25 Years After

Before War gave Herbert Hoover to starving Belgians he fell in with another able U. S. mining capitalist named Alfred Chester Beatty in London. In 1911 the two looked not unlike: solid, broad-browed citizens, both engaged in financing exotically-named companies to ferret out underground wealth. Soon firm friends, they worked together on promoting a Klondike property. They did better with Russo-Asiatic Consolidated. Like good mining men, both were quick-witted and taciturn, used to keeping their mouths shut in strange places, self-reliant, worldly and well-educated. When War came, Herbert Hoover turned from the world's underground grab-bag to U. S. public life. Up he went from Food Administrator to Secretary of Commerce to President, on up into the stratospheric darkness of the ex-Presidency. His properties had long since been converted into bonds. His fortune had dwindled to something over $500,000.

Meanwhile Chester Beatty kept popping up all over the Earth's crust wherever a big mining development was starting. Primarily a copper man, he was quick to spot the possibilities in South Africa. While Friend Hoover was campaigning for President in 1928, Friend Beatty was shuttling between London and the great Rhodesian mine, Roan Antelope, a name to conjure with. He tied Roan up with American Metal Co., backed Rhodesian Selection Trust. He made himself king of South African copper, board chairman of Roan and six other mines.

In June 1932 the U. S. Congress hurt the business of President Hoover's old friend by imposing a 4-c- import tax on copper. Roan refused to limit production any longer. U. S. copper producers declared open war (TIME, Dec. 19, 1932). Emerging from the battle, Mr. Beatty last July announced a profit of -L-53,205 against a deficit the year before. That was finished and some old loyalties, he felt, were finished too.

That same month Chester Beatty moved to become a British subject (TIME, July 24). Last week while his onetime friend sat in Palo Alto, he got his final naturalization papers in London. Said he, with a trace of apology:

"I have lived here 25 years and have had my son educated at Eton and Cambridge and he is now married to an English girl. Being of Anglo-Saxon stock, it is fitting that I should come back and become an Englishman. I love England and my friends are here."

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