Chart of the Times

The magnitude of the changes in U.S. wartime living was charted in cold figures last week when the Treasury published tax collections for last September and compared them with the same month in 1941. In one year:

> Automobile and motorcycle taxes dropped from $5,000,000 to $338,000; on tires and inner tubes they fell from $3,240,000 to $950,000.

> Corporation income taxes rose 88% (from $424,000,000 to $795,000,000). Individual income taxes increased 140% (from $277,000,000 to $670,000,000). But excess-profits taxes soared a mighty 840% (from $68,000,000 to $640,000,000).

> Revenues from long-distance telephone calls and telegrams more than doubled, amusement admission taxes produced twice as much, cigaret taxes were up 16%. Fewer men were rolling their own: sale of cigaret papers dropped in half.

> New excise taxes showed that in the tenth month after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. people bought $8,500,000 worth of electrical appliances, $5,200,000 worth of refrigerators and air conditioners. They also loaded up with $55,000,000 worth of jewelry, $23,000,000 worth of furs and $23,000,000 worth of cosmetics.