Corporations

Last week the following newsworthy corporations made the following news:

House of Budweiser. Under the foremost crest of the beerage, the A and the eagle of Budweiser, Anheuser-Busch mailed to its stockholders its first annual report ever certified by an outside firm of accountants. Messrs. Haskins & Sells did not cast up the Anheuser-Busch statements for any army of public investors. The brewery of the world's most widely distributed beer has less than 200 stockholders. And were it not for the few thousand shares that have dribbled into public hands in the last few years, a single report handed around at a family reunion of the descendants of a lusty German immigrant named Adolphus Busch and his father-in-law Eberhard Anheuser would have been all that was necessary. Until an inactive over-the-counter market developed just before Beer, the only way to obtain AnheuserBusch stock was to marry it.

Indeed for half a century, while the company was growing to its great pre-War prosperity, only one stock record book was used. Until 1930 when it was recapitalized the ownership of the $35,000,000 corporation was represented by only 480 shares of stock.

Those were probably the most fabulous shares in all corporate history. St. Louis banks were always ready to value them at $25,000 per share as loan collateral, although they had no market. In a private sale one share actually changed hands at $60,000. No one but the Busches and Anheusers ever knew precisely how much money their brewery made, but the executors of Adolphus Busch's estate reported to the courts that they had received $9,100 dividends per share in a 27-month period between 1914 and 1916.

The certified statements issued last week revealed little about the conservative old concern except its profits since Beer. Heavy expenses for renovating its brewing business held last year's earnings to a measly $325,000. Even more has been spent on improvements so far this year, but in the seven months through July Anheuser-Busch made $1,000,000.

The House of Anheuser-Busch today stands for many things besides beer. Founder Adolphus' son August Busch managed to pay small dividends pretty regularly through the dry years by making near-beer, yeast, malt and corn syrups, truck bodies, cabinets, Bevo, ice-cream, ginger ale, Diesel engines for U. S. submarines. Other interests include a local coal company, the Hotel Adolphus in Dallas, Tex. and the tiny St. Louis & O'Fallon Ry. whose valuation case in the Supreme Court made railroad history. August Busch died by his own hand two months after Repeal (TIME, Feb. 19). Adolphus Busch III is now head of the House.

Decision. When Walter P. Chrysler bought Dodge Brothers in the summer of 1928, he got not only a good automobile but also some $60,000,000 in debts--largely in the form of 6% Dodge bonds in the hands of the public. Even for Chrysler Corp., with its assets then of $226,000,000, that was a heavy load. So Mr. Chrysler, who was expanding lustily in almost every direction at the time, set to work to reduce the debt he had assumed.

By last summer he had sliced $20,000,000 off the total. Then Mr. Chrysler looked upon his balance sheet and it was good. Chrysler had only $36,000,000 in current liabilities and nearly $100,000,000 in current assets, about one-half of which were cash & securities. Mr. Chrysler looked upon the price of his stock and saw that it had declined from a February high of $60 per share to around $30. Yet he had made a profit of $8,000,000 in the first six-month, which was twice what he made in the 1933 half. His sales were running 100% ahead of the year before. Thereupon, Mr. Chrysler, who is by no means ignorant of the fact that a good market for his stock is a good advertisement for his cars, decided that it would shake no one's faith in his company if he paid off another $10,000,000 of bonds.

Last week Mr. Chrysler announced that $10,000,000 of Dodge bonds would be called for redemption in November, thus paring the Chrysler funded debt to just one-half what it was in the summer of 1928. Chrysler stock registered a gain of 2 3/4 points for the week.

Red S. Singer Manufacturing Co. sells sewing machines in almost every part of the globe where clothes are worn. So long does it take to assemble Singer figures from the preceding year that the annual meeting can never be held until September. Last week, having accounted for the very last nickel, yen, leu, franc, shilling, florin, drachma, peso, pengo, rupee, escudo, zloty, mark and finmark. Sir Douglas Alexander, Singer's venerable president, announced that profits for the year 1933 were $10,000,000.

Founder Isaac Merritt Singer had no sooner launched his enterprise in 1851 than he became involved in countless lawsuits with Elias Howe and other sewing machine inventors. Founder Singer paid his lawyer, Edward P. Clark, in Singer stock, and it was not long before Mr. Clark's interest was as big as Mr. Singer's. But Founder Singer was quite content to leave the business in Mr. Clark's hands, departing for Europe, there to live a gay and gaudy life, in which there are legends of no less than nine wives and 21 children. The Clarks ruled Singer for two generations with Frederick G. Bourne as their president. The innumerable descendants of Messrs. Singer, Clark & Bourne are still the dominant Singer stockholders.

The present head of Singer is a loyal British-born subject of George V. A young lawyer in Hamilton, Ont. when he entered the company in the 1880s, Sir Douglas Alexander was a director before the turn of the Century and has been president for the last 30 years. A conservative. Vandyke-bearded gentleman of a very old business school, Sir Douglas never used to publish any annual report at all. If a stockholder wanted to find out how his company was doing, he had to take pad & pencil to the meeting where the report was read--usually so rapidly that no one could understand it. From Sir Douglas' grudging remarks, a stockholder usually gathered the impression that, what with rising taxes and general social unrest, the outlook for the sewing machine business was practically hopeless. Yet for years Singer profits ranged between $20,000,000 and $25,000,000 annually. The stock, traded inactively on the New York Curb, sold as high as $631 per share (last week's price: $185), and dividends ranged as high as $48 a year.

Singer's traditional reticence about its affairs is usually attributed to the management's dread that foreign governments will find out how prosperous the company really is, tax it accordingly. Its prime mysteries are its subsidiaries, of which there are perhaps 20. Largely a holding company, Singer's earnings are chiefly dividends received from these subsidiaries. Its unconsolidated balance sheet, showing assets of $174,000,000, reflects none of their importance. For the loss of its Russian properties after the 1917 Revolution, Singer wrote off $84,000,000 alone.

In a normal year Singer makes 1,500,000 machines in 3,000 different types. Needles and accessories bulk large in its income. It has some 10,000 stores, 60,000 salesmen and its factories dot two continents. And that is just about all that anyone except Sir Douglas and his fellow officers know about the company whose red S trademark is a household fixture from Shanghai to Sarajevo.

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