Worry on Worth Street

Worth Street, on Manhattan’s lower West side, is the center of the U.S. cotton goods business. In a short reach of half a dozen run-down blocks lie many of the country’s biggest and oldest cotton textile houses and the starchy Merchants and Arkwright clubs for Worth Street. Worth Street firms sold more than $2 billion worth of cotton cloth and yarns in 1947—90% of the output of all U.S. mills.

Last week Worth Street was full of trouble. It started with a buyers’ strike last spring. This month the Government predicted a whopping 15,169,000-bale cotton crop. On the New York Cotton Exchange, cotton futures promptly slid off $4.50 a bale. Print cloth went to 25¢ a yard, off 13¢ from its year-end high, and there were few buyers. Some thought the slump on the Cotton Exchange would bring down textile prices further. Over & over, customers told Worth Street factors: “We’re waiting for lower prices.”

Manufacturers insisted they could not help. New England and Southern mill owners, who had just upped wages 8%, complained that prices were already too low. Rather than slash them more, they cut back production. Four-day work weeks and layoffs became common in the industry.

Between the buyers’ and the sellers’ strikes, Worth Street has suffered its worst slump in years. A few optimists point out that a similar slump last year ended quickly when retail stores began to lay in winter stocks. Others take a more serious view. Because cotton mills abroad are producing again, exports are off 10% from 1947’s record high. At home the first flush of the postwar demand for cotton goods has worn off; New York bargain basements, for instance, are selling shirts for $2.95 which last year brought nearly twice as much. To many a Worth Streeter it looks as if the war-swollen cotton trade is going to be trimmed back to peacetime size.