Facts & Figures

Heavy Freight. The railroads, whose freight rates have gone up 41 to 43% since war's end, will ask ICC for another 8% boost, railroad traffic executives decided at a Chicago meeting. If granted, the increase would add another $400 million to the nation's freight bill. (The total increase so far: $2.1 to $2.5 billion.)

Five a Second. Chicago's Bell & Howell Co. (cameras) announced that it would put on sale this fall the world's most expensive still camera. Its "Foton" will take five 35-mm. pictures a second, sell for $700. Bell & Howell, which has found that "families of both low and high incomes now spend over $550" for movie equipment, hopes to sell 20,000 Fotons a year.

Four Aces. The 9,644-ton, 17-knot Excalibur, first of the American Export Lines' postwar "4 Aces," sailed from New York harbor on its maiden run to the Mediterranean, reopening the line's first-class travel after eight years. Excalibur has a swimming pool and air-conditioned cabins and carries 124 passengers. Her three sisterships, Exochorda, Exeter and Excambion (replacing vessels lost during the war) will go into service in the next two months.

Textron Retreat. In the Battle of Nashua (N.H.) over the closing of Textron, Inc.'s sheet and blanket factory (TIME, Sept. 27), the town won a partial victory. Harassed by a Senate committee, Textron's Royal Little agreed to continue his sheetmaking department (which employs 1,000 of his 3,500 workers) "as long as it remains profitable." Little also picked up some ammunition for his case against New England's easygoing textile workers. When he offered to keep the entire plant open if the workers would accept a heavier work load and increase production, the C.I.O. Textile Workers Union called the proposal an insult.

Wet Art. Manhattan's Starling Products brought out the latest in bathroom art: plastic shower curtains with color reproductions of Van Gogh's paintings (The Bridge at Aries and Boats of Saintes-Maries). The curtains, first of a series of reproductions of famed paintings, will retail at $6.

Curtain Lifter. Movieman Eric Johnston got Hollywood's foot under the Iron Curtain. He made a deal with Russia, where almost no U.S. films are shown, to let in up to 20 films a year, pay for them with dollars in New York. Johnston hoped to close a similar deal with Yugoslavia's Marshal Tito.

Bumper Loans. As the last of the bumper U.S. wheat crop was being harvested, it overflowed elevators and warehouses. But much of it was not going to market, where it would have helped bring down prices. Reason: farmers were putting it under Government loan at $2 a bushel. They had already taken loans on 90 million bushels v. 20 million last year. The Department of Agriculture eventually expected to have 300 million bushels under loan.

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