Evening star., 1935-04-07
Taylor and Young Scorn
"QuaCk" Notions Born
During Depression.
SHIFTING PERIOD FAILS
TO DISTURB COURAGE
Business Refuses to Surrender to
Soft and Flabby Thinking
Despite Rapid Changes.
BY J. G. DONLEY.

VI
Special Dispatch to The Star.
NEW YORK, April 6-Everybody
has seen a store. with the front torn
out and rough boards up, Haunting
the sign, Business going on as usual
during alterations" World business
is pretty much in that state today.
1t is not hopeless situation, but it
is difficult.
The greatest tribute that can be
paid to the business man is the plain
fact that he is trying to carry on
during alterations in world currencies,
in the balance of European military
power, and in the very rules of the
game of business itself.
Such courage, it would seem, is
destined eventually to come out on
top. 1t is most significant that busi-
ness has come through hard times
surrendering to soft and
flabby thinking. As Myron c. Taylor.
chairman of the United States Steel
Corp, put it in his address to the
annual meeting of stockholders,
American industry has 'weathered the
storm without surrendering its faith" F"
The forward movement already be-
gun" Mr.. Taylor said. lis plainly
gathering impetus. and it should,
when it advances, sweep away all un-
sound policies which our great pros
perity in the past has engendered
and many quack notions which have
been born Of our adversely"
Natural Recovery Seen.
If We are to judge from such re-
marks and those of others who carry
large industrial responsibilities, busi-
ness leaders retain their belief in a
recovery, to be based upon a
accumulation Of deferred de-
mand. And they expect such move
ment, when it gets under way, to
sweep away the false work" and
set up by those who have
earnestly believed in and worked for
a sort of supernatural" recovery.
Detailing actual improvement over
a year ago, the steel executive re-
ported that new orders booked in the
first quarter of this yeear totaled
l l.774,272 tons, against 1.504,O15 in the
first quarter of last year, and 63l 900
in 1888 And he expressed the belief
that the broad upward trend of steel
interrupted by the de-
preston. would eventually be resumed,
because of the backlog
of steel requirements due to deferred
maintenance and construc-
ton during the five years of the de-
preston
Another industrial leader, Owen D.
Young, chairman of the General Elec-
trio Co., took occasion during the week
to dispute the prophets Of disaster.
MIR. Young has nothing but scorn for
those who preach that we have fin
ished with the pioneering, the develop
ment and the perfection of this coun-
try and. therefore, have nothing to do
now but to sugar off that the kettle
with the boiling sap of vital progress
can now be taken from the fire and be
permitted to crystaliZe into a per-
manent, rigid and immovable form" "
THE most valuable item on the
balance sheet of America has been,
and if nurtured will continue to be
indefinitely, the things we do not
know" Mr.. Young observed. In other
words, the products of research and
development yet to come.
Express Shipments Rise.
These are, of course, broad consid-
erations and not all the surface indi-
cations of the week fit into a picture
of progress-unless portion Of 1t is
But on the positive side there continue
to be evidences of the slowly rising
ground-swell of recovery. At the an
nual meeting of the Railway Express
Agency, its president said that its
traffic had recovered to a point at
which virtually all its 10000 employees
had been returned to work. Express
shipments in 1884 gained 1881 per
cent in number, while the poundage
of air express was slightly more than
doubled
Railway Express is controlled by the
railroads. 1t is significant. therefore,
that the principle behind its program
of recovery is the adoption of every
facility, including highways and air.
ways, that can be used in express
transport.
Automobile output and sales con-
tinue to be one of the brightest spots.
But steel production has slipped bit
again, what with the uncertainty over
codes and eventual disposition of the
baSe-point pricing system. And power
output is rejecting the increasing day.
light hours and the reduction in work.
ing time at the cotton mills. There Is
high hope, however, for April retail
trade, and the prediction is made that
following declines throughout the
country in March, sales of merchan-
disc this month will likely show gains
of from IS to 80 per cent over April,
1884.
Evidence accumulates that men are
being put back to work here and there
Lay-offs may balance these gains for
a time, but with the opening OF the
outdoor work season and such prog
ress as may be expected on work re-
lief projects, the net result must even-
tually be reduction in unemploy-
ment. A compilation recently made
of the number of employees on the pay
rolls of a group of the largest indus
trial corporations in 1884, as against
1888, shows an increase during last
year of 81 per cent. Even United
States Steel, in the supposedly very
backward heavy industry" group
employed 189,881 in 1884, against 172,-
SIT in 1888, and Bethlehem Steel hao
44,430 on its pay rolls, against 3,504
(Copyright 1885. by North American
Newspaper Alliance. Inco