Pierce Oil Upheaval

Owing to the default of four quarterly payments on its preferred stock, the control of the Pierce Oil Co. has passed from its common to its preferred stockholders. The latter, organized by H. H. Lehman as a Stockholders' Committee, have elected a new Board of Directors, including among them H. L. Doherty, and will undertake to raise new capital for the concern. Mr. Doherty holds a demand note against the Company for $1,200,000, secured by $3,000,000 worth of pipe line and tank cars.

The old management, represented by Alton B. Parker (who was Democratic nominee for President of the U. S. A. in 1904), has fought to retain control by an appeal to the preferred stockholders to let Doherty rather than the banking firm of Lehman Brothers finance the Company out of its present difficulties. This appeal has led to a typical retort from Samuel Untermyer, attorney for the preferred stockholders and the Lehman interests. "Judge Parker," the Untermyer statement concludes, "has been misled into making reckless assertions as to the Company's condition that are temperately characterized as of unsurpassed audacity and inaccuracy."

Mr. Untermyer's recent vacation is perhaps responsible for this "temperate" statement.