Welfare Capitalists Jubilee

Rabelaisian, old Bartlett Arkell rounded off 50 years last week as first and only president of still-booming Beech-Nut Packing Co. Sadly he stepped up to chairman, and turned the active management over to his son, Clark. But no one expected this schoolboy's dream of a success to end here. There was still plenty of kick left in the old boy.

In 1891 Bart Arkell started with $10,-ooo, less than ten employes and an idea that the public would buy hickory-cured ham -- his only product at the start. Be fore he eased off he had pushed Beech-Nut to No. 3 place in the U.S. confectionery industry, built its assets to $22,800,000 without a cent of debt.

At 78 he is still hale, cocksure of him self. His occupational paunch does not stop him from playing golf (usually two holes), drinking his favorite cocktail (Scotch old-fashioned), eating his favorite foods (Beech-Nut). A onetime Judge employe, he bubbles when he tells a story. And his summer place at Manchester, Vt. is always open house for any good Republican.

Yet Beech-Nut's products and workers are likely to remain his chief interest. He tried to make Beech-Nut's home, Canajoharie in New York's Mohawk Valley, a model town without looking like it, gave it an art museum and a library, put boxes of flowers on the village's lampposts (an idea he picked up in Hungary). In the old days before the clatter-clang of modern machinery, he hired a pianist to relieve the workers' tedium. Last year, on top of above-average wages, the company set aside $466,249 for its employes (including old-age benefits and a Christmas bonus of $3 times the years of an employe's service). But this welfare capitalism has paid dividends: many a manufacturer envies Beech-Nut's labor relations.

Unusual for a company with such continuity of management is the way Bartlett Arkell kept adding new products to the Beech-Nut line (beginning with jam which his sister came down to the plant and made). These new products are the key to Beech-Nut's rising profits, for today the cured meats account for less than 2% of earnings. Biggest money-maker is chewing gum, which Brother-in-law F. E. Barbour handles. Other big items are strained foods, coffee, peanut butter, soup. Dropped along the way are tomato juice (1940), biscuits (1940), ginger ale, fish bait.

Arkell's care for Beech-Nut extended even to his son. To make him a better factory man he sent him to M.I.T., apprenticed him in every branch of the business. Today the son takes over at high tide. Last year Beech-Nut made $2,889,940--an all-time high equal to $6.61 a share. First-quarter earnings of this year are still better. Even at the low tide of 1932, Beech-Nut made $3.78 a share. Over 50% of these profits goes straight to the Arkell family and company executives. But an outsider who bought one share in 1899 (since swelled by stock dividends of 236 shares) could today sell his holdings for about $27,000. On the subject of selling his shares Bart Arkell once said: "I will not sell out to anyone at any price. . . . To me Beech-Nut is more than a business, it is my ideal, my service to the public."

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