Facts, Figures, Apr. 13, 1942

U.S. Treasury receipts in March totaled a walloping $3.547,000,000—highest ever, only 25% less than collected in all 1929. Income-tax collections were no less than $3,083,000,000. However big, the month’s revenue exceeded outgo by only $125,000,000. This will probably be the last month that the Government will have a cash surplus until the end of World War II.

> In spite of the unprecedented tax drain, the U.S. went on an Easter shopping spree. Department-store sales jumped 10% to 70% to an alltime Easter peak. Best sellers were clothes (especially woolen garments), radios, refrigerators, shoes. Individual purchases were huge: a dozen socks or stockings, two and three suits or dresses, shoes three pairs at a time, shirts and blouses by half-dozens. Mob scenes in stores were frequent. In Philadelphia and Cincinnati, stores ran ads begging customers to buy less. In some places the police had to keep order.

> Sale of war damage insurance, provided for when Congress created a $1,000,000,000 War Damage Corporation within RFC, is being held up until Jesse Jones has come to an agreement with the insurance industry. Present plan is that the Government corporation will be the sole underwriter and take all the net losses, if any, but that private industry will operate the scheme. Latest quarrel holding up action: whether the insurance companies or their agents (each of which would like to cut out the other) will have the pleasure and profit of doing the job.

> Many Lend-Lease ships which heretofore returned from Britain with Scotch whiskey are now returning with chalk as ballast. Reason: British stocks of Scotch are running low. Consequence: the U.S. supply of Scotch (now sufficient for about six months) will also begin to decline rapidly.

> Because increased plant efficiency has cut plane costs one-third since mid-1940. North American Aviation, Inc. (fast two-engined bombers, sturdy trainers) returned $14,000,000 to the Government. This is 70% above record 1941 profits, just about equal to all dividends paid in the company’s 14-year history.

> Because his doctors forbade him to take the job, Chrysler’s big, tough-as-nails president, Kaufman Thuma Keller, recently had to refuse Donald Nelson’s appeal to head WPB’s aircraft section. But in spite of his health, K. T., besides bossing Chrysler’s huge war program, is doing important odd jobs for WPB. On Nelson’s desk last week was a voluminous Keller report on how to streamline the flow of raw and fabricated materials into finished planes; in the works is another Keller study on aluminum fabrication.

> The Senate passed and sent to the House a bill creating a $100,000,000Smaller War Plants Corp.—to make contracts as well as the necessary loans to enable small contractors to get to work on war orders. It will not be under Jesse Jones, whose RFC has power to make such loans for which many borrowers cannot qualify. It will be run by WPB, so that for the first time in war production the agency that grants contracts will make or guarantee the loan that makes production possible. All Government procurement officers are under orders to make contracts without further fuss over a contractor’s capacity or credit, provided the deal has SWPC’s O.K. (Predicted Senator Prentiss M. Brown: “There are going to be heavy losses.”)

> Hudson Motor Car’s naval ordnance plant advertised in the Detroit papers for “A1 toolmakers—age limits 45 to 98 years.” Hudson is glad it did: at week’s end scores of alert, experienced, comparatively young men had signed up. With these men at work, the company expects an immediate boost in production, a cut in training costs. Said the plant personnel boss: “Hell, we’ll take them up to 100 years old if we can get them.”