Prophet in Bed

In Nashville, Tenn., 50 years ago, lived a family named Rhea. Father Rhea ran a line of river boats on the Mississippi, loved the stockmarket, had been several times rich, several times poor. The family totem pole was the Wall Street Journal. Before his son Robert was out of high school, Father Rhea gave him the Journal's difficult William Peter Hamilton editorials on the Dow Theory of stock prices, told him to master them or get spanked.

After a smattering of college, Son Robert started a river line that nearly ran his father's out of business. Later Son Robert caught tuberculosis and went to Colorado. When World War I came, Rhea enlisted in the air force. As luck would have it he cracked up and got a piece of the propeller through his lung. Back to Colorado Springs went he, a permanent invalid.

In bed Rhea began to average and chart stockmarket prices, to study the Dow Theory. He found that he could concentrate so heavily that pain was forgotten and at the end of the day he was exhausted and could sleep.

In 1929 when William Peter Hamilton died, Dow, Jones & Co. needed a new high priest to lead the Dow cult of stockmarket analysis. They published some of Rhea's "notebooks" in Barron's weekly. The next year Rhea put his ideas on Dow lore into a book and, after publishers refused it as a white elephant, published it himself and sold over 90,000 copies. Letters began to pile up on the foot of Rhea's bed, and, unable to answer them individually, he one morning sent out a note to the effect that if & when he had anything worth saying, he would mimeograph it and send it to anyone who wanted it. Last year over 5,000 clients paid $40 a year for Rhea's "Dow Theory Comment."

Rhea did not want to be a tipster (though he did well by himself playing the market, averaged $436.19 gain for every $100 loss), but tipster he was to the public. Hundreds went to Colorado Springs to get advice from the great man. He arranged his invalid's schedule so that he worked early in the morning and late at night, was sound asleep when most people called. Soon he had 25 assistants, and his bedroom turned into a statistic factory. Sometimes he composed tirades against Franklin Roosevelt, which were incorporated in his market letters.

Month ago Rhea's clients were surprised to find with their letter a note saying that because Rhea's illness was worse (he was down to the use of part of only one lung, and was suffering from heart trouble in addition), his Junior Partner Perry Griner would take over. Last week, aged 52, Robert Rhea died.

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