways, were on their way to the Kingdom of Cord, and the hardbitten little man who would henceforth rule them undisputed could grin more satisfiedly than ever at the 14 years that have passed since he was selling Moon autos in an agency on lower Michigan Avenue.

In 1931, having whipped together a quick fortune out of Moon, Auburn and Cord automobiles, Errett Lobban Cord set out to head the "largest air passenger and express unit, in the world."* He laid siege to Avco which, as a stockholder, he thought was being mismanaged. He felt it was worrying too much about its bulging portfolio of stocks, too little about its basic business of flying planes. He thought there was too much Wall Street atmosphere about the company, too little airport smell.

By last December he and his group had bought enough Avco stock to remove La Motte T. Cohu from the company's presidency (TIME, Dec. 19). A compromise board of 16 directors, still bankerish, was formed. Richard Farnsworth Hoyt, Hayden, Stone partner and board chairman of Curtiss-Wright, an athletic, motorboat-racing man cut much like Motormaker Cord though more refined, was put in temporarily as president. Mr. Cord & associates continued to buy Avco shares. Bankers Robert Lehman and William Averell Harriman, after their hot and losing proxy fight with Cord last autumn, had no heart to fight longer. Last week, when it became known that the Cord group had 1,100,000 of Avco's 2,800,000 shares, Richard Hoyt announced :

''Mr. E. L. Cord . . . and his associated interests now have effective control. . . . Under these circumstances Messrs. La Motte T. Cohu, George R. Hann, W. A. Harriman, Charles L. Lawrance, Robert Lehman, Lindley C. Morton and Matthew S. Sloan and myself believe it would serve no useful purpose for us to continue as directors of the corporation, and I am accordingly resigning as president."

Soon after getting his first real grip on the company in November, Motormaker Cord reduced operating expenses $600,000 a year, chiefly by consolidating American Airways' overhauling points and by cutting executives' salaries to a $15,000 maximum. He began liquidating Avco-owned securities, thus realizing $5,000,000 which he husbanded in cash and Government bonds. Consolidating the offices in Chicago is also to save money.

To complete the job of putting Avco on a paying basis, Mr. Cord last week chose a board of nine, himself included. Two were Cord executives: Vice President Lucius B. Manning of Cord Corp.; Major Lester Draper ("Bing") Seymour, a small, genial disciplinarian who flew with the A. E. F. and who has been president of American Airways since December. Two were Cord lawyers: stocky General Counsel Raymond S. Pruitt; Lyndol L. Young, who grew up with Cord in Los Angeles, hunted squirrels with him on the site of the Ambassador Hotel, graduated from the University of Southern California and was for a time U. S. District Attorney. Mr. Cord brought him East last autumn.

Banker Vanderlip (financially connected with all Cord enterprises) and Board Chairman Carle Carter Conway of Continental Can Co. were seated on the Avco board to handle the purse-strings. Chairman Conway's son Norton married Banker Vanderlip's daughter Charlotte Delight. C. Coburn Darling of Providence, R. I. was seated because his family are longtime holders of Auburn and Cord securities. Also on the board is potent Publisher Amon Giles Carter of the Fort Worth (Tex.) Star-Telegram.

The man selected for Avco's new president is muscular Lucius Bass Manning, 38. He was born & raised in Tacoma, Wash., went to Hotchkiss and, for one year, Yale (1914-15). He left college to make enough money to marry, sold Dodges, raced. In 1921 he organized a short-lived brokerage firm in Seattle. Next year he met Errett Cord in Chicago through the manager of the auto agency for which Cord was salesman. He helped Cord with the Auburn deal; in 1925 he became Auburn treasurer. A Wartime flyer, he is credited with first having interested his superior in aviation. Until he became Avco's president, he had worked without salary for Cord enterprises, in which he is second largest stockholder. In Chicago he lives in a duplex apartment in the Drake Towers, is prepared, as all Cord executives must be, to work at any & all times.

Nil Desperandum

One 2 a. m. last week, 19-year-old Victor Smith roared off Lympne Airdrome in his Comper "Swift" monoplane to try for the third time to lower Amy Johnson Mollison's London-to-Cape Town record (4 days. 6 hr., 55 min.). His average speed to the southern edge of the Sahara was better than 100 m.p.h. He was hours ahead of Mrs. Mollison's log when fog enveloped him near Niamey, French West Africa. Then bad luck set in. As he left Duala, he narrowly missed crashing in trees. As he landed at Pointe Noire, French Equatorial Africa, his ship skidded 40 ft. in greasy mud. To rise again he had to use a rutted road as runway, throw away food, maps, clothing to lighten his load. He was still ahead of the record when a whipping rain beset him over Benguela, Portuguese West Africa. He was ten hours ahead at Walvis Bay, 800 mi. from Cape Town. Then, in a rain storm, Flyer Smith disappeared.

Crowds at Cape Town where Flyer Smith is idolized as "Nil Desperandum" (Never Despair), waited anxiously. His fiancee, "a wonderful girl named Bee," looked to the leaden skies in vain. At Van Rhyns Dorp, 150 mi. away, Victor Smith was plodding his way to the nearest telephone to say that, although forced down, he had at least lowered the record between England and Cape Province.

Quiet Condor

Long have airplane makers tried to quiet their ships. Flying noise not only annoys but helps induce airsickness. Last week President Ralph Shepard Damon of Curtiss-Wright Airplane Co. was gratified when the Department of Commerce certified his new Condor which, he amazingly claimed, subjects passengers to no more noise than a Pullman car.

In planning his quiet Condor, President Damon knew that 70% of airplane noise comes from the propellers after tip speed passes 850 ft. per second. He began by gearing down the Condor's three-bladed propellers so that at cruising speed, tip speed does not exceed 670 ft. per second. Next he insulated with rubber the nine attaching bolts of each Cyclone motor. He then proceeded to the problem of the fuselage.

The Condor's entire cabin compartment has been sound-proofed with wood and Kapok fibre so that it comes in direct contact at no point with the surrounding fuselage. Windows have been set in rubber, walls and ceiling are upholstered. It was found that arrangement of material in sound insulation is more important than the material itself. The Condor's cabin compartment is vaulted.

Quiet enough to permit passengers to talk to one another in normal voices and to allow radio music to be heard, the new Condor will be put into service by Eastern Air Transport out of Newark to Miami this week. Eight others are under construction at Curtiss-Wright's St. Louis plant.

*American Airways is biggest in the U. S. reckoned by route miles. United Airlines flies more miles, carries more passengers, has $40,000,000 assets. Last week United's supremacy was challenged when it was definitely predicted that General Motors' General Aviation Corp. and North American Aviation, Inc. would merge. The fusion would place G. M. in control of a holding company with $25,000,000 assets. T. W. A. and E. A. T. airlines, a potent manufacturing unit.

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