Business & Finance: Blair-Rockefeller

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Cutten-Sinclair (See front cover)

On a wall in the offices of Blair & Co., bankers, at No. 24 Broad St., Manhattan, hangs a portrait of J. Insley Blair, founder. Revered is the memory of Mr. Blair, but stocks and bonds no longer interest him. The inheritor of his power, though not of his title, is Elisha Walker, senior partner of Blair & Co.* There is little about Partner Walker to distinguish him, outwardly, from other Blair & Co. partners such as Polo Player J. Cheever Cowdin. He has dark hair. He is of medium size. He is decidedly middle aged. He likes to play poker. He is impatient of obstructionism. It is on Mr. Walker, however, that the destinies of Blair & Co. most vitally depend. In an association, theoretically, of equals, Mr. Walker stands unquestionably a superior. He it is who decides where the potential energy of Blair & Co. millions shall be cynamically applied.

And recently his decisions have concerned the oil industry—an industry which, suffering from overproduction and savage competition now shows signs of straightening out its difficulties. Carefully surveying the oil industry, Mr. Walker discreetly arrived at a conclusion. The result of that conclusion was last week's transfer of some thirty million dollars of Rockefeller holdings in the Prairie

Oil & Gas and the Prairie Pipe Line Co.* to Blair & Co. Inc. These holdings totalled some 10% of Prairie Oil and some 14% of Prairie Pipe Line.

By that speculative law through which the act of purchase increases the value of the thing purchased, Blair & Co.'s acquisition of Prairie stock shot Prairie quotations upward. Indeed, the deal had hardly been concluded when the rise in Prairie prices made the $30,000,000 holding worth $47,000,000. Even before the purchase, however, the two Prairie flowers had been blossoming with unprecedented brilliance. Prairie Pipe Line had a Low for the year of 51. Last week's High was 277. Even Wright Aero, even Radio Corp. have not equalled this record climbing—the most sensational advance in a year of sensational advances. And Prairie Oil & Gas has moved from a Low of 26 to a High of 67.

Yet the bull market in oils is not caused only by Partner Walker, not only the work of Blair & Co. Other and even more powerful interests have influenced the rise in oils. Chief among these other influences is Arthur W. Cutten who has gone into Sinclair Consolidated as Blair & Co. have gone into Prairie oil. Always a bull, never a bear, Arthur W. Cutten has done more than any other individual to make the overload stock ticker lag far behind the market and Prairie Pipe. He has been in Radio Corp., in Montgomery Ward, in many another of the soaring stocks that have done most to create the present buying market. In a bull market, among many bulls, Bull Cutten ranks king of the herd.

But since No. 209 Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, is still Arthur W. Cutten's home, it has been necessary for him to have a Wall St. representative actually on the trading floor. Such a representative he has found in his nephew, Ruloff Cutten.† If Uncle Cutten is the brain of the combination, Nephew Cutten is certainly its vigorous tongue, its potent legs. There is no more active bustler on the floor of the exchange than Nephew Cutten.