OCR Text |
Show ' near future, with the tendency continuing downward. Hopes are i pinned on the fall. And what that season will bring is an unknown un-known qunantity. 1 A great many Americans are justifiably confused " by recent events abroad. The meeting between be-tween Hitler and Mussolini, in which the two dictators toasted each other and made fulsome pledges! of friendship, coming so soon on the new England-Italian agreement, has further mixed up the European crazy-quilt. Most of the experts are coming to the conclusion that Mussolini is playing both ends against the middle. He wants to avoid trouble trou-ble with Germany. He likewise wants to avoid trouble with France and England. He doesn't know what countries would be strongest in the event of war, and he naturally wants to back a winner. win-ner. So he is sitting on the fence. And in the meantime, England and France have lately completed an agreement which is regarded as being of tremendous importance. import-ance. Under its terms, in the event of war, Paris and London would work together toward a common goal. Their general staffs would cooperate, as would theiri diplomats. As Dorothy Thompson puts it, "It really amounts to establishing es-tablishing a common army, a common command, and a common foreign' policy." The general tendency of recent events is to isolate Germany, and to make it exceedingly dangerous for Hitler to attempt the conquest that everyone believes he has in mind now that of Czechoslovakia, whose most potent allies are France and the U.S.S.R. The Japanese question has become less of a problem for the time being Japan is finding the going very hard in China, and she is too busy there to adventure elsewhere. else-where. And most authorities feel that even if she finally subdues China, which is by no means assured, as-sured, she will have to spend so much in men, .money and materials mater-ials that she will be left enervated. ener-vated. Vitally Important will be the next English general election, which must come before the end of 1940. Chamberlain has many enemies chief among them Winston Win-ston Churchill, most brilliant and unpredictable of the present-day British statesmen. Churchill isi a strong backed of Eden, who is today to-day playing tennis, painting wat-ercolors, wat-ercolors, and saying nothing. The fireworks are being prepared and the outcome of the fight may revolutionize re-volutionize British foreign policy. ECONOMIC HIGHLIGHTS o One of the frankest commentaries commen-taries made on the business situation situ-ation by any big Administration authority recently, came from Secretary Se-cretary of the Treasury Morgen-thau, Morgen-thau, who said that business appears ap-pears to be steadily getting worse. That pessimistic conclusion conclu-sion is amply supported by the statistics. Business is . not getting worse rapidly but the trend of the indexes is undoubtedly downward. April was an exceedingly disappointing disap-pointing month. Attitude of many experts is reflected by the Annalist, Annal-ist, which said on April 29 that "by the time the new pump priming prim-ing program) becomes effective (assuming it becomes effective at all, business will be "so depressed that any probable stimulus will merely result in raising the business busi-ness index to a level .little if any higher than it was when the program pro-gram was first announced," Looking at the picture ti"om the statistical point of view, rT.e business busi-ness activity graph in! Business Week for April 30 provides some illuminating comparisons. At that time, the general index for the latest week covered stood at 58.1 as compared with 58.4 for the preceding pre-ceding week, and 59.1 for the week a month previous. A year before, the index was at 77. The average for tht years 1933-37 was! 66.3. Thus, business is now operating at a level substantially below-even below-even that average, which included includ-ed three years of abject industrial depression, one fair year (1936) and only about seven or eight months comparatively prosperous times (January to October, 1937). Equally serious is the fact that the decline has finally reached practically all lings of activitv not just a limited number, as was the case when the current "recession" "re-cession" began. Extremely severe drops hav occurred in electric power production and freight car loadings a fact that casts a great deal of light on the retrenchment re-trenchment taking place 'throughout 'through-out all industry and commerce Steel is down again, with pn-peels pn-peels for the immediate future dark. The automobile industry is largely in the doldrums, and it is reported that plans for 1939 changes and innovations have been abandoned by some makers. In all the basic industries strongly favorable factors, either for the long or short pull, seem to be almost al-most entirely lackihg. Industry tried to gain some :heer from the President's recent statements to the effect that he wished to cooperate with business leaders. However, there is only 1 tenuous hope that anvthing tangible will come of it. There lave been many "conferences" in he nast, and none have been fruitful. Summing up, the outlook is for little change in business in the |