Deals & Developments

Shredded Wheat For 35 years after a dyspeptic lawyer named Henry D. Perky saw another dyspeptic eating cooked whole wheat and helped himself to the idea, the course of Shredded Wheat Co. was profitable and untroubled. Many a visitor to Niagara Falls was shown through the model bakery by Shredded Wheat's Miss Blumreich and went home to add more dollars to the profits of Lawyer Perky's successors. In 1928 National Biscuit Co. bought Shredded Wheat, threw its huge organization into an effort to sell even more shredded wheat biscuits. Breakfast Food Manufacturer Will Keith Kellogg sat up, took notice. Soon Kellogg Co. was also making "shredded wheat biscuits" (Kellogg's Whole Wheat Biscuit), shipped thousands & thousands of them out of Battle Creek, Mich.

Two months ago National Biscuit Co. filed suit against Kellogg Co. in Wilmington, Del. Valuing its trade mark at $5,000,000, N. B. C. said it had been damaged to the extent of $250,000, asked an injunction against the manufacture of "shredded wheat" by Kellogg. Last week Kellogg retaliated. In New York's Federal Court it filed a complaint under the Sherman anti-trust laws, charging unfair competition, coercion, monopoly. Kellogg claimed that patents on the shredded wheat process have long since expired, that it has been kept out of competition by efforts of N. B. C. "to coerce & intimidate the trade by threats of suits, ... by employing a former general sales manager of the plaintiff company, and by reviving its unfair, slanderous, threatening and coercive attacks upon the plaintiff, its products and its dealers." Kellogg Co. asks $3,000,000 damages.

Iron Gift Horse. Two years ago the I. C. C. denied Colorado & Southern Ry.'s petition to junk its 185-mi. narrow gauge division between Denver and Leadville, valued at $3,600,000. For 32 years it had been steadily losing money; annual deficits had mounted to $400,000. Then Colorado & Southern (a subsidiary of the Burlington) tried to give it away. No one wanted it. Finally Lawyer Victor A. Miller of Denver said he would take the line as a gift, and last week he applied to the I. C. C. for permission to accept it. Lawyer Miller knows what he is about. As receiver for Rio Grande Southern R. R. he has profitably substituted light gasoline trucks and busses for heavy rolling stock. Some trains are made up of an automobile fitted with flanged wheels, carrying ten passengers, and a diminutive freight car. If the I. C. C. lets him accept the gift, Lawyer Miller will run his little road as the Denver, Leadville & Alma, send his little trains chugging through the mountains.

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