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Show 1 of Delaware. In 1902, two or three years later, Pierre du Pont and his two cousins, Alfred and Coleman, acquired the great E. I. du Pont de Nemours Co., which had been making explosives since the Revolutionary war. Pierre went to Wilmington, Del., to become treasurer, and Raskob went along with him as his assistant. His salary, sal-ary, now was $3000 a year. Later on Pierre du Pont became president of the company. He made Raskob treasurer. Raskob continued in this job. In 1913 came a turn of fortune that was to be of vast importance. The General Motors corporation, then more or less in its infancy, was recommended to him by a friend as a "good buy." Raskob looked into and agreed. He bought some stock and persuaded Pierre du Pont to buy more. Between them they got 3000 shares. Two years passed. In 1915 came the expiration of a voting trust under un-der which the corporation had been operating, and bankers and stockholders stock-holders got together to reorganize. When a surprising thing happened. It was found that the 157,000 shares of stock represented at the meeting were evenly divided among two opposing op-posing factions. The 3000 shares held by Raskob and du Pont, all that remained outstanding, was the balance of power. Enter General Motors Raskob and du Pont were notified. noti-fied. They went to the meeting, and at Raskob's suggestions reached reach-ed a compromise whereby each of the two original factions was to name seven men for the board of rlironfnro txtH-Vi PofVnh nn1 Dr,nl DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN IS CALLED MILLIONAIRE-MAKER him a harmful influence on the country because it led to disrespect for law. naming three. Raskob became a director and du Pont was elected chairman of the board. Thus did Raskob and the du Ponts enter General Motors. After the war they got in deeper. deep-er. Wartime prosperity had rolled upon an enormous surplus for the du Pont de Nemours company. It had to be invested somewhere. Raskob Ras-kob persuaded the directors to buy General Motors stock. They agreed, buying $25,000,000 in one block and an equal amount a little later. A year or so later they bought a third block of equal size, thus getting for the du Pont company ownership of 40 to 45 per cent of the corporation. corpor-ation. Since that time, it is worth noting, the du Pont company has , received in dividends far more than the $75,000,000 it invested, while the market value of the stock is many times the original figure. General Motors is Raskob's pride and joy. He likes to tell of its progress and of the progress of the men who have been associated with it. i-Made i-Made 80 Millionaires "They say Carnegie made thirty millionaires over a period of years," he once said. "Well, we made 80 millionaires in General Motors. In 1923 we induced 80 of our sejiior and junior executives execu-tives to go into debt to buy General Gen-eral Motors stock. We got them to pledge themselves to buy $33,-000,000 $33,-000,000 worth. That stock is worth $250,000,000 today. All obligations have been paid and every one of those men, even the juniors who put in only $25,000 apiece, are millionaires." mil-lionaires." For a giant of the business world, Raskob has received surprisingly little personal publicity. His picture has seldom appeared in the papers before, he is seldom interviewed and the general public knows very little about him. He makes his home in Wilmington, Wilming-ton, Del., with his wife and their 11 children. He is a devout Roman Catholic, and has given extensively to charity. For years he has been an intimate friend of Governor Smith. Not long ago Raskob came out publicly for modification of the prohibition law, writing an open letter to Col. Patrick H. Callahan of Louisville, Ky., in which he declared de-clared that prohibition seemed to NEW. YORK, Aug. 6 The upstate up-state city of Lockport is quite a long way from Manhattan. Yet if the bands in Washington next March 4 are playing Manhattan's national anthem, which is a song dealing with sidewalks and mamie O'Rourke, Lockport will be able to claim a large share of the credit For Lockport's most distinguished distinguish-ed son, John B. Raskob, who as one of the leaders in the General Motors Corporation helped make 80 .millionaires between 1923 and 1927, is going to manage the presidential -campaign of Gov. Alfred E. Smith, as chairman of the Democratic national na-tional committee. Raskob is new to politics. As chairman of the finance committee of General Motors he has not had much time for such things. Now, however, because of his close friendship with New York's governor gov-ernor coupled, perhaps, with the fact that he shares the governor's views on the prohibition lav he is making the plunge. Wall street, 1 as well as Lockport, is willing to admit that he probably will do a good job. Began As Poor Boy . It seems impossible to describe any of the figures in this presidential presi-dential campaign, in either party, without ringing in the old "success "suc-cess story" motiff the story of the poor lad who made his own way to the top. Hoover, Smith, . Curtis and Rooinson all have biographies biog-raphies of this type; so has Raskob. Raskob was born in Lockport in 1879. The story opens when he was a boy of 20. working as clerk in a pump . company there for $7.50 a week, and helping support sup-port his mother, younger brother and two sisters. Like the man whose campaign he is now directing, direct-ing, he was fatherless. Raskob wanted mora money; $7.50 didn't go far, even in those days. He asked for $10 a week. It was refused. A friend had recently moved to Lorain, O., .and Raskob wrote him asking if there were any jobs out there. The friend replied that one P. S. du Pont, head of a street railway company in Lorain, was wrote du Pont and asked for the looking for a secretary. Raskob job. Taking his courage in his hands, he said that he would expect ex-pect to be paid $1000 a year. He mentioned this to his friends in Lockport and they agreed he was daft. One thousand dollars a year for a boy of 20! It was absurd. ab-surd. - . Joins With du Ponts But in the tradition of success stories Raskob. got the job. He went to Lorain and found that the P. S. du Pont was Pierre du Pont, scion of the famous du Pont family |