Candymen

Page & Shaw. So inordinately fond of sweets was the late teetotaling James Buchanan ("Diamond Jim") Brady that he was known to eat a pound of candy in five minutes. One day he was given a box of chocolates made by a small Boston confectionery named Page & Shaw. "It's the best goddam candy I ever put in my mouth!" cried "Diamond Jim," who vowed he would thereafter buy no candy but Page & Shaw's. Later, according to his biographers, he offered the struggling little candy company $150,000 without interest.

Page & Shaw did not remain obscure for long. Styling itself "the only international candy company," it opened branches in England, France and Canada, a chain of swank stores from Manhattan to San Francisco. By 1924 its sales reached a peak of 2,200,000 lb. per year. Then troubles came to Page & Shaw. Sales slumped, cash dwindled. Control had fallen into the hands of a Boston lawyer named Otis Emerson Dunham. Promoter Dunham shocked the Boston Better Business Bureau by giving away one share of common stock with every $2 worth of candy. In 1930 Promoter Dunham and two stockbrokers were found guilty of conspiracy in floating $2,000,000 worth of Page & Shaw stock. According to the prosecution, half of the money received from selling the stock went to the brokers. Otis Dunham was sentenced to two years in a Massachusetts house of correction. Before his sentence began, Page & Shaw quietly toppled into bankruptcy.

Last week, firmly convinced that he had been victimized, Otis Dunham emerged from retirement to file in Massachusetts a damage suit against six of his stock-selling cronies. Claiming that the brokers had forced their way into the company in 1929 and "caused his name to be forged on papers and letters," he demanded $1,500,000 damages and complete vindication of blame for the shady stock deals. Page & Shaw has never recovered from the Dunham spree. It still operates a factory in Cambridge, but all its retail stores have been closed. Most of its candy is sold today through drug stores and specialty shops.

"Vegecandy." Before Depression, burly, white-haired James M. Washburne, 80, operated all the Martha Washington Candy Stores in New York City. He thought nothing of paying $250 for a single suit of clothes. He bought his wife so many jewels her friends began calling her "Diamond Anne." They lived in a $4,700-a-year apartment in Manhattan, had two houses and a farm in New Jersey, a winter home in Florida. In a good year the Martha Washington stores each grossed $6,000 a day and Mr. Washburne's income was $50,000 a year.

One by one, as Depression deepened, Candymaker Washburne's stores sank into debt, were closed. He dismissed his chauffeur, sold his houses, pawned his wife's jewels. Martha Washington candies vanished from public sale in New York. Last year, penniless, Mr. Washburne moved to a one-room flat. There he spent his days puttering with candy on the kitchen stove, finally concocted some sweets made of fresh fruit and vegetables. Each day he slipped out of the flat, went to Times Square. There he tied a placard on his chest, stood by subway exits selling candies made from corn, spinach, beets, carrots, peas. Too proud to tell his wife what he was doing, he explained each night that he "sold to old customers." One day a newshawk discovered him. When the story of his plight was published, letters and checks poured into his apartment. Peddler Washburne returned the checks with thanks, kept on selling his candies. Finally a Long Island candy manufacturer named Joseph B. Kaufman called to say that he wanted to buy Mr. Washburne's formula for "Vegecandies."

Last week James Washburne, dapperly clad in a grey coat and pin-striped trousers, sat thumbing a fistful of stock in a Manhattan office. Proudly he read in black letters on the face of each certificate: ''James M. Washburne Candy Specialty Corp." The company is capitalized at $1,000,000 with James M. Wash-burne as president, Joseph B. Kaufman, treasurer. In the street below the office stood Mr. Washburne's shiny new Cadillac. ''I'm beginning to live all over again," beamed Candymaker Washburne.

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