"Spike"

Last fall from the leaf-red hills of White Sulphur Springs, W. Va., the New Deal-fearing Investment Bankers Association of America reached as far from Wall Street as it could stretch for its new president: sunburned Jean Carter Witter of the California firm of Dean Witter & Co.

Last week Wartime field artillery Captain Witter announced his successor, selected by the board of governors and sure to be elected at the I.E.A. convention in Del Monte, Calif, this October. This time I.B.A. reached into the Middle West, chose another Wartime battery commander: tall, spectacled, 48-year-old Emmett Francis Connely, president of First of Michigan Corp. First Detroiter ever to head I.E.A., socialite "Spike" Connely is also anti-New Deal, believes in letting others shout their antagonism while he does the best he can in sad days for banking.

> Sharply at 8:45 o'clock each workday morning the officers of the world's largest hat factory sit down at a worn, carved oak round table, go over the morning mail addressed "John B. Stetson Co., Philadelphia, Pa.", and discuss company matters. Since last June when Stetson's third president, George V. MacKinnon died, the president's chair has been vacant. This week it was occupied. Fourth head of the 74-year-old Stetson business was robust, grey-haired, 43-year-old George L. Russell Jr., former vice president and treasurer. After a miserable 1938 with a net deficit of $413,534, he was recently able to announce for the first half of fiscal 1939 a net profit of $37,090. No. 1 rule of Stetson's Philadelphia office: no hatless man is allowed to come in the front door.

> Appointed recently as trustee for sick 8,391-mile Chicago & North Western Railway was Lawyer Charles M. Thomson. As trustee for 927-mile Chicago & Eastern Illinois he had led the smaller road a long way toward financial convalescence. To C. & N. W. as President and operating head also went C. & E. I.'s weatherbeaten Executive Vice-President Rowland L. Williams.

Last week C. & E. I. got its trustee replacement: tall, handsome Chicago Lawyer Benjamin Wham (rhymes with Tom), writing authority on receiverships and reorganization. His most pressing job (to be shared with C. & E. I.'s crack President C. T. O'Neal): to wind up details of the only Class I reorganization already approved by ICC and Federal courts.

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