Textile Doctor

When a silent, bespectacled, fidgety man resigned, last March, as chairman of the board of the Boston and Maine R. R. (TIME, March 26), many a voice was raised in applause and inquiry. It was generally conceded that Homer Loring had done well, for in February the road had made a new high operating record. It was generally asked what Homer Loring would do next, for no one believed the physician to ailing industries would be long without a patient.

Spring came, spring went, summer came, summer went, while Physician Loring preserved an impenetrable silence. Last week he issued one of his rare, terse statements. He announced he would enter the textile business, outstanding and lamentable sick man of the U. S. industry.

Physician Loring's approach to the ill-starred textile industry, he revealed, is through its only sound and healthy part. While textile mills have failed, textile selling houses, or converters, have been showing profits. Notable among successful converters is the Cohn-Hall-Marx Co. (Manhattan) which increased its yearly (fiscal) earnings from $4.21 a share in 1927 to $6.47 in 1928. At its head is slick Lawrence Marx, whose most colorful achievement was the sale, last summer, of 30,000 shares of common stock. On the New York Curb, the stock was rising from a low of 23 1/2 to around 50. But most of the company's outstanding 100,000 shares were not for sale, and President Marx is reported to have asked and got $70 a share for his block.

Southern cotton mills, seeking outlets for their products, were believed to be buying into Cohn-Hall-Marx. Last week, it was apparent that a heavy interest in Cohn-Hall-Marx had gone to a new and comprehensive textile company, to be named the United Merchants & Manufacturers, Inc., whose vice president will be Mr. Marx, and whose president will be Physician Loring himself.

In his new experiment, he faces totally different problems, different programs. He plans to buy "a few selected mills" (at the present extraordinarily low rates) to turn out unfinished cloth. He will add finishing plants to bleach, dye and print the cotton, then sell the product himself through his own converters, including Cohn-Hall-Marx. United Merchants & Manufacturers, Inc.* will then control the entire textile process, from the purchase of raw materials to the sale of curtains and draperies.

--Kidder, Peabody & Co., Manhattan banking house, last week brought out the first stock issue of the new company. Authorized capital is $15,000,000 preferred, 750,000 shares of no par value common. Manhattan bankers recalled that Kidder, Peabody had backed the New England Cotton Yarn Co., first of large mergers of cotton textile mills.