Good Humor Corp. of America declares dividends whenever the idea pops into the busy head of Michael J. (''Mike") Meehan. Last week Mr. Meehan passed out a 50¢ dividend. Most of the half dollars clinked into Mr. Meehan's personal pocket. A few found their way to his good friend Alfred E. Smith.
A Good Humor is a diminutive brick of ice cream coated with chocolate or coconut and frozen onto a stick. It is sold on roadsides in and about New York. Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, Miami, Tulsa, Detroit, Newark, Dallas and New Haven by young men with bright smiles. The young men have either neat white trucks or dry-ice boxes.
The first Good Humor was concocted in 1920, the year that "Mike" Meehan moved up from the New York Curb Exchange to the New York Stock Exchange where he soon began riding Radio from $25 a share to a high of $549. Good Humor's creator was Harry B. Burt, a Cleveland candymaker, who took the name from one of his earlier creations, a clear candy sucker. Chocolate-coated ice cream was already the province of Eskimo Pie. But ice-cream-on-a-stick was new, patentable.
On the day of the first October stock-market crash in 1929, Good Humors were being sold in Cleveland and Chicago by a syndicate which bought out Inventor Burt's widow. On the day after the crash Speculator Meehan took $500,000 out of the market, bought into the syndicate.
The little industry began to expand. In 1932, 14,000,000 Good Humors were sold in New York and Chicago and, although no figures are given, sales have probably gone higher. All the Good Humors earn money directly for Good Humor Corp. of America except those sold in Los Angeles, Tulsa, Miami and Dallas. Manufacturers in those four cities are licensed by Mr. Meehan's company on a royalty basis. Production is simple. Good Humor uses the best ice cream and chocolate, charges 10¢. It expends its ingenuity on merchandising.
The white trucks and white-clad salesmen are spotless. For two days each spring the salesmen go to school. There they are instructed to bathe and change their shoes & socks daily, wash their feet with borax water, Epsom salts or ammonia. Each morning a salesman gets a fresh uniform. In making a sale he salutes, says brightly, "Good Humor, may I serve you, sir?" When possible he gets in a word about regulation-size brick ice cream to take home.
Each salesman gets a commission on sales. During the season his commissions range from $30 to $120 weekly, out of which he must buy gasoline. Yet many salesmen average a princely $100 net.
President of Good Humor Corp. of America is James F. McConnochie, a highly good-humored Irishman whom Mr. Meehan discovered in the New York Customs House. Its vice president and head of the all-important sales department is Carl Freshwater, a onetime Ford salesman in London, Ohio. With Good Humor, he has a long winter vacation. For each autumn the plants are closed, the white trucks garaged, the sunny salesmen dismissed.