Profiseering

BUSINESS & FINANCE

When Congress gave Franklin Roosevelt the kind of Neutrality Act he wanted fortnight ago, profiseers dusted off their crystal globes, looked hard and long, saw a billion dollars worth of lush war orders for U. S. industry. To the U. S. came seven foreign missions, ready to take advantage of cash-&-carry. Up to this week their checkbooks still bristled with unused checks.

By Atlantic Clipper from Lisbon came pert, mustachioed J. Frederic Bloch-Laine to head the French purchasing mission. He is no easy mark for U. S. salesmen--he began buying war goods as a member of France's U. S. mission in World War I. As member of the Paris banking house of Lazard Freres, he also knows how business between the two countries is done in peacetime. No sooner had word of his arrival spread than eager agents began banging on his door at the French Line offices.

Yet to arrive from Canada last week was another gentleman who has been around: potent, bushy-browed Arthur Blaikie Purvis. Head of the U. S. wing of the British purchasing commission he, like his French confrere, is returning to an old job. In 1914 he was the first British munitions buyer to reach the U. S. His peacetime job is president of Canadian Industries, Ltd. (makers of explosives, fertilizers, paint, plastics, industrial chemicals) which means he knows the chemical industry like a book.

In spite of the arrival of the biggest buyers the U. S. has seen in a generation there are relatively few war orders to date whose actual existence can be confirmed. World War II is a war of caution and just as France and Britain got together and agreed to correlate purchases to keep from bidding against each other, so they have been cautious in other ways. Mindful that this time purchases in the U. S. are for cash, which has to be laid on the barrel-head, they are shopping carefully. For the same reason Britain is buying everything she can in her own financial dominions where she does not have to pay in foreign exchange.

Some considerable war purchases in the U. S. have been made and kept dark because of the sellers' craving anonymity; most big deals rumored have yet to be signed & sealed. Biggest is the French purchase of South American copper; 25,000 tons a month for six months. If it goes through, the deal will amount to $42,000,000, enrich U. S. coppermen with South American mines. The chief war orders whose existence could be confirmed last week were:

> $8,000,000 worth of ordnance, shells, torpedoes (at nearly $20,000 apiece) from a large East Coast manufacturer of steel mill machinery. Buyers: Russia, Turkey, France.

> Some 3,750 submachine guns ($750,000) from Thompson Automatic Arms Corp. Buyer: France.

> 6,000 horses ( 2/3 cavalry; 1/3 draft) from three Midwest commission firms. Buyer: France.

> 200,000 2 1/2 lb. army blankets (70% wool) from two Eastern textile manufacturers. Buyer: France.

> 5-6,000 trucks from Studebaker, White Motor and Yellow Truck & Coach. Buyer: France.

> 11,000,000 bushels (7 1/2% of the U. S. crop) of soybeans, which quintupled the 1933-38 export average. Main buyers: non-belligerents Holland and the Scandinavian countries.

>Airplanes, parts and motors from planemakers: United Aircraft, $70,000,000; Curtiss-Wright, $60,000,000; Douglas Aircraft, $30,000,000; Lockheed, $6,000,000; Republic Aviation, $4,000,000. Big buyers: France and Britain. Little buyers: Sweden ($4,000,000), Iraq ($500,000).

Significantly, some Pacific Coast planemakers guessed that belligerent purchases had already reached a peak in purchase of combat planes, that future orders would be mostly for training ships. Reason: rising British home production and a growing disrespect for the Nazi airforce. Eastern planemakers, however, felt buying would increase when delivery could be assured. What a big German push on the Western Front would do was another matter.

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