Downtown

Primping. Three weeks ago the New York Stock Exchange, primping itself for Federal inspection, took the unprecedented step of warning its members that Pierce-Arrow Class A stock, then selling at $3, was out of line with Pierce-Arrow preferred selling at $17 (TIME, Oct. 30). Both were to be converted into new stock, and the preferred was worth 32 times as much as Class A on the exchange basis. Reason for the relatively high price of Class A was that some traders had carelessly sold it short and found difficulty in getting it to deliver, since much of it had already been converted into the new stock Last week the Exchange issued an order more effective than its warning: decreed that the new stock could be delivered on Class A contracts. Immediately the price of Pierce-Arrow A dropped to $1.

Consolidated Telegrams. Newcomb Carlton, chairman of Western Union, has steadily opposed merging Western Union with Postal Telegraph, subsidiary of International Telephone & Telegraph. Last week in London he gave his blessing to a sort of merger: Western Union's English and European offices with those of R. C. A. Communications, Inc. (subsidiary of Radio Corp. of America), of Commercial Cables Co. (I. T. & T. cable subsidiary) and of Imperial & International, British Wireless and Cable Company. The merged offices, he distinctly explained, are to operate in a fashion similar to consolidated railway ticket offices; the companies remain separate.*

Converts. Acting Secretary of the Treasury Dean Acheson announced last week that 40% of the 4th Liberty Loans called for redemption next April (TIME, Oct. 23) had been offered in exchange for the new 4 1/4-3 1/4-10-12 year bonds of the issue announced in October, but public enthusiasm for the new bonds waned somewhat last week due to the Administration's experiments with a rubberized dollar. Banks and bond dealers who had bid heavily in the cash subscription of the new issue were surprised by getting bigger allotments than they expected. Sales of unwanted bonds in the market forced the price of the new issue, dubbed "converts." down almost a point below the subscription price. Base-Stealing. The Senate investigating committee last week had Albert Henry Wiggin, son of Mary Baker Eddy's rewrite-man./- ex-chairman of the Chase National Bank, once more on the stand. This time his old friends and clients learned: 1) that one of his family holding companies had made over $4,000,000 by selling Chase stock short in 1929. 2) That in five years, 1928-1932, he had a total income of $5,881,000 and the Wiggin companies netted $2,798,000 despite $5.300,000 in losses in 1931-32. 3) That in the same five years Mr. Wiggin, wife, daughters and holding companies paid $3,493,000 in Federal taxes. 4) That in 1932 while chairman of Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corp.'s finance committee Mr. Wiggin sold 26,400 shares of B.M.T. just before the dividend was passed and Chase sold 55,000 shares of B.M.T. that had been put up as collateral for a loan to Gerhard M. Dahl, board chairman of B.M.T. Mr. Dahl, not called as a witness, quickly denied having any voluntary part in this bit of base-stealing.

I B. A. In Hot Springs, Va. met the Investment Bankers Association of America and passed resolutions recommending that embarrassed municipalities be allowed to compromise with the majority of their creditors, urging that the stringent liabilities placed on sellers by the Securities Act be relaxed. Said I. B. A.'s retiring president, Frank M. Gordon (Chicago's First National Bank): "Personally I do not believe that anyone ever intended to pass a law which makes a country dealer who handles $10,000 of a $10,000,000 issue liable for the entire amount."

*Last week Western Union messenger boys in Manhattan and Chicago were issued new uniforms: darker "forestry grey," with gold instead of black braid, with new eight-pointed caps. The new uniforms will be put on Western Union messengers throughout the U. S. Every night all messengers have to turn in their uniforms to be pressed (and periodically cleaned), their puttees to be shined. /-Rev. James Henry Wiggin, retired from the Unitarian ministry in 1875, edited theological and technical manuscripts for the Cambridge Press. According to his own account he was employed by Mrs. Eddy and spent four years in revising and rewriting the whole of Science & Health "from the ground up."

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