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In this Peter-to-Paul manner, Emanuel kept the complicated corporation breathing until he had strengthened AVCO enough so that it could swallow both its parent, ATCO, and AMCO. By then V.E. thought that AVCO could start expanding again. With war in the offing, he had his eye on Consolidated Aircraft Corp. The way he got it was characteristic. Washington didn't like the idea of a key war plant being run from a skyscraper 3,000 miles away. So V.E. simply had one of his small planemaking subsidiaries, Vultee Aircraft Inc., buy Consolidated. (One planemaker described Vultee's designs on Consolidated as "like a flea going up an elephant's leg with lust in its eye.") Under V.E., the Army & Navy had no complaint about the way Consolidated was run.
The New Bid. This expansion and streamlining of AVCO paid off. In 1941 AVCO paid the first dividend in its history—15¢ a share. In 1942 it paid 25¢ and has paid 20¢ in each succeeding year. But the streamlining is not over yet.
Within the next few months, Emanuel plans to merge most of the associated companies (those which AVCO controls) into AVCO, simplify the operating procedures. At the top now is the combined policy-operating group, headed by Emanuel. His right-hand man, president and production boss of AVCO and board chairman of many of the other companies, is Irving Brown Babcock, 55, who learned his production know-how in 20 years at General Motors, was a G.M. vice president and head of its truck division until he joined AVCO a year and a half ago. Babcock's right-hand men are Executive Vice President William F. Wise, who came from Excello Corp. and Republic Products Corp.; manufacturing Vice President Carl H. Kindl, who came by way of National Cash Register and G.M.; and New York Shipbuilding's John Farrell Metten, a hardhanded, hard-driving production man who turned out $655,000,000 worth of ships for the U.S. Boss of AVCO's sales is Raymond C. Cosgrove, who joined AVCO when it bought the Crosley Corp. in 1945.
The Rubber Game. In the cluster of twelve companies these men boss, AVCO has a line of consumer's products ranging all the way from self-sterilizing toilet seats to marine engines.* It has a smoothly functioning distribution system to sell them. And it has a fat backlog in orders. But like every other company, it has had trouble getting into production to fill those orders. For the first nine months this year, the AVCO family turned out $100,000,000 worth of products, lost money doing it. But last month it appeared to have turned the corner, moved into the black for the first time this year.
Until AVCO gets into peak production, and shows that it can make money doing it, most Wall Streeters will keep their fingers crossed about its future. They are not at all sure that 1) it has lived down its past, 2) it is not now expanding too fast in peace. Nor has AVCO finished expanding.
V.E., who has always been deeply interested in the farm problem (he has championed farmers by praising their coops and, more recently, by fighting for decontrol of farm products), got only a taste of making farm implements with his New Idea, Inc. Now he wants a bigger bite. One guess is that Emanuel will soon move deeper into the farm-implement field, may buy up another company. After that, even Emanuel is not quite sure where he is going.