TIME CLOCK

CAPITAL GAINS TAX revision, now under study by the Treasury Department, will probably call for a lower rate on gains that are made over a long period of time (ten years or more). However, the Treasury will probably balance any cut by also asking Congress to keep the overall corporate tax rate at 52%, even though it is scheduled by law to drop to 47 % next April.

APPLIANCE SALES will hit 428 million units (eight more a home) within the next five years, an increase of 90 million units over 1949-53, predicts Westinghouse Vice President John M. McKibbin. Biggest sellers: color TV and air conditioning, which will also more than double the home use of electricity by 1963.

FARM PRICE PROPS will drop even further this year. Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson feels that the Midwest election returns have justified his flexible price-support program, will now push for lower supports whenever practical. First to be chopped: feed grains, now supported at 85% of parity, which will probably be cut by 10%.

KERR-McGEE OIL INDUSTRIES, which bid $15 million for a tract of Government-owned oil lands off the Louisiana coast and then discovered that it had made a mistake in the tract numbers (TIME, Nov. 8, 1954), will not be held to its contract. The Government has accepted the argument that a bid containing an obvious error does not constitute a binding contract, will give the company back its $2,900,000 deposit.

WILLIAM E. BOEING, founder of Boeing Airplane Co. (TIME, July 19), who retired in 1934 to devote all his time to his lumber business, has just closed one of the Northwest's biggest timber deals. For $13 million, Boeing has sold his 23,000-acre tract (1 billion bd. ft.) of fir along the Oregon coast to Georgia-Pacific Plywood Co.

REO MOTORS, INC., which has been having trouble with its truck business, will not be sold to Hearsemaker Henney Motor under the deal originally signed last April (TIME, April 12). Henney has turned the deal over to Detroit's Bohn Aluminum & Brass Corp., which will buy Reo, continue to operate and expand it as a truck builder.

THREE-CENT AIRMAIL experiment will soon be extended to the West Coast by the Post Office Department, which now permits 3-c- airmail between Chicago, Washington, D.C. and New York. The Government will sign contracts with five airlines (American, Trans World, United, Northwest and Western) to fly low-cost mail between 22 western cities along the route from San Diego, Calif, to Seattle, Wash.

SUPER SABRE, North American's new supersonic F-100 fighter on which the Air Force is spending $100 million, has been grounded for a thorough check after a series of crashes. Three of the new 800-m.p.h. jets have crashed mysteriously, killing two pilots, including Britain's Air Commodore Geoffrey Stephenson, boss of the R.A.F.'s tactical school, who spun into the ground last week on a flight in Florida.

TV MERGER is in the works between third-ranking American Broadcasting-Paramount Theaters and Dr. Allen B. Du Mont's fourth-ranking Du Mont Television Network. Du Mont, whose money-losing network eats into the profits from its setmaking business, is negotiating a deal for ABC to take over all Du Mont network programs to fill gaps in ABC's nightly program schedule. Du Mont will continue to operate its three stations individually.

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