Business & Finance: Bearing Man
Last week International Nickel Co. of Canada raised its quarterly dividend from 15¢ to 20¢ a share. Irving Air Chute raised its regular dividend from 10¢ to 15¢, declared an extra of 10¢. Reporting a sharp increase in half-year profits, Eastman-Kodak voted a 25¢ extra in addition to a regular dividend of $1.25. But the fattest extra dividend of the week was 50¢ paid the 14,190 stockholders of Timken Roller Bearing Co. of Canton, Ohio. During the first six months, Timken earned $4,522,000, nearly double the profits for the same period last year.
Chief beneficiaries of the extra dividend, which totaled approximately $1,200,000, are Board Chairman Henry Holiday Timken and his brother, Vice President William R. Timken who, on the basis of their last SEC report on stockholdings will receive nearly $200,000. Timken Roller Bearing is essentially a family business and the Timkens are a tight-lipped family. The company was founded as a carriage works in the last century by Henry Timken, onetime blacksmith. Founder Timken thought carriages dull the moment he began experimenting with cup and cone ball bearings. His enthusiasm infected his two sons when the huge possibilities of the automobile bearing market opened up around 1900. Henry Holiday and William Timken promptly abandoned Timken Carriage Works for Timken Roller Bearing Co.
The Timkens were among the first to discover the advantages of the roller bearing over the ball bearing. Their ace product today is the Timken tapered roller bearing (i.e. larger at one end than at the other). This simple device is of prime importance to automobiles where radial and thrust loads are encountered simultaneously in road curves, twists and shocks. Timken tapered roller bearings are standard equipment on nearly every car except those of General Motors which has its own New Departure and Hyatt bearings. Timken also makes bearings for other industrial uses. Its most significant recent milestone was the locomotive bearing first introduced in 1930. In April 1935, there were 500 Timken-equipped locomotives, 2,000 Timken-equipped passenger cars.
Septuagenarian Henry Holiday Timken, Canton’s No. 1 citizen, lives in baronial splendor in his Canton home, is sometimes called “The Millionaire Nobody Knows.” Around his estate is a high iron fence guarded by watchmen who question all who attempt to enter. Deaf, Mr. Timken expresses himself in curious ways. On his office floor is a fine thick carpet. It is said that when something displeases him, he stalks the floor scattering live cigaret butts. No one is allowed to pick them up, for later Mr. Timken likes to look across a carpet pock-marked with burned spots, evidence of successful rages. In gentler moods Chairman Timken is generous with his money. He pays high wages, has provided food and coal for old employes now idle. To Canton he once donated a $250,000 swimming pool. Eight years ago he gave Cleveland’s Dr. Orval James Cunningham $1,000,000 to build a tank hospital where patients live under compressed air (TIME, Oct. 8).
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