The Roof Leaks

The 649 stockholders of Atlas Tack Corp. are no longer surprised at anything.

Most of them remember the wild days back in 1933 when Wall Street manipulators jacked the stock from $2 a share to $28, then let the price drop like a hot potato so that they could rig the market over again. Thus last week the hardy Atlas stockholders heard a grim summary of their company's condition and took it standing up.

In the annual report for 1944, the Atlas president, blunt, hard-boiled Sherman Hoar Bowles (cousin of OPAdministrator Chester Bowles), told the stockholders: "The roof of the Fairhaven plant has so many leaks you can't count them all, and the floor is falling in all over the building. The sides of two of the boilers are caving in. The machinery is mostly very old and something falls in pieces almost every day.

"It is remarkable that the personnel produces as good quality products as they do, with the equipment and methods of manufacture in vogue. . . . Due to rising costs, with no relief from OPA . . . about 60% of the cut tack sales were made at a loss."

Bowles's advice to his stockholders: convert their stock into Atlas bonds priced at $20 each and paying 5%. But the stockholders figured it would be more exciting, and maybe more profitable, to keep on being stockholders.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.