The Farmer Comes to Town

Forty-nine men have headed the New York Stock Exchange since 1817; all were bankers, brokers or otherwise emblematic Wall Streeters. But last week a special Stock Exchange committee broke this 124-year tradition, named a farmer-politician to the presidency. The man: big, dimpled, platter-eared Emil Henry Schram, who never owned more than 100 shares of stock in his life.

If Wall Street's bankers & brokers were peeved at this invasion, they were too beaten to protest. The beating, now in its twelfth year, had pushed Stock Exchange trading volume (on an annual basis to the lowest level since 1914, despite a 141% increase in the number of stocks listed since then. Stock Exchange seats sold for $20,000, cheapest since 1898. The Exchange had three new presidents in ten years, greeted each one like a savior. But Richard Whitney wound up in Sing Sing, Charles Gay in a small brokerage office, Bill Martin in an Army camp. And business got worse than ever.

Two months ago, a special committee set out to try again. Its spark plug was Paul Vincent Shields, one of the few brokers who know their way around Wash ington. Broker Shields convinced his fellow committeemen that the biggest obstacle to Wall Street's recovery was the eight-year squabble between the Exchange and the Government. Hence their best bet was a Washington man. So they checked over 50 prospects, finally lit on Emil Schram. He waited a week before saying yes, but he was tickled at getting the job. Reason: he was not too happy at RFC.

Emil Schram looks like a police lieutenant in a tough Chicago district. Until 1933, he was a successful dirt farmer. A native of Peru, Ind., he left a coal company bookkeeper's job at 21 to take charge of a 5,000-acre down-at-the-cribs farm in the Southern Illinois Valley. In three years he boosted corn production from 12,000 to 110,000 bushels. Now Schram owns a one-third interest in the farm; last year it produced 35,000 bushels of wheat, 105,000 bushels of corn, a $9,000 AAA check. Public-spirited, Schram often visited the State Legislature to fight for farmers' rights, made a lobby-hobby of irrigation and flood control. That caught the eye of Jesse Jones, who hired him to take over RFC's Drainage, Levee and Irrigation Division.

Emil Schram took RFC-banking in his stride. His record of less than one-half of 1% defaults on irrigation loans made him a Jones favorite. A good administrator, he acquired titles on new Government boards and bureaus (mostly Jones-dominated) almost as fast as his boss. Besides his RFC chairmanship, he is an officer, director or member of the Electric Home & Farm Authority, Export-Import Bank, Defense Plant Corporation, Federal Prison Industries, Inc., Rubber Reserve Co., National Power Policy Committee, three others. Only a fortnight ago he was named to OPM's priorities division, got OPMites mad as hops by taking the Stock Exchange job.

^A Jones friend and a Jones man, Schram was fast becoming also a Jones rival. At first, like other Jones men, he remained anonymous. He never held his own press conference, never sent out his own press releases. Even after the President gave him the RFC chairmanship (which Jesse wanted to keep in his own collection of titles), Jones was still his boss. Schram's thwarted feeling probably mounted during the Bolivian tin negotiations, which Jesse handled in such a way that Bolivian tin is still not being commercially smelted in the U.S.

Jesse himself, no lover of rivals, apparently saw it would not last. Early this year (TIME, March 17), he tried to make Schram $35,000-a-year president of Chicago's Federal Reserve Bank, failed when local patriots revolted. At a press conference a few days later a reporter needled Jones about the Chicago fiasco. Waving at Schram, whose RFC salary is $10,000, Jones cracked: "He's a farmer; when somebody dangled that big money in front of him, he jumped at it!"

The Stock Exchange's $48,000 was likewise inviting, since Schram has a wife and three sons to plan for. But even more inviting was the prospect of being a real boss. He refused the offer until he was promised that the Exchange's creaky operating machinery would be overhauled to make important committees responsible only to him, not to the board of governors. So when Schram packs his autographed picture of Roosevelt, his grotesque wood carvings (he hails from a woodcarving family), and leaves his RFC office* on or before July i, he will take over a real job.

Late last week, after prying deep into Schram's wholesome background, beaten Wall Street almost felt confident again. Two Stock Exchange seats sold for $27,000, up $7,000 from the previous sale. With a farmer at the helm, anything could happen--and things could hardly get worse.

* Among names talked of for his successor as RFC chairman Cottonman Will Clayton, under Secretary of Commerce Wayne Chatfield Taylor, Jesse Jones himself.

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