the life of Philo T Farnsworth - Early Television Foundation

236 THE STORY OF TELEVISION
purchased and that another near-by plant at Marion, fifty miles
south of Fort Wayne, was also available. The upshot of it all
was that a plan was finally worked out for the acquisition of
these manufacturing facilities and for the floating of $3,000,000
worth of Farnsworth stock to provide for the purchase price of
the two plants and to insure adequate operating capital.
could get the matter cleared through
Our goal was to have the arrangements completed and the
new company in operation some time in November if
1938, we
the Securities and Exchange
Commission by that time. Since it was a perfectly legitimate
speculative undertaking
it seemed to us that there should
not be a great deal of red tape involved. However, in this we
were mistaken.
Naturally we engaged competent attorneys and accountants.
As we got into the necessary work of filing the registration statement
we recognized that a real task lay ahead. While our
bankers expected that there would be some routine effort to get
the matter through the newly set-up regulations of the S.E.C.,
we were wholly unprepared for the difficulties we met at the
hands of this government bureau. We were undoubtedly the
victims of a situation that had been created by flagrant abuses of
buyers' confidence in public financing. The position taken by
the Commission seemed to be that you were guilty until you
proved your innocence. In our case the attitude seemed to be
one of daring us to prove that we were not all a pack of dishonest
rogues. The expense that we were forced to incur mounted to a
sum several times our most liberal estimates, and the demands
of the Commission required seemingly endless trips of accountants,
lawyers, and executives to Washington.
The registration statement and its
supplement,
in final
printed form, represented a weight in printed matter greater
than that of the New York telephone directory. Upon any point