Empire Sold

A grubby auction hall is the Exchange Salesroom at No. 18 Vesey St., Manhattan. There in one corner is the famed auction block of Adrian H. Muller & Son which for a fee will sell anyone's securities. Both Mr. Muller and his son are dead, and the firm today is run by Miss Helen M. Collins, fortyish and efficient. One afternoon last week Miss Collins held the most spectacular auction in U. S. history.

Across her block passed control of the $3,000,000,000 Van Sweringen rail and real estate empire, put up for sale by J. P. Morgan & Co. and a group of banks that held as collateral for some $50,000,000 of past-due notes practically all the securities the two Cleveland bachelors ever owned.

It was a great day for Miss Collins, who stood at her auctioneer's elbow throughout the long, dull sale. She tried to preserve the dignity of the occasion by sternly denying entrance to all photographers but scores of newsmen milled craning about the small group of men seated before the block. In that group were representatives of the bankers who bid to protect themselves. At a tall desk with clerks and calculating machines stood Col. Leonard P. Ayres, Cleveland Trust Co.'s vice president-economist who bid in behalf of Mid-American Corp., especially chartered last week as the new top Van Sweringen holding company. Morgan Partner George Whitney was there with Morgan lawyers. Conspicuously absent was old bush-bearded Leonor Fresnel Loree, who has been built up in the Press as a likely Van Sweringen rival. And toward the rear was the iron-grey head of Oris Paxton Van Sweringen. Brother Mantis James did not attend.

From the moment Miss Collins' auctioneer thumped his palm for the first sale it was clear that "O. P." and "M. J." would regain their possessions. In the preliminary routine of offering the 58 separate parcels, a few lots were knocked down to the banking group or outsiders. But when the auctioneer put up the securities in four big blocks Col. Ayres's bids took only two. The other two groups, largely non-Van Sweringen stocks, went to Hallgarten & Co. for $1,582,000. For control of coal mines, street railways, office buildings, suburban developments, trucking companies, a hotel, a department store and Alleghany Corp., through which they run 23,000 mi. of railroads, "O. P." and "M. J." paid $3,121,000.

When friends felicitated him, "O. P." said: "I would rather have paid the bill"--a reference to the $45,000,000 lost by the bankers and remaining as a debt of honor. Assisted through the pack of photographers at the door, he climbed tiredly into his three-year-old Chrysler, was driven off slumped down in the corner of the rear seat, chin deep in his hand.

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