STATE OF BUSINESS: Autumn Pickup

Businessmen who have been anxiously looking forward to a fall upturn last week saw signs that it had arrived. The steel industry, heartened by an upturn in orders, scheduled operations at 66.3% of capacity, highest rate since June 28. U.S. Steel Corp. announced plans for a new “multimilliondollar” plant in Utah for making oil and gas pipe, for a battery of 59 new coke ovens at its National Tube Division in Lorain, Ohio, and for improvements at Chicago and Pittsburgh plants.

Many another business took an optimistic view. The American Retail Federation reported to President Eisenhower that it expected this year to set a new record for retail sales, surpassing the previous peak last year. In Detroit, where auto production is tapering off for model changeovers, Chrysler Corp. estimated that it would have 84,400 workers on the payroll in the Detroit area by mid-November, up 30,300 from last month, when 1954 model output stopped, and just 3,600 under the year’s high of last January. The Department of Commerce reported that industrial production bounced back 6% in August to 124% of the 1947-49 average, though it still lagged 9% behind a year ago.

Businessmen seemed just as confident of the long-term future. Frank M. Folsom, president of the Radio Corp. of America, predicted that more than 350,000 color television sets will be sold by the end of 1955, and that sales should reach an annual rate of 5,000,000 by 1958. RCA, he said, has already invested $50 million in color television, is now going into production of a 21-in. color set to sell between $800 and $900. As for black-and-white sets, said Folsom, more will be “sold in 1954 than in any of the previous seven years.”