Downtown

P: In Montreal last week the fate of Canada's venerable Price Brothers & Co., Ltd. (newsprint) was finally settled. Suffering from the gutted newsprint market, Price Brothers defaulted on its bonds more than a year ago. Britain's potent publisher, Canadian-born Lord Beaverbrook, whose papers used Price newsprint and whose brother Allan Anderson Aitken was a director, tried his hand at reorganization but was blocked by the bondholders. Last April Price slipped into receivership. Other interests including Duke-Price Power (Aluminum Co. of America affiliate) wangled for control. Last week the bondholders committee sold Price Brothers to 55-year-old Bowater Paper Mills of London, dominant newsprint makers of the British Isles.

P: Before the turn of the year Deposit Insurance Corp., created by the National Banking Act of 1933, must plow through the books of the 14,000 banks that are expected to apply for participation in the deposit insurance plan (TIME, Sept. 18). D. I. C. will requisition all Federal Reserve and national bank examiners, is counting on the services of all U. S. clearing house examiners. Last week to supplement this army of examiners, D. I. C. asked the banks to loan it 2,500 smart credit men.

P: Life insurance underwriters meeting in Chicago heard sharp criticism, of the practice of underwriting huge policies (called "jumbos") of $1,000,000 or more. Vice President John Melvin Laird of Connecticut General Life observed that responsible companies have grown shy of underwriting jumbos, that they are a dangerous risk even in normal times. Said he: "Statistics show that the death rate on this type was excessive on issues of the 'boom' decade carried to the anniversary of 1930. The experience includes a period of generally favorable mortality and excludes practically all the Depression. Nevertheless the mortality on persons insured for $1,000,000 or more was 169% of the normal. Clearly there was something wrong even before the Depression. . . . By 1930 more information had become available and companies were limiting 'personal' insurance to the amount which could be purchased on the ordinary life plan by 20% of the man's income." Lives known to be insured for $1,000,000 or more include those of Motorman Walter P. Chrysler, Scripps-Howard's Roy Wilson Howard, Harvey Samuel Firestone, Cineman Will Rogers. Some jumbos deceased since 1923: Julius Rosenwald, William Wrigley Jr., John Thompson Dorrance.

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