Cow

In Wall Street's menagerie of bulls, bears, lambs, wolves, the homely U. S. cow has suddenly appeared; or to put the matter less figuratively, Wall Street has seized upon the cow and capitalized her to the tune of many millions of dollars.

The National Dairy Products Co., organized as a merger of previously separate dairy concerns in 1923, recently acquired the Sheffield Farms, Inc.--leading milk producer. National Dairy Products now have an annual sales volume of about $100,000,000, which compares with $130,000,000 for National Biscuit and $100,000,000 for the Continental Baking Corporation.

The new giant food-products consolidation originated as a merger between the Rieck-McJunkin Co. of Pittsburgh and the Hydrol Co. of Chicago--each the largest ice cream distributor in its section. At the present time the consolidation has acquired 17 subsidiary companies. Of these, Sheffield Farms is the most important. One of the largest U. S. distributors of milk and other dairy products, it operates, mostly in New York City 1,959 retail and 32 wholesale routes involving the handling of 900,000 quarts of milk daily. Other holdings of Sheffield Farms include five large farms for the production of certified milk, 108 receiving stations, and 313 retail grocery stores in New York with an annual volume of $9,000,000.

The present size and scope of National Dairy Products are the result of careful and far-sighted planning back in 1923. The acquisition of Sheffield Farms, Inc., rounds out its organization as projected two years ago.