Detroit Doings

On the weather map of business activity last week there was a high pressure area over Detroit. For the first time in five years U. S. motormakers could not fill their orders. Henry Ford had already opened two additional assembly plants. Chrysler plants, slow to get new streamlined cars into production, were last week operating with 21,000 more workers than last year. Hudson had 24,000 orders on hand and a working staff double its January average. Nash estimated that it would deliver more cars in the first quarter of this year than in all of last. Blamed in part for delayed deliveries was the tool and die strike last autumn, but the fact remained that the Industry's orders had piled up to $250,000,000. In Akron, all major tire companies raised wages 10%. Firestone dusted off molds it had not used since 1929. Goodyear's chief statistician predicted tire sales for 1934 would reach 46,000,000 units.

General Motors had 100,000 orders for Chevrolet alone; for Buick and Oldsmobile, 20,928; for Pontiac, 20,000. Even Cadillac reported deliveries 50% above last January. Other General Motors news of the week:

P: Vice President James David Mooney, in charge of exports, announced that Dr. Oliver Mitchell Wentworth Sprague, who quit Washington in a huff over President Roosevelt's money plans, had been retained as an adviser on foreign trade and exchange.

P: Net profits for 1933 were reported at $83,214,000, equivalent to $1.72 a share on the common, against a profit of only $165,000 in 1932.

P: Lost was a suit over a patent for manifolds in Toledo. General Motors was ordered to pay to Swan Carburetor Co. $621,500 in royalties.

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