Say It with Dividends

Montgomery Ward's Board Chairman Sewell Avery last week neatly answered charges by Challenger Louis Wolfson that he is stingy with dividends. Though Ward's sales in the first nine months of 1954 slumped 13 1/2% and profits $4.8 million (to $21 million), the company's directors voted an extra $1.75 dividend for the 67,055 stockholders. The regular quarterly dividend rate will be boosted to 75-c- instead of 50-c- per share, the first such increase since 1936. In fiscal 1954, Ward^s dividends will total $4 per share, 50-c- more than last year.

On the New York Stock Exchange, the good news caused a crisis of sorts. There were so many orders to buy Ward stock--and none to sell--that trading in the stock had to be suspended for more than 30 minutes. When it was resumed, the price was up 3 to 76.

In Washington the same day, Financier Wolfson had dividend news of a different kind. At a meeting of directors of his Capital Transit Co., which he has admitted "milking" by payment of big dividends, Chairman Wolfson announced that he was discontinuing his null salary. His reason: the Public Utilities Commission, worried over the company's dividend payments, forced Capital Transit to cut payments to 20-c- per share (from 40-c-) for 1954's third and fourth quarter. Explained Wolfson: he could not accept his big salary because "of the reduced dividends being paid to stockholders."

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