Bullish Bush

Last week unexpected aid came to the Hoover industrial program from a bull outside the herd. Irving T. Bush,* head of Brooklyn's mammoth Bush Terminal, announced the completion of three years of negotiations in the formation of Bush Service, Inc., U. S. A. The new company combines the facilities of the Bush Terminal with those of Lassen & Co., a Swiss holding company that controls 54 distributing agencies throughout Europe. Fifty one percent of the stock of the new company is held by Bush Terminal. Inc. For the smaller exporter Bush Service Corp. will do, roughly, what is done for companies like International Harvester, General Motors, and Standard Oil of New Jersey by their own overseas selling and distributing organizations. Bush Service will assume full responsibility for shipments from the point of origin to the point of distribution, handling all repacking, marking, routing, and import requirements that arise en route. It will "provide adequate and reliable information regarding foreign markets and conditions" to its customers. By assuming responsibility for the shipment while en route, Bush Service will be able to give the exporter what is known as "a continuous document of possession," so that he can borrow money on his goods while they are in transit. At present such goods are a frozen asset while in transit. A middle-west manufacturer can put goods for export on a railroad train and forget about them until he receives the money for them from Bush Service, which will collect his customers' bills in Europe. An indication of the scope of the system: in Rumania there will be Bush Service offices in 14 cities, only one of which is even remotely familiar to American ears: Alba, Bucharest, Arad, Targu, Mures, Cernauti, Galatz, Braila, Constanza, Oradea, Timisora, Julia, Deva, Cluj.

Every architect knows, and most of them admire, the strong, stark, massive group of reinforced concrete warehouses that form a good part of the Bush Terminal. The work of Architect William Higginson, they are praised, described in many a book on industrial architecture. Fittingly enough, last week Builder Bush was elected head of a committee to assist the City of New York in formulating a new building code. His colleagues number 220, chosen by the Merchants' Association of New York to represent the public in future hearings on the building code. A city within a city is Brooklyn's great Bush Terminal. There are piers, warehouses, factories, railroad lines and terminals, a vast panorama of industry that unrolls itself over 20 acres of South Brooklyn waterfront. This industrial city has a daytime population of 35,000, its own police force, and its own courts for the settlement of internal disputes. It is the creation of one man, Builder Bush. "Dreamer" and "visioner" are two words sadly overworked in business biography, but they apply here. A broad and high forehead and a reflective cast of countenance give Irving T. Bush more the aspect of a philosopher than a successful businessman. After a preparatory school education at Hill School, Pottstown, Pa., and a cruise round the world on his father's yacht, the Coronet, young Bush began to dream of his great terminal scheme. In 1902 he founded Bush Terminal, Inc., and began to build six small warehouses and a pier. When the big railroads ignored his tiny terminal, he called it to their attention by buying many a carload of hay in Michigan and sending it to himself via Bush Terminal. To impress on steamship lines the existence of his terminal, he hired two Norwegian tramp steamers and began to import to himself via Bush Terminal tons and tons of bananas from Jamaica. Today twelve steamers dock at the Bush Terminal on an average day, and one-fifth of the freight handled in New York passes through it. With quiet pride Mr. Bush says of his terminal : "I have built, and it is my creation."

*Since Sept. 2, 1662, when "Jan Bosch, from Westphalen," arrived in the U. S. aboard the Fox from the Netherlands, the Bush family has seen many a change. In 1747 Ter Bos and Ter Bosch became Ter Bush, and more recently Irving and his brother, Professor Wendell T. Bush of Columbia University, reduced the Ter to T.

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