Peaches, Prunes & Bonds

Bandits could have entered the big banking room at No. 44 Wall Street last week without any trouble. One, two, three and they could have overpowered the taciturn, uniformed information clerk. They would, however, have been hard put to carry out any thievery. For the cash and securities that were in Bank of America, N. A., have all been merged with those that are National City Bank's. For weeks the big banking room has been dark, filled with row upon row of empty desks, cavernous, deserted cages.

But on the floor above, in the executive offices of the investment banking firm of Bancamerica-Blair Corp., there was much activity last week. Bancamerica-Blair was not sold to National City and is now 63% owned by Transamerica Corp., 37% by some 20,000 stockholders mostly around New York City. And, following the changes in Transamerica's management (TIME, Feb. 22), last week a revised Bancamerica-Blair management was getting accustomed to new desks, new duties.

With bright red roses on his desk, no buzzer yet connecting him with his secretary, his telephone ting-a-linging incessantly, George Newell Armsby, chairman and president, was assembling the new management, setting it agoing. It was not his first organization but it was his most important.

The year of the Chicago World's Fair (1893), stocky little George Armsby, 17, scorned college, went to work for his father's big Chicago firm, J. K. Armsby Co., distributors of California products. The next year he became a salesman, traveled through the Midwest and Southwest. Agreeable, talkative, able to swap a good yarn, he convinced buyers that they should purchase his father's peaches and prunes. Most of his life since then has been spent convincing.

A big job of convincing came in 1916.

For 18 years George Armsby had been vice president of J. K. Armsby Co. with headquarters in San Francisco. The firm had grown until it was the biggest packer of California dried fruits, biggest distributor of salmon, second biggest distributor of California canned fruits and vegetables. He decided that one big firm combining all functions of the industry, amalgamating big competitors, should be formed. To do so he had to convince some one that he should lend 16 million dollars.

Convincer Armsby marched East and laid siege to Blair & Co. and William Salomon & Co. He got the loan. California Packing Corp. (Del Monte, Sun-Kist) thus came into being. He is still vice president of the company and his family are its biggest stockholders.

His big fruit deal convinced convincing Mr. Armsby that banking was his field. After the War he convinced Blair & Co. and William Salomon & Co. that he was a good man to work with. He also convinced them that they should work with each other to the extent of merging. They did and Mr. Armsby went with them. When Blair & Co., Inc. was bought by Transamerica, Mr. Armsby found himself working for his longtime California friend and oldtime fellow fruiterer, Amadeo Peter Giannini. When Elisha Walker, then chairman of Bancamerica-Blair, and Mr. Giannini began to disagree, Mr. Armsby took no sides, respecting his friendship with each man.

The cheerful, generous, bustling personality that is George Armsby is housed in a short, robust frame with a chest that was deep enough to throw off dire double pneumonia a few years ago. At his big country place on swank Centre Island (Oyster Bay, L. I.) which he calls "the farm," he plays tennis with vim and an eyeshade, plunges in the bay, eyes his swans, pet deer, goldfish and beauteous second wife (Colette Touzeau), entertains many-comers from all corners of the land. He is a faithful, jovial member of California's famed Bohemian Club. Even more does he prize his membership in the Horrible Hemingways, youngsters' "kidding" society in Los Angeles (TIME, Sept. 14), whose code requires him to be regarded as an execrable character. But business is his first and dearest love--making deals, driving bargains, convincing people. At such times his cigaret jiggles rapidly up & down in the centre of his compressed lips; his emphatic words bark out like little bullets; he is in action, happy.

When he was forming California Packing in 1916, George Armsby was assisted by his tall, taciturn young friend and Burlingame neighbor, John Cheever Cowdin, then 27. And when Blair and Salomon were making overtures and reacting pleasantly, J. Cheever Cowdin was again on the scene. Again last week Mr. Cowdin, retained from Bancamerica's old personnel as a vice president, had an office adjacent to Mr. Armsby. Lean and reserved, apparently the soul of severe deliberation, lantern-jawed Vice President Cowdin supplements the Armsby ebullience with an air of almost scriptural conservatism and rectitude. In contrast to President Armsby's sociability, Vice President Cowdin is wont to repair, with only closest friends, to a country place at remote Ausable Forks, N. Y. designed by his equally reclusive neighbor, Artist Rockwell Kent. But Bancamerica-Blair's bondsellers who have listened to Mr. Cowdin's exhortations, know well his positive side. So do opponents who have ridden against him on the polo field, where he used to rate 8 goals. They know his mind is as lean as his body, working at high tension constantly. His assistants are hard driven to supply the data that his roving ideas demand. Specifically he is credited with the first piece of national aeronautics financing --Transcontinental Air Transport. Currently he is finding time to function as treasurer of the American Legion's and A. F. of L.'s "War against Depression" (TIME, March 7).*

Most investment bankers have plenty of spare time nowadays. New business is at low ebb, especially abroad, where Bancamerica-Blair was once so active (for municipalities in Europe, South America, Australasia). Chief pictures in reorganized Bancamerica-Blair's gallery are North American Aviation, Inc., Douglas Aircraft, Consolidated Oil (Sinclair and Prairie), Certainteed Products, Diamond Match, General Foods, Canadian National Railways.

*Last week a total of 275,593 jobless had been given work by this joint drive. Charles Gates Dawes became the chairman of its finance committee to raise $300,000. Thousand dollar contributions have already been received from Andrew William Mellon, Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Owen D. Young, Walter Sherman Gifford and Edward F. Hutton.

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