Facts of Life

In Manhattan last week 2,000 retail merchants (members of the National Retail Dry Goods Association) met and faced the one big fact about their business in 1943: customers will have more money in their pockets, but scarcity of merchandise will cut sharply into retail trade. Volume in the fourth quarter is expected to drop as much as 20% under current levels.

Merchandise. Soft goods will be in fairly good supply, with more woolens available, but civilians will not get as much cotton cloth and less than 50% of the 1943 rayon yarn production. Men's haberdashery will tend more & more to ersatz fabrics. Perfumes and toilet goods will be cut by war demands for alcohol. Notions, blouses, handbags will be difficult to obtain. Draperies, rugs and carpets are already so tight that one West Coast retailer placed an order for 1,000 rugs of any color, any pattern and any size provided they could be retailed for less than $100 in the 9-by-12 size.

In durable goods, sales of radios, pianos, clocks and metal jewelry will end when the existing small inventories are exhausted. Sales of household furniture and furnishings, glassware and utensils will drop by 25% for lack of goods. Big increases are forecast for sales of men's & women's work clothes.

Manpower. More & more department stores will turn to self-service as the manpower shortage grows, more & more small retailers will close up as their one or two employes drift away to other better-paying jobs, or the owners themselves find they can make more money in a shipyard. Already turnover in jobs is fantastically high, some stores reporting 40-50% as against a normal turnover of 10%. Only hope of maintaining sales staffs at all is to employ elderly and middle-aged saleswomen, hire students on part-time.

On one point all merchants agree. Their hours of business will undergo a big change this year. In cities and towns where war workers must choose between absenteeism or shopping, stores will close one or two days each week, stay open more nights.

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