Evening star., 1925-03-11
VIRTUAL COLLAPSE
N ST. PAUL STOCKS
S. Steel and Several
SpeciaItieS Get Better
Support Today.
BY STUART p. WEST.

Special Dispatch to The Star.
NEW YORK, March ia virtual
collapse IN the preferred and COM
mon stocks of the Chicago, Milwau-
kee and ST. Paul Railway Co. was
the outstanding incident in the stock
market today.
The preferred, which had closed at
20 on Tuesday and had sold as high
as. 28h earlier in the year. broke
under heavy trading. 1t got down,
as did the common, to new low fig
ures. The junior stock had closed
on the preceding day at II Z and its
1895 top was 16%. In the break
today it was freely supplied, selling
down nearly 10 points from it's high
of. the year.
Reports Hurt Stock.
Wall street was full of gossip re-
Earding the immediate future in the
ST Paul situation and, needless to
say, this gossip was Of a decidedly un-
favorable nature. Although st. Paul
stocks and bonds broke badly the
opinion was that whatever lies
ahead for St. Paul finances has been
quite fully discounted by the market
general. Accordingly operations
for the rise in other directions were
not affected by the selling in the
wlth it. Prices were lower from the
outset, then recovery set in.
Western Rails Strong.
THE violent advance in Western Pa
cific to much the highest prices of
the year and the resumption of the
advance in St Louis Southwestern
were features. The Western Pacihc
advance was based on expectations
of
as certainty. A number of other
rails were bid up moderately. Rail-
way stocks OF the class of Atchison
and New York Central moved up in
face OF the weakness in st. Pauls.
industrial leaders like United
States Steel common, American Can.
General Electric and the Pan Ameri
cans among the oils turned about fol-
lowing the selling of Tuesday and
early today, and received better sup
port a good part of the time.
1t appeared that the recent selling
mpvement In the general market had
gone some distance in correcting weak
TECHNICAL condition, due to the excess of
the previous advance.
Speciality Group Drops.
On the other hand there was some
rather sharp declines in the specially
group in instances where support was
feeble and there seemed to be no basis
for an extension Of an advance already
oyerdone.
The announcement that the Rock Is
land had got control of the St Louis
Southwestern explained the recent up
swing in the stock of the latter. Rock
Island, according to Wall Street gossip,
1sF, destined to become a part of the
Southern Pacific system, but this report
has never been confirmed. The state
ment of the chairman of the Rock Is
land company today had to do only with
the acquisition Of the st. Louis-South-
western.
Wilson in New Break.
"A bad break occurred in the pre-
ferred and common stocks of Wilson
&zCo., the sequel to Tuesdays report
that an assessment would be put on
beth issues in a projected reorgani-
zation of the company's financial af-
FAIRS. 1t was evident that holders of
both issues were disposing of their
stocks at the market. a SIS assess
ment on the preferred and a IS as
sesSment on the common stock are on
the. boards, according to the reports
Considerable attention was at
tracted today to the heavy selling in
r number of stocks of the speciality
type such as Ludlum Steel, Savage
Arms and Jordan Motor. The way
these stocks went down it appeared
that effective support was lacking and
tha1 the recent operations for the rise
had been highly speculative.