More Proxy Fights

While the New Haven fight (see above) carried off most of the headlines, other spring proxy wars were bubbling. P:Decca Records, which has been fighting a group of rebel stockholders who say that management salaries are too high and hit records too few, finally won its proxy war by a 6-to-1 margin. Decca's President Milton Rackmil said that the man behind all the trouble was Draft Dodger Serge Rubinstein (TIME, Mar. 5, 1947), who had paid for the opposition's proxy solicitors and twice visited Decca trying to make a deal that would give him a voice in company policy.

P:Printing-Press Builders R. Hoe & Co., whose President Joseph L. Auer lost control to a rival group last July, did an about-face, put Auer back in control. Auer's biggest talking point: after 15 years without labor trouble, the new management had tumbled the $14 million company into a $1,400,000 strike.

P:The Minneapolis & St. Louis Railway, which suffered through 20 years of bankruptcy before the war and earned the nickname "Maimed & Still Limping," found itself in another painful spot. A group of stockholders headed by Chicago Lawyer Ben W. Heineman charged that President Lucian C. Sprague had mismanaged the company, claimed that they had 201,628 proxies (about half) lined up to put him and his directors out of office at the May 11th annual meeting. Among the accusations: Sprague spent up to $100,000 a year of company funds on such luxuries as two Cadillacs, boxes at race tracks, trips to Florida and Europe and jewels for his wife, while drawing down $61,000 in salary and pension.

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