Facts & Figures

Victory. In advertisements, Lustron Corp.'s $8,000 five-room steel-enamel house looked bright enough. But until last week the prospects of producing many looked dark indeed. The steelmen who run the Department of Commerce's voluntary allocations had turned thumbs down on prefabricated housing ("not successful"). Last week, after intervention by Housing Administrator Raymond Foley and Vermont's Senator Ralph Flanders, the committee handed out 58,000 tons of steel to prefabs. To Lustron (which got all but 10,000 tons of the allocation), that meant 4,800 houses.

Outsider In. Six months ago, old (66) hawk-nosed Sosthenes Behn was jarred into relaxing his one-man control of the International Telephone & Telegraph. Insurgent stockholders, led by Financier Clendenin Ryan, had succeeded in electing seven (out of 23) directors (TIME, Jan. 5). Last week, Behn voluntarily relaxed some more control. He stepped out as president (remaining as chairman and chief executive officer), got his new board to bring in an outsider: A.T.&T.'s operations & engineering chief, Vice President William H. Harrison.

Above Water. Eversharp Inc. (ball pen), which lost $3,416,985 last year (TIME, May 24), was once more able to total its earnings above water. In the first quarter ended May 31, Chairman Martin L. Straus II reported last week, Eversharp netted $318,618 after taxes.

$3,000 Flivver. Ford Motor Co., which had upped the price of its 1949 Ford by $85 to $125, last week ordered its dealers to figure their markups (25%) on the old prices (thus cutting their profit by an average $25-per-car). The grey market was already placing a far different price structure on the new Ford. On "used" car lots, new models were selling at $3,000 (the Detroit-delivered price ranges from $1,320 to $2,218).

Guilty. In New York courts last week, two skimmers of the land's fat got the bill. Grey Marketeer and Lawyer Isadore Ginsberg (TIME, Jan. 26) was convicted of grand larceny (for accepting $1,575 for a carload of rock lath that he never delivered). Gus Fusaro, $50-a-week financial district elevator man who played the market for his friends and lost $250,000 of their money, was convicted of grand larceny and operating a bucket shop.

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