Corporations

Last week the following newsworthy corporations made the following news: Wages of Meat. The Big Four of the meat-packing industry are Armour, Swift, Wilson and Cudahy--foundations of fabulous Chicago fortunes all. They provide work for some 150,000 people. In the eyes of the Department of Justice, a good many U. S. citizens and all farmers, the leading packers are always suspect. Yet they handle hundreds of millions of pounds of a highly perishable commodity with model efficiency, no waste and a profit, if they are lucky, of a penny or two per dollar of sales.

Lately the packers have been enjoying modest prosperity. They have to carry vast inventories which in meat's present upward swirl have proved wonderfully profitable. Employment is at least 110% of normal. Last week, after decorous palaver with employe representatives, the Big Four consented to up wages 8%. Topping an 18% increase at the start of NRA another 10% boost last December, last week's raise put the industry's wage scales above 1929 levels. Little packers throughout the Midwest promptly followed suit.

Gerli Touch. One of the crosses borne by the Manhattan firm of Edward B Smith & Co. in the 1920s was Belding Heminway Co. The first half of this corporation the Smith firm bought from the Belding family, silk spinners since the Civil War. The stock was sold to the public at $39.50 per share.

The next Smith move was to merge Belding with Heminway, another Connecticut concern founded in the first year of the Gold Rush. Now the oldest silk company in the U. S., Belding Heminway accounted for one-half the country's spool silk and no small share of its fabrics and hosiery. Nevertheless, Belding languished throughout the most florid years of the New Era. The net result of the bankers' touch was a deficit each year from 1928 through 1932, a decline in assets from $14,000,000 to $4,000,000 and a low for the stock of $1.75.

Meantime another old silk family, neither weavers nor spinners but merchants, became convinced that what Belding needed was new management. The commission house of E. Gerli & Co. already owned a small interest in Belding, and as the stock dropped they bought & bought. Paolino Gerli, general manager of his family house, is the swart, able young head of the International Silk Guild. Belding stockholders were soon convinced that Paolino Gerli knew something about their business. High Belding executives were shuffled around until Mr. Gerli finally picked Raymond Charles Kramer for president.

President Kramer was a troubleshooting merchandiser, an associate director in Amos Parish & Co., director of Hahn Department Stores. He promptly bought out Corticelli, one of Belding's few spool silk competitors, concentrated production in the efficient Putnam, Conn, plants, scrapped the unprofitable fabric and hosiery manufacturing division, wound up last year with a $500,000 profit. He continued to make money this year, paid off a bond issue. Last week the Belding Heminway directors declared a 50-c- dividend -- their first in six years.

Paris Propaganda-- Nudism is no jesting matter to makers of men's apparel. Says Paris Garter's advertising manager, "Nudism is the challenge which barbarism has hurled at civilization."

Advertising Manager Joseph M. Kraus is most concerned about garterless legs. But he also knows that hatters are troubled by more & more hatless heads, that clothing dealers are bothered by the growing tendency to leave off undershirts. Author of slogans like "No Metal Can Touch You" and "If You Wore Them Around Your Neck You'd Change Them More Frequently," he lately started a campaign to make men wear their full quota of clothes and accessories. Last week his campaign resulted in the creation of a body called the National Men's Apparel Commission to counterattack nudism.

Advertising Manager Kraus sells a number of things beside garters, including belts, suspenders, girdles, dress shields, sanitary aprons, baby pants -- all made by A. Stein & Co. Despite the rise of Nudism, Paris garters are sold in 65 foreign countries, and in a good year A. Stein & Co. makes nearly $1,000,000. (But last year it made only $280,00.) The concern was started in a one-room plant in Chicago in the 1880s by Albert Stein, a German immigrant, to turn out ladies' fancy garters with rabbits' feet and silver buckles and the blazing armbands favored by the high-collared boulevardiers of that era. One by one he imported his three brothers, the last of whom, Sigmund, is now head of the company.

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