Facts & Figures

Deflation. In the Malay States, where word of the great U.S. synthetic rubber industry presumably had not penetrated Jap censorship, native growers hopefully asked as high as $2 a lb. for their small stocks of natural rubber. With an estimated 20,000 tons of rubber believed stored near Singapore, the growers were stunned last week when British authorities set the price at 36 Malayan cents a lb. (about 17 1/4-c- in U.S. currency). At this price the growers were in no hurry to sell the rubber they had furtively hoarded and hidden from the Japs.

Here Comes the Beef. The fall run of cattle to market bumped smack into a manpower shortage at the Midwest packing houses. By working 60 hours a week, the federally inspected packers managed to carve up the 350,000 head of cattle that arrived last week (highest number since February 1942). But unless the packers can round up thousands of their old employes who threw down their knives and cleavers for higher pay in other industries when war began, they will be in trouble when the cattle run reaches its peak, some time in October.

Good Hunting. The 1945 seal catch off Alaska's desolate Pribilof Islands was the largest (76,700 skins) since conservation of the decimated seal herd was started in 1911. An estimated 10,000 fur coats can be made from this year's $4 million catch.

Aplomb. With lofty disdain, Wall Street traders set their sights far beyond last week's pother of strikes, wage demands, price-control squabbles and reconversion growing pains. Bursting with confidence in the future industrial boom (and the hope of lower taxes), the traders bid up the price of industrial stocks to an eight-year high.

Autos to Sleepers. To the line-up of potential buyers of the Pullman Co.'s $80 million fleet of cars, scuttlebutt added the name of Detroit's auto body builders, the Fisher Brothers. The five vigorous Fishers, with an estimated $250 million to invest, are looking for good businesses to buy. They now own a big chunk of stock in Baldwin Locomotive Works, have an eye on Hudson Motor Co.

Warmer. The shortage of anthracite coal was over. Robert V. White, president of the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Co. (last year's production: 6 million tons, v. 2.5 million in 1938), warned the coal industry that within two or three months it "will have so much anthracite it may embarrass them."

Finis? The unlucky ex-French liner Normandie was added to the list of surplus property for sale by the Navy. Probable last trip of the 80,000-ton liner (on which the Navy spent $11 million for salvage after she burned and capsized in 1942) will be an ignoble tow to a junk yard.

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