Business: Block Out

Benjamin Block, broker to Wall Street market makers for nearly 20 years, retired from his Stock Exchange firm last week. His best customers were Jesse Lauriston Livermore, famed bear operator, and William Crapo Durant, oldtime head of General Motors and leader of many a potent pool in the Coolidge bull market. Broker Block would often take huge selling orders from Bear Livermore over one telephone while Bull Durant was on another wire to place huge buying orders. To customers he thought were wrong he would snort: “You’re throwing your money away”—and take the order.

Jesse Livermore, a friend from pre-War days in Chicago, Broker Block has called “the gamest and cleverest trader alive.” Durant he said was “as square a man as you’ll ever know, and when his friends are losing he is losing more than any of them.” Broker Block ought to know; he helped Durant throw away a $90,000,000 fortune trying to support General Motors’ stock in the 1920 crash. But Bull Durant fell out with Broker Block two years ago when his account was sold out. Early this year he sued for $378,000, claiming he loaned the stock as a favor to Broker Block. Broker Block curtly stated that Durant had been warned to put up more margin.

Benjamin Block was a big operator in his own right. He it was who boosted U. S. Steel from around $108 to over $200 in 1927 and 1928. He is credited with several killings in the wheat pit. Unlike most operators he makes no secret of his positions. “When I say I’m buying, I’m buying. When I say I’m selling, I’m selling.”

There is an old Wall Street saw that you cannot mix horses and stocks, but Benjamin Block’s first horse was a great horse. Kentucky Derby-winner Morvich. Morvich was beaten in his 13th start— and never won another race. Twice a year Broker Block journeys to Elizabeth Pinkney Daingerfield’s famed farm near Lexington. Ky. to spend a few hours with Morvich, his brood mares and his colts. “Some day,” he says, “I’ll have another Derby winner by Morvich. That’s a prediction, too.”

Tall, dominating, tight-lipped Benjamin Block lives at Manhattan’s Ritz Tower, has no country estate. He is no kin to Publisher Paul Block. He says he does not plan to retire from all business activity but has no plans for the future. Benjamin Block & Co. was reorganized as Anderson. Block & Co. with Block’s son John Horace as a partner. Son Horace’s friends refer to him as “old Block’s chip.”