Prices Up

In Detroit last week a steel salesman quipped to an automan: "When I come back to tell you how much our prices are going up, you'd better be sitting down to take the shock." Snapped the automan: "I just hope you're sitting down when you hear the price of your 1957 car."

Steel was still mum at week's end on when and how steeply prices will jump. But no one doubted that the rise would soon come. As the last of steel's Big Three, Bethlehem Steel Corp., signed a contract with the union, estimates of the eventual rise ran around $10 a ton.

Steelworkers' wage hikes will cost U.S. Steel just under $5 a ton in the first of the three years covered by the new contract, Chairman Roger M. Blough estimated last week. To this may be added almost another $5 per ton for the increased costs of steel's goods and services. Blough predicted that his corporation will be producing at 90% capacity within a fortnight after the strikers return, and that demand for steel will remain strong throughout the year, thus lessening resistance to the price increase. Additional rises were forecast in aluminum, as 15,000 aluminum workers won a three-year package increase, estimated at 46-c- hourly, and many of the rest were striking for equivalent raises.

The expected boost in steel was already setting off a flurry of price rises in other industries. In appliances. General Electric, Westinghouse, Frigidaire and Maytag announced factory price jumps of 1% to 12 1/2%. In Detroit the estimate was that list-price increases for new cars will range from $10 to $40 in the low-price field, up to $200 to $300 on some of the luxury models. Tiremakers have already boosted prices 2% to 3 1/2%.

Sears, Roebuck's new catalogue, a sensitive guide, listed increases averaging 1 1/2%. Montgomery Ward's registered 2% increases in some lines. Royal McBee Corp. used the steel price jump as a peg to boost its typewriters 5% to 10%. International Shoe, looking at stiffer labor and leather bills, sent its autumn footwear up 4% to 5%.

The Administration's economists viewed the inflationary pressure with apprehension but not alarm, felt sales competition and high production would cause many of the price increases to be absorbed by the middleman rather than passed on to the consumer.

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