Notes

Notes

Many Autos. Last week, with the year's motor vehicle registrations completed, the magazine Motor gloated: 22,342,457 machines in the U. S., 11% more than in 1925, one for every five people in the country. Seven states registered more than a million cars each--New York (1,818,765), California, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Michigan and Texas. Nevada has fewest: 23,933. Many Busses. To motor bus manufacturers and operators, the statistics of an Interstate Commerce Commission report that appeared last week were pleasant. There are in the U. S. 22,368 busses listed as common carriers. They operate over 352,800 miles of roads. Also there are 45,417 motor trucks in the transportation business, serving 611,921 miles of roads. The trackage of all the U. S. railroads (250,000 miles) is only one-fourth of all this. And yet the motor mileage does not include the 1,590-mile service that the Mid-West Motors Corp. expects to open next month between Dallas and Los Angeles, the longest continuous bus route operated by one company in the U. S.

Ice Cream. Manufacturers who produced 84,000,000 gallons of ice cream last year (three quarts for every person in the U. S.) reported to the Department of Commerce that more than half their customers demanded vanilla flavor. One-tenth would take chocolate, one-twelfth strawberry. The remaining customers took the various flavors put together by the dispensers. One-eighth ate brick cream, seven-eighths the more familiar bulk. Million a Day. Speyer & Co. with J. & W. Seligman & Co. bought 245,000 shares constituting control of Victor Talking Machine Co. from its President Eldridge R. Johnson a fortnight ago (TIME, Dec. 20). In ten days the stock went up 40 points, bringing the bankers' paper profits of $10,000,000. Crops Worth Less. Steadily since 1923 the dollar value of U. S crops has been growing less. In 1923 the 55 principal crops were worth $9,468,128,000. This year they will be worth, the Department of Agriculture calculated last week, $7,801,313,000. Cotton alone depreciated by $555,477,000 in the period, although 8,478,000 more bales were produced. Morgan Partners. On Wall Street there was talk that two new partners might be added to J. P. Morgan & Co. after Jan. 1. Present partners are: J. P. Morgan, Edward T. Stotesbury, Charles Steele, Thomas W. Lament, Horatio G. Lloyd, Dwight W. Morrow, Thomas Cochran, Junius Spencer Morgan Jr., George Whitney, Thomas S. Gates, R. C. Leffingwell.

Billions Toted. One James W. Allen, employe of the National City Bank, stepped last week from the obscurity that gilds a great institution's factotums. He celebrated 25 years of service with the bank, and proudly told pressmen of the $30,566,382,435 he has toted through Manhattan streets, between the bank and clearing house.

Steel Record. Last week at Furnace No. 6 of the Carnegie Steel plant at Duquesne, Pa., there was surcease of work. Men and officials hurried about, grinned, shook hands with one another, for they had established a new record of pouring steel. In 24 hours their furnace yielded 1,035 tons, better by 22 tons than the previous record, long held by the Thomson works at Braddock, Pa.,

Radio Dealers deliberately train buyers to the use of better and costlier receiving sets, sometimes even selling experimental sets at a loss. How well the dealers were rewarded in 1926 by this canniness, the trade journal Radio Retailing estimated last week--1,750,000 sets sold; average price $115. The year before the average price of 2,000,000 sets had been $83. In 1926 the sale of sets, parts and accessories reached $588,000,000--$158,000,000 more than for 1925.*

Ayer Castle. N. W. Ayer & Son, oldest and possibly largest/- advertising agency in the world, has long had its offices in an old Philadelphia building on Chestnut St. Last week officials announced that in the spring a new housing will go up, along the west side of Washington Square, Philadelphia; a $1,000,000 monument to its age and prestige.

Crack Train. The New York Central's 20th Century Limited reached a peak in receipts for the year 1926--$10,500,000. It operated an average of more than six sections a day; carried one-half of the New York-Chicago passengers of the N. Y. C., one-third of the total passengers of all railroads between the two cities.

*Secretary of Commerce Hoover last week licensed 19 new broadcasting stations, bringing the total to 650. /-In volume of billing. Some hold, however, the J. Walter Thompson agency is largest.