Down Bobby's Alley

The nation's two big bowling manufacturers seem to get along about as well as two tomcats in an alley. "Competition is vigorous and unimpeded," says Brunswick Corp. President Benjamin E. Bensinger, 56. Says his archrival, American Machine & Foundry Co. Chairman Morehead Patterson, 64: "Competition has been fierce and sanguinary." Thus it came as a surprise last week when Bobby Kennedy's Justice Department filed an antitrust suit against the two in a Manhattan federal court. The charge: that AMF and Brunswick had conspired with each other, and with the Bowling Proprietors' Association of America, to restrain trade by refusing to sell to businessmen who wanted to open bowling alleys in areas that the association had designated as "overbuilt."

Not so, cried the manufacturers. Both granted that they do turn down orders, but only for sound business reasons, and both denied any conspiracy. Since Brunswick sells most of its equipment on credit, aggressive "Ted" Bensinger insists that the company has the right "before accepting any order to make sure a proposed bowling center can be operated profitably." Soft-spoken Morehead Patterson, whose AMF generally leases its pin spotters for a percentage of the income, also concedes that AMF turns away poor business risks. "We want our proprietors to make money," he says. "If they don't, then we don't get paid." Neither man would say how much business his company had refused lately, but Brunswick's annual report for 1958 put the amount that year at $35 million.

The Bowling Proprietors' Association, which includes more than 80% of the nation's 11,000 bowling centers, also denied conspiracy. Its members were amazed by the trustbusters' suit. Suffering from over-competition, many of them said they would have welcomed assurances from the manufacturers against overbuilding, but got none.

So many bowling centers have been started that Brunswick and AMF, which between them manufacture almost all of the nation's automatic pin setters, are now feeling the pinch. While the bowling boom of the late 1950s helped triple Brunswick's sales to $422.3 million in 1961, and helped double AMF's sales to $516.5 million, sales have fallen off this year. So has the value of their stocks, long favorites of Wall Street, which are now down to less than one-third of their 1961 highs.

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The Justice Department's action was complicated this week by the sudden death from a heart attack of AMF's Morehead Patterson in Washington.

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