Business & Finance: Wrap It Up

In a Chicago department store, a couple found a tricycle for their son’s Christmas. But they balked at the price: $47.50. While they discussed the matter, a shabbily-dressed man pulled out a roll of bills, bought the tricycle, commenting loudly: “You can’t take it with you, brother.”

Most Americans seemed to agree with the loud man. In stores from coast to coast, they bought anything that was for sale, in the last splurge of Christmas buying, boosted retail sales to the highest ever.

The Detroit branch of Saks Fifth Avenue could not get enough $5,000 mink coats to satisfy the demand. Other big sellers around the country: “Plenty of Nothing” black lace panties for $25, alligator handbags for $150, negligees for $65.

Despite acute shortages of hard goods, and shoddy merchandise in general, sales were 10 to 15% higher than last year. Gimbel Brothers, Inc., reported record sales in its eleven stores of more than $2,000,000 on one day last week. Same day Manhattan’s R. H. Macy & Co. passed the $1,000,000 mark for the third time this month (fourth time in Macy’s history). San Francisco’s Emporium, which did an $18,000,000 business in 1941, will top $36,000,000 this year.

But even these figures did not fully reflect the wild spending of the nation’s buying spree. Said one Los Angeles retailer: “God knows what would happen if we could get everything we could sell.”