The last common dividend on the Class A stock of Ward Baking Corp. was paid April 1, 1929. The stock which five years ago was selling at 198 last week was selling at 23½. Profits of $4,232,000 in 1927 slumped to $3,294,000 in 1928 and to $3,124,000 in 1929. During the first half of 1930 the company made $948,548 as compared to $1,795,108 for the corresponding period of 1929. Developing from a single New York city bakery in 1849 to its present position with 22 bakery plants and $44.575.000 assets the Ward company, particularly since the deaths of Charles A. Ward (February 1930) and William Breining Ward (February 1929) has been unprosperous. Last week alarmed stockholders, headed by Edgar Palmer of New Jersey Zinc Co., organized an ouster movement to replace the present management with a new directorate of which George Kenan Morrow of Gold Dust Corp. would be chairman. The regular stockholders' meeting is scheduled for the second Thursday in February, but the Morrow faction was attempting to arrange a special meeting in which they hoped to secure control.
"It is our belief," said the Morrow manifesto to stockholders, "that the company's troubles are largely, if not entirely, due to a lack of skilled and experienced management." In addition to citing the earnings decline, the antimanagement group attacked the company's depreciation policy. It was pointed out that whereas the 1928 statement carried depreciation at $2,051,576, the 1929 statement carried depreciation at only $1,052,253. Practical result of this depreciated depreciation was to add $1,000,000 to earnings, so that the 1929 statement showed earnings of only 5% instead of 32% less than in 1928. Included in the Morrow group was onetime (1924-28) Ward-President George Byron Smith, who said that the Ward organization was demoralized, that the company was managed by "a lawyer without long experience in the baking business."
The lawyer meant is Ward-President Ralph Sherlock Kent, longtime attorney for the late William B. Ward. The Kent reply to the Morrow attack attributed earnings declines to general depression, stressed the company's sound cash position. "In times of depression," said the management's letter to stockholders, "there will appear designing individuals who will seek to stir up dissension and seize upon it to accomplish selfish ends. . . . We must . . . warn you against any scheme . . . which may have as its object stock manipulation for the benefit of the few." Between-the-lines readers saw in this statement a suggestion that a Morrow victory might result in a merger between Ward and Gold Dust.