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No politician but a shrewd and imposing merchant is 46-year-old Aaron Frank. Oregon's richest sportsman, he is chairman for the Pacific Northwest of the Amateur Athletic Union's executive committee, is said to plan a great athletic pavilion as his monument in Portland. Mainspring in the Meier & Frank business since Uncle Julius moved to the State House in 1930, Aaron Frank has watched his store's sales shrink from $18,510,061 in the fiscal year of 1928 to $11,276,077 in 1934 and swell again to $16,555,952 in 1936. When Aaron Frank announced last January that the operating assets of the store would be transferred to a new corporation, Meier & Frank Co., Inc.,*and that employes would be invited to buy stock therein, nobody doubted that he hoped to line up his 3,500 workers with the management, not against it. Stockholding customers, likewise, would be unsympathetic to the unions. To President Frank it "seemed proper that employes, customers and the public be given opportunity to participate in the ownership of the business they have helped to build."
*Other Meier & Frank assets (two small hotels, a freight terminal, securities, a garage, etc.), valued at $1,678,883, are for descendants.