Facts & Figures

Trend Reversed. The Federal Reserve Board's index of industrial production (in which the years 1935-39 equal 100) dropped during July, for the fourth month in a row, to 178. This was six points below June and twelve points below the postwar high last March. But the board said that, although it did not yet have final figures, "scattered information" indicated that the downward trend, due "in part to influences of a temporary nature," was reversed in August.

Irreversible Trend? In its sixth successive weekly rise, the Department of Labor's index of wholesale prices inched up .8% to a new postwar high of 153.5% (of the 1926 average). The Dow-Jones commodity futures index spurted 3.45 points to 152.03, highest since the index was started in 1933. Nothing would pull prices down, said General Electric's President Charles E. Wilson somewhat hopelessly, except "technological advances and more efficient mass production."

Bedtime Boost. The Pullman Co., now owned by a group of 57 railroads, asked the Interstate Commerce Commission for authority to boost all sleeping-car rates under $17.70 from 1% to 49%. The increases would amount to about $13 million a year. This, said the company, would be little enough considering the drop in annual revenues of $31 million compared with 1944, and a rise in costs of $26 million a year since 1942, the year of its last general fare boost.

Union. The persistent shortage of steel prompted 25 small steel-using manufacturers to chip in about $4,000,000 for a steel mill of their own in Phoenixville, Pa. This Phoenix-Apollo Steel Co. had also bought an Apollo (Pa.) sheet mill to process the ingots from Phoenixville. The manufacturers, whose plants are scattered from New England to the Midwest, expect that production will be more than enough to keep all of them operating at capacity.

Dog-Day Doldrums. The stock market ended its most sluggish month in three years with hardly any sign of picking up. The volume of trading never exceeded a million shares on any one day in August, slumped to a paltry 480,000 shares one day last week. Traders consoled themselves with the fact that prices just about held their own. The Dow-Jones industrial average dropped only 0.87 to 178.85.

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