March to the Sea

When it came out not long ago that the Van Sweringen brothers had bought control of the Missouri Pacific, it was plain that something was about to happen. Last week it happened. To the annual meeting of the MOP stockholders, held last week in St. Louis, came John P. Murphy, secretary of Alleghany Corp. He came in order to complete the first move in the Van Sweringens' march to the sea--in this case the rolling Pacific and not the tepid Indian Ocean. Mr. Murphy did not come unarmed. With him he had a most powerful weapon: 996,287 shares of MOP voting stock, which is 66.4% of the total outstanding. When the election of directors came up, Mr. Murphy used this weapon, and with telling effect, against eight of the 17 old directors. The eight directors were not men accustomed to be thus summarily disposed of. Among them were Archibald Robertson Graustein (International Paper & Power), John J. Raskob. and Matthew Chauncey Brush, who is a director in some 50 companies and runs his own investment trust. The Van Sweringens are evidently not overfond of Mr. Brush, for they did not re-elect him to the board of the Pere Marquette when they took over that railroad. Another of the eight deposed was Finley Johnson Shepard, husband of Helen Miller Gould, and last remaining representative of the Gould interests on the MOP board. His retirement marks the final collapse of the late George Gould's vision of a transcontinental system built around the Missouri Pacific. The unkindest cut of all was the elimination of William Henry Williams, the old chairman. However, shrewd, poker-faced Mr. Williams has plenty to occupy him in the consolidation campaign of the Wabash, whose chairman he is. His efforts to create a fifth trunk line around the Wabash are, naturally, highly distasteful to the Van Sweringens. His office on the MOP will probably be filled by Oris Paxton Van Sweringen himself, whom Mr. Murphy elected a director -- along with six other Clevelanders tried and true, and one outsider from Buffalo. The industrious Mr. Murphy also arranged that in the future MOP directors' meetings may be held in Cleveland or St. Louis instead of in New York. The thoroughness with which the Van Sweringens mopped up the MOP directorate suggests that they may also change the road's banking allegiance from the House of Kuhn, Loeb to the House of Morgan, long the bankers for the Cleveland brothers. Three days after Mr. Murphy revised the MOP directorate, President Lewis Warrington Baldwin, who contrived to remain in office, stated that he was "personally of the opinion" that it would be a good thing if the Missouri Pacific acquired control of Denver & Rio Grande Western and Western Pacific, as provided for in the I. C. C. Final Plan. Thus the second and concluding move in the great march to the sea was indicated. The Denver & Rio Grande Western would take the Van Sweringens from Pueblo, Colo. (where their MOP ends), to Salt Lake City; and Western Pacific would carry them on to San Francisco and the Pacific. At present the D. R. G. W. is jointly controlled by Missouri Pa,cific and Western Pacific. This latter road thus becomes the only remaining barrier between the Van Sweringens and the Pacific. To get control of it, they must either persuade or outflank its chairman, Arthur Curtiss James, who now controls it. An alliance between Mr. James and the Messrs. Van Sweringen is possible, not probable. In reply to questions, Mr. James told news-men-last week, smilingly: "I have no doubt that the Van Sweringens would like the Western Pacific. . . . But I have no intention-- of selling." Thus, for the time being, the march to the sea was apparently halted.

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