Deals & Developments

Deals and Developments

Share-Work Spread. The boss of Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey and the boss of Socony-Vacuum Corp. did not agree last week on the crude oil price situation. But they did agree on the merits of the five-day week. New Jersey's Walter Clark Teagle, as head of the National Coordination Committee, has campaigned since August on the subject. Companies which have supported him and put their employees on the five-day schedule have included, besides his own. General Motors Corp.. Procter & Gamble Co., New York Daily News, Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. A total of 3,500,000 in 3,500 companies have been given work through the plan. Last week Chairman Herbert Lee Pratt of Socony-Vacuum announced that so far as possible the plan would be put into effect among the company's 30,000 employees."This program starts at 26 Broadway,"he said, "and is recommended . . . for wage earners and salaried employees. Employees whose earnings do not exceed $100 a month will not be affected." The five-day week plan of course means a smaller weekly pay check to all employees but means more men will be working, more money spent than if some men were able to save, others were dependent upon charity. Last week on the day that Socony-Vacuum took up the plan, 28 leading economists, including Harvard's Wallace Brett Donham and Yale's Irving Fisher, endorsed it with the obvious warning that the movement would defeat its purpose "unless the principle of sharing is kept within the point where every employe receives at least enough income to provide for himself and his dependents the necessities of life."

Discovery. Lafayette Markle, president of the Chicago Automobile Trade Association, made a gloomy discovery last week. He found that during the three months ending with September, 9,068 new cars were registered in the city, 10,199 cars were stolen.

Woodman Spared, For many months a few disgruntled bondholders have sought to put Long-Bell Lumber Co., biggest in the world, into receivership (TIME, Feb. 1). In dismissing their petition last week Judge Merrill E. Otis of Kansas City praised the management of 81-year-old Lumberman Robert Alexander Long, found all his transactions aboveboard.

First Dates. Off the town of Basra on the coast of Irak, the S. S. Registan, flying the Union Jack, upped anchor at noon Sept. 15. When the Registan tied up at the Bush Terminal, Brooklyn, last week she had made the 10,000 mi. voyage in 25 days 19 hr., knocking a day off the previous record. By being first ship in port with 266,000 cases of new Arabian dates she added 1 1/2-c- per Ib. to the value of her cargo, making the crates in her hold worth $2,500,000.

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