Cigars, Bounder

The Consolidated Cigar Corp. last week sold $10,000,000 of ten-year notes. This is the result of its recent purchase of G. H. P. Cigar Co., a purchase which gives Consolidated Cigar "the largest production and sale of high grade cigars [10 cents and higher] in the world." The purchase also added G. H. P.'s El Producto brand to Consolidated Cigar's Dutch Masters, Harvester, El Sidelo, Mozart, Adlon.

The importance of the purchase and the note issue may have made Director August Heckscher seem excited at the recent directors' meeting, which considered these matters. But surely Barron's Weekly exaggerated when it said that this dignified gentleman (he was 78 in August) "literally bounded in and out of the meetings, a picture of youthful sprightliness."

This August Heckscher, who "bounds" about, is a happy old man, doing just as he pleases. After the Civil War he came to the U. S. from Germany and by 1905 had become sufficiently rich (coal, mines, New Jersey Zinc Co.) to retire. He thought to devote all his time to ameliorating the living conditions of poor children. He likes them, pities them. But business oppor-tunities--railroads, steel works, Manhattan and Florida realty--knocked, assiduously, made him richer.

None the less, he kept up his private child welfare work. He built the $3,000,000 Heckscher Foundation building in Manhattan for the entertainment and care of children up to the age of 16. Here he cooperates with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, by housing the waifs. He financed two Central Park playgrounds, and gave New York State a 1,500-acre park ground on Long Island. And only a few days before he was seen "bounding," he had returned from a European study trip with plans for sanitary, low-rent, "model" tenements, such as the Rockefellers and the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. have planned for New York poor.