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Show T ; : V I Winter Business 1 E3USINtSS going to slow down this winter? a n f f iirr.ii IrrfAi.if A ( rl ll-fit Itlll-t- ni'itir nil T S'l. Tf "fllUCT Ifli1 MitTI J" ' perity seems too good to be. true. All of the basic signs point to a continuation f the steady industrial revival now under way. M.-t encouraging encour-aging of these signs is the big freight traffic being handled by the, railroad-;. In the two w eek ended September 2 5 (latest figures available) the number of cars loaded with revenue producing freight on all railroads compared with the corresponding corre-sponding period of previous years is as follows: 1922, 1,919,210 cars; 1921, 1,727,19 cars; 1920, 1,999,275 cars; 1919, 1,990,892 cars. You'll observe that 191 cars of freight are moving for each 199 cars in 19 19 during the big boom. Business doesn't haul a lot of freight around the country unless it expects to use it, work it up into manufactured products. That means jobs. The stage is being set to keep every one busy. A car shortage is developing in some quarters. This is a bad thing for business, but it is also a gooj thing, for it shows that there Is more business than can be handled. In one recent week the railroads were asked to furnish fur-nish so many freight cars on sidings that they ran short 86,000 cars. In the same week there was a shortage of 26,000 coal cars. At other points there was a surplus of 17,614 coal cars, but these couldn't be rushed to where they were needed as fast as they were needed. All of this feverish activity on the railroads looks mighty comforting to any one who remembers, during depression, how cars stood on side tracks, accumulating rust. The old business machine is moving and getting into high speed. Sometimes the unexpected .happens, so there might be a. setback, but nothing in sight makes that seem probable. If traffic statistics seem dry, here's something along the same line that will penetrate easily to any brain: E. M. Sheehan, president of the California Grape Growers' exchange, says that about half of California's 550,000-ton wine grape crop is in danger of destruction as the result of a shortage of cars for shipping the grapes to John Doe's cellar. |