Boom in Stockholders

U.S. citizens last week got a real look at who sells and who buys the large blocks of stock which are traded in Wall Street almost every week. The look was an eye-opener, proved that almost all big blocks are dumped by rich estates (to pay inheritance taxes) or giant corporations, are bought by thousands of small investors scattered over the whole U.S. Since the New York Stock Exchange started its "special offering" plan last February (TIME, March 2), the Exchange alone has broken up 67 large blocks of stock, sold the bits & pieces to some 10,000 investors. Some recent breakups:

> Wall Street underwriters Hemphill, Noyes & Co. last week put across the biggest special offering yet: 65,527 shares of International Paper common worth $508,000. Formerly held by American Light & Traction Co., the sale lasted only 26 minutes, took the stock from one owner and put it in the hands of more than 422 small investors who bought from 15 to 500 shares apiece.

> The estate of David Charles Whitney, (mining and logging) recently liquidated 100,000 shares of Parke, Davis common stock at 23 7/8 a share. The stock was not offered as a "special" but was sold after regular trading hours and snapped up by about 500 investors in 90 minutes.

> In mid-November executors for the Ellis P. Earle estate (paint, exporting, mining, banking) sold 81,575 shares of Phillips Petroleum to about 750 investors, followed through by parceling 21,400 shares of Congoleum-Nairn to 176 buyers. Total value of the lots: $3,700,000.

> Acting for the estate of oil-rich Edward Stephen Harkness, oldtimers Dillon, Read & Co. offered 50,000 shares of Standard Oil of Indiana at 25 3/8, happily watched it go to hundreds of investors.

Biggest result of these sales is a whopping increase in the number of U.S. stockholders, hence a much broader ownership of U.S. industrial wealth. National Industrial Conference Board statisticians figure that 16 large U.S. corporations had a record 1,611,200 shareholders last year, 64% more than in stock-crazy 1929. For the whole U.S. economy this is a good thing: big business thus has more policemen to keep it out of trouble, more guardians to protect it from needless persecution.

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