More for Monsanto

Among the smokestacks that make St. Louis sooty are those of the chemical industry. Biggest chemical concern in St. Louis, and one of the biggest in the U. S., is Monsanto, which operates one plant in St. Louis, another across the Mississippi in Illinois. Starting from scratch with the U. S. rights to a German patent on saccharin, Monsanto spent the first 20 years of its life shouldering its way to the top of the domestic fine chemical industry, the next 15 buying plants at home and abroad to consolidate a respectable position in the heavy chemical industry. For another $6,000,000 worth of expansion Monsanto last week prepared to offer its stockholders 101,310 shares of new stock at $60 a share. Underwritten by Edward B. Smith & Co., the offer will probably be snapped up, since even after a 19-point drop from its year's high, Monsanto stock is currently selling at 84.

Monsanto was founded in 1901 by John Francis Queeny, a St. Louis drug salesman. He figured he had sold enough remedies and condiments to be able to make money manufacturing them, scraped together $5,000, began making saccharin. He gave the company his wife's maiden name because he planned to keep on peddling drugs under his own. The company got to its feet slowly, did not down European competition in selling drugs to U. S. drug stores until the War.

Just before the heavy weather of the post-War depression, Drugman Queeny put out a sea anchor in Britain by buying a half interest in a Welsh concern making phenol (pure carbolic acid). In 1929 Monsanto absorbed Rubber Service Laboratories with a plant in Nitro, W. Va. for producing chemicals used in rubber processing. Same year Monsanto acquired the Buffalo, N. Y. plant of Mathieson Alkali Works and Merrimac Chemical Co. at Everett, Mass., oldest and largest New England manufacturer of heavy chemicals for the textile, paper and tanning industries. Monsanto has lost money in only three years since it was founded. The only deficit since 1904 was in the post-War depression. In 1929 earnings were $1,691,000. They fell off in 1930, have risen steadily since 1932 to last year's record of $3,843,000.

Founder Queeny died in 1933, leaving Monsanto management to his son, Edgar Monsanto Queeny, who had been president since 1927. Tall, dark, brisk President Queeny lives on a 500-acre farm in St. Louis County, rides horseback every morning before going to work. He boasts that "Monsanto's net contribution to ... unemployment . . . was nil," since he never laid off a man during Depression, has twice as many people working for him now as in 1931. Satisfied, too, is Monsanto's Queeny that the firm's market is so diversified that no more than about 10% of Monsanto's gross profit comes from any one of the more than 300 chemicals it manufactures.

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