Yankee Gadgets

Few of the products of Boston's United-Carr Fastener Corp. would look amiss in the notion bag of a Yankee peddler. Its line, buckles, screw machine parts, purse frames, ornaments; leather, metal and bakelite specialities; automobile hardware radio tube pins, clips, sockets, soldering lugs; fastener attaching machines; fasteners for automobile, airplane and motor boat upholstery, carpets, tops, curtains; or luggage, footwear, gloves, raincoats, overalls, caps. Chief bugaboo of United-Carr Fastener is the ubiquitous zipper.

A merger of two typically New England Enterprises, United-Carr began its corporate life in 1929, when its gadgets piled up profits of $568,000. Today the company operates plants in England, Canada, Australia and Luxembourg, where its subsidiary is called Societe Anonyme des Etablissements Ri-Ri. Profits showed a drop for three years after the merger but turned upward after 1932. Last year United-Carr reported earnings of nearly $500,000. And by last summer the company felt prosperous enough to borrow

$1,200,000 from the banks to pay off a high-coupon bond issue. Last week, to pay off the banks, United-Carr marketed 50,000 shares of preferred stock through Boston's firm of Hornblower & Weeks.

The Weeks of Hornblower & Weeks was Warren Harding's late Secretary of War, John Wingate Weeks. His only son, Sinclair ("Sinkie") Weeks, is president of United-Carr and longtime Republican Mayor of smug Newton, Mass. When not occupied with fasteners, "Sinkie" Weeks bedevils Democratic Governor James M. Curley, whose limousine has twice run down escorting troopers, one of them in "Sinkie's" bailiwick. When Curley denied that he had been personally involved in the Newton crash, "Sinkie" held an investigation, brought forth witnesses who said that they had seen His Excellency in the car. On the side, "Sinkie" Weeks is a director of Boston's First National Bank, president of Reed & Barton (silverware), treasurer of Durgin Park & Co. (famed Boston restaurant).

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