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Show WEEKLY TRADE REVIEW. Retail Business Helped by Storms and Low Temperatures. NEW YORK, Dec. 14. Dun's tomorrow will say: Only in the retail school have storms I and low temperatures been helpful to : business, and it is of less general im-' im-' portance that demands for seasonable i commodities have been accelerated and j augmented than that transportation problems have been aggravated and I manufacture still further impeded. 1 Through the vigorous and unusual measures meas-ures taken to better conditions, partial relief from the freight congestion was indicated before real winter weather set In over a wide area, but since then the situation has become even more troublesome trouble-some and not a few plants have been forced to shut down altogether or to appreciably ap-preciably reduce operations because of the added difficulties of obtaining fuel. Tho stoppage or curtailment of work is especially unfortunate at a time when the pressure for supplies of various materials ma-terials and merchandise for the government govern-ment and other interests is so great, and in branches where regular buying has diminished the change is not unwelcome, with producers hampered ax they are. That strictly civilian trade, while not so conspicuously active as previously, remains re-mains large in the aggregate, reports make clear, and Christmas shopping has , started in a way forecasting favorable , results on the whole. But holiday purchases pur-chases in most instances are both more conservative and discriminating thaji last year and emphasize the movement toward to-ward economy which has grown out of the war and which is spreading in about j all sections. Weekly bank clearings, $5,177,251,052. |