CORPORATIONS: Say It with Dividends

Montgomery Ward's Board Chairman Sewell Avery last week neatly answered charges by Challenger Louis Wolfson that he is stingy with dividends. Though Ward's sales in the first nine months of 1954 slumped 13½% and profits $4.8 million (to $21 million), the company's directors voted an extra $1.75 dividend for the 67,055 stockholders. The regular quarterly dividend rate will be boosted to 75¢ instead of 50¢ per share, the first such increase since 1936. In fiscal 1954, Ward^s dividends will total $4 per share, 50¢ more than last year.

On the New York Stock Exchange, the good news caused a crisis of...

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