Full Quarter

For most of U.S. business, the first three months of 1968 added up to a very full quarter. In a survey of 508 early reporting companies, the Wall Street Journal found combined profits up by 11.1% over the first quarter of 1967. When it weighed in with its own 567-company study last week, the New York Times reported gainers outnumbered losers 422 to 145 as earnings leaped 13% beyond last year's figures.

There were few retreats. Some airlines, among them Pan American, TWA and Eastern, lost money as they battled increased wages and costs. Copper companies were down some 30% as a group from the first three months of 1967 because of strikes--which afflicted few other industries last quarter.

While necessarily incomplete, the surveys showed that almost every other area of the economy enjoyed the surge. Earning $1.3 billion, 26 oil companies outpaced their 1967 first quarter by 16%. Rebounding from the slump that hit most of U.S. business last year, steelmakers' profits rose by 40%, while big gains were also recorded in aircraft (59%), building equipment (34%), textiles (30%), office equipment (29%), chain-store retailing (24.5%), rubber (21%) and Pharmaceuticals (17%), not to mention cement, up a solid 236%. Other increases came in tobacco, broadcasting, food products and electronics. Among the leaders:

P: Ford, with record first-quarter sales of $3.9 billion, up 36% from last year's sluggish first period, earned $222 million--an 84% increase that beat General Motors' 17% profit rise (to $457 million) but not Chrysler's impressive 280% jump (to $69.3 million) over the same quarter last year, when it was hit by an unusually severe combination of higher costs, lower sales.

P: U.S. Steel, the industry leader, forged a 23% earnings increase (to $50.8 million), while second-ranked Bethlehem Steel posted a 36% rise (to $43.9 million), as stockpiling orders surged in anticipation of a strike this summer.

P: Penn Central, reporting for the first time since the Feb. 1 merger of the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central, earned $13.4 million, or 16.6% more than last year's first quar ter, when the partners were competitors.

P: J.C. Penney Co., the nation's second-largest general merchandiser (after Sears, Roebuck & Co.), rang up $208 million sales in March, thus outracing last March by 8.3% and completing a five-year stretch of consecutive monthly-sales increases. Since 1962, sales have risen from $1.7 billion to 1967's $2.75 billion--a 60% increase that edged out Sears's (59%), far exceeded that of third-ranked Montgomery Ward (32%).

P: McDonnell Douglas Corp., making only its fourth quarterly report as a merged company, earned $14.8 million. The Douglas Aircraft division, which had losses that would have cost the pair $3.8 million in the 1967 quarter, finally returned to the black in March.

P: Standard Oil of New Jersey, the industry's front runner, increased profits 12.7%, to $320 million--another record quarter like the ones at Mobil (up 14.8%), Texaco (13.3%), Shell (13%), California Standard (10.5%), Gulf (10.1%) and Cities Service (3%).

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