New Rich, New Poor

At Chicago's Boat Mart, a slick runabout changed hands for $1,500 last week. The seller: an auto-parts manufacturer, his business shot by priorities, his savings shot by income taxes, his nerves shot by the war. The buyer: a steelworker with plenty of overtime in his pay envelope and a thriving bank account.

In the wartime U.S. the poor were growing richer, the rich poorer. War-factory payrolls had brought back World War I's silk-shirt days, except that most buyers now didn't want silk shirts. High taxes and living costs had put many a rich man on half rations. Badly off were white-collar workers with fixed salaries: schoolteachers, civil-service employes, office workers whom the boom had passed by.

Pocketful of Cash. Men & women who had seldom had one coin to rub against another suddenly heard an unmistakable jingle from their pockets. Girls who had worked as maids for room, board and peanuts found factory jobs at $100-$200 a month. A Manhattan physician's maid quit to move into her own home: her husband, out of work for years, now made $26 a day pouring cement.

For the skilled factory hand, Detroit was the biggest boom town of all. Tool & diemakers earned $125 to $175 a week; new girls at Briggs Body got 85-c- an hour. Even girl stenographers at Willow Run got $67.50 a week.

Detroit's swank Saks Fifth Avenue store invited the General Motors Girls' Club to an evening fashion show, expected 300, and was swamped by working girls from all over the city. Saks put on its show four times in two nights, finally gave up with 8,000 requests for tickets still unfilled. The show featured inexpensive goods like compacts, gloves, $20 coats--instead, the girls bought $37 dresses, $85 coats.

Dreamboat in Port. The new rich used their money to buy things that were once undreamed-of luxuries. They pushed jewelry sales to 26% above last year's: in Pensacola, Fla., a plasterer walked into a tony jewelry shop, counted out $100 for a diamond wrist watch; next day his wife returned with the watch and another $50 for a better one.

Snootv stores from Coast to Coast ordered a relaxation of snide sales approaches, began to direct their advertising plumb at plebeians. Bullock's Wilshire, tony Los Angeles department store, went after war-workers' dollars; Macy's, New York's people's store, waved farewell to the bon ton trade. Phonograph shops discovered a new kind of customer: not young swing collectors, not symphony lovers, but plain people asking for Old Black Joe and My Old Kentucky Home.

Pocketful of Bills. On the expensive side of the railroad tracks, men & women were busy cutting down. Detroit's auctioneers did a big business selling furniture and art from hotel-sized houses which were now too big a burden to keep up. Stocking-repair counters worked on more expensive sheers than cheap service weights. The Junior League reduced its dues from $120 to $75.

In every big city, agents for big apartment-hotels held their breath; many a wealthy tenant would give up his town apartment when the lease expired. And up & down the U.S. vacationlands, proprietors of snooty resorts wondered what they would do for customers this summer.

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