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Show : X WHO'S NEWS THIS WEEK By LEMUEL F. PARTON NEW YORK. The muezzin from his tower cries that he can't exactly ex-actly say that everything is all right, but it might be worse and it probably proba-bly will be bet-Hls bet-Hls Restrained ter. That would Optimism Hits be Col. Leonard A Cheerful Note p- Ayres f Cleveland allaying al-laying fears of a bear market, in his monthly business survey, a periodic voice as authoritative as any noontide noon-tide bulletin from the minarets of Cairo. Colonel Ayres, vice president of the Cleveland Trust company, was a school teacher for many years, and is the author of a book called "The Measurement of Spelling Ability," Abil-ity," one of about a dozen of his books on educational subjects. He has written a similar number of books on business and finance, and, in his entire range, from spelling to selling, he has never overlooked detail and he is no offhand prophe-cier prophe-cier prophecy being his main line, as contrasted to that of mere market mar-ket analysis. He has logged eight major depressions de-pressions and eight cycles of inflation in-flation and deflation, and he gets the feel of the thing, in about the same way a good cook gets the feel of a cook book. He was one of the few financial experts who saw the 1929 blizzard coming, com-ing, and said so. On October 3, 1928, he wrote: "The golden age of American business has come to an end." Nobody was paying much attention atten-tion to the muezzin then. He kept on repeating that the condition of finance was "thoroughly unhygienic," unhygien-ic," but the wind wasn't right and the words didn't carry down to the market place below. A native of Niantic, Conn., Colonel Ayres was educated at Boston university, later garlanded garland-ed with a chaplet of honorary degrees from other colleges. He taught school at Rochester, N. Y., and at Puerto Rico, and in the latter engagement turned his spare time to statistical research, re-search, with such success that he became statistician for the A. E. F. in war days hence his title. Previous to taking over the banking post in Cleveland, be was a director of education for the Russell Sage foundation, and he bad rounded out his career as an educator nicely before starting start-ing another in finance. In between be-tween the two work zones, he wedged a book, "The War With Germany," written in 1919. TN THE depth of the depression, a group of Wall Street financiers hired an economist to draft for them a shock-proof and slump-proof plan . , for the invest- Smo Business ment of their Sagacity Seems surplus funds, Highly Plausible0 assure security in their old age. After diligent research, their adviser found that no such plan was possible, but suggested as an alternative that they put their money in the keeping of some sagacious sa-gacious Chinese financier. This writer recalled then that several sev-eral of the shrewdest business men in this country, including Edward Bruce of the fine arts division of the treasury department and the late William R. Murchison, had learned about the care and nurture of money from the Chinese sages of the abacus, and now comes Richard C. Patterson Jr., also schooled in business in China. He retires as assistant secretary of commerce to take a private post. Back from China in 1927, with half of his allotted span of years still ahead of him and a sizable fortune already in hand, he wished to put in the rest of his life being socially useful. He was commissioner of corrections of New York city until 1932, given a big hand for his effectiveness effec-tiveness on the job. Just a year ago, he became a sort of liaison officer between the department de-partment of commerce and the nation's na-tion's business. In this capacity, he urged a friendly get-together in an "economic clinic," as he thinks part of our trouble is due to a lack of basic facts and sound understanding understand-ing of economic and business forces. He was a Nebraska farm boy, routed through the University of Nebraska and the Columbia School of Mines to a successful professional and business career, ca-reer, first as a mining engineer with the J. G. White Engineering Engineer-ing company, as a consultant for the DuPonts and later in mining and business ventures in China. He served on the Mexican border bor-der and in the World war, a major ma-jor in the latter, annexing several sev-eral foreign decorations. (Cunsalidalcd Features WNU Service. |
