Downtown

P: Errett Lobban Cord, the young man who is out to become his country's foremost transport tycoon by air, land and sea, last week added one more set-up to his system. Smith Engineering Co. of Cleveland was bought up by Cord Corp. which thereby acquired rights to manufacture Smith controllable pitch propellers. In airplanes, variable pitch propellers are like gear shifts in automobiles, allow engines to run at efficient speed under different load conditions.

P: Following increased earnings Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad last week, obeying the hopes of its stockholders (TIME, Aug. 28), upped its common dividend from $2.50 to $2.80 a year. To raise the C. & 0. dividend must have felt good to the Brothers 0. P. & M. J. Van Sweringen. Their Chesapeake Corp., which holds 3,826,000 shares of C. & 0. stock, will therefore get $1,140,000 more in dividends. If the value of Chesapeake Corp. stock rises it will benefit their Alleghany Corp. whose assets are now impounded by the trustee of its bond issues. Alleghany's assets include Chesapeake Corp. stock and if Alleghany's assets rise to 150% of the par value of Alleghany's bonds, the income from the impounded assets will be freed to pay charges on other Alleghany Corp. obligations falling due in October. The Van Sweringens' financial structure of wheels within wheels begins to gain power as soon as the innermost wheel starts turning out more money.

P: All summer prospectors have been scouring the Dominion of Newfoundland for gold. Prospectors and syndicates have staked hundreds of square miles of claims. Following reports of rich strikes, small steamships and airplanes have been carrying eager men and supplies into the wilderness in gold rush fashion. Excited, the Dominion government hired Professor Alfred Kitchener Snelgrove of Princeton, and F. W. Foote, Manhattan mining engineer, to make an expert survey. Last week the Government released the first section of their report. Messrs. Snelgrove & Foote said that it was not unlikely gold would be found, added-like a douche of cold water--that so far no ore had been found which assayed over 40-c- worth of gold to the ton. Few gold mines can operate profitably with ore that yields less than $6 a ton; many a first-rate mine yields over $14.

P: That people might buy & sell (but not drink) U. S. wines and whiskeys American Liquor Exchange, Inc. quietly opened for business in Manhattan last week. Founded by Sidney Reich, a 40-year-old importer whose family has never been more than a stone's throw from a vineyard, brewery or distillery, it is not an exchange but a firm dealing in warehouse receipts. Stocks cannot be removed from bonded warehouses (except with a federal permit for medicinal sales) but receipts representing ownership can be traded. Quotations: bourbons ten years in the wood-$-34 to $35 a case; ryes--$35 to $51 a case.

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