A Waterman on a Rampage

Last February 41-year-old Elisha Waterman, grandnephew of the founder, resigned his job as executive vice president of L. E. Waterman Co., famed makers of pens. Not only did he resign, but last week he sued to dissolve the company. Not only did he sue, but in effect he called his relatives and co-officials boobs.

No ordinary family-business careerist is Elisha. In 1925 his father, then president of L. E. Waterman Co., tossed him out of his job with the company. On his own, Elisha took a $35-a-month flat in Manhattan's Greenwich Village, cooked hamburgers, washed dishes, wrote detective stories for a living. In 1938 his father died, left him just $100. But his father's death also left Elisha a beneficiary of the trust that controlled L. E. Waterman Co. Elisha moved back into the company, was fulsomely hailed in the press as the "Cinderella Man" (TIME, June 20, 1938).

Turning up for work, with a neatly trimmed mustache, Cinderelisha decided to handle labor relations and advertising.

He promptly discarded some of the company's tested methods, ordered employes around brusquely. No easier did he make the job of his younger brother Frank, shy, quiet president of the company. Last week, in Elisha's complaint to a New York court, Brother Frank saw himself described as "an inexperienced person, incapable of directing the affairs of the Corporation and unwilling to cooperate with the plaintiff." For other company officials, members of "a small group of relatives" who (said the complaint) have thwarted his efforts to "rebuild" the company, Elisha had similar epithets. His cousin, Louis E. Waterman Jr., 73-year-old son of the founder, was called "a victim of disease and illness which has unfortunately affected the soundness and independence of his judgment and mind." Uncle Fred S. Waterman was called "incompetent and unfit." To their mismanagement he charged a ten-year loss of $4,000,000, a $4,112,198 drop in surplus, a $2,001,016 shrinkage of cash and securities. But men in the company, whose answer remained to be filed, found their business, despite losses, in good shape.

President Frank Waterman is able to boast of this year's March sales 20% ahead of any month last year.

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