Luckier Than the Grocer

A. & P. Groceryman John Hartford was not the only one who lost money in Brigadier General Elliott Roosevelt's 1939 radio ventures (TIME, June 25). Last week, as the Treasury Department, the Bureau of Internal Revenue and two Congressional committees tried to unwind the General's lighthearted deals, two other men-with-money-to-invest admitted that they also had lent Elliott money, most of which they never saw again.

The two: David Baird, New York insurance man, and Maxwell M. Bilofsky, Newark manufacturer, member of the National Republican Club of New York, who owns a $30,000 aluminum Rolls Royce. Baird invested some $70,000, got some $30,000 back. Bilofsky (through his good friend Baird) invested some $50,000, recovered $20,800.

The loans, Mr. Baird said bravely, were "private and personal investments entered into for profit because [they] carried for the lenders an option to purchase stock in the network. . . . The gains could have been substantial." Baird and Bilofsky were luckier than Groceryman Hartford, who lent Elliott $200,000, got back $4,000.

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