Facts, Figures

> Detroit shuddered over reports that WPB was about to order all of its auto molds and dies (made of high-alloy nickel steel) turned into scrap for munitions. Worth infinitely more than their $60,000,000 valuation in terms of quick postwar conversion to car production, their destruction would ensure a post-war designer's field day (see p. 82), would turn current models into worthless antiques even more surely than wartime rationing of tires and gas.

> Detroit is already employing more men to make arms than it did to make cars. Last month's payroll: 505,000 workers. Pre-Pearl Harbor peak: 498,000 (in 1941).

> U.S. farmers are following the President's anti-inflation advice in at least one respect: paying off their debts. Last year farmers repaid $128,700,000 of loans, half of them before maturity.

> Since Easter, department-store sales (in dollars) have been showing smaller & smaller dollar increases over last year. Last fortnight the increase was only 8%, which represents a substantial drop in actual values, since retail prices were up almost 20%.

> Because Congress' pork-barrel price for domestic silver (71.11-c- an oz. v. 35 1/8-c- for foreign metal) keeps it out of the industrial market, Manhattan Silver Dealers Handy & Harman had to prorate their customers. Yet Silver Senators last week were after Henry Morgenthau's scalp for trying to repeal the Silver Purchase Act.

> WPB ordered 20,000 U.S. auto graveyards to convert all their jalopies into scrap every 60 days or face requisitioning. Within two and a half years, guessed WPB, 15,000,000 more cars will be junked--double the peacetime rate, and half of all the cars now in service.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.