Heat Off, Heat On

Many a U.S. citizen felt as though he had just walked out of a triple horror feature, and had found the sun shining and the streets crowded with sunny people. As spring merged into summer the world seemed to have become, at least for the present, an astonishingly cheerful place.

Nobody expected Joe Stalin to go on forever giving his imitation of a benign Cheshire cat. U.S.-British relations were cloudy (see INTERNATIONAL). But the global crisis, which had prompted enormous U.S. expenditures for arms only a few weeks ago, had eased off.

The cost-of-living raise which General Motors gave the United Automobile Workers (see below) seemed to have settled the dust on the labor front. Chrysler ended its strike with a raise. Other companies seemed almost certain to follow suit. And the stockmarket, after years of acting half ashamed of itself, had suddenly become as confident as a vegetarian with a Lionel Strongfort exercise book.

The weather was warm. Streams were rounding into form and trout were biting. In crowded Manhattan, this generation's Dead End Kids performed summer's immemorial rite and dove into the East River (see cut). Baseball was going full blast and the sports fiends had a startling topic of conversation--old Connie Mack had his A's up on top after 17 years in cold storage. The hammock season was almost here. Just at the moment, it looked like a beautiful morning.

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