Current Outlook

Although merchants' stocks have in some particulars not moved well because of the warm weather, the general retail turnover this Christmas season has proved most satisfactory.

It now remains to be seen whether the recent rise in the stock market really "discounted" a manufacturing recovery, or whether it was merely the result of efforts to "stabilize" business, whatever that generously vague phrase may mean.

Building construction, owing to the unusually mild weather, has gone ahead at an unusual rate for this season of the year, and should form the backbone of the business of 1924. Other industries begin to appear better, especially steel. Only one fact can be corroborated concerning the accuracy of New Year's predictions by "business leaders," however, and that is that two-thirds of them are mere rhetorical flourishes, and all but a small part of the remaining third absolutely incorrect. Year after year the truth is always stranger than this type of fiction.

Mr. Walter Head, President of the American Bankers' Association, calls attention to a few cheering figures. He points out that our bank deposits are $40,000,000,000 and our farm lands are worth $77,000,000,000; that our annual production of corn is three billion bushels, and of wheat, one billion bushels; that our annual output of manufacturers totals $60,000,000,000, and of petroleum 23 billion gallons.