No Crutch Needed

His left leg taped up after a riding mishap, Secretary of the Treasury George M. Humphrey hobbled into the Executive Office Building in Washington one morning last week to speak to an annual Governors' Conference on the state of the U.S. economy. Humphrey was quick to point out that there was no resemblance between the economy and his game leg. Said he: "We are not now headed for a depression. We see more signs every day to make us confident of the future."

Umbrellas & Overshoes. Elsewhere in Washington last week. Federal Reserve Board Governor A. L. Mills Jr. and Assistant Commerce Secretary Lothair Teetor both saw increasing signs of an early business upturn. "The gloomy ones may well be caught out in the sunshine with their umbrellas and overshoes on," said Teetor. Though two private economists, Walter E. Hoadley of Armstrong Cork Co. and Dr. Courtney Brown of Columbia University, saw no such sign of a swift upturn, neither could they see any signs of an oncoming bust. The gentle slide, they thought, had just about hit bottom.

Backing up the optimism, cheery first-quarter earnings reports continued to pour out, chiefly as a result of the end of the excess-profits tax. Such rubber-industry giants as Goodrich and U.S. Rubber both announced higher profits than in 1953. Standard Oil Co. (N.J.) brought in earnings of $146 million, up $8,000,000 from last year; Westinghouse zoomed from $16.8 million to $26.3 million, Du

Pont from $56.7 million to a whopping $73.8 million. In the auto industry, General Motors roared ahead with profits of $189 million, $38 million better than in 1953, rang up the second highest first-quarter sales record (705,303 passenger cars) in history. Some companies had slipped. U.S. Steel dropped $4.6 million to $44.8 million, and the railroads were down. The pressure was also on the independent automakers, and they did poorly. Studebaker lost $6,000,000 and passed its dividend. Nash lost $750,000, Packard $380,000 during the first three months. Kaiser reported that it had lost a grand total of $27 million in 1953 and was still in the red.

Inventories & Bulls. But overall, businessmen around the U.S. seemed to show the same confidence in the future as Treasury Secretary Humphrey. Manufacturers' shipments were up along with new orders, and sales in March climbed 2%. In Wall Street, the bull market was still climbing. After hitting a 24-year high at 313.77 three weeks before, the Dow-Jones industrial average jumped another six points this week to 319.35, the highest level since Oct. 22, 1929, the day before the '29 market collapsed.

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