Huddle in a Hamlet

In the heart of Kentucky's bluegrass lands, 30 mi. west of Paris and 10 mi. north of Versailles, is Spring Station. Fifteen people live there. It is 600 mi. to the nearest track of the Southern Pacific R. R. The Louisville & Nashville railroad runs through Spring Station but no trains stop except on flag. Last week a train did stop and out of a private car stepped 15 directors and employes of the Southern Pacific Co. They marched into a one-room brick building. There in a space 25 by 25 ft. the two-billion-dollar railroad system held its annual stockholders' meeting. There were no stockholders present, except the directors. With proxies representing some 2,000,000 shares, the directors voted on routine matters, elected three directors, including Senior Partner George Emlen Roosevelt of Roosevelt & Son. After a quick adjournment they climbed in their private car and went away. Nobody in Woodford County knew they had come or gone except two State agents.

When they return next year it may not be to Spring Station. The company, largest incorporated in Kentucky, used to hold its meetings at Anchorage (pop.: 564). But it found that the tax rate was getting too high and moved on.

Spring Station is perhaps the strangest of stockholders' stamping grounds but some other corporations also select out-of-the-way places for their annual meetings. Mathieson Alkali meets at Saltville. Va. (pop.: 2,964), F. W. Woolworth Co. at Watertown, N. Y., near Utica where it was founded, Anaconda Copper at Anaconda, Mont. U. S. Steel meets at Hoboken, N. J., where it serves a light lunch. Not all big U. S. corporations seek inaccessible spots. Of the 29 with the largest number of U. S. stockholders, eight meet in New York, five in Wilmington, two each in Baltimore, Philadelphia. Dover.

Others pick small places sometimes out of sentimental attachment, sometimes to avoid high taxes, as does the Southern Pacific. Sometimes, too, they pick them to avoid being annoyed by stockholders. It would seem logical that Delaware, home of corporations, would have the most meetings. But Delaware's liberal incorporation laws allow companies to hold their meetings outside the State if they choose.

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