Spring Fevers & Chills

Low of the Year. The stockmarket, depressed by strikes and alarms over prices, tumbled 4.76 points in the Dow-Jones industrial index to end the week at 171.76, a new low for 1947. On the first day of this week, in the broadest market in stock exchange history, it plummeted 5.07 points more, the worst daily drop since last November.

Fair Warning. In the midst of recession talk, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia in its monthly Business Review worried over the possibility of a "boom" psychology which might result in speculation and overexpansion.

Bob Young Sells. Alleghany Corp.'s Robert R. Young reported that he had sold his entire holdings of common stock, 27,306 shares, in Alleghany Corp., which controls his burgeoning railroad empire. But Bob Young said that the sale in no way affected control of Alleghany. The shares were transferred to his associate, Allan P. Kirby, so that Young would be eligible for the directorship representing preferred stock holdings. Added Young: "I probably will increase my holdings of preferred."

The U.S. Buys. While Government heads sweated over pulling prices down, at least one Government arm seemed to be doing what it could to keep them up. The Senate passed and sent to the House a bill to extend price supports on domestic wool for two more years, in effect pegging the price at last year's sky-high level of about 41.6-c- a lb., some 32% higher than world prices. By virtue of the present floor under wool, which has kept U.S. prices above world wool prices, the Government is now stuck with 480,000,000 lbs., more than a normal year's supply for the U.S. Estimated cost of the proposed new program to taxpayers: from $35 million to $75 million a year.

Recession in Jail. New Mexico State penitentiary monthly El Boletin reported that sales of prison-made goods have dropped so much that inmates may have to depend on outside sources for their spending money.

Too Early for Wolves. Rumors of a collapse in the slumping women's apparel industry (one report had 75% of the women's coat-&-suit makers in New York idle) flew so thick & fast that many manufacturers were hard put to deny them all. Up-&-coming Henry Rosenfeld, Inc. (TIME, June 10) was so harassed by reports of its imminent failure that it finally took full-page ads in Manhattan's Sunday papers to dispel them with its balance sheet. Main point: cash in bank, $1,119,006.70; "owed to banks--$.00."

Boom in Bonds. The Treasury Department reported that sales of E bonds during the first quarter of the year exceeded redemptions by $326,146,000. The tide had turned abruptly after eleven months during which cash-ins had been greater than purchases.

Great Circle Salesman. After a delay of one week due to weather, Milton Reynolds, the ball-point king, finally took off in his converted A26 attack bomber from LaGuardia Field on a flight in which he hoped to circle the globe in a record-shattering 60 hours (present record: 91 hours, 14 minutes, set by Howard Hughes in 1938). No pilot, Penman Reynolds was "navigator."

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