Albuquerque morning journal. [volume] (Albuquerque, N.M.) 1903-1926, 1921-01-03
BRADSTREET'S review OF The
Year 1920 With FORECAST OF
IS. The OUTLOOK FOR YEAR 1921
High Money, Credit Contractions and Buyers
Strike Apply Brakes; Unemployment and
Short Time Follow Subsistence of Buying
BY Consumers; Foreign Trade Good.
ESPECIAL CoRREsPoNDENCE mo- MoRNING JoURNALl


New York, Jan. 2.--The follow
ing report on conditions during the
year just ended and the prospects
for the new year has been issued by
Bradstreet's:
Nineteen hundred and twenty
may easily lay claim to having been
one of the biggest, though certainly
not one of the best, years in trade,
manufacture and industry. Some
new high records We're set up in
financial lines and in industrial
output, though it will hardly be
claimed that the year was as prof
liable in all lines as were some
others when outputs were smaller
and prices were lower but when
final margins were larger. Closing
as it does, with wholesale trade
stagnant, retail trade below that of
recent years, manufacturing output
restricted, unemployment, includ-
ing reduced working time in indus
try, rarely, if ever, equaled, collec-
tions backward and depression
widespread the stamp of success
as to the past is missing and the
outlook as to the future far less
favorable than prospects at it's out
set led the business world generally
10 expect Indeed, the general
feeling is to regard it as a year
whose results might best be soon
forgotten were it not for the useful
lessons that costly experience has
taught, not only to this country but
to the entire world.
The fact is that the year Just
closed was the true heir of 1919,
and as such it reaped to the full
the results of the bad seed sown in
1919, this referring to the extrava-
gance in buying for which the lat
ter year was pre- eminently noted,
the piling up of unreasonable de-
mands by labor, and the increasing
of costs beyond the ability of peo-
pie to pay who had already been
taxed to the apparent limit to carry
on a confessedly successful but i'm
mensely expensive war. The waste
of that and earlier years, most of K
unavoida ble-because war is AMI
always has been wasteful of life
and property-finally demanded a
reckoning, and it's payment bids
fair to be heritage for some years.
In this respect, while this country
has not had to pay the price IN
dead that other countries nearer
the scene of active hostilities have
had to shoulder, the effects of the
conflict, the waste of liquid capital
involved, the lowering of moral
tone that followed the exaltation OF
the war itself, the extravaganza en-
gendered, the heartburnings in
yoiyed, the straits to which the or
binary man and woman, debarred
from profiting by the conflict, were
reduced, should act as guideposts
for centuries to come and set the
seal of civilizations disapproVal
and condemnation on those who
would light-heartedly talk of war
as a solver of problems, or who,
with the terrible examples visible
on every hand, should oppose any
reasonable means of rendering III
ture conflicts impossible.
A Glance at the Past.
Whatever the causes-Whether
the overlooking of trade and indus
try with excessive costs-overpro-
duction certainly did not affect all
Iines-the exhaustion Of mobile
supplies of money, as shown by tho
making up of loans early IN the
year and their maintenance untll
the late months, or the attenuation
of credit to a degree where mar
had to be called on the raising Oh
prices of commodities to a point
where future buying became I'M
posible--the year 1920 Will pfopa-
bly, be memorable for what Is now
freely termed the buyers strike
or the "revolt of the buyer IL
would be difficult to fix the date
at which this doing without
movement first became noticeable
as a market factor. Necessity puy-
ing only was urged early in our war
wears as national duty; later II
became an apparent necessity with
a large part of the public. Lost
sight of for time in 1919 when the
strain of war was lifted, 1t was
again actively preached by puoilS
men when the snowstorm OF strikes
struck the country in the late sum
mer of that year, and was power
fully enhanced by the countless eA-
hibitions of extravaganza TO Whlcn
easily extorted wage advances gave
rise. ,4,,
Signs of public impotence with
the steadily mounting cost of Nv
ing grew as the year 1919 waned.
hut were apparently lost sight oil
in the holiday buying orgy at the
close of that year. The momentum
acquired in 1919 was sufficient 10
carry trade generally at II very hlgh
volume throughout the first month
of last wear, but severe weather
the tie-up of traffic and the acute
congestion of transportation noted
earlier in the year, but eliminating
in the winter and early spring OF