America's prospective prosperity
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Part of The American Chamber of Commerce Journal
- Title
- America's prospective prosperity
- Language
- English
- Source
- The American Chamber of Commerce Journal Volume XVIII (No. 11) November 1938
- Year
- 1938
- Rights
-
- Fulltext
- November, 1938 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 11 America’s Prospective Prosperity Seemingly bound to ebb and flow during decades to come, America's business volume is currently rising and may up Philippine commerce. In our November (Holiday) number it is fitting to review current homeland conditions. Yuletide reflec tions turn inevitably in that direction, while nothing else is so vital to Philippine trade. Last year at this time Depression II was approaching, now it seems to be receding. Our direct references will not be later than (Continued from page 10) dug up to make bomb-proof shelters for the population, no mobilization took place. We were not sure what might happen in the rest of the world, but at least here we were sure of peace. For prosperity—and a prosperity which, because it does not owe itself to any boom, is all the more to be ap preciated. For a comprehensive program of public works, now being systematically carried out—roads, public buildings of all kinds, transportation facilities, and so on. For a treasury amply supplied with cash to back up its good intentions. For these, and a multitude of other, smaller and more vital reasons, we find it possible this year to con template the Christmas season with genuine thanksgiv ing. The more so since, as we see it, the same is going to hold true for many, many Christmas seasons yet to come. The Journal wishes you a Merry Christmas. Time of September 12, but we feel confident that later ones will be mere corroborations. Recovery is plainly afoot even though no one quite tells why nor foretells its probable duration. Defense is in it, particularly as to steel, and make-work projects and vast relief out lays of all sorts go on and on. But public credit is still unimpaired. An intense congressional campaign took the heart of the summer, and it is rather a phenomenon that business improves at such a period—the usual ten dency runs the other way. In August, commercial loans in New York and throughout the country had been rising week by week for three weeks. Basic yardstick, if not for carrying stalled inventories over, it seemed as though this would keep up. Time jibed the Federal Reserve for ceasing to break down the loans by types of collateral behind them, but the comeback was that there was nothing sin ister in the decision to abondon old classifications—the feeling behind the decision had been that such tabula tions had proved an unsatisfactory way of showing the purpose of loans. (Chain and department store figures would give insight into inventory conditions as to con sumer goods, and sales were good). House rents rose during 1937 out of proportion to living costs, building costs declined, and the administra tion liberalized its lending policy. Home building that had been lagging far behind has gone booming until ...................................... ......................................... 1 PHILIPPINE ENGINEERING | CORPORATION ii IIMACHINERY IMPORTERS—INDUSTRIAL CONTRACTORSASSAYERS—MANUFACTURERS MANILA Cebu ------ Iloilo ------ Bacolod ------ Cotabato !' San Francisco, California IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 12 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL November, 1938 from April to June it reached within 9G of 1937. In the same period industrial production was lower than at any similar period since 1933. August building con tracts rose 177< above those of August 1937. Such building affects many industries favorably, and of course many types of employment. Carloadings at the close of August were a high for 1938 and going up, but roads as usual struggled with their mortgages, and their unions refused to get together with them at Chicago on wage cuts, a deadlock that can be carried over to the first of next year, when a showdown will be inevitable unless conciliatory counsel prevails. (When this had to be written, October 15, Swan, Culbertson & Fritz had carloadings of 703,000 for the week ending October 7, compared with 698,000 the week previous and 812,000 a year previous. Their forecast was that October’s load ings would top any month since November 1937). It is bad for business as it is for individuals to have to pay the whole of a considerable obligation at one time: in the case of a business such as a railroad or ma jor industrial corporation, an issue of bonds. Breaking ground in New York on lines long commonplace in Lon don, Sunray Oil floated $4,000,000 worth of $25-unit debentures without maturity date, the debentures con vertible into stock at fixed intervals. Sunray sets aside 10% of its gross to take up lots of the debentures month ly in the open market at $26.25; if it can’t get them, it may call them by lot. While business is good, retire ment of debt proceeds by routine, and during slumps no heavy maturities complicate the problem of sheer exist ence without benefit of 77-B. With Virgina in, all states have provided joint age relief with the Federal government. Aged indigents af fected sum 1,735,000 when Virginia’s new 14,000 are counted. Old stuff in Europe, this sort of thing comes to America after no little haggling—mainly because frilled and fancied Townsend and Downey sophistries carry it to wild extremes and scare taxpayers out of their wits. Scarcely had the Townsend plan died of in anition, though even in September Maine Republicans (I) used its ghost to whisk them back into congress, than up comes Dr. Townsend’s lieutenant, Sheridan Downey, to win the California senatorship from Senator Wm. G. McAdoo with a ham & eggs slogan of $30 every Thursday for every idle retired Californian 50 or more years old. The ray of sunlight is that when Downey had beaten McAdoo by 100,000 votes in the primaries, he welched on his scheme and did not write it into his election platform. But California is likely to have him for next senator, while Manila will gain from having McAdoo as head of the new board of the reorganized Dollar line restoring American ships to the Pacific in cooperation with the Maritime Commission. PLOMB LOS ANGELES HAND FORGED Automobile & Aviation Tools KLEIN CHICAGO PLIERS FOR ELECTRICAL WORK E. VIEGELMANN 460 Dasmarinas Manila, P. I. Just as a footnote, the Downey plan would cost all working Californians $625 a year each. Life begins at fifty! shouted Downey to the destitute, plumping for a scrip scheme to make his pensions self-liquidating. Gaf fers in California were to eat their cake, but somehow their employed juniors were still to have it—this in a state where we happen to know 1000 qualified applicants recently clamored for 6 available jobs. It must be the climate, which not only sets you up but seems at times to set whole cities goofy. The National Resources Committee made up of cabinet members, New Deal economists and business men of liberal views has just reported definitively on Con sumer Incomes in the United States. In this report, data gathered scientifically by WPA through the bu reaus of Home Economics and Labor Statistics, Time September 12, first column, page 59, have been correl ated by Dr. Hildegard Kneeland. There are 41 million family units and individuals in the United States, where annual national income is 60 billion dollars. There are 29,400,300 families spending nearly 48 billion dollars a year. Among these families, 14c/< have incomes below $500 a year, 42% have incomes below $1,000 a year, 65c/< have incomes below $1,500 a year, 87% have in comes below $2,500 a year. Ten per cent have incomes above $2,500 a year, only 1%- have incomes above $10,000 a year. Thirteen million families and indivi duals who have incomes below $780 a year are “not a aistinct or unusual social group but include all types of consumers in all sorts of communities.” Fully 707< of these families get no form of relief; God bless them, for it does not escape us that here is sturdiness of American character still unimpaired by the slings and arrows of times peculiarly, and seeming(Please turn to page 54) Richard T. Ely:—America’s. . . (Continued from page 9) for which the remaining two-thirds must accept respon sibility in government and economic organization. The two-thirds, compared with the other peoples of the white race, have a high average of intelligence and character. The first reason why the struggle for our survival as a great people and a sound nation has been so des perate and so doubtful is this—our more intelligent majority has been as an army fighting in the darkness and the storm. The simple old-fashioned guidance of human nature must now be replaced by the guidance of trained intelligence. To drift is to drift downward. There must be no returning to the jazz age. If we con tinued to drift and leave this issue to our children, they may, on their part, fight ever so desperately to regain the ground we have lost—but after another generation lheir case would be far worse than ours. We must find new ways. We must write new laws. We must accept new disciplines. The conditions of our struggle demand the greatest restraint of self-command ever attempted by a democracy. The soul of our people must be aroused, and all our spiritual energies brought to support the conflict at every point of advance. “Man does not live by bread alone.” There is no valid cause for pessimism because we have a good fighting chance for victory. To those that wage the battle our effort is the most thrilling adventure of our national history. Our strength is the greater and our courage the stronger because the issue is so doubtful. IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 54 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL November, 1938 New National Designs. . . (Continued from page 20) corporation has hinted that it would like to take up this activity, and has been as sured a clear field if it will). But all said and done, the Roxas group is on the spot. This paper is designed to put it there, and so designed with the group’s own consent. Which of course im plies that whatever faults the group may have, want of confidence is not one of them. Let’s call the roll of the group: Dr. Manuel L. Roxas is a graduate of the College of Agriculture, U. P., who, with an M. A. degree, went on to Mas sachusetts Tech, and then returned to his alma mater to run some experiments in cane culture and sugar milling—among other things. He is sometimes dubbed visionary, and may be partly culpable on occasion. But he has been a successful cane breeder, and this means much to the country. At Del Carmen years ago, he crossed CAC 87 with Badila in a field of 85,000 plants and evolved PSA 14. (CAC 87 was a cross between talahib and M 1900, an Australian cane). These experi ments gave a variety hardy of growth and notorious for stooling qualities. At Calamba in 1916, it yielded 92 piculs of sugar to the hectare; the average for all varie ties was 61 piculs, and of the Javan cane POS 2878, 54 piculs. Dr. Roxas got his chemistry at Massachusetts Tech., his agriculture at the University of Wiscon sin. Dr. Vicente C. Aldaba is the group’s industrial technologist. He is now touring the world’s textile centers and giving ra yons particular attention. He too is an Aggy from Los Banos, with his doctorate from Sheffield Institute, Harvard, for work in botany and textiles. Juan T. Villa nueva is the textile engineer. He studied at Massachusetts Tech., around 1924. Hilarion Henares graduated in mechanical en gineering at the U. P., and took graduate work at the University of Illinois. He was associated with Dr. Roxas in sugar experiments at the College of Agriculture and was later at Isabela Central, Negros, establishing some manufactures there. At Isabela he designed a bag machine, utiliz ing jute. (To date, Manila hemp as a substitute for jute has proved too harsh). Dr. Santiago Rotea. is a veterinarian for merly employed in the Bureau of Animal Husbandry. He has studied meat preserv ation in the United States. At the Pasig plant he is in charge of the laboratories. Miss Presentation Atienza was graduated at the University of the Philippines in phar macy and has done some work at the Bu reau of Science in the department of foods. She too has studied food preservation in the United States and is interested in can ning fruits and vegetables here. Miss Atienza is the presiding genius at the can teen and recreation hall at the Pasig plant, the center of a cooperative among the em ployees. Jose C. Espinosa is the group’s rayon expert. He had a course at Mas sachusetts Tech. It was he and Carlos Locsin who dug alpha cellulose out of abaca tow to the tune of 40 lbs. to 100 lbs. of gross fiber. Florencio Talavera is the group’s fish canning expert. He has worked at the Bureau of Science, but his actual factory experience was gained at Monterey, California. —W. R. America’s Prospective. . . (Continued from page 12) ly beyond anyone’s helping it, outrageous. These 70% having no relief have incomes averaging $471 a year. The middle third of the total of 13 million families averages family incomes of $1,076 a year. When the reader recalls surveys of social Ame rica dating before the turn of the century, and studies of Middletown (Muncie, In diana) made in the past decade, with any other similar matter that may have come to his shelves, he can not think of this survey as disclosing conditions at all novel in the national life. The situation has been blowing up a long time. Its mitiga tion, if practical means are found, would induce a long curve of fine business. The family that gets only $471 a year and has no relief, wants more and is willing to work for more. Extremes of proffered solutions to this problem must meet on middle ground before, more work per manently turns up. Meanwhile, population begins tapering off. School enrollment in the United States this September is 100,000 below the enrollment for September last year. From this point on, expanding population will not be basic in expanding markets. The alternative is necessarily an upping of per capita income: more per capita prosperity among fewer people and smaller families. This could result from lower unit prices for wealth produced, if farmers find the way to greater profits from cheaper bushels of grain and cheaper bales of cot ton. Higher wages couldn’t bring it about, unless accompanied by even higher pro duction per man, since the wealth entailed must derive from the soil. America’s si tuation remains therefore a knotty prob lem in all circumstances; no large portion of the people will sit down to content it self with poverty, and the neap must fol low the full tide evoked by artifice (gov ernment spending, new-gadgeted automo biles, new dinkuses on radios, spread of installment credit) until the system of eco nomy is basically reformed and everyone lives more tolerably from the products of the soil. Just now it would seem that one of the fuller tides is setting in. Just the same, the maximum of $5,000 fixed in the bank deposits insurance act covers 95% of all such accounts. Too many Americans live too close to the line, yet smash would go their great domestic market if they took a more prudent stand toward life, and they couldn’t pick much up in exports. It’s a riddle in any man’s language. —W. R. U.S. MONTHLY ECONOMIC CABLE Washington, D. C., October 27, 1938. GENERAL Domestic business conditions improved during September, continuing the progress made since June. Industrial activity in creased at about usual seasonal rate, in res ponse to rising volume of orders from distri bution groups. Freight car-loadings also ex panded beyond the normal seasonal rise, while improvement in building industries has strongly influenced the general trend. In dustrial production has recovered to about the level reached last November, with in creases apparent in both durable and non durable goods. The general trend is indi cated by the change in steel output, from a low this year of below 25 percent of ingot capacity to nearly 50 per cent at the end of September. The automobile industry has not been a major factor in the rise of steel production to date, but October is expected to bring a sharp advance in automobile pro duction. Activity in consumer goods indus tries has been well above the mid-summer rate, with production of textiles, leather ma nufactures and tobacco manufactures show ing considerable advances. Demands for industrial fuels such as coal and electric power have expanded, as well as demand for industrial materials for manufacture. Re tail trade has improved with the advent of the fall season but the charges in dis tribution to consumers have not been so pro nounced as those concerned with industrial activity. EMPLOYMENT Employment conditions have improved materially since mid-summer and aggregate income payments have moved definitely up ward, mainly through rise in payments for labor services. While unemployment in creased materially during the latter part of last year and the first half of this year, the number has been recently reduced, but esti mates of the volume of unemployment vary because of the difficulties of definition and measurement. COMMODITY PRICES Commodity prices generally moved with in a limited range during September with European developments affecting price movements in some sensitive commodities, but Moody's index of 15 important commo dities has fluctuated narrowly. Grain quo tations reacted to war threats but showed little net improvement from the August lows. Non-ferrous metal quotations were advanced by small amounts and purchases increased. The downward movement of prices for farm (Please turn to page 56)