Casket Circumstance

At first glance, the casket business would seem depression-proof. Yet a shrewd investor would realize that since the price range of caskets swings from less than $100 to many thousands, bad years will result in smaller gross sales, smaller profits. When last week National Casket Co. reported profits of $925,000 for the year ended June 30 against $1,518,000 in the previous year, President Philip B. Heinz commented on this fact. But he also suggested an economic relationship which would occur only to the hypersuspicious investor. "Nature would also seem to play some part in it," said he of the smaller earnings, "for almost invariably in any depressed period the mortality rate is lower than in years of great plenty and good general business. We do not attempt to explain this circumstance."*

Formed by a big merger in 1890 and expanded by many later acquisitions, National Casket leads the field. It has offices in 27 cities, also many factories, last year sank $800,000 in new land and buildings.

The casket business is no static affair. A flux of styles from decade to decade keeps things moving. The height of current fashion is National's Cast Bronze Sarcophagus, a 1,400-lb., $16,000, silk-lined affair. From 1910 to 1920 the leader was a fancy mahogany casket selling at around $3,500. A trend toward colors is likewise setting in. Cream, champagne, grey, pink, green, and rainbow-tinted caskets are popular now. Recently an actress was buried in a bright orchid colored casket lined in satin ruffles; officials of a smaller western company still talk of the man who came in and demanded a scarlet casket with scarlet lining.

Most of the sales are made to funeral directors whose charge is for the whole funeral rather than just the casket. The average funeral comes to around $300. No figures on the actual number of caskets sold by National are ever given out, although the company admits that the all-time highs were during the influenza epidemics when stocks reached zero and caskets had to be recalled from non-flu districts. National estimates, however, that it makes one-sixth of the U. S. output.

* Metropolitan Life Insurance Co.'s returns on the deathrate seem to substantiate only partially this circumstance. The depression of 1921 found the rate of 10.6 against 13.1 a year before. In 1928 it was 12, a gain of .6 over 1927.

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