Mrs. Williams' Husband

A rare flower of U. S. wealth is Mona Strader Schlesinger Bush Williams, better known as Mrs. Harrison Williams, "best-dressed woman in the world." Born in Kentucky some 40 summers ago, she married first Henry J. Schlesinger of Milwaukee's iron-&-coke family, then Manhattan Banker James Irving Bush, finally and most successfully Harrison Williams, 23 years her elder, a quiet specialist in utility finance. To the adornment of their three houses--on upper Fifth Avenue at Bayville, L. I., at Palm Beach--Mrs. Williams has devoted her professional knowledge of porcelains, her flair for the paler sort of glamour. Since being given her title by a group of cold-blooded couturiers four years ago she has become the world's most photographed non-professional mannequin. In time spared from Society she has written a clever novel (Bright is the Morning, 1934) and cultivated prize-winning tulips. In 1929 Wall Street guessed that the fortune behind these pleasant activities was a fabulous $700,000,000. Last week, while blue-eyed Mona Williams was wintering in Italy, her suave, keen-eyed husband disclosed for the first time, to Securities & Exchange Commission inquisitors, how nearly correct that figure was and how it grew.

No lover of the spotlight is Harrison Williams, though he gave evidence last week of having grown as much in poise as in fortune since the day in 1890 when he forgot his graduation speech at the high school in Elyria, Ohio. Young Harry's penmanship got him his first job as a bookkeeper. By the late 18903 he was in business for himself, making bicycles. At 30 he had had enough of Elyria, sold out, headed for the cold shadows of Wall Street to begin his real career. In 1906 he took a hand in splicing a group of Midwest and Southern utilities into American Gas & Electric Co., six years later formed a higher and bigger holding company. Central States Electric, which eventually got working control of Great North American Co. (TIME, Feb. 22).

Mr. Williams conceded last week that it is "a common phenomenon of holding company set-ups that each company on top goes a little faster than the one underneath." Phenomenal indeed was Mr. Williams' observance of this principle. By 1924 he had spent $2,072,000 to increase his holdings to 104,671 of Central States' 109,038 outstanding common shares, a 96% interest and complete voting control. As shares in the utilities at the base of his pyramid rose, the shares in companies above them rose a little faster. On the super-top holding companies the effect of this multiplying leverage was prodigious. Central States stock began to expand and divide with the exuberance of yeast cells. Between 1924 and 1929 the common was split 60-for-1, the value of a single share increased from $10.50 to $5,600, and Mr. Williams' holdings, though reduced to 90%, amounted to 7,500,000 shares worth $612,000,000.

His hawky face intent upon SEC's hardboiled young lawyers, 63-year-old Mr. Williams affably admitted las't week that he had "influence on the management" of North American Co., North American Light & Power, Pacific Gas & Electric, Northern Natural Gas, Detroit Edison, United Light & Power, American Water Works. After 1929 the astringent years which wiped out many a man of wealth merely shrank Mr. Williams' fortune from fabulous to big. He retained his 400-ft. yacht, the Warrior; his houses, his leisure for travels almost as continuous as those of his wife, his interest in oceanography which led him to help finance William Beebe's voyages to the Sargasso Sea. From 1929 to 1931 he sold down to a 51% interest in Central States, got between $27,000,000 and $28,000,000 for his stock. Of this, he told Attorney Smith last week, he lost $7,000,000 in North American Co. stock trades, paid $4,756,317 in income tax and loaned $3,000,000 to Central States.

Question: "You got your money back from the Central States loan--you don't claim that as a loss?"

Answer: "I didn't get it back from the income tax."

Meanwhile Shenandoah and Blue Ridge corporations, the two investment companies which Mr. Williams and Waddill Catchings had put together in 1929, were on their way to the limbo from which Floyd Odium later plucked them (TIME, April 24, 1933). It was for background information on these that SEC had called Mr. Williams. When Attorney Smith persisted in asking if the Williams "empire" was not greater in 1935 than in 1929, he apparently used a word very annoying to his smiling witness. Said Mr. Williams sharply:

"I thought this was an investment company investigation. . . . You've been reading the papers."

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