Business Adventures

Business Adventures
by John Brooks
Copyright 1959 first year and other years to 1969

1. THE FLUCTUATION
       The Little Crash In '62
      Stock Market crashes of 1929 and 1962 were compared.
It could happen again for certain.
As de la Vega said, "It is foolish to think that you can withdraw from the Exchange after you have tasted the sweetness of the honey."

2.  THE FATE OF THE EDSEL.
           A Cautionary Tale
      Rise and Flowering,  several years of research, design, and planning.
      Then building separate factories and sales facilities.
     Decline and Fall,  Production and sales started.
     Some sales and then buyers disappeared.  Some quality problems.
     Finally in 1958 production was stopped and the Edsel was discontinued.
     Reasons for failure not clear,  the downturn in the economy may be the reason.
    In the end it did little harm to the Ford Motor Company.
    Other new designs and smaller models were introduced with much success.

3.  THE FEDERAL INCOME TAX.
     Its History And Peculiarities
    The current Federal Income system has grown very complex and needs simplification.  Optimists believe simplification will soon occur and hopefully bring it back to be near to that in 1913, the first ever put in during peacetime in the USA.

4.  A REASONABLE AMOUNT OF TIME
        Insiders At Texas Gulf Sulphur
     How much time should there be before an insider can release information to cause others to buy stock from a corporation, as well as that insider to also buy that investment stock???

5.  XEROX XEROX XEROX XEROX
     Very successful with new copy machines in the 1960's.
Later they they invented the mouse and other features for computers and passed along the information to Microsoft and Apple.  Xerox did very little for computers and soon were bypassed by Microsoft and Apple.

6.  MAKING THE CUSTOMERS WHOLE
           The Death of a President
    A story about the Ira Haupt & Co., a member if the New York Stock Exchange.
This exchange company was faced with a big loss of funds due to oil reserve failures due to false information.  The New York Stock Exchange wanted to at least protect the investment companies doing investment business with the Haupt Co..  Other Exchange members were asked to provide funds to cover the probable losses to Haupt investment companies, including 4 Exchange members in England.  In the end total amount raised and donated was about $9,000,000. 
   This happened during the weekend when US President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963,

7.  THE IMPACTED PHILOSOPHERS
         Non-Communication At GE
    Price fixing in the electrical supply industry was denied by top executives at General Electric and other companies. Blame was placed on poor communication between top leaders and those lower down in the company. In the end the courts held many of the lower leaders guilty resulting in large fines and jail time.

8.  THE LAST GREAT CORNER
       A Company Called Piggly Wiggly
   Clarence Saunders as head of the Piggly Wiggly grocery chain attempted to play the game of "Corner" the market by buying nearly all the stock of that company.  Then he attempted to sell much of the stock at a greatly inflated price.  He borrowed a lot of money  to buy the stock.  His attempt failed due to stock market controls and the market selling a lot of stock market short sales. He became bankrupt and resigned as head of the company. He had several more attempts at starting new grocery stores with very little success.

9.  A SECOND SORT OF LIFE
         David E. Lilienthal, Businessman
   Lilienthal was very successful in government work, but moved to private enterprise later in life.  At first he was doubtful about that, but eventual found it to provide much more personal satisfaction than he ever derived from public service.

10.  STOCKHOLDER SEASON
         Annual Meetings And Corporate Power
   Four large company annual meetings were described, including professional stockholders who attended to ask difficult and foolish questions.
11.  ONE FREE BITE
          A Man, His Knowledge, And His Job
     Donald Wohlgemuth worked at B.F. Goodrich in Akron, OH making space suits.
 When he later applied to work for International Latex Corp. he faced law suites etc.to prevent his use of space suits knowledge in his new job.

12.  IN DEFENSE OF STERLING
           The Bankers, The Pound, And The Dollar
     The Federal Reserve Bank Of New York with other world bankers, saving the English sterling pound, and worldwide selling of US gold reserve are all covered in this section.