The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1939-06-15
WHO'S
NEWS
THIS
WEEK
By LEMUEL F. PARTON

NEW YORK. - Vincent Bendix
' got on famously as long as he
stuck to tinkering, inventing and
fussing with machinery. He did
Without Wheels things. but anv-
It's No Go for thing whic h
Vincent Bendix didn't have to
do with wheels,
cams, and pinions was just no dice.
1t was his Chicago real estate
deals which brought against him the
petition in voluntary bankruptcy
filed in Chicago, say his lawyers.
His holdings were more than SIS ,000,-
600, including the famous Potter
Palmer Lake Shore drive residence
all down the chute in the federal
district court. His machinery. COM
panies, not involved in the petition,
are rolling along nicely. They seem
to be one up on the "good earth" as
an arcanum of security. Modern
times are like that.
In the basement of a New
York hospital, where he ran the
elevator, he had a grand time
taking an old hOt-tube gas en-
CINE to pieces and putting it to-
gether again. He was II, not
long from Chicago, where he
had been telegraph messenger
boy. An old one-eyed swamper
around the place, who under
stood machinery, had instruct
ed him in the working of the
power plant and had encouraged
his laboratory work. There was
a close working alliance be-
tween faculty and student body.
Two years later, the lad got a job
as a typist in law office, baf1ed
at first because he couldn't use a
monkey wrench on the typewriter,
but exploring it satisfactorily with a
screw-driver and pliers.
But a law Office hadn't any
wheels, and he did better with
the Lackawanna railroad, which
had plenty, although he was in
the traffic department. In his
spare time, he worked out i'm
prOvements on a bicycle chain
and sprOcket. That brought him
in touch with bicycle manufac-
turers and at last he was on the
main Iine-and it wasn't the
Lackawanna. 1t was a wide,
paved highway to millions in the
invention of automobile and avi-
alton devices whose only dead
end was real estate.
Of Swedish ancestry, son of Mo-
line, ILL.,, Methodist minister, he
packed a copy of Schopenhauer in
his pocket when he was messenger
boy. In those days, he wolfed Hux-
ley, Darwin, Marx, Tyndall, Wallace
and Spencer, calling himself a So
cialist in his earlier years. Never
still a minute, he is buoyant and
resilient at 81, and his friends shrug
off this bankruptcy business as just
short detour from the main high
way. They say they wouldn't be
surprised if he should bob up with
something as exciting as perpetual
motion, one of these days.
CALTY, laconic, William Allan
- Nelson, rounding three score
years and ten, retires with this
years graduating class as president
of Smith coI-
The Groves of lege. Rarely
Academe Laud does any pass
Retiring Prexy ing prexy get
from students and faculty. Some
what in the picture of Stringfellow
Barr of st. Johns, and Maynard
Hutchins of Chicago, he has put over
education on its merits. He has been
first a scholar and secondly an adj
ministrator, but has fired so much
enthusiasm that administration has
pretty much taken care of itself.
The University of Edinburgh
and Harvard passed on to him
the fame q the great Elizabeth
ans. Merry eyes-little white.
beard-res0nant laugh-with a
surgically incisive mind-he has
been to the Smith undergradu-
ates blend of Chaucer, Shakes
peare and Erasmus-although
said immortals didn't smoke big
cigars. He takes bow from
all the groves of academe.