Up 25%

The economists and businessmen who gathered this week at the University of Michigan's annual economic-outlook conference took a rosy look into 1959. After making a study of no big U.S. corporations, speakers predicted that 1959 corporate earnings will run 25% above 1958.

Said Research Director Edmund Mennis of Philadelphia's Wellington Fund: "The industries hardest hit by the 1958 recession (autos, textiles, steels, chemicals, metals, machinery and rubber) are expected to have the sharpest recovery."

Last week 1958 third-quarter corporate earnings reports continued encouraging. Though General Motors reported earnings of 22-c- a share, v. 43-c- in the third quarter last year, the only one of the Big Three to show a profit, many another company cleared more than in 1957--often by venturing into new fields that added to their earning power. Merck & Co., pushing new drugs and chemical processes, raised its earnings to $7.1 million, v. $5.9 in last year's third quarter. National Steel, the nation's fifth-largest steel company, pushed its earnings to $10.9 million from $8 million in the same period last year.

In the textile industry, Celanese Corp. raised its net to $4.4 million from $2.9 million, American Viscose lifted its net to $2.5 million from $1.3 million.

Brightest earnings of all were reported by Chicago's Brunswick-Balke-Collender Co., which started out as a manufacturer of pool tables and later bowling alleys. It has diversified under President B. E. ("Ted") Bensinger, great-grandson of John M. Brunswick, the Swiss immigrant cabinetmaker who founded the company.

In the Korean war the company jumped into airplane radomes and other Fiberglas and plastic shapes, and in 1953 invaded the school-furniture business. Last week, as a result of such triple playing, plus a fast-selling automatic pin setter for bowling, the company reported third-quarter earnings of $4.31 a share, almost double the same quarter last year.

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