Television, so far, has been an amusement for amateur electricians and material for Sunday newspaper sections. That television might soon be something else was indicated last week by an advertisement which appeared upon financial pages.
The advertisement made it known that C. C. Kerr & Co., of the New York Curb Market were offering for sale 250,000 shares of common stock priced at $10 a share in the Jenkins Television Corp. (total capitalization $10,000,000). The purpose of the Jenkins Television Corp., as expressed in a letter written by President James W. Garside, was to "transmit or broadcast television pictures and programs; to transmit photographs ... to engage in the broad development, exploitation and sale of television and image transmitting apparatus. . . ." The advertisement pointed out that the development of television so far has paralleled that of the early development of radio; and it indicated that Jenkins Television Corp. hoped to duplicate -the grandeur of Radio Corp. of America.
Whether it will do so or not, no one can say. The success of the new organization depends largely on the past and future prowess of C. Francis Jenkins, who invented "the first practical motion picture projector," and whose laboratories have recently been devoted to televisionary experiments. The announcement of the new capitalization came at a time when Wall Street was talking of nothing but the break in the market and made therefore less stir in financial circles than it would have a week before.
It made however a stir in sections of Manhattan where business is the subject of smart chatter. In the smart restaurants of lower Park Avenue, headwaiters consulted patrons differentially but earnestly. There were two reasons why they did so: Headwaiters yield only to speakeasy owners as shrewd investors; many a headwaiter was acquainted with the young and impressive Anthony Joseph Drexel Biddle Jr. who was named to head the board of directors of the Jenkins Television Corp.
Like almost every presentable young club member in Manhattan, Anthony Biddle Jr., has been called the city's best dressed man. At the age of 18, he married Mary L., the 28-year-old daughter of Benjamin Newton Duke, the tobacco king.* Tongues wagged and darted, but the Biddies, in Palm Beach, Newport and Manhattan, for which they had deserted the native Biddle heath of Philadelphia, gave evidence of marital contentment. Tony Biddle played tennis, squash and swam, occasionally boxing at the Racquet Club to show that he was not afraid of being hurt, thus found many business enterprises in which to interest himself and his fortune.
Not all of these enterprises are connected with Wall Street. Biddle, along with social register companions, was accused only a fortnight ago of sharing with Mayor Walker a plot to convert the dismal restaurant which now sits like a spider, webbed with paths, at the centre of Central Park, into a civic banquet hall, thus encouraging patronage and improving the circumstances of the waiters who are employed there by the present lessee, Theatrical Zitell.