CORPORATIONS: What the Country Needs ...

The Chicago Corp. is a well-heeled investment trust which likes to take fair chances, calls its operations "enterprise financing." Some 18 months ago, Chicago Corp. took the biggest chance of its corporate life. It sank more than $12,500,000 of its own cash, and another $44,000,000 borrowed from the Reconstruction Finance Corp., into building the longest natural gas pipeline in the world; 1,265 miles from its rich fields near Corpus Christi, Texas to West Virginia, hub of the profitable northern market.

By the time the job was done last November, the pipeline had turned out to be an investor's dream. In...