Broken Broker

On one of the darkest days of the 1929 stockmarket crash, when almost every rumor was a libel, Broker Michael J. ("Mike") Meehan sauntered up to one of his partners, said cheerily: "Well, I understand I'm broke. Guess we'd better give all the boys in the office a two weeks' bonus to prove it."

Having pulled Radio Corp. of America to a high of $549 per share in the most spectacular pool operations of the New Era, Mike Meehan was certainly vulnerable when the great decline set in. How much of his fortune, once estimated at anywhere from $5,000,000 to $25,000,000, was lost in the next few years, no one who knows will tell. Presumably the figure was big enough to bother even optimistic Mr. Meehan. His firm did some heroic retrenching in the way of lopping off branch offices, including those at sea on crack transatlantic liners. But reports that the high-strung, red-haired onetime theatre ticket agent had lost his last shirt were exaggerated. Year ago Broker Meehan presented his son on his 21st birthday with a $130,000 seat on the New York Stock Exchange.

In the same week he bought his son's present, Broker Meehan received a present from the Securities & Exchange Commission in the form of a summons to show cause why he should not be suspended from all U. S. stock exchanges for alleged manipulation of Bellanca Aircraft stock. Hotly denying that he had been jiggling Bellanca or any other stock, Broker Meehan prepared to defend himself.

Broker Meehan had plenty of time to brood upon his case before the SEC's hearing got under way. Then last spring in the middle of the proceedings his attorney had to announce: "It is unfortunate that Mr. Meehan cannot take the stand in his own defense . . . his doctors inform me . . . that the state of his health is such that it is impossible for him to appear. I understand that the Commission's doctor ... is of similar opinion." Broker Meehan dropped from the news, and the Meehan case, still undecided, dragged on without him.

Last week it was belatedly discovered that Mr. Meehan, far from recovering after his preliminary bout with SEC, had been confined since last August to Bloomingdale Hospital, a sanatorium near Manhattan for the treatment of nervous and mental disorders. On the application of his wife and the advice of two alienists, the 42-year-old broker had been committed by New York Supreme Court Justice William F. Bleakley just before that jurist accepted the Republican nomination for Governor of New York.

Among Broker Meehan's friends it was said that the SEC challenge had been a "heartbreaking" experience for him.

From the genial, generous person they had known, Mr. Meehan changed into a tense, excitable nervous case. A marked increase in drinking was noted, and a tendency to rambling talk. Distressed by the fact that Mr. Meehan's condition had become front-page news, one of his partners made haste last week to stop further speculation, declaring: "M. J. Meehan is ... not under restraint. He has been sick about a year and has given no attention to business during this period. His condition is a matter of concern to his family and friends but we are confident . . . that he will soon win his way back to good health."

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