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presenting W. T. GRANT
^u/mg. nominee j-or
MAN DF THE MONTH
by MORI GREINER
THEN the stage play named VV Gaslight was made into a movie a few years back, it was a painful experience for Tom Grant. Friends were puzzled, and even more so later when he avoided radios and juke boxes all of the time that The Old Lamplighter, a dance tune, was in vogue.
For Grant, a fabulously successful insurance executive, both of those titles revived unpleasant memories nearly half a century old. It was in 1901 that Grant took a flyer in the gas lamp lighting business, only to learn the hard way it is easier to buy gold bricks than to sell them.
The story really begins in Lawrence, Kansas, where young Tom Grant was working his way through the University of Kansas law school as an afternoon bank teller and parttime insurance salesman. One day a stranger entered the bank and approached the assistant cashier. "I'd like to turn on your lights," he said, gesturing to a long rod in his right hand. "Is it all right?"
"Sure," answered the banker. "With that thing?"
"Yep," said the stranger, reaching up with the rod to touch a gas lamp. Miraculously, the lamp lit.
"No climbing around on ladders," the stranger was saying. "No monkey
ing with matches or tapers. Dollar and a half buys it."
The banker was convinced. Tom watched him trade a bill and a halfdollar for the magic wand, then slipped outside for a chat with the salesman.
"How much did you make on that sale?" Tom asked.
"Seventy-five cents. I buy the lighters for six-bits and mark them up 50 per cent. Got a little battery in them."
"How many you sell a day?" "Oh, six or eight. On a good day, ten."
Tom whistled. Seven-fifty a day! He earned six dollars a week at the bank. Not much, when you stacked it up against a gilt-edged proposition like this. "Do me a favor," he asked. "Tell me where you get these things."
When the school year ended in June, Tom bought a hundred lamplighters, in order to get a quantity discount, and headed for Colorado. That was to be the scene of his big triumph.
A solid week of noes changed his mind. The batteries in the lamplighters burned out after four or five usings. He was constantly dipping into his reserve supply to keep himself in demonstrators.
When the lighters wouldn't move,