Chase on Wheels

Its brass gleaming, its larder bursting and its water tanks brimming, the private Pullman car Roald Amundsen glided softly out of Manhattan one afternoon last month behind the New York Central's westbound Commodore Vanderbilt. Forward in the servants' room were the cook, the waiter and a porter who once polished up the handles on Henry Ford's private car. In the five master bedrooms as the train was speeding through the Mohawk Valley, a number of notable people were getting into their silk brocaded pajamas for the night. One was Winthrop Williams Aldrich, chairman of the biggest bank in the U. S. Another was the bank's president, Henry Donald Campbell. A third was the bank's brilliant economist, Benjamin M. Anderson Jr. And a fourth was handsome young Nelson Rockefeller, who had nothing to do with the bank except that his father John Davison Rockefeller Jr. is its biggest stockholder and his uncle heads its board of directors.

Chase National Bank was paying $75 per day for the private car, plus railroad fares for 15 persons, in order that its top executives might make a month-long swing around the rim of the U. S.

By last week the Chase junket was on its homeward lap. After surveying the financial district of Phoenix, Ariz. (pop. 48,000), Chairman Aldrich, Nephew Nelson Rockefeller and the other Chaselings began at San Antonio a seven-day inspection of Texas "conditions." There the party was joined by young Winthrop Rockefeller, who has been "roughnecking" in the oil fields for the Rockefeller Humble Oil & Refining Co. He boarded the car for a few days to visit with his brother Nelson, who is generally regarded as the heir-apparent to all his smart old grandfather's smartness. At Houston Mr. Aldrich confided to newshawks that a San Antonio press story made "it look as though the rest of us were merely accompanying my nephew, Nelson Rockefeller, on this tour. As a matter of fact, we brought him along just so he could see the country."

If he had done nothing else for Nephew Nelson in the preceding three weeks, Uncle Winthrop had certainly shown him the country. After two days in Chicago the Amundsen rolled north to Milwaukee, where the party was taken in hand by a good & faithful Chase customer, big Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co. When Mr. Aldrich wanted to see the city's residential section, Dr. Charles Edgar Albright, Northwestern's star salesman, motored him through the suburbs, took him to his own house for a cocktail party where 75 Milwaukee bigwigs were waiting to meet the No. 1 U. S. banker. Mr. Aldrich and a few guests absented themselves for a few moments to step down the street and pay their respects to 84-year-old Fred Vogel Jr., a Northwestern trustee.

In St. Paul local newspapers were asked to play down the Chase junket but they insisted on playing up President Campbell, their home-town-boy-who-made-good. One of "Don" Campbell's first jobs had been a clerkship in the State Capitol. Said the president of the Chase National Bank: "And, gentlemen, you should have seen my office, much finer than my office in New York."

In Seattle President Campbell's brother Roy saw to it that no Chaseling had a moment to himself. There were breakfasts, luncheons, dinners, a visit to a great Weyerhaeuser lumber camp near Snoqualmie Falls. Once when President Morris Allen Arnold of Seattle's First National was entertaining the party privately, Nelson Rockefeller sneaked off to a prize fight with Roy Campbell, whose regular job is executive vice president of Western Dairy Products.

Uncle Winthrop's chief complaint about Seattle was a fog which prevented him from seeing Mt. Rainier. By the time the Amundsen pulled into Portland, Ore. to be welcomed by a platoon of local bankers, there was a downpouring rain. All that afternoon the New Yorkers sludged-trudged through the mud inspecting Bonneville Dam.

In San Francisco the Chaselings abandoned the Amundsen for five days and moved into the swank Hotel Mark Hopkins atop Nob Hill. Up from Montgomery Street marched the great bankers of the third banking city of the land, Herbert Fleishhacker, Amadeo Peter Giannini, William Henry Crocker, many another. Newshawks who visited the Chase suites, well aware of the abstemious traditions of the pious Rockefellers, were pleasantly surprised to find that excellent liquor was being served.

From Manhattan west Mr. Aldrich had been orating at every stop but he reserved his major speech for San Francisco. At a Commonwealth Club luncheon in the St. Francis Hotel, after solemnly reporting that business and sentiment were markedly improved, he made an earnest plea for cheaper unemployment relief. Declaring that unemployment must be considered as something more than temporary, he urged that direct home relief be substituted for costly made-work relief.

Simultaneously in Manhattan the Chase Bank released thousands of copies of the Aldrich relief speech. Few days later the New York Herald Tribune headlined: NEW YORK BANKERS WOO BROTHERS ACROSS NATION.

What the Herald Tribune newshawk had done was to link the leisurely Chase tour with a hurried trip to the West Coast made ten days before by Chairman James Handasyd Perkins of Manhattan's huge National City Bank. The chief difference between the two tours was that Mr. Perkins traveled in an ordinary Pullman unaccompanied by even a single secretary. Since it was no secret that most western bankers felt that their truce with the President was something of a Wall Street sellout, it did indeed look as if Messrs. Perkins & Aldrich were "wooing" their little brothers into the Administration fold. But best opinion was that the purpose of both tours was simply to tighten friendships with correspondents, drum up business and obtain from first-hand sources information on the state of the union.

With the Amundsen coupled on to the end of Southern Pacific's Lark, Mr. Aldrich & party went from San Francisco to Los Angeles, there to inspect, among other things, a whopping if unwanted Chase investment. Fox Film Corp. Funnyman Will Rogers reported:

"One of New York's very leading bankers was visiting our studio (and incidentally his studio). . . . This fellow had an economist with him. Pretty near everybody's got one. Either that or a police dog. The more wealthy have got both."

Aboard the Amundsen was no police dog, but Mr. Aldrich demonstrated at a Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce luncheon that he did have power. Believing no newshawks present, he remarked cheerfully: "In their absence I can speak very freely and off the record." Thereupon Mr. Aldrich delivered himself freely and frankly on the subject of the Roosevelt Administration. When the luncheon broke up some conscientious Chambermen told him that the Press had actually been present. Cried Mr. Aldrich: "Leave all that out."

Harry Chandler of the Times, E. Manchester Boddy of the tabloid Illustrated Daily News, G. G. Young of the Examiner, other Los Angeles publishers, saw to it that Mr. Aldrich's free speech was left out.

Last week Mr. Aldrich had another exciting experience with the Press. Just as the Chaselings were leaving Dallas for St. Louis and Manhattan, Publisher Amon Giles Carter of Fort Worth swooped down, gathered up the whole tourist group, whisked them back to his Fort Worth estate. There, as he always does, Host Carter proffered decanters and panatelas, fed his overnight guests on turkey. But he did not have time to stamp in the broad-brimmed hats he presented to each guest the customary legend: "'The latchstring always hangs outside.' Amon G. Carter, Shady Oaks Farm, Fort Worth, Tex."

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