Personnel

Last week the following were news:

P: "You've been - - - -ing up this business long enough. I'm going to straighten it out." Legend has it that these were the words of a hawk-eyed, six-foot Bessarabian Jewish immigrant named Samuel Zemurray who stormed into a meeting of the Bostonian directors of United Fruit Co. in 1932, thumped down on the long table in front of them enough stock certificates and proxies to give him control of the $187,000,000 company. Sam Zemurray got into the banana business in Mobile, Ala. in the early 1900s as a jobber, later peddled United's "ripes" in New Orleans. By 1930 United was glad to buy out his plantations and fleet for 300,000 shares of United stock. Sam Zemurray has been United's managing director in charge of operations since his 1932 coup. Last week he became head of the company in name as well as fact by succeeding President Francis R. Hart who died last month. Purely on a business basis, President Zemurray is supposed to have backed a couple of Central American revolutions. Elected last week to the new post of board chairman for United was camera-shy Thomas Jefferson Coolidge, onetime (1934-36) Undersecretary of the Treasury, a great-great-great-grandson of another colorful revolutionary, Thomas Jefferson.

P: While President Benjamin F. Fairless of U. S. Steel Corp. was engaged in borrowing $50,000,000 last week (see col. 1), his only son, Elaine, was discovered in the student training course in the Aliquippa, Pa. plant of Big Steel's little competitor, Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. Big, broad-shouldered and 24, Blaine Fairless went to Culver Military Academy, M. I. T. and Babson Institute, from which he graduated last spring. Liked by his fellow workers, he collects phonograph records, moves in a socialite young set. Month ago he and a dozen other gay blades ribbed Pittsburgh debutantes by holding a mock Bachelors' Cotillion at which the girls had to carry bouquets of vegetables.

P: U. S. pawnbroking is a $600,000,000 a year business. Reputedly the oldest and most celebrated U. S. pawnshop is that of William Simpson, Inc., which was founded in Manhattan by a family which had been pawnbroking in England for five generations. One William Simpson or another has lent money to Steve Brodie, Boss Tweed, Commodore Vanderbilt and Tony Pastor. John L. Sullivan used to hock his diamond-studded championship belt at Simpson's for $400. Evalyn Walsh McLean pawned her Hope Diamond there to get the $100,000 Gaston Means swindled from her as ransom for Charles A. Lindbergh Jr. The present William Simpson, much harassed by squabbles in the business, recently got a new slant from the play You Can't Take It With You. Last week William Simpson decided to leave pawnbroking, try merchandising a cleaning fluid Simpson's has always used. The new Simpson Jewelry Cleaner will have headquarters in Indianapolis, Ind.

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