Ford Earnings

One H. L. Moekle of Ford Motor Co.'s auditing department went by train from Detroit to Boston last week, bearing as courier the balance sheet of his company's 1926 business. At Boston he paid the Massachusetts Commissioner of Corporations (Henry F. Long) $10* as a filing fee and the report became the tidbit of public prattle. The annual statement, composed of a few hundred arabic numerals, naturally told nothing of the internal affairs of the Ford Motor Co. President Edsel B. Ford and his father and mother still make that their private business. They own all the outstanding shares--172,645, of the company's 1,000,000 shares, and they can chat of their yearly earnings over the dinner table. So none will tell what they drew as last year's dividends, although $14,670,000 is as good a presumption as any. They took out that amount two years ago. However, they did have to declare how much money the company had made over and above all expenses. That is, the amount they added to the company's profit and loss surplus account. The amount was $75,270,895, and it made that account total $697,637,788.* Thus the three Fords, it might be said, have an equity of almost three-quarters of a billion dollars in their Ford Motor Co.

*By check drawn against the Corn Exchange Bank of Manhattan.

*Growth of the Ford company's surplus has been : YEAR TOTAL INCREASE 1926 $697,637,788 $ 75,270,895 1925 622,366,893 79,890,396 1924 542,476,497 100,435,416