Downtown

P:To encourage loyalty among its employes Manhattan's National City Bank allowed them in 1929 to purchase some 50,000 shares of its stock at the specially low price of $200 per share. Last week most of the employes completed their payments, took title to their stock, soon to be reduced in par value from $20 to $12.50 and now selling in the open market at about $19. The day last week's payment was due a number of National City's loyal employes resigned. Reason: by leaving the employ of the bank before the stock was turned over to them they were entitled to receive back the full amount they had paid in on installment, plus interest. P:Stockholders of Socony-Vacuum finally satisfied the proposed merger of their Far Eastern oil properties with those of Standard Oil (N. J.) (TIME, Aug. 21). Thus a new overseas empire came into being, stronger than the sum of its parts: whereas Socony-Vacuum had markets in the East but no production, and Standard Oil had production but lacked markets, new Standard-Vacuum Oil Co. will have both. P:It was news last October when Atlas Tack Corp. announced that it had started to make bottle-caps. It was news when Kermit Roosevelt and John Sargent, the insurance partner of James Roosevelt, took seats on the Tack board. It was news last week when the Tack directors voted to split the stock three-for-one. Next day Tack stock tumbled from $34.75 a share to $21. Rumors flew thick that the Tack pool had been punctured. It had--but not the way Wall Street suspected. The New York State Attorney General curtly announced that he had been investigating Tack's amazing rise from a low of $1.50 a share early in the year to last week's high. Swift & Co. announced a profit for its fiscal year (ending Oct. 28) of $5,882,000, almost precisely $1 a share, practically the same amount the company lost last year. P:The public relations of the New York Stock Exchange are said to be governed by two simple rules: 1) to tell the public as little as possible; 2) never to admit that the Exchange is less than perfect. One morning last week all Wall Street buzzed with the news that the first of these rules was to be discarded, that the Exchange was about to launch a big publicity campaign by radio, movies, lectures, and advertising to teach the public that the Exchange is a benevolent and useful institution. Even brokers guffawed at such a naive effort to avert the wrath of Congress. Much embarrassed. President Richard Whitney announced that "No such program had been approved or even considered." Someone, it appeared, had proposed it to the law committee of the Exchange and an Exchange official had spoken out of turn. Rule 1 went back in force more rigidly than ever. P:Partly as a hedge against Inflation and partly because speculators like to believe that "They are going to do something for Silver," more of the world's No. 2 metal is now stacked up in Manhattan than at any time in the history of Wall Street. Normal stocks in storage run from 2,000,000 to 10,000,000 oz. Last week the Commodity Exchange announced that there are 81,000,000 oz. in its seven licensed warehouses (safe deposit companies). Another 40,000,000 or 50,000,000 oz., it was estimated, was in other banks or in hoarding. Silvermen were alarmed lest the mounting pile exceed the city's available storage capacity.

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