Business: Inconsistent Firemen

Iron Fireman Manufacturing Co. of Portland, Ore. makes more automatic coal stokers than any other firm. In the last few years it has grown so big that it no longer has one annual dealers' convention. It has fiveĀ—one after another, two days apiece, in Cleveland, Manhattan, Atlanta, Chicago, St. Paul. Last week, as the "traveling convention" got under way in Cleveland, 400 dealers were astonished to hear that Iron Fireman, which made $711,000 in 1937 from an uncompromising warfare on oil burners, was going into the oil burner business itself.

Iron Fireman has been...

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