Dollar Down

Best-known emblem of U. S. shipping around the world is a white dollar sign mounted on red-banded stacks. Last week, leaking badly at the seams, its brightwork tarnished after decades of shining renown, the Dollar Line signed away by its crew of heirs, assignees and moneylenders, was to be taken over by the U. S. Maritime Commission.

Keel of the Dollar Line was laid some 40 years ago by dour old Captain Robert Dollar who needed ships for his lumber business in the newly opened Pacific Northwest. A goat-bearded gaffer with a self-made man's canniness and mistrust of others, he drove many a skinflint bargain. In 1928, at 84, he wangled a Government ocean mail subsidy calculated to pay him about $3,000,000 annually. For some $9,000,000 he had already purchased on time from the U. S. Shipping Board twelve vessels then valued at almost $16,000,000. By 1931 his fleet of President liners had been increased by two bought from the International Mercantile Marine and two built for him mainly with $11,000,000 loaned by the shipping board.

Captain Dollar died in 1932 and his son, R. (for Robert) Stanley, fat, red, fiftyish, took over. Trained in the Dollar lumber camps, R. Stanley had a hard time figuring out the financial maze his father had managed so shrewdly. He got help from Herbert and Mortimer Fleishhacker and their Anglo California National Bank of San Francisco. Straightway, the Dollar maze got mazier. Criss-crossed family corporations were set up, existing companies expanded. Soon the Dollar Line owed Anglo California some $3,000,000; and of the Dollar stock, the Fleishhackers owned 109,000 shares, the Dollars 93,000.

Last year, when the Merchant Marine Act terminated all ocean mail contracts. Dollar whirled nearer than ever the maelstrom of 77B. In January, the Maritime Commission caught it just in time, awarded a $1,400,000 temporary six-month subsidy, ordered the leaky financial hull scraped and calked before it would consider a permanent subsidy. When the six-month grant expired, the Dollar crew had not completed the required financial overhaul, proposed instead counter plans that smacked of the old Captain's brass. Typical suggestion was that for the old Captain's bargain ships, on which $7,000,000 was still due, the Government should pay $18,500,000. When this sort of bargaining failed, the line decided to surrender to salvage.

When last week's deal was negotiated, eleven Dollar ships were laid up, only four were in commission. To get them afloat again, the Maritime Commission will make a loan of $1,500,000, and get an RFC loan of $2,500,000 for working capital, grant a five-year operating subsidy of some $3,000,000 a year. To the Commission goes all the line's Class B stock (2,100,000 shares), almost half of its 252,000 shares of Class A stock. Six months after the transfer, the Commission will abandon the Dollar name, and the familiar dollar-sign insignia will disappear for good from the high seas.

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