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March 13, 1941
NEW YORK WORLD-TELEGRAM
SECOND SECTION
Copyright, 1941, by New York World-Telegram Corporation. All rights reserved

Another Generation
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Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, son of Harry Payne Whitney, and grandson of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, has business interests that range from Marineland in Florida (above)to the Pan American Airways and huge mining interests in Canada. My addition, he is one of the country's foremost sportsmen.

Underground or in the Skies, Sonny Whitney Makes His Ventures Pay.
This is the third of five stories about prominent New Yorkers whose careers have added prestige to family records long notable for civic and financial achievement.
by THOMAS KELLAND
World-Telegram Staff Writer.

Back in 1926 three young fellows not long out of Yale University got together and formed a company called the Aviation Corp. of the Americas. Its charter stated its purpose was to explore the possibilities of aerial transportation and to supply management for other aviation projects. The company still is in existence, but it has changed its name. It is now known as Pan American Airways, with line encircling South America and stretching across the Pacific to New Zealand, China and Singapore.
The three young men were John Hambleton, who dies in 1929 in a plane crash; Juan Trippe, now president of Pan American, and Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, p[resent chairman of the board of directors of the company.
This story is about Mr. Whitney--known to his friends as Sonny--ex-playboy, mining man, aviation pioneer, film producer, world traveler, contributor to science, backer of the development of beryllium and president of a great arbitration association.
As the son of Harry Payne Whitney, international sportsman and financier, and Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, daughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt, he led the life of a rich man's son, going to various private schools, summer resorts and generally taking life easy.

Enlisted in Air Corps.
In 1917, when he was attending Groton, war was declared. He immediately enlisted in the Air Corps, with his parent' permission, since he was only 17. Sonny received his training under Royal Flying Corps officers in Texas taking, so the story goes, an hour and 40 minutes instruction before lunch and soloing immediately afterward. He was commissioned a second lieutenant and was assigned to instructing. The day the armistice was signed he was on the dock waiting for the boat that was to take him to France.
Whitney remained in the army for another six months and then resigned to enter Yale during which time he seems to have had a pretty good time.
"I had no special training when I got out of college," Mr. Whitney reports. "Father would give me enough money to live on but no capital to play with. I had no particular bent in any direction so since I said I wanted work but outdoor work, preferably, he put me to work in one of his mines."

Decision.
Cornelius Whitney really became a miner. He was assigned to a pick and shovel job and sent down in the mines. In time he was an assistant foreman and was sent to various mines in California.
By this time he apparently decided he knew quite a lot about the business. His father assigned him and Roscoe H. Channing, Jr., the job of trying to salvage something from some non-paying mining ventures.
"I decided," Mr. Whitney says--and he'll smile--"that we should recoup for father the $14,000,000 he had put into these mines. We did pretty well and I got so interested in mining I didn't want to quit. 'For God's sake,' I said to Channing, 'let's find something worthwhile in which we can interest the old man and keep on at thins.'
"About this time one of our chemists found  process for salvaging low-grade ore. I went up to Canada and got an option for one year on some properties. Then I went to father and explained the whole thing and asked if we could go ahead. He said yes...after considerable argument. Those mines did pretty well." Pretty well is a slight understatement. Those mines are now the Hudson Bay Mining Co., of which Mr. Whitney is board chairman, and they are the second largest mining properties in the Dominion. 
"I always loved mining," Mr. Whitney said the other day, "and if it hadn't been for the comeback of aviation made in 1926 I still would be a mining man."
In 1926 Mr. Whitney was back in new York "looking for something to do." The mining company was organized and going along well.
Trippe, Hambleton and Whitney got together and formed the aviation company since it seemed that flying was on the upgrade.
"Hambleton went to Cuba and the islands," Mr. Whitney related. "Trippe went to Florida and the West and I stayed in New York to raise capital. I raised $20,000. Hambleton and Trippe decided the best chance was a line to Havana from Key West with possible extension to the Canal Zone and Puerto Rico. The South American idea was evolved among the three of us. I'm inclined to give credit for it to Hambleton."
Next money had to be raised to get the line under way.
"I went to everyone I knew," Mr. Whitney says. " I made myself a pest. It became whispered about that I was a nut and had to be humored until I grew up. Some of the best financiers in Wall Street laughed nastily and said I was crazy to think an airplane could ever get any place on schedule, especially over large stretches of water. It took me at least a couple of months to raise the necessary $200,000--and I did it on my own." And from that grew Pan American Airways.

Non-Salaried.
Mr. Whitney says he has never received a salary as officer of any of the companies with which he is connected.
"I've made money out of these things right from the beginning," he says., "because they were productive."
Last year Mr. Whitney went to the Far East on of of the Pan American planes, covering some 20,000 miles. When he returned he went to see President Roosevelt.
"I still stick to what I said then," he declares. "I felt that there should be an Havana Conference of the Pacific. That all the principal countries interested in the Pacific should gather together in Manila or some such city. Japan would have to state its aims at such a conference and if they were not satisfactory to everyone else a joint means of self-protection could be worked out. I feel that out of such a conference would come a peace in the Pacific that would last for some time. No, I don't feel that I can tell what the President said."

Marineland.
Perhaps best known to the public of Mr. Whitney's ventures into science is Marineland, the giant pool in Florida where the public may watch monsters of the deep cavorting as in their native haunts.
"The theory of the thing," Mr. Whitney recalls, "was evolved in conversations with Marlon Cooper, the man who developed the modern technique of taking animal pictures. Douglas Burden and I felt that exhibits in a museum lost much of their impressiveness because there were so many cases it was impossible to concentrate on any one. Here's where the motion pictures came in. The watcher sits in darkness with nothing to distract his attention from the bright images appearing on the screen.
"We wanted to do that with fish. We wanted people to be in darkness looking at the animals in the light. Then we felt that such a thing would provide opportunity for scientific study and for making motion pictures. From that we worked out the tanks circled by darkened passageways from which people may look into the brightly lighted water."

A Live Panther.
Mr. Whitney also donated the Whitney Wing of the American Museum of Natural History. He once shipped to the American Museum a live Mexican panther. Its extraordinary viciousness and terrific odor practically brought the museum to ruin.
The American Arbitration Assn., of which Mr. Whitney is president, is 14 years old. It is a non-profit organization whose purpose is to aid any and all in the settling of disputes.
"I've acted as an arbitrator in several cases," Mr. Whitney says. "Most of them were theatrical--contracts between producers and players or laborers. I was on one between Theodore Dreiser and his publishing company. Later I was chairman of the board of liaison officers. Them the president decided he didn't have enough time to devote to the association. They looked all around for a new president and asked me--probably because of my international connections which they though would be useful in the planned expansion. We've handled 10,000 cases in 14 years. Anyone can come to us or even write us into their contracts. The expense is only nominal--about $1 to $10 in a regular court."
Mr. Whitney is a many-faceted person. He is a first-rank sportsman playing a high-rated game of polo. He has had one of the finest racing stables in the country and loves hunting and fishing,
He was the backer of the first color motion pictures.
He was the first man to believe in beryllium and to put up money for its development.
He has long believed in promoting Pan-American relations through cultural exchange and has financed trips to South America for operatic stars and musicians.
He spends more than $100,000 a year on charities.
Nearly everything he has touched has been successful. Nearly everything, for he failed in one undertaking. In 1932 he ran for Congress from the First Congressional District of New York but was defeated by Robert Bacon.
That is a partial record of the achievements of Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, labeled 19 years ago as a "young clubman."
TOMORROW: Robert Loree.

2 U. S. Liners May Go 

Transcription Notes:
chose to omit articles on the left margin due to them being cut off.