Valve Man

Highly conscious of its small beginnings, its amazing growth and its venerable traditions is Crane Co. This great plumbing house likes to recall the fact that it was established in Chicago in 1855 as a "Brass & Bell Foundry" with one employe-- Richard Teller Crane. It likes to recall that in 1930 it had 20,000 employes, one-fourth of whom had been with the com-pany ten years or more. It likes to use waste space on its printed matter or in display windows for maps showing its 150 branches and factories in the U. S. and Canada.

Yet in the 80 years of its history Crane Co. has had only four presidents, three of them Cranes. First was the founder who until his death in 1912 delighted in annoying Chicago socialites by insisting that he was nothing but a plumber. The next two Presidents Crane were his sons, Charles and Richard Jr. Son Charles preferred politics and traveling to plumbing and by appointment of President Wilson in 1920 became U. S. Minister to China shortly after his own son had become first U. S. Minister to Czechoslovakia. Son Richard also liked traveling but liked it best when he was roving the Crane empire. On inspection trips through the U. S. and Canada alone his private railroad car often rolled up 80,000 miles per year. Shy, reserved, profoundly democratic, he expanded the Crane organization into almost every section of the earth where bathtubs are used, pushed Crane's assets above $100,000,000. During his life he gave outright to his older employes more than $12,500,000 of his personal stock, and when he died in 1931 left them another $1,020,000.

For the past four years Crane's head has been John B. Berryman, an oldtime vice president. Last week Mr. Berryman moved up to board chairman, making way for what he called "an extremely young man"--Charles Beach Nolte, 49. "I've reached a very old age." explained the ruddy, strapping master plumber who is 73.

And from Crane's viewpoint President Nolte is both young and almost an outsider. He has been a director for only two years, although as head of Chicago's Robert W. Hunt Co., biggest firm of consulting, testing and inspecting engineers in the U. S., he has long worked closely with Crane. He lives modestly with his wife and two children on Chicago's South Side, works hard and long, golfs badly, fishes infrequently.

The corporation which Mr. Nolte took over one day last week when he taxied to the Crane Building at No. 836 South Michigan Avenue and hung up his grey fedora in the president's paneled office on the third floor has paid no dividends on its common stock since 1931. That year for the first time in its corporate history Crane Co. operated at a loss. A producer of capital goods, Crane was in the red for the next two years but in 1934 climbed out to the extent of $1,000,000 (1929 profit: $11,500,000). And last week the Crane directors recognized Recovery by declaring a $1 dividend on the preferred --first preferred payment in three years.

Contrary to popular belief, Crane is not primarily a builder of bathtubs. Residential plumbing accounts for only 20% of its 'normal business. Its magnificent plants at Chicago, Birmingham (Ala.), Bridgeport (Conn.), Montreal, Ipswich (England), Paris are employed chiefly in supplying the massive plumbing fixtures of modern industry--in power houses, waterworks, oil fields, chemical plants, canning factories, etc. Perhaps the most famed of its hundreds of industrial products are valves and fittings. The door of its national showrooms at Atlantic City is a huge seven-foot valve which is opened & closed like a portcullis. Crane's house organ is the Valve World. Crane has no monopoly on the U. S. valve business, no basic patents; its dominant position is based on its ancient reputation for quality.

Crane Co. is still controlled by the Crane family, though they are not particularly active in plant or office. Five of the nine directors are either Crane heirs or their representatives. Biggest block of stock is held by the estate of the late President Richard Teller Crane Jr., who before his death was rated the second richest man in Chicago. At the depth of Depression, when Crane common was selling as low as $2.25 per share, the estate was supposed to be practically insolvent. But last week with the stock back to $9 the executors felt justified in paying out in bequests to four old family retainers more than $100,000..

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