Word: baldwin
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Without Midvale's contribution, Baldwin's order book would now be only about 40% of what it is. But if Baldwin stockholders can count on Midvale to keep their company from bogging down in depression, they cannot count on Midvale to do more than help Baldwin break even on its huge capacities (as it is barely doing now). Prosperity for Baldwin still depends on when U. S. railroad buying will come back...
Besides its locomotive works, Baldwin has Standard Steel Works (railroad wheels and a wide assortment of industrial miscellany) and Baldwin-Southwark (capital goods from engines to nuts). In spite of all these, Baldwin would still be in deep Depression but for the accident of geography that established Baldwin on tidewater, and the shrewdness of former President Samuel Vauclain, who bought 61% of Midvale Co. in 1926. For well over half of Midvale's business-U. S. armament-does not swing with the ordinary cycles of depression, is bringing Baldwin Locomotive as close to the black as it can come...
...Baldwin Locomotive Works today depends on non-railroad buying for half of its sales in even a good railroad buying year. At present, 80% of Baldwin's unfilled orders come from its hedges against bad locomotive business. Of this, Mid-vale's $18,500,000 backlog adds up to the biggest single lump, 73%. Its presiding genius, handsome, abstemious Dr. Harry L. Frevert, lives from one ballistic test to the next, his only concern the race between armor-piercing shells and shellproof armor...
...some $10,000,000 pf sales, Midvale paid stockholders $998,720 (of which Baldwin got $614,500), nearly 7% on Midvale assets. Midvale's 1939 present to Baldwin is sure to be much handsomer; in the first five months of 1939, its backlog boomed more than 140% over last year while the combined backlog of all other Baldwin divisions rose only half as fast. The Navy allows Midvale up to 10% profit on contracts after figuring a generous 10-20% depreciation. This assures not only good profit but is enabling Midvale to keep its capacities modern, efficient...
...until railroads have money to invest they refuse to make money either for themselves or Baldwin by borrowing to buy new equipment. Should the New Deal, however, decide to fight Recession II by priming heavy industry instead of consumer purchasing power, it is likely to choose railroad equipment (either forming a corporation to rent equipment to tho roads or guaranteeing loans enabling them to buy it) as one of the surest, quickest ways to gain its end. The figure New Dealers like to quote as a "minimum" of new locomotives needed to modernize the U. S. rolling power plant...