Facts & Figures

Safety First. Steel production reached 1,710,000 tons a week (97.7% of capacity), the highest in peacetime history. Wilfred Sykes, president of Inland Steel Co., predicted that even at present capacity the industry "will be able to balance supply and demand during 1948." Nevertheless, the Department of Commerce played it safe by slapping export controls on 36 more steel products. This brought about 95% of all iron and steel shipped to foreign countries (except Canada) under its licensing system.

Studebaker Buys. The Studebaker Corp. bought the Empire Steel Corp. of Mansfield, Ohio for $7,430,000. It thus assured itself of enough steel to keep production at the present rate of 20,000 cars and trucks a month, and step it up to around 25,000 "much sooner than we anticipated."

Sunrise. Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey followed Sun Oil Co.'s lead (TIME, Dec. 8) and boosted its buying price of crude by 50-c- a barrel. By week's end, the new price pattern had been established east of the Rockies and showed signs of spreading to the West Coast, where Union Oil Co. of California had already led off with a 40-c- increase.

Cut Rate. To help ease the U.S. aluminum shortage, the State Department plans to cut the 3-c- tariff on Canadian aluminum to 2-c- and allow Aluminium Ltd. of Canada to sell raw aluminum at 14-c- a pound, the U.S. base price. This was bad news for Henry J. Kaiser's Permanente Metals Corp. and Reynolds Metals Co. Only last June, Reynolds shut down one plant and Kaiser canceled the opening of another to prevent overproduction. Now they were hastily attempting to reopen them.

Erleigh Sorrow. South Africa's breezy Norbert S. Erleigh, whose -L-100,000,000 New Union Goldfields empire was recently thrown into receivership (TIME, Nov. 24), was arrested on a charge of theft for borrowing -L-352,875 from New Union without the board's permission. He was let out on bail after he promised not to 1) leave the country or 2) dabble in New Union business. He found these conditions infuriating. With two new gold strikes on lots adjoining properties controlled by New Union, it looked as if New Union might get back on its feet without Erleigh.

Fire Bug. A joint Government-industry committee put its finger on the cause of fires aboard two Douglas DC-6 planes, which had led U.S. airlines and Douglas Aircraft Co. to ground all DC-6s in service. As expected (TIME, Nov. 24), CAB decided that the gasoline tank vent forward of an air scoop permitted gasoline to be sucked into the heating system, where it ignited. Douglas plans to move the vent and make some other minor design changes, paying for them itself. The airlines do not expect to get the 92 grounded planes back into service until next month.

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