One-Manned

Stockholders of Cities Service Co., $650,000,000 corporation selling gas, oil, electricity and transportation to more than 600 U. S. and Canadian communities, received an intimately colloquial letter from their President, Henry Latham Doherty, last week. The letter, like the lines of drama, revealed the tribulations of a quasi servant of the U. S. public: "I am not an impatient man and I am not given to making impatient statements, but I have got to a point where it is hard for me to preserve the semblance of good humor when somebody makes a statement that Cities Service Co. is a one-man concern. . . .

"It is true that I am sick. [Stock jobbers recently used his sickness to beat down the price of Cities Service securities.] I have been a sufferer from rheumatism practically all my life [57 years], or at least that is what it was called. . . . What I have now resembles what I had [when I was 23] in every way, but they now call it arthritis. . . . I have been in Johns Hopkins Hospital since the latter part of December. . . . If people want to transact business with me and insist upon doing so at Johns Hopkins Hospital, I will be simply compelled to move elsewhere and conceal my location until I can force everyone to take up his business matters through my office [60 Wall St., New York City; he is at Battle Creek, Mich., now.]

"At all times my business affairs have been provided for by will and by provision for trustees. [He never married.] If anything should happen to me now, or at any other time, there is no reason why it should lessen the intrinsic value of the securities of the Cities Service Co. by a single dollar. I have taken no part in the routine work of the company since the U. S. got into the World War and never expect again to take an active part in the routine work. I wish people would let me alone."

Cities Service Co., $650,000,000 holding company, controls directly or indirectly 75 gas, electric light, heat, power, electric railway and water, and more than 45 oil-producing and refining properties in 18 of the United States and in Canada. Its public utilities serve a population of over 3,000,000 people in more than 600 different communities, most notably Denver, Col.; Sandusky, Ohio; Kansas City and St. Joseph, Mo.; Kansas City and Topeka, Kan.; Danbury, Conn.