Word: retail
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Business for the nation's storekeepers was better last week. Warm-weather buying gave a little fillip to retail trade, which has just about held its own since April. Merchants in the drought districts, however, were demanding 50% cancellation clauses in their contracts. Carloadings were still nearly 13% above the same week of the year before but loadings of less than carload lots, almost wholly consumer merchandise, dropped 20,000 cars from the week before. Ore & coke for the steel industry, madly piling up inventories in anticipation of strikes, accounted for no small part of the carloading gain...
...spring advance had definitely slackened. For the stockmarket's sorry performance inflationists blamed dollar stabilization and brokers blamed the threat of regulation. But more disinterested observers laid it to the flattening curve on the business chart. Trade was still far above last year but the amazing Easter retail boom had tapered off. The drought-inspired rise in commodities was more than offset by fear of a staggering drop in farmers' incomes. Power production was well above the same week of 1933 but a 2% decrease from the previous week was more than seasonal. Automobile production was still setting...
Cleveland was still in the throes of a retail gasoline strike. Two thousand filling station operators of the major oil companies walked out three weeks ago, leaving Clevelanders to depend upon some 700 independents for their entire supply. In one day 27 doctors complained that they had run out of gasoline while making calls. Last week panic-stricken motorists rushed to filling stations with cans and jugs for extra supplies as the independents threatened to stop pumping too. Promptly at midnight 689 independents shut down, did not reopen...
...Hotel McAlpin, this year's fair was a milestone. It marked the 20th anniversary of the ''birth'' of the industry in 1914 when the flow of German products was abruptly cut off. Since then the domestic industry has grown 300%, now has a retail market of $200,000,000 annually...
Last week Montgomery Ward & Co. reported March sales at the highest level of any month since 1930 and 62.6% above March 1933. Ward sales were not news, for almost every report of retail volume for the Easter season had revealed thumping big gains. But with accountants still footing figures for Industry's first quarter, no one knows precisely how much the swift advance has meant in profits. What was news in the Ward statement was President Sewell Lee Avery's estimated earnings of $1,000,000 for February and March. In the same two months of last year...