Business & Finance: W. C. Durant

Now that the swift rise in stock prices this summer is over, discus- sion as to who made money out of it is the order of the day. Chief among those mentioned is W. C. Durant, onetime automobile manufacturer and inveterate bull speculator in stocks. Mr. Durant is said to have been the chief beneficiary in the meteoric rise of Cast Iron Pipe, to the tune of about $2 million. He is also said to have carried 25,000 shares of Southern Railway from the 30's to the 50's, as well as to have had heavy operations in Savage Arms and Missouri Pacific preferred.

Yet these activities, if true, are small beside Mr. Durant's market operations while he controlled the General Motors Corp. in 1919. At one time his fortune was stated to be $100 million. The smash in stocks beginning in November, 1919, wiped out most of this, and Durant was compelled to sell out his control of the General Motors Corp. to a banking syndicate. But the genius of Chevrolet soon organized his own auto company, and is said to have done well in its shares on the Curb. In 1921-22 he "came back" in Wall Street by making $4 million in Studebaker; he accumulated 80,000 shares at 50 and sold them at or about par. Stockbrokers are now beginning to speak of Durant as "one of the Street's great operators," "a successor to James Keene."