Buyers & Sellers

FACTS & FIGURES

Ships. For the Mediterranean run, American Export Lines ordered two 20,000-ton passenger liners with air-conditioned cabins and the latest safety devices (radar, automatic steering controls, radios on life boats). The ships will be built at Bethlehem Steel Corp.'s Quincy, Mass, yards. Under a stepped-up program of shipbuilding subsidies (TIME, Aug. 2), the Government will pay $20 million of the $46,830,000 construction cost.

Cars. The auto industry rolled out its 100-millionth car (the Duryea brothers built their first one in 1893). Because of suppliers' strikes, production last week was down to 102,368 cars and trucks, off 3,548 from the week before.

Apples. Apples, which gyrated in price from 64-c- a bushel in 1937 to $2.96 in 1945, upsetting many a grower's cart, were admitted to futures trading on Chicago's Mercantile Exchange. By offering buyers a chance to hedge in the futures market, growers hoped to steady prices for this year's crop (estimate: 100,445,000 bushels).

Airports. The Port of New York Authority bought New Jersey's 500-acre, ten-hangar Teterboro Air Terminal. This closed the last escape hatch for airlines that objected to the Authority's landing fees at Idlewild and hoped to take off on transatlantic flights from Teterboro (TIME, July 12). Price: $3,115,000. Teterboro's owner, Frederick L. Wehran, got the property for $460,000 in 1941.

Checks. The Omaha National Bank put in circulation the first checks printed in Braille for the blind. They can be made out in fixed amounts ($5, $10, $25 and $100) and, as a special guard against forgery, are signed with thumb prints.

Banks. The World Bank, turning from lender to broker, got ten U.S. banks to lend four Dutch shipping firms $12,000,000 to buy cargo-passenger vessels. Henceforth, said Vice President Robert L. Garner, the World Bank will try to steer foreign loans to private institutions.

Prices. Chrysler Corp.'s K. T. Keller, who had predicted yet another price rise for the auto industry when steel went up (TIME, Aug. 2), followed through. Prices of some 50 Chrysler models were raised $58 to $98, an average of almost 5%.

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