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That was not the first business Armand Hammer, M. D., had ever done with Moscow. Just out of medical school and waiting to interne at Manhattan's Bellevue Hospital, he went to Russia in 1921 to do a few months' relief work in the Ural famine area. More impressed by the need of food than of medical attention, he promptly arranged (through his father's chemical firm) to barter 1,000,000 bu. of wheat for Russian furs, minerals, caviar. Lenin heard of his feat, sent for the 23-year-old doctor, told him to go to it. And under Lenin's New Economic Policy (limited individual enterprise) Dr. Hammer stayed on & on, waxing richer & richer in Soviet trade. With his two brothers he built up an importing-&-exporting business which by 1925, when he sold out to the Government, handled $25,000,000 of goods a year. He obtained the Russian agency for Fordson tractors and for Moline plows, persuaded U. S. firms to train Russian mechanics in their plants. Meantime he obtained an asbestos concession and a concession to make pencils. Both proved profitable, for in Russia there was no sales problem. Dr. Hammer could sell as much asbestos and as many pencils as he could produce. Unable to obtain foreign capital for further expansion, he sold out the asbestos mine to Dictator Stalin in 1928, the pencil plant in 1930. In the sales contract for the pencil concession shrewd Dr. Hammer, who has never practiced medicine and says he never will, inserted a clause permitting him to take out of Russia the Romanov treasure he had collected in his nine-year visit. Tapestries were rescued from peasants who were about to burn them for their gold & silver content. Products of the Imperial Porcelain Factory (founded by the daughter of Peter the Great; were unearthed in grimy restaurants. Such things as diamond-&-lapis lazuli Easter eggs and jade snuff boxes he bought at Soviet sales of Romanov knickknacks. with his $1,000,000 collection and a White Russian wife, Dr. Hammer retired to France. But life in a Paris suburb seemed tame after Russia in the 1920's and when beer gave him the chance he went after the Ukrainian staves that years before he used to sell to Germany. One-third of the Romanov collection was sold to finance the cooperage venture, and he moved to Manhattan where he housed the balance in his home off Washington Square. Now 35, swart, black-haired, he wrote a book on his Russian years, The Quest of the Romanoff Treasure, which has much to do with Soviet business but practically nothing with the Tsar's baubles. His wife, daughter of Baron Vadim Nicholaievitch Root, an Imperial Army general, once escaped a Red firing squad by singing gypsy songs to her jailers. She is now preparing to sing on Ed Wynn's new broadcasting chain under the name Olga Vadina. When U. S. brewers were dusting off their plants for beer's return, they were convinced that draught beer would be banned. Bottles they bought by the trainload, but kegs they neglected to order. Steel makers like A. O. Smith Corp. and Borg-Warner Corp. rushed into the business. But venerable brewmasters shake their heads over steel barrels, and though exasperated steelmen swear it is only prejudice, brewers still prefer white oak kegs.