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Ewing Virgil Neal was busily doing transient business in a magnificent Florentine suite on the Sherry-Netherland's 14th floor. His rise to wealth began, like that of Owen D. Young and many another U. S. tycoon, on a farm 64 years ago at Sedalia, Mo. He still talks with a Midwestern inflection—bland, drawling, soothing. Sedalia he left when he was 24. going to Philadelphia. Soon he entered the publishing business, wrote and published Modern Illustrated Banking and Modern Illustrated Bookkeeping (which still pay him royalties through American Book Co.). He also operated as publisher in Rochester, N. Y. and New York City, reprinting old prose and poetry on which the copyright had run out. About that time he was also touring the U. S. as X. La Motte Sage, giving exhibitions of hypnotism. This led to The Philosophy of Personal Influence, distributed by mail from Rochester, which offered courses in hypnotism, and earned him & associates $1,500,000 before postal inspectors, suspecting fraud, forced the "New York Institute of Science" to quit. Another Rochester enterprise called the New York Institute of Physicians & Surgeons sold cure-alls called" "Vitaopathy"' in the U. S.. "Radiopathy" in Mexico and South America. At a certain hour of certain days Radiopathy customers took certain pills while staring into the photographed eyes of one of the Institute's professors, who at that very instant was "concentrating on you." The Postmaster General also scotched that enterprise. Japanese became best customers of another Neal brainchild, the Cartilage Co., which sold a halter by which runts hung themselves from ceilings to stretch their vertebrae. About 1904, Mr. Neal went to Europe, where he made caffeine from tea sweepings. Back in the U. S., he claimed to be the only man making aspirin in this country before the War. He also sold wrinkle eradicators. weight reducers, bust developers, hair restorers, Nuxated Iron* which made Ty Cobb "greatest baseball batter of all time." which enabled Prizefighter Jess Willard to "triumph over" Prizefighter Jack Johnson, and Prizefighter Jack Dempsey "to whip" Prizefighter Jess Willard. Currently E. Virgil Neal has a cosmetic factory in Paris, one in London, and sells "Tokalon" powders and creams "in 100 countries." He would sell his latest product in the U. S. "if I could find a good man." Three months in the U. S. this autumn was sufficient for Mr. Neal. Last week he sent his magnificent Maybach-Zeppelin limousine back to France on the 5. S. De Grasse, departed on the 5. S. lie de France with his buxom young wife, his buxom young French secretary, his 9-year-old son Nen La Motte Sage (after the father's pseudonym), maids, valet. 30 trunks, 40 other pieces of luggage. Proudly he carried with him a green leather booklet signed B. Mussolini. The booklet is his "Fascist Membership Card," which he treasures above all the millions he has made out of catering to the aches and pains and physical vanities of a credulous world. Says he: "Mussolini never gives his signature. Great man, Mussolini. We talk in French because I don't know much Italian."
*Present owner: Win. R. Warner & Co. of Manhattan, sellers of Sloan's Liniment, Agaral, Nouspi, Formamint.