Year-end Treat

With profits recovering, many a board of directors saw fit to pass on to stockholders a traditional holiday treat: an extra year-end dividend. P. Lorillard Co., still riding high on the sales of Kent cigarettes, voted a 95-c- extra, bringing dividends to $4 v. $1.95 in 1957. Extra dividends and 2-for-1 stock splits were approved by Pet Milk and Kellogg Co.; growing drug sales gave Chas. Pfizer & Co. stockholders a higher dividend, a year-end extra of 60-c- and a proposed 2 1/2-for-1split.

Not all stockholders fared so well. Du Pont chopped its year-end payment from $2 to $1.50 per share. United Fruit, citing fruit damage from wind storms, cut its dividend from 75-c- to 50-c-. American Telephone & Telegraph declared the same $2.25 quarterly dividend it has paid for 37 years, despite a spate of rumors of a raise. But stockholders have fared well this year despite dividend cuts in hard-hit industries. The New York Stock Exchange reported that cash dividends on common stocks for the first three quarters set a record high of $6.4 billion, up $11.2 million from 1957.

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