(See front cover)
Black, Starr & Frost-Gorham, Inc., famed Manhattan jewelers, opened the doors of their new Fifth Avenue store last week. The interior was 16th century Italian Gothic. Displayed was a $750,000 pearl necklace, exquisitely matched.
Lee and J. J. Shubert and Max J. Kramer, Broadwayites, announced that they would build on Broadway a $15,000,000 theatre-hotel.
U. S. Steel and American Can declared extra common dividends of $1.00. American Tobacco Co. declared dividends of $2.00 each on both common and common B shares. Bon Ami declared $1.00 on its A stock, 50¢ on its B stock.
Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Co. reported nine months' net profit greater by $5,254,176 than its corresponding net last year. Similarly the Southern Railway System showed an increase of $1,549,000.
For failure to meet their obligations the firms of John J. Bell and Lynch & Co. (Manhattan) were barred from the New York Curb Exchange. In Madison, Wis., H. M. Warner & Co., brokers, closed their doors. In Worcester, Mass., Riley Fitzgerald & Co. did likewise.
In Manhattan, the pawnbroker nearest Wall Street said his loans had tripled.
Someone had to show faith. The first to do so was T. B. Macauley, president of the Sun Life Assurance Co. of Canada, who said that his company (large institutional stock-buyers) was not selling, was buying (TIME, Nov. 4). Others quickly followed his lead. From Washington Dr. Julius Klein, Assistant Secretary of Commerce, radioed to the nation that its business was sound, that only 4% of U. S. families were affected by the break. Others were Stuart Chase and Irving Fisher, famed economists, Paul Shoup of the Southern Pacific, Bowman Gray of the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., Luther Blake of Standard Statistics Co., Walter P. Chrysler, Roy A. Hunt of Aluminum Co. of America, Matthew C. Brush, Walter S. Gifford of American Telephone and Telegraph, K. R. Kingsbury of Standard Oil Co. of California. William Wrigley Jr. and John J. Raskob announced that they were buying stocks.
In Chicago Philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, board chairman of Sears Roebuck Co. guaranteed the margin accounts of all his employes. Two days later Chicago's public utility tycoon and opera promoter Samuel Insull announced that he would do the same thing. And so did Samuel W. Reyburn, president of Manhattan's department store Lord & Taylor. But the climax came when the wizened little man who lives in the fortressed home in Pocantico Hills, N. Y., said: "My son and I have for some days past been purchasing sound common stock." In memory of many a trader in Wall Street, John D. Rockefeller Sr. had never spoken of the market. Nor did he often speak on any subject.*
Thus did the men whose names are known strive mightily to alter a national psychology. Theirs in great part was the credit last week when on Thursday Oct. 31 U. S. Steel which the Tuesday before had closed at 174, closed at 193½, and Radio which had plunged to 38½ climbed to 50.