Leo Crowley's Aniline

Around Washington bars the gag is that only two kinds of freight now get A-1-a priorities on airplane space from the Far East to the U.S.: 1) generals, 2) mica. Last week came good news on one of these two strategic materials: the General Aniline & Film Corp. has developed a synthetic substitute that can double for some of mica's most essential war uses. A new Aniline plant, now building, will come into production soon.

Mica, which laymen know as isinglass, is mainly used in peacetime as a nonconductor for electrical equipment. When war hit the Far East, almost everything about mica immediately became a military secret. Reason: most high-grade mica comes from India, and without it no tank, ship or airplane would be of much use, since mica is essential for radio condensers, and there have been no acceptable substitutes.

When burly Robert E. McConnell moved in as board chairman-president of ex-German-controlled General Aniline a year ago (TIME, April 20, 1942), he had two problems at the top of his list: 1) to create a research staff; 2) to needle them into finding a mica substitute.

Polectron, Promika. Bob McConnell's new scientists had one big advantage over all the other men in the U.S. struggling with the same problem: they had Ani line's bulky file of German experiments on synthetic mica. With the aid of this know-how, last summer they came up with Polectron -- a resin made from plentiful materials including coal, tar, water and limestone. General Electric tested Polectron for a while, at length evolved from it a finished mica substitute which it named Promika.

Promika has not yet successfully supplanted mica except for most types of radio condensers. But with literally billions of those needed for radar, walkie-talkies, inter-communicators, etc., this is a huge step forward. Natural mica "fails" at lower temperatures than Promika. Moreover, 1 lb. of Polectron replaces 10-15 lb. of natural block mica (on which rejects and wastage are very high), thus costs less than Indian mica.

Last week, while Bob McConnell was beaming over Polectron and Promika, politics--an old Aniline bugbear--rose up to plague him. His principal stockholder was scouting around for a new board of directors. The stockholder: Alien Property Custodian Leo Crowley, who owns 97% of Aniline. Talk was that the new board chairman would be Manhattan's razor-smart Victor Emanuel, a director of Standard Gas & Electric, of which versatile Leo Crowley is board chairman.

No one knew what this would do to Bob McConnell. But what really titillated Wall Streeters was that Victor Emanuel, who is also an investment banker, might get a chance to underwrite a deal selling Aniline, with its $64,000,000 of assets. This is the juiciest piece of alien property in Leo Crowley's portfolio. The question: Has Crowley finally decided to sell?

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