Easter Parade

As a barometer of business, department store sales have been signaling trouble ahead. For six consecutive weeks sales have been below those of 1948. Last week the spell was broken.

In Manhattan, Gimbels threw a crowd-catching sale of summer furniture--and put thousands of Easter hats on the counters at $5 and up. In San Francisco, the City of Paris store slashed prices a third to a half on $160,000 worth of draperies. Four big carpetmakers (Bigelow-Sanford, Alexander Smith, Mohawk and James Lees & Sons) cut prices from 10% to 20%. Thanks to such measures and a burst of fair weather and Easter buying, department store sales for the week ending April 2 were 8% above last year's. But the gain was too small to cause much cheering. The Federal Reserve Board gloomily observed that sales for the year would probably be down a bit.

In some lines, buying had dropped off in spite of price cuts. Nash cut its prices $20 to $120; Willys, whose recent cut had brought no notable sales spurt, went on a four-day week. Car dealers complained that the spring buying wave had been a ripple instead of the hoped-for comber.

Here & there--gasoline and some meats, for example--prices were still edging up. But prices generally seemed to be settling into an uneasy equilibrium. The commodity markets, which had been weak, rose slightly on the news of Secretary Brannan's new farm price-support plan (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS).

Though there were scattered industrial layoffs and cutbacks--and scattered rehirings as well--there was no letup in many industries. The automakers had their biggest week (130,197 units) since 1941. Heavy construction awards of $178 million for the week were nearly double those of a year ago. Looking at all this hustle-bustle--and totting up the $47.5 billion in savings bonds U.S. consumers hold--Treasury Secretary John Snyder said cheerfully: "If we are going to have a depression, it's going to be the richest depression we ever had."

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