When Eversharp, Inc.'s stockholders walked into the Chicago headquarters for their annual meeting last week, they felt that something important was out of place. Something was. It was Eversharp's ebullient ex-chairman, Martin Straus. In place of Straus, thick-jowled R. Howard Webster of Montreal, Straus's sworn enemy, was running things. Straus had lost control of the company which, in seven meteoric years, had risen, with the help of razzle-dazzle advertising ("the $64 question"), from a $12,078 deficit to peak sales (1946) of $46 million and a $4.2 million net.
Straus's undoing was the ballpoint pen. He entered the market too late with...
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