What Recession?

Big Steel's Chairman Ben Fairless last week entered a strong dissent to the doleful predictions of recession.

"If I ... wanted to discredit the free-enterprise system by producing a business slump," Fairless told Detroit's Economic Club, "I think I would start predicting from the housetops that hard times were on their way. And if I could shout long enough and loud enough, and could get other people to take up my mournful cry, I think I could frighten millions . . . out of the market place." The only recession danger, said Fairless, is that the U.S. might "predict" itself into one.

For the steel industry, said Fairless, any talk of a sudden drop in demand is all wrong. The whole industry will operate close to 95% of capacity for the rest of 1953 and turn out 7,000,000 more tons than 1951 's alltime record. "I can only say that the employees and stockholders of U.S. Steel would like to see that kind of recession for the rest of their lives."

He was not the only one who thought recession talk exaggerated. Sears Roebuck Chairman Robert E. Wood, still expansionist-minded, thought the stock market's hints of a business decline "once again . . . may be wrong," was still planning to open or enlarge eleven stores in the next six months. Even Wall Street's frightened stock traders were taking a second look at the economy and new heart from what they saw.

The stock market, which for two weeks had been climbing after its sharp drop, by week's end had reached 263.31 on the Dow-Jones industrial average, a 7.82 point gain. The Commerce Department reported that in August, when cries of "soft spots" were everywhere, employment, income and sales either matched or topped the rates of earlier months--and Commerce had already pronounced it the best summer in history. August's retail sales of $14.2 billion were well above 1952's August figure despite the head wave. And last week, after a slump early in September, retail sales were once more ahead of last year's.

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