For a year, stockholders of Botany Mills, Inc., have had only bad news. President C. F. H. Johnson Sr., who built up the famed textile company, died in April 1952. The annual report for 1952 showed a deficit of $5,509,434, worst in the company's 64-year history. No dividends have been paid on common or preferred stocks since last fall. Last week the stockholders finally heard what sounded like good news: control of the company was being bought by Philadelphia's Bankers Securities Corp., headed by Albert M. Greenfield, who has made a specialty of buying sick companies and making them well.
The...