In command of Remington Rand, Inc. there were until last week two outstanding figures. Now there is but one.
The remaining figure is that of James Henry Rand Jr., 44, chairman and president of the company. Soon after he graduated from Harvard in 1908 he went into the business of making business simpler. One of the first companies he worked for was his father's Rand Co., Inc., producer of card index systems. In 1915 he and his father disagreed. He left the company, borrowed $10,000 from Uncle George F. Rand of Marine Trust Co. in Buffalo, formed American Kardex Co., a direct competitor of Rand Co. Ten years later Father & Son Rand were reconciled. They agreed that American Kardex should buy Rand Co.
This deal gave Son Rand an urge to merge further. The same year he bought Index Visible, Inc. from Yale's Professor Irving Fisher. A few months later the new Rand Kardex Co. bought Library Bureau, Inc., maker of office furniture and library supplies. In 1926 the new Rand Kardex Bureau, Inc. sold $23,000,000 worth of office equipment, gathered profits of almost $4,000,000.
In 1927 James H. Rand Jr. put through his biggest deal of all. A merger was arranged with Remington Typewriter Co. and into being came Remington Rand Inc. It kept growing, now makes such varied lines of business equipment as loose-leaf binders and forms, adding machines, carbon paper, safes. It has plants in 20 U. S. cities and seven abroad where it does 33⅓% of its business. Its earnings for the year ended March 31, 1931 were $1,411,000 against International Business Machines' $7,357,000 for 1930, Underwood Elliott Fisher's $4,011,000, National Cash Register's $3,584,000.
Not until 1928 did the other Remington Rand figure come into the picture. It was that of William Fessenden Merrill, 54, who was made president. Mr. Merrill had once been an executive of Library Bureau but he entered the company for other reasons. Just as Remington Rand caters to office efficiency, Mr. Merrill is an expert on corporate efficiency. Many a time he has entered a company, doctored everything from mechanical production problems to sales methods, swelled the profits. He was sent to Remington Rand by National City Co. which, having just headed a syndicate selling a $21,968,000 R-R bond issue, wanted to see its problems of consolidation quickly adjusted.
Last week President Merrill and three directors resigned without explanation. Wall Street tried to guess the reason. One possibility was that, although Remington Rand's profits have dwindled lately, President Merrill did his work well, is now needed by National City to jack up another one of its client companies. The other possibility was that National City may be retiring as Remington Rand's most prominent banking sponsor. For just as Chairman-President James H. Rand Jr. has built far beyond his father's original business, so has his cousin George F. Rand Jr. succeeded and surpassed his father and is now the alert president of aggressive Marine Midland Corp., holding company for 18 New York State banks.