Census Preview in Boston

In Boston's Hotel Statler last week enigmatic little Dress Designer Elsa Schiaparelli, about to address the twelfth annual Boston Conference on Distribution, arched her back. "That man," she hissed, "tell him to stop smoking that cigar! The timbre of my voice--I shall not be able to speak." Tiptoeing up to the offending guest, flustered hosts persuaded trust-busting Assistant Attorney General Thurman Arnold to quash his stogie.

Mme. Schiaparelli and Smoker Arnold were not the only bigwigs at Boston's Conference. For twelve years it has studded its two-day conclave programs with big names, from Cordell Hull to Elizabeth Arden. This year it lined up Sir Louis Beale of the British Purchasing Commission, Missouri's Governor Lloyd C. Stark, Akron's Harvey S. Firestone Jr., Vogue's Editor Edna Woolman Chase, many another. Unlike the ivied theorists of college round tables who know what to do but are in no position to do it, Conference experts have facts & figures at practiced fingertips.

Nub of the Conference's discussion was war: how to keep rising prices from skyrocketing, whether national defense would increase or diminish the supply of consumer goods. The most significant address had little concern with the war. It was a "preview" of 1940's census results (TIME, Sept. 30) by Vergil D. Reed, assistant director and bright idea man of the Census Bureau. He i) smartly summed up the effect of population shifts on distribution, 2) described the trends in retail sales (mostly up), 3) brought out facts from the first complete nose count of U. S. time-sales companies. Sample Census Bureau findings:

> Retail stores which have had "striking" increases in number and sales since 1935: food stores, variety stores, filling stations, eating and drinking places, drugstores.

> Retail stores "which are definitely declining in sales importance": cigar stores, newsdealers, country general stores.

> Of all retail sales, one third (about $13,000,000,000 worth) are made on credit.

> Commercial banks and sales-finance companies held $1,890,000,000 in retail installment paper (mostly purchased from retailers) at 1939's end. Since 1934 banks have increasingly entered the sales-finance field, by 1940 had upped their percentage of the total to 28.6%. In California, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Virginia and Wyoming, holdings of sales-finance companies and banks are practically identical in amount. Reasons: 1) more liberal State banking laws, 2) branch banking, 3) less conservative attitude of the bankers.

> There are 2,548 sales-finance companies in the U. S., employing 27,547 people and disbursing an annual payroll of more than $51,000,000. Of their holdings, 73.8% are automotive; only 2% on soft goods, jewelry, so-called luxury items.

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