Facts & Figures

Highest. The cost of living reached an alltime high in April, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. The Bureau's index rose 1.4% to 169.3 (1935-39 equals 100), more than wiping out the drop caused by February's commodity price break.

New Suitor. Rail Juggler Robert R. Young was determined to get the girl, even if he had to take up with her prosperous friends too. The Interstate Commerce Commission had turned down the trial marriage of his Chesapeake & Ohio with the New York Central, partly because it would take business away from the Virginian Railway Co. (TIME, May 24). So Suitor Young made a new proposal: he would buy into or merge with the Virginian too, and merge it with the Central and C. & O. Said the thriving, coal-hauling Virginian: Not feasible. ICC said nothing.

New Deal. Marvin E. Coyle, General Motors' executive vice president, told auto dealers they should stop forcing motorists to trade in their cars when buying new ones (dealers usually sell the trade-ins at far more than they allow the customers). Dealers' discounts are fat enough, said Coyle, without the extra trade-in profit. Said he: "If [the dealer] is assured that the new car will not pass into the black market, he should permit the customer to sell his own used car if he wishes to do so."

New Quota. Under a new law, effective last week, touring U.S. citizens may bring into the U.S. $400 worth of goods duty free, providing they have been out of the U.S. at least twelve days. The old limit: $100.

Deepest. The Pure Oil Co., which has been drilling an oil well in Wyoming's Wind River Valley, brought in a producing well at 14,309 ft., a record depth. (Previous record for a producing well: a 14,000-ft.-deep well in Grady County, Okla.) In a 41-hour test, the well flowed 1,413 barrels. The news sent Pure Oil's stock up 4 1/2 points to 40 in one day on the New York Stock Exchange.

Dry Air. In Los Angeles, Bullock's department store next week will put on sale a hatlike home hair dryer for women, the "Turbanette." Price: $6.95. (It will soon go on sale in 30 other stores in 16 other cities.) The inventor, John Moore, ex-aircraft engineer at Lockheed, got the idea from seeing aircraft engines packed with sacks containing silica gel (a deliquescent powder) to protect them from moisture. The turban of cotton muslin packed with silica gel will dry a woman's hair--after washing--in half an hour.

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