Index

Accountants solemnly dipped their pens into red ink, balanced the score for gloomy 1931's last gloomy week. Reported were the following cold facts:

Business failures for 1931 totaled some 28,275 with liabilities of $733,100,000. In 1930 there were 26,355 failures, owing $668,283,000.

Carloadings for the week of Dec. 19 totaled 581,733, a decline from the previous week of 31,801 and 132,132 below the same period in 1930.

Railroad earnings reflected the lower loadings. First 67 roads to report for November showed net operating income of $33,891,000 compared with $57,250,000 in November 1930 and $60,112,000 in October 1931.

General business indices were either unchanged or slightly lower. Most of them hovered around the low 60's with 1923 activity taken as the normal of 100.

Steel industry activity for the week ended Dec. 28, dropped to 20% from 24% the preceding week.

World consumption of U. S. cotton in November equalled 996,000 bales compared with 1,017,000 bales in October.

Automobile production was 68,867 passenger cars and trucks for November against 136,754 in the same month of 1930. For the first eleven months of last year total U. S. figures were 2,268,197 units compared with 3,200,285 in the same period of 1930 and 5,238,413 in 1929.

Oil production (daily average) in the U. S. in the week ended Dec. 26 was 2,292,900 bbl. against 2,430,300 the week before and 2,126,750 the week ending Dec. 27, 1930.

Gasoline in storage increased 1,263,000 bbl. to 37,199,000. In 1931 exports of gasoline were off about 30%, total demand about 1 1/2%. Domestic consumption increased 3% over 1930.

Shipbuilding in the U. S. ended 1931 with work valued at $58,000,000 unfinished against $90,000,000 unfinished business at the beginning of 1931. U. S. yards were at about 40% of normal capacity.

Dividend payments for the last week of 1931 came to about $1,000,000,000, some 10% less than in the previous year-end. Total disbursements for 1931 were estimated at $4,500,000,000 against $5,000,000,000 in 1930. The loss is accounted for by 2,650 dividends which were either cut or omitted during the year. Sixty-nine dividends were resumed during the year, 129 extras declared last month.

Building permits for 579 cities equalled $76,094,339 last month against $87.891,000 in November 1931 and $131,556,000 in December 1930.

New financing last week was nil compared with $63,590,000 the week before and $10,655,000 in the last week of 1930.

Federal Reserve System ratio of gold to notes and deposits stood at 61.9% for the week compared with 64.4% the previous week and 73.7% for the week ending Dec. 31. 1930.

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