Split and Up

On Feb. 25 the stock of National Lead Co. closed on the New York Stock Exchange at $221 a share. On Feb. 26 it closed at $248.50 and on Feb. 27 at $288, making a gain of $67 in two days' trading. The outburst was caused by a 10-to-1 stock split, National Lead offering ten shares of a new $10 par common for each share of the $100 common now held. From an arithmetical standpoint, a stock split 10-for-1 should emerge with the new shares selling at one-tenth the price of the old. The market, however, reacted enthusiastically to a split-up which reminded traders of 1929'S happiest days. National Lead also announced 1935 earnings of $5,261,000, best since 1929, and lead prices were rising in a busy market for the metal.

The Lead spurt was equally remarkable in that only 800 shares changed hands on Feb. 26 and only 625 on Feb. 27, Lead stockholders preferring to keep their stock rather than take their profit. The shares have long been a widows-&-orphans' favorite, a gilt-edge security that has paid at least its regular $5 common dividend throughout Depression. Only 300,831 shares of common are outstanding and 25 individual holders have blocks of 1,000 shares or more, with these relatively large holdings amounting to about 47,000 shares. Another 58,000 shares are held by individual owners with less than 100 shares each, and about 110,000 shares belong to investment trusts and other non-individual owners. Nearly half the 9,433 stockholders are women, who own 31 % of the stock.

Formed in 1891 as a merger of several lead fabricators and smelters, and acquiring many a competitor in the course of its long and lucrative life, National Lead is probably responsible for at least half the U. S. output of painters' materials. Best known product is Dutch Boy white lead -- paint base made of lead carbonate and lin seed oil. Add more linseed oil, turpentine and drier, and the paint is ready to apply. Add various tinting materials and the white paint assumes any desired color. National Lead aLso makes red lead, used most conspicuously as an anti-rust coating for structural steel. It has a line of lead alloys, particularly Babbitt metal (a lead-tin alloy used in bearings), type metal and solder. It is one of the largest U. S. tin users, with an interest in Simon Patino's Bolivian tin mines and in other tin producers. National Lead has not missed a preferred dividend since 1893, a common dividend since 1905.

Chairman of National Lead is Iowa-born Edward Joel Cornish, 74, thin-haired but still square jawed. From 1882 to 1906 he practiced law in Omaha. One of his clients was Levi Carter, head of Carter White Lead Co. After Mr. Carter's death in 1903, Mr. Cornish became president of Carter Lead, sold the company to National Lead in 1906, ten years later became National's president. In 1933 he moved up to the chairmanship, was succeeded by Fred Mason Carter, who is old Levi Carter's nephew.

Modestly describing himself as "practically on a pension," Mr. Cornish said last week that he was unable to work as hard as he used to, but that his associates insisted upon continuing him in office. According to Pensioner Cornish, the stock split will give Lead many new stock holders, each of whom would be a "walking advertisement." He also said that the world was recovering from the effects of the War, that the only economic disturbance felt in a long time had been the War, so that the only lesson to be learned from that disturbance was the avoidance of future wars. Mr. Cornish spent no time worrying about New Deal policies. "They cannot," said he, "pass legislation any faster than we can adapt ourselves to it."

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