Downtown

P: After a three-week toboggan the stockmarket pulled up short last week, rose moderately. Volume of transactions, however, continued to slide down to new low records. In a short Saturday session only 249,300 shares changed hands--lowest figure since July 1932. Even the Toronto market was more active. Having nothing better to do, a Wall Street statistician sharpened his pencil, calculated the shrinkage in value of 100 listed issues. He found that the $4,136,000,000 paper loss since the Stock Exchange Control Bill was introduced last February would have: 1) bought all last year's wheat crop at $7.80 per bu.; 2) built 1,000,000 small homes; 3) bought more automobiles than were produced in the last two years; 4) employed 10,000,000 people ten weeks at $40 per week; 5) paid any government deficit of the last three years or 91% of the deficit estimated for the current year; or 6) wiped out 15.8% of the national debt.

P: For 1932 Standard Oil Co. (New Jersey), which has $1,900,000,000 in assets, reported a profit amounting to precisely 1-c--per share on its 25,000,000 outstanding shares. Last week Stanoco reported 1933 earnings of 97-c- a share. Exclusive of a $24,900,000 profit on balances in foreign countries resulting from dollar devaluation, Stanoco's earnings were $25,084,000--an increase of no less than 9,000%.

P: After 17 years of faithful clerking, Samson Wallach was made cashier of the Stock Exchange firm of Halle & Stieglitz. A dignified man with greying hair, he served eight years in that capacity. Last week he was arrested for defalcation of $329,000. No stockmarket plunger, he had invested in New York City real estate and pleasant living. On a salary cut from $11,000 to $5,400 he paid $3,000 rent for a big house on Long Island, kept two automobiles, two servants. Declared Samson Wallach: "I have never gambled outside of playing the real estate market. I have no women. If you think I have a blonde, I have no blonde. I don't go for them."

P: American Telephone & Telegraph directors met to declare the twelfth consecutive regular dividend not earned in full. Rate: $9 per year.

P: E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. last week upped its dividend rate from $2 to $2.60 annually.

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