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Sitting on the boards of 31 corporations, restless little Sidney Weinberg started in Goldman Sachs as a porter in 1907 after a short Manhattan career as a newsboy and Western Union messenger. It was years before the partners even knew him by name. By his own account he got ahead by being "such a fresh kid." During the War he was cook on a submarine chaser, until yanked into the Navy's Intelligence Department. Brilliant, blunt, energetic, he takes vast interest in the affairs of any company in which he is a director. Occasionally at board meetings he pulls out an essay on the duties of a director, reads it to his fellow board members. At his home in Scarsdale, outside Manhattan, he keeps a private office for night work, which he uses several evenings each week.
To Sidney Weinberg's ability as a director belongs most of the credit for preserving Goldman Sachs's invaluable corporate connections, not the least of which was Sears, Roebuck. When financing revived, corporations turned to Goldman Sachs as they had done before Depression. Last Spring National Dairy Products came in for a $62,000,000 refunding deal.
Even more cheering last week to Walter Sachs and his partners than the proposed Sears underwriting was the final interment of Goldman Sachs Trading Corp. Though the firm was stuck by its own investment (originally $12,000,000) in that ill-fated venture, control was acquired by Floyd Odium's Atlas Corp., which changed the name to Pacific Eastern Corp. Last week in a corporate simplification program, Pacific Eastern was submerged into Atlas.