Again, Dillon

Last week witnessed the introduction to the buying public of another great family business. At a figure between 60 and 75 millions, suave, saturnine Clarence Dillon,* 43-year old chief of Dillon, Read & Co., Wall St., Manhattan, took over the assets and liabilities of the National Cash Register Co. (Dayton, Ohio) and invited the public to assimilate 60 millions worth of new securities with correctly calculated confidence that his invitation would not be ignored.

His special corps of 200 accountants had told Mr. Dillon that the N. C. R. Co. concern possessed assets of 41 millions, exclusive of patent rights which were nominally set at $1, and of good will which was not reckoned at all; that it had an annual business of 40 millions (85% of the world's cash register orders); that its 900,000 shares of common stock profited $40.69 per share last year after 7% had been paid on 9 1/2 millions worth of preferred; that there was no funded debt.

President Frederick B. Patterson was more than willing to see the inactive interests in his family bought out. He had been negotiating with banks since the death (in 1922) of his father, John H. Patterson, the company's founder. So in stepped Clarence Dillon and succeeded where others had failed of accomplishment.

Clarence Dillon is not the first genius to appear on Wall Street, but all geniuses have their special characteristics. Besides honesty, foresight, courage and decision, what distinguishes this Texas-born, Harvard-bred, widely-traveled young man is an attitude toward business -- and life -- that is commonly called the artistic attitude. What other men make a labor, he makes an art. Before he tried his hand at business he idled in Europe for two years studying art and architecture. "I never expected to become a professional painter, or to build houses," he says, but he still delights to execute an etching, judge furniture, buy rare books. His office has the air of a scholar's library and in it he has the air of a man with time for anything but business. Newspaper men who interviewed him in the midst of his historic duel with the Morgan interests over Dodge Bros, were astonished to find him utterly cool and relaxed, willing to talk (a clinging drawl) for five minutes about the very simple facts of the deal and for 55 minutes about himself, his many friends, his children (Clarence Douglass, aged 15, with whom he hunts and fishes; Dorothy Anne, aged 12, whom he supplies with dogs, ponies, stories and a paternal playmate), his herd of Guernseys, his frequent trips abroad.

After the National Cash Register deal, newspaper men found him puffing an old black pipe and talking about "team work." "All of us are cogs in a great machine. . . . There can be no leadership in modern enterprises--they are too big. In board meeting I don't sit at the head of the table. I sit anywhere. . . . Money? What is there to it? ... After man's material wants are satisfied all that remains to the making of money is the power to accomplish something for the common good."

*Floater of Polish, Brazilian and Dutch loans; builder of Youngstown Sheet & Tube: successful competitor of J. P. Morgan & Co. for the huge (146-million) Dodge Bros, deal (TIME, April 13).