Facts & Figures

The Redcoats Are Coming. For the third week in a row, stocks on the New York exchange drifted lower. The day after Britain's Ernest Bevin suggested that the U.S. redistribute its gold (see FOREIGN NEWS), a sudden flurry of selling brought forth the waggish explanation: "The British are within 50 miles of Fort Knox."

Requiem. U.S. exports, which started to drop in June, fell another 7% in July, said the Department of Commerce, and are now down 19% from their May peak. The Department of Commerce expected exports to drop further as the world ran out of U.S. dollars. Latest dollar conservation move: Australia, following the British and French lead, imposed a ban on some 32 products ranging from washing machines to tires.

Exhumed. Chicago Brass Manufacturer Marshall Merkes announced that he had bought the remaining inventory and blueprints of the fabulous Duesenberg automobile from the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Co. Merkes hired the late Fred Duesenberg's younger brother August to design him an eight-cylinder engine with an injection-type fuel feed for a new custom-made Duesenberg. The price: "No less than $25,000, probably more."

Biggest Inch. The Trans-Arabian Pipe Line Co. acquired the complete right-of-way for its projected 1,030-mile pipeline from the Abqaiq field in Saudi Arabia through Trans-Jordan, Syria and Lebanon to the Mediterranean port of Sidon (TIME, March 24). When completed by 1949, the 30-to-31-inch line -- world's biggest -- will eliminate the present 3,650-mile tanker haul from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean. Trans-Arabian, affiliate of the Arabian-American Oil Co., will spend $125 million on construction, expects that the line will initially carry some 300,000 barrels of crude oil a day.

Chirp. A wristwatch with an alarm based on the principle used by male crickets to produce their chirping (they rub a saw-toothed edge on one front wing against the other) will soon be put on sale by Switzerland's Vulcain Watch Co. The name: Vulcain Cricket. The price: $100 and up.

Loosened Grip. Another wartime restriction died quietly when the Department of Commerce removed the restrictions on the use of natural rubber for some 30,000 industrial products. Unaffected by the new ruling were automobile tires and tubes, whose natural-rubber content will continue to be fixed (23% for pleasure cars). By maintaining its control over the automobile industry's rubber supply, which accounts for 72% of U.S. rubber consumption, the Department hopes to keep at least part of the U.S. synthetic rubber industry operating.

Long String. The American News Co., a distributor of newspapers and magazines, as well as of food on railroads and in bus and airport terminals, got ready to pay its sooth consecutive bimonthly dividend --25-c-. Since its founding in 1864, it has not missed a dividend.

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