Facts & Figures

Retail Record. U.S. retail sales are running at an annual rate of $127 billion, almost 12% higher than 1947, the National Industrial Conference Board reported. If the rate is maintained, said N.I.C.B., 1948 sales will exceed 1929--the prewar peak--by more than 250%, while prices are only 40% higher than in 1929.

Subtraction. The cream was off the boom for Burroughs Adding Machine Co. It cut the price of its $184 adding-subtracting machine to $155, the $135 model to $125. Burroughs said it was giving consumers the benefits of its production savings. But there was another cogent reason: Burroughs had caught up with the backlog on its lower-priced machines.

Cotton Crutch. Cotton prices, which had been slipping at the prospect of the biggest crop (15,219,000 bales) since 1937, got a prop from the Department of Agriculture. The department agreed to make loans on cotton stored on farms (formerly it made them only on cotton stored in approved warehouses), thus made it possible for farmers to keep their cotton off the market and keep prices up.

Tuning Up. Television is growing so fast (see RADIO & TV) that by year's end production will reach 100,000 sets a month, 32,000 sets more than current production. So predicted Philco Corp.'s Vice President James H. Carmine. Carmine said that Philco, now producing more than 16,000 sets a month, will reach more than 40,000 a month in early 1949.

Jawbreaker. Rats, which eat $2 billion worth of U.S. food and other property annually, can't get through a tough new low-cost plywood ("Protekwood") developed by the U.S. Plywood Corp. The cost (8 1/2-c- a sq. ft.), said U.S. Plywood, makes Protekwood feasible for rat-proofing on farms and other places where concrete, sheet metal or wire mesh would be too expensive.

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