Index

Seat. A New York Stock Exchange seat was sold last week for $415,000. The previous high price was $398,000, negotiated last May. The Exchange has 1,100 members. No indications exist that the membership will be increased and thus depreciate the value of seats.

Cinema. Warner Bros, bought control of the Stanley Co. of America, and thereby first entree to more than 3,000 cinema houses (see p. 32).

Car Loadings reported last week for the week ending Sept. 1, totaled 1,116,948. This was 36,108 cars more than during the previous week but 412 less than the same week last year.

93-year Flame. From 1835 until last week, a mighty flame burned continually at a New Orleans artificial gas plant. Cheaper natural gas became available. So the 93-year flame was at last smothered.

Kroger Grocery & Baking Co. now has 4,605 stores -by purchase last week of 125 B. C. Thomas stores and 41 K. & B. stores at Grand Rapids, Mich. At the same time Kroger's bought a Grand Rapids creamery, a bakery and a real estate company.

Wheat. Renick William Dunlap, Acting Secretary of Agriculture, warned farmers not to sell their wheat crop too hastily. The northern hemisphere is raising 2,873,000 bushels of wheat this fall. This is a trifle more than last year. But the world's rye crop is 92,000,000 bushels less than last year; the potato crop will be less; Russia probably will have no wheat to export; people are demanding more wheat (as flour) than ever before.

Autos & Planes. Continental Motors has begun to make motors for airplanes. Ford, Packard and Auburn have long been connected with flying, General Motors not at all. Yet the du Ponts have given financial backing to Guiseppe Bellanca, plane designer. And the du Ponts are a large part of General Motors. So the industrial surmise is not so wild that General Motors will soon make airplanes and equipment.

Exported Autos. The American Automobile last week published its survey of the U. S. automotive industry's exports for the first half of this year. Motor cars and trucks exported numbered 260,072 (44,837 more than in the first half of 1927); were worth $184,687,815. Tires: 1,344,000 (225,072 fewer than last year). Parts: $55,318,127 worth ($1,152,428 gain). Best car customer was Australia; best truck customer, Argentina.

5-Cent Loaves. Atlantic & Pacific chain stores in and around New York began to sell 1-lb. loaves of bread for 5-c-. They also sold 2-lb. loaves for 8-c-. Wherever freight rates on flour from Minneapolis are as cheap as to Manhattan, there A. & P. will sell loaves as cheaply. Other stores will doubtless follow.

Gold Movement. Because five hundred million dollars of gold had been shipped away from the U. S. this year, the shipment of $2,500,000 from England to the U. S. last week, was memorable. It was the first time in more than a year that such movement had happened. Interest rate on loans is the cause. Money in New York cost 7% to 8%, in London 4 1/2%; and money goes where it earns most.

Steel. Neat ingot after neat ingot will have come out of the U. S. steel mills. 48,000,000 times before the year has ended, predicted J. R. Nutt, president of the Union Trust Company of Cleveland, last week, in Trade Winds, his bank's magazine. Automobiles, building and railroad equipment and petroleum industry doings will cause the mills to produce 1,000,000 more ingots than were pressed in 1926, the record year.