End & Beginning

Though recovery may seem to go by fits & starts, actually it has followed a strikingly rhythmical pattern. Since its foundations were laid in the summer of 1932, each cycle of revival and recession had lasted almost precisely nine months. Last week it looked as if the third cycle, dating from last autumn, had run its parabolic course and a fourth cycle was just be ginning.

The steel industry stepped up operations from a year's low of 32% of capacity to nearly 40%. Machine tool buying for June was the best in five years, better than the 15 year average, and increasing contra-seasonally. The index of power production was abreast of October 1929. The Federal Reserve Board's index of department store sales advanced from 76 in May to 80 in June, and last week's retailing reports revealed a rising clamor for goods. F. W. Dodge reported home construction, key to the building industry, amounting to $49,000,000 in June, up 87% from a year ago and the highest monthly total since October 1931. The automobile industry, surprised at a better month in June than May, reported total output for the first six months of 1935 at 2,348,000 cars & trucks, a half-year figure exceeded only twice in history -- 1929 and 1926. And ignoring for once the confusion of Washington news, the stockmarket climbed last week to the highest level of the year. Since last March when the ma ket upswing began, the Dow-Jones average of industrial stocks has rallied with only one serious interruption (at the death of the Blue Eagle) from 96.7 to 122.6, a gain of more than 25%.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.