On the Treadmill

Like a sprinter on a treadmill, U.S. industry is finding that no matter how fast it runs it cannot catch up with increasing consumer demand. Last week American Telephone & Telegraph Co., which set an industrial record for yearly spending with the $1.6 billion put into expansion in 1955, announced that it was still unable to close the gap. This year, said A. T. & T. President Cleo F. Craig, the world's biggest utility will spend a staggering $2.1 billion merely to keep from falling farther behind. With 47 million phones already in service, orders for another 3,000,000 are expected and every Bell subsidiary is snowed under by an 11% increase in long-distance calls.

With the shower of good first-quarter earnings reports (see below), other companies voiced their confidence in the increasing appetite of the growing U.S. population. B. F. Goodrich Chairman John L. Collyer announced a $200 million plant expansion in the next five years, nearly $60 million more than in the last five. Youngstown Sheet & Tube, already committed to a $40 million outlay in two years, is pressing so hard to keep up with rising steel demand that it is considering tacking another $20 million onto the total.

In the shortage-ridden aluminum industry there was the promise that supply would catch up with demand. The Aluminum Co. of America unveiled plans for a huge, $80 million smelting plant near Evansville, Ind., to turn out 150,000 tons annually, increase Alcoa's primary capacity 33% to 942,500 tons a year in 1958. When the plant goes into operation in the fall of 1957, the industry will have to expand old markets, find new ones to keep growing. But the job should not be too difficult. In autos alone the potential is enormous. Said Alcoa President I. W. Wilson: "The current automobile models average 34 Ibs. of aluminum per car. Next year it will probably average over 40 Ibs., and the potential aluminum use is 200 Ibs. per car in the near future.''

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