Cuneo Steps In

For months, National Tea Co., sixth largest U.S. retail grocery chain, had squirmed under the critical gaze of one of its new stockholders. The critic: John F. Cuneo, cold-eyed, round-faced owner of The Cuneo Press, Inc., biggest U.S. printers as well as "angel" of Liberty and a string of other magazines.

Last fall, Stockholder Cuneo sent his own auditors poring through National's books to find out why it made only $332,000 in 1943 on sales of $92,000,000. Last month he fired off a letter to National stockholders giving his findings: bad management, antiquated selling methods and high salaries to National Tea's executives.

Last week Cuneo won his war. John McKinlay, onetime president of Marshall Field & Co., who has run National Tea for the last six years, resigned. As part of the peace treaty, Cuneo won control of National's board of directors. Backed by his print shop millions, he had become a potent new figure in the chain-store field.

Competition Helps. John Cuneo is still little more than a name to retail merchants, is little better known to most Chicagoans. He dodges publicity, keeps the lid on any airing of his business affairs.

Chicago-born Mr. Cuneo went to Yale University, but left after an impatient two years to start in business. With $10,000 given him by his father, he bought up a small bookbinding shop, changed the name to John F. Cuneo Co., which now controls Cuneo Press. He knew little about printing, but plenty about selling.

His big chance came shortly after World War I. Sears, Roebuck, which had been printing its own catalogue, got fed up with the job. John Cuneo landed the fat contract. Overnight, it turned his bookbindery into a big business. Cuneo went right on expanding, although he no longer does the bulk of Sears printing.

Tallyho. He took over a string of movie magazines which had run up big printing bills (Screenland, Silver Screen), watched them move into the black; he set up Consolidated Book Publishers to print cheap Bibles and encyclopedias, branched out into country banking, bought up Chicago real estate. When Liberty magazine was floundering, he took it over from Macfadden, added it to his string.

In 1937, when the late Samuel Insull's famed Hawthorn-Mellody Farms went on the block, complete with an Italian villa, John Cuneo plunked out $752,000 for them. In short order, they became Chicago's third largest supplier of milk.

Now 59-year-old John Cuneo spends much of his time with his family on his farms, where he raises hackney ponies, Palominos and Suffolks, drives his friends about in a tallyho on holidays.

Into the Red. Cuneo's speculative eye had been fixed on National Tea for months before he decided to get into the grocery business. Founded by an immigrant, the late George S. Rasmussen, National Tea ran into difficulties not many years after he left the company to his sons, George S. Jr. and Robert V., and went home to Denmark. By 1937, National Tea was in the red by $1,365,280. McKinlay was brought in to try to pull it out, though Robert stayed on as president.

National made a little money, although not enough to encourage McKinlay, who sadly announced in 1943 that he saw little hope. John Cuneo, watching from the sidelines, saw plenty. He bought up 101,325 shares of common stock, another 1,907 of preferred. By last week he already had enough stockholders behind him to settle on his own terms: a thorough house cleaning of National Tea, new executives, new selling methods. When the stockholders meet, March 25, no one doubts that he will get what he wants. And no one doubts that Cuneo, in cleaning out the cobwebs, will make a pile of money.

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