Facts & Figures

Caution by Commerce. Secretary of Commerce Henry Agard Wallace, who has stood stoutly for 60 million postwar U.S. jobs, last week told the House Committee on Small Business that it would be "unfortunate" if veterans were to attempt to set up more than 500,000 to 700,000 new small businesses. (It has been estimated that between two and three million veterans intend to go into business for them selves, many with Government help.) Said he: "The same precautions should be observed" in making Government-backed loans to servicemen as to civilians.

What he did not say was that an alarming number of small U.S. businesses fail every year because their owners do not know what they are getting into.

Reckoning. The cost of this war to all nations, exclusive of damage to private property, has passed the trillion dollar mark, according to a statistical dream released last week by Washington, D.C.'s American University. Said Dr. Paul F. Douglass, the University's president: "If all the money spent on this war since 1934 was distributed equally to all the people of the world, every man, woman and child (over two billion people in the world) would receive more than $500." At this rate, every Hottentot could have had 3,000 quarts of grade A milk.

What This Country Needs. The Office of Price Administration announced that rationed shoe stocks had dropped 25% (from almost 200 million to less than 151 million pairs) during 1944.

No! The War Production Board repeated that the future will hold even fewer cotton and wool goods for U.S. civilians. Reason: the Army demands a complete new outfit for the more than 3,500,000 soldiers going to the Pacific.

Maybe. House owners, who have been allowed to spend only $200 a year for repairs or new construction, got the go-ahead-if-you-can sign to spend $1,000 on a one-family house, $2,000 on a three-and up to $5,000 on a five-family house. But most expenditures would be in repairs, and most repairs would require lumber -- which is shorter than ever. (The U.S. construction industry was also told that it could begin preliminary earth moving operations for new projects without WPB authorization -- if no lumber or other construction materials except drainage pipe were required.)

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