Mr. Hertz's Deal

John Hertz of Chicago (TIME, May 5) is not easily discouraged. Beginning as a copy boy at eleven in a Chicago newspaper office, he emerged a few years ago as the genius of the Yellow Taxicab and other kindred companies, whose tremendous rise was the sensation of the Chicago Stock Exchange in recent years. Then he brought his stocks east and listed them on the New York Stock Exchange, where they underwent a disconcerting deflation. As if to repay New York's lack of hospitality, Hertz has now completed a new $25,000,000 coach merger, whereby the Fifth Ave. Coach Co. of New York is to be merged with the Chicago Motor Coach Co., along with the New York Transportation Co., under the title of the Omnibus Co. of America. The Interborough Rapid Transit Co., which formerly owned 51% of Fifth Ave. Coach, sold out to the new combine.

Mr. Hertz, now a national figure, got his start in the motor business as an automobile salesman, and his start as a motor operator by buying three taxicabs and borrowing seven more. From this start the Yellow Taxicab Co. of Chicago sprang. Hertz succeeded in injecting responsibility and economy into a chaotic industry.