Do you remember the scraggly little bull calf on TIME's June 14, 1948 cover (see cut)? Bewildered, unsteady on its feet, shrouded in ticker tape, the little fellow symbolized the baby bull market which Wall Street was nursing at the time.

Next week, almost two years older and many pounds (and Dow-Jones points) heavier, the bull will make his second appearance on TIME's cover (thus joining the circle of such cover repeaters as Harry Truman, Winston Churchill, Joe Stalin, et al.). The cover story accompanying his first appearance indicated that TIME's editors were bullish on the U.S. economy and thought that, if all went well, the stock market would advance to about the point it has now reached. Next week's cover story will take a fresh look at the market and the economy.

The continued expansion of American business is probably today's most important news story outside of the Cold War. It is also the special concern of TIME's Business & Finance department, whose motto, if it had one, would undoubtedly be that anybody who wants to understand the U.S. should first understand U.S. business.

TIME tries each week to print the news of business that is most significant, the news the editors think you should know about. It may be about beef cattle, movies, models, railroads, hotels, airlines, automakers, and scores of other dissimilar topics. It may be an old-fashioned success story--in many ways the lifeblood of a free-enterprising economy. Sometimes it is a story of business failure.

Often, TIME'S business stories anticipate important front-page news to come. One such was the cover story on Eugene Holman, president of Standard Oil Co. of N.J. (March 24, 1947), which explained the corporation's $300 million expansion into Middle Eastern oil as an attempt not only to make money but at the same time to convey the "tangible benefits of free enter prise" to a backward land. Almost two years later the U.S.'s Point Four plan for world recovery was launched to encourage just such tangible benefits as this.

Although the U.S. is the world's great, example of a free enterprise economy that works, Americans are inclined to take this for granted. They are also inclined to balk at production figures and the "dull" statistics of busi ness. In today's world those figures are important. Recently, a TIME editor encountered an Austrian official who was flabbergasted by the quantities of cars and television sets owned by U.S. workers. The official explained : "Until I came here I never believed it, even though I had read it. The Russians said all those figures were just propaganda, and I believed them because I didn't think there could be that many cars."

These figures are part of the story that America is trying to tell the world. And from the reactions we have been getting to TIME's business coverage, our readers are convinced that it is more important now than ever to have a true understanding of U.S. business affairs.

Cordially yours,

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