Deals & Developments

Price War? The motor industry, flushed with the excitement of its spring sales drive (TIME, April 4), denied that a price war began last week. But no sooner had the new Ford prices been announced than Chevrolet made slashes of from $10 to $55. Pontiac followed with reductions of from $20 to $50. In the higher brackets, Hupmobile made $100 to $200 reductions. Willys-Overland, with its six-cylinder roadster $45 under the Ford V-eight, said it would enter no price war. Rockne, Graham-Paige, Continental-de Vaux all said no price changes were contemplated.

Prices last week models were:

Roadster Standard Sedan Coupe

Chevrolet $445 $490 $590

Ford "4" 410 440 540

Ford "8" 460 490 590

Plymouth 495 565 635

Willys-Overland 415 530 610

Ford roadsters in other years have cost:

1910, $680; 1915, $390; 1920, $550; 1925,

$345.

Fallible Insull. "I do not pose as infallible," said Samuel Insull last week. "I have made many mistakes and I have erred in judgment, but the same criticism may be leveled at everyone in the business world."

With this attitude Mr. Insull has been answering all current criticism of his management. But U. S. finance was less interested last week in Mr. Insull's attitude than it was in the fate of his vast corporate pyramid, badly in need of cash, indebted to banks. A receivership suit was brought last week against Insull Utility Investments by a Mrs. Helen Samuels of Chicago. She owns four $1,000 notes, now worth about 4% of par. United Public Service Co. and two subsidiaries operating in 236 communities in seven States announced they could not pay their bond interest, would receive no more helpful advances from Middle West Utilities, their parent company, chief object now of Mr. Insull's anxious attention.

Decision. Plaintiff: Tiffany & Co., famed jewelry, stationery, silver & glassware merchants.

Defendant: Tiffany Productions, Inc., cinema firm now part of Educational Pictures, Inc.

Venue: Supreme Court of New York, last week.

Question: Right of the cinema firm to use the name "Tiffany."

Plea: Tiffany & Co. has done more than $350,000,000 business in the last 40 years, has spent $3,500,000 in advertising since 1909, should not have its goodwill hurt by a motion picture firm advertising "Twenty Gems from Tiffany," "Tiffany, It's a Gem," etc., etc.

Defense: The public knows the difference between a motion picture and a jewelry shop. Tiffany & Co. did not object for several years. The dictionary says "tiffany" means a thin muslin gauze.

Decision (to be appealed): Tiffany Productions must not use the name.

Endangered? Detroit's Tiffany Beauty Salon, Pittsburgh's Tiffany Drugstore, San Francisco's Tiffany Bakery, New York's Tiffany Poultry Market, et al.

Gift Telephones. No great sum in relation to the $95,000,000 it has earned in the past three years is'the $233,413 that New York Telephone Co. has given to charitable organizations. But last week the New York Public Service Commission said that it was just as important that $100,000 be entered correctly on the books as $10,000,000. The point of correctness centred on whether gifts to charity should be called an operating expense, hence part of the figure on which rates are upped. The Telephone Company had entered the gifts in this manner. The Commission ordered them to be taken out of surplus, to be considered a charge against stockholders rather than subscribers.

Browning, King. A million dollars was lost last year by Browning. King & Co., 34-year-old haberdashery firm, maker of uniforms of all kinds (specialty: railroad men's). Last week the firm, with offices in 24 cities, consented to a receivership. Petitioner was President William Hull Browning, a $486,000 creditor. Practically all of the firm's stock is held by Brownings.

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