Downtown

P:First big Manhattan bank to sell preferred stock to the R. F. C., Manufacturers Trust Co. last week took action, announced it would accept $25,000,000 from the R. F. C.* To prove to the public that Manufacturers Trust was just being generous to the Administration and did not need the money, President Harvey Gibson advertised at the same time that the bank's dividend, suspended because of uncertainty during the banking holiday, but continuing to be amply earned, would be resumed.

P:In Hartford the deputy attorney general of Connecticut ruled that Connecticut's mutual savings banks could not legally join the Federal Reserve System. Reason: by doing so they would be compelled to join in the Federal Government's deposit guarantee scheme.

P:Jackson Bros., Boesel & Co., members of the New York Stock Exchange and Chicago Board of Trade, announced that its Chicago, Milwaukee, Kansas City, Omaha and St. Joseph, Mo. offices had been acquired by Winthrop, Mitchell & Co. of Manhattan. Month ago Arthur S. Jackson, senior partner of Jackson Bros., Boesel, who managed their Chicago office's grain commission business (largest in the U. S.), died in Manhattan. Thus Jackson Bros., Boesel plans to become simply a Manhattan brokerage firm, passed on the title of biggest grain broker to Winthrop, Mitchell.

P:Under the oil code Texas and Oklahoma last week whittled down their production quotas and Secretary Ickes, hopeful of maintaining the basic Midcontinent price of $1.11 a barrel for crude oil (set three weeks ago), warned producers against cheating under express threat of exercising his "drastic powers." Meanwhile Nature, with a more powerful threat, endangered again the best laid plans of oilmen for keeping down production: in Anderson County, Tex., gushed the discovery well of a new oil field.

*Banks and trust companies incorporated under New York's banking laws cannot issue preferred stock. Therefore Manufacturers Trust issued "capital notes" which are preferred stock in virtually all respects except in the eyes of the law. They were readily accepted by the R. F.-C., for the New Deal does not frown on evasions 'of the law if they happen to suit its purposes.

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