Strange case of Sterling Products - page 1

The Strange Case of Sterling Produots ?ial ton Hamilton liar per' e Hagasine January 19 43 Thia la the atory of how Sterling Produots, Inc., an American pharma¬ ceutical houae, through a series of tranaactiona with a German corporation, found itaelf finally in the toila of the Nazis. The attack upon the United State e did not begin with Pearl Harbor. That event did no more than add a military to an eoonomio front. The war behind the war waa already in full awing) its campaign, planned long ago, was rolling along even before the Mails came into power. Ita objectives were to build up in Germany a huge oapaoity-to-produoe and to sterilise the reaouroee of ita enemies. The defeat of the adversary waa to be ensured before a gun waa fired. To aucn an eoonomio attack the United States was peculiarly susceptible. Ita corporate enterprise was committed to the pursuit of gain; business was regarded as a private affair; the intrusion of the government waa locked upon by amerioan business men as ’•interference.* Officials of German oonoerna approached their Aaerioan brethren; the bait of markets and monop¬ olies was dangled, and tne supervision of the German state was concealed, and thus our honorable companies were led into entangling alliances . In time "eerlin" imposed its will upon ita corporate subjects and they in turn passed on the pressure to their American confreres. In dyestuffs and light metals, chemicals heavy and light, tungsten carbide and synthetic rubber, the yoke was fastened before the victimised amerioan corporations were entirely aware of the nature of the bondage. A dozen suoh battles, differing somewhat in oolor, inoident, and detail, move to the same tragio event. The story of synthetic drugs, and more especially of Sterling Produots, Inc., reveals the general strategy which the eoonomio war has followed. Our feature writers have made deals between Auerioan and German oonoerns an invention of the devil, unknown until pulled off by minions of the fascist state. Yet they emerge almost as a matter of course from a gradual sequence of events. The event which begins this story oame on the heels of the Armistice of 1918. The properties of the old nayer concern, onoe German, which had been seised by our government during the war, were offered for sale by the Alien Property Custodian. There was a plant, a collection of patents, an assortment of trade-marks. The most valuable as»et was aspirin. The patent had expired in 1917, but the trade-mark had not lost its magic, and to the public the name bayer was almost inseparable from the drug. The new ownership had to be all-American, for we had suffered grievously since 19i4 because of our former dependence upon German synthetio drugs, and were resolved to develop our own chemioal therapy. The bidding was spirited. At auction the bargain package was knocked down to Sterling Products, Inc., a newcomer in the field and a ooncern little known at large. No one then guessed that there would follow a series of events whioh in time would defleot the patent system from its orbit, mako an American oonoern a vussal of a uerman cartel, and give to the Nasi party a dominant voice in the oonduot of a strategic «uerioan industry.