RATE CUTS for fire insurance are in the offing. Allstate Insurance Co., subsidiary of Sears, Roebuck, has started writing fire policies at about 20% below rates of other stock companies, will probably force them to cut to meet the competition.

CYRUS EATON, wily old (70) boss of Cleveland's Otis & Co. and the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway, was helped up, then knocked down, by the U.S. Government. Otis was cleared by the Securities & Exchange Commission of six-year-old charges that it welshed on a $10 million deal to help float stock for Kaiser-Frazer Corp. But Internal Revenue agents handed Eaton a $1,570,000 bill for back income taxes (1943) on a $1,909,000 profit he made by transferring stock between two Canadian iron-ore companies.

PUNCH-CARD TAX forms are being readied by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service for some 35 million U.S. income taxpayers who make less than $5,000 and can use short-form 1040A. The tax card will call for only the taxpayer's name, address, social-security number, dependents and income. It will then be cross-checked mechanically with employers' withholding records, thus enable agents to quickly spot errors or evasions.

COPPER STRIKE, which idled 33,000 workers, may prompt Attorney General Herbert Brownell to crack down soon on the Communist-led International Union of Mine, Mill & Smelter Workers under the new anti-Communist law.

MISSISSIPPI RIVER shipping is nearing a flood stage. Barge shipments between Cairo, Ill. and St. Louis last year reached 15,942,000 tons, up 20% from 1952, and seven times the tonnage during steamboating's golden era (the 1850s and '60s). Current shipments (mostly oil, gas, coal and grain) are bigger than 1953.

STANDBY MOBILIZATION plan will be put into effect by Chief Mobilizer Arthur S. Flemming. While arms production will continue to be concentrated with the most efficient producers, the U.S., at a yearly cost of "several hundred millions," will finance mothballing of higher-cost plants.

CHRYSLER CORP., whose car sales have dropped (from 20% of all auto sales in 1953 to 14% now), is going all out this fall to recover its position. Chrysler and Plymouth are coming out Nov. 17 with 55 completely new models. President L. (for Lester) L. (for Lum) Colbert even gave a surprise pep talk to the United Automobile Workers' 175-man Chrysler Council to enlist the union's help.

NEW TEXAS OILFIELD may turn out to be a major discovery. In the Panhandle's Gray County, Phillips Petroleum Co.'s No. 1 Delp well has produced 3,720 barrels of oil a day on tests, plus 6.6 million cubic feet of natural gas. Geologists believe that the oil-famous Anadarko basin, major Oklahoma producer, has finally been traced into Texas.

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