State of Trade

Business for the nation's storekeepers was better last week. Warm-weather buying gave a little fillip to retail trade, which has just about held its own since April. Merchants in the drought districts, however, were demanding 50% cancellation clauses in their contracts. Carloadings were still nearly 13% above the same week of the year before but loadings of less than carload lots, almost wholly consumer merchandise, dropped 20,000 cars from the week before. Ore & coke for the steel industry, madly piling up inventories in anticipation of strikes, accounted for no small part of the carloading gain.

General Motors reported an unseasonal drop of 10% in retail sales from April to May. Most other motormakers felt it wise to join the price-cutting parade, and production for the industry as a whole continued to decline. The New York Times business index registered its fifth consecutive weekly decline. While trade was going steadily downhill it gave no signs of such a collapse as Wall Street confidently predicted six weeks ago. But even the most sanguine businessmen saw little hope of an upturn until August at the earliest.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.