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Show 'MOTOR BUSINESS ILL BETBETTEH Cheerful View of Situation Taken by President of Bicj Company I 'The other day an old Oklahoma prospector told nie that an optimist in these modern times was the man 'whom you found carrvlng around U corkscrew on his key ring. This was I not such a bad definition of optlm- Ism, and at any rate I think it bc-: bc-: hooves all of us to K rf out and put n corkaCrew on our own key rlnffS, It la perfect! tme thai there has I n stringency Fey generally In business circles for some littlo time, butt it is likewise true that there has appeared a new note of opt. n Ism In trie East land that It 's due to spread oxer the ! entire country.-' I I ' I 1 1 I I I This Wai tin declaration Of T, & l.i i i a id. ( ice president ol lilt Apper-jon Apper-jon Motor ''ai company. Mr. Jarrard made careful survey of business conditions from the Cana-1 Cana-1 dlan line to the Mexican border, and lie was most eropnetic in um asaer-tion asaer-tion that an em of better business is on the way. "You know Ihe pendlum swings up and It swings down. Just as surely as it goes no it must return to the I boitOm 01 the circle and then start upward again. That explains tin ey l s iii business. Tho good period! are followed bj the bad and vice versa. v have just passed through one of tho sum;,-! in nun s so lhal now we Can expect ex-pect a. return of the good. W PSl I There Is no doubt but that business busi-ness was temporarily upset by B financial fi-nancial Stringency Which, however, was onlv threatened and did not be no nil. -. i l :ii't ii:i lit v tins nertoil was followed by the usual number of calamity howlers. If they had been Silenced the period of depression depres-sion would not have been felt nearlv as much as it was. Now If these .lino panicky persons can he silenced long enough Co enable the careful to maice a survey of the situation, there Is no dOUbt that things will soon bt-boundlng bt-boundlng along In the good old way. "This, in a nut-shell, Is the judgment judg-ment of bankers and big business men who have carefully surveyed the situation sit-uation the country over. They are familiar dot only with the surface conditions, but also the underlying fundamentals fun-damentals and In their judgment, the bustm ss readjustment, winch is goinic on h;.s created a condition which is I more psychological than It is real. M i ll BETTKR. Undoubtedly you hav- noticed that Blbert Gary ol tne United States Steel corporation said in October tnal the steel Industry was Devor in h more ' i healthy condition. Ton know there i an old saying that as goes steel so goeS gem ral Industry." and the war hs not altered ibe .el industry as a general barometer of business con-. dltlons. i " t his brings us to a consideration of another Important factor which has been bocupying the attention of th-public th-public for tho past sixty days, ! o.. prices. All eves have for some little. lime been cm Steel prices. The operators oper-ators have denied :ance earlv lust fall lhal there would be a general price cutting and this is true because steel pricet h:' been maintained. M ki i M WAK " if coures price crashes, as in ihe case of sugar, have tended to make buyers In all lines expect general price recession: throughout the business World. Hul it should bo kept in mind . that the price of SUgS,r was utinat-I utinat-I ucally Inflated and that It has mere-fallen mere-fallen lo u more nearly normal level. "And so in this period of readjustment readjust-ment will it ie with all commodities automobiles and other things alike the prices in which there have been Inflation must necessarily seek the 1 normal level. Hut these prices whit h have been honestly arrived at and in which there Is no inflation will stand l,l BH '.'Frenzied war-time buying Is at .-in end. All Inns of merchandise are being readjusted and are getting down to a sound bdsi.. Inflation is disappearing dis-appearing and bedrock value Is taking us place. Commodities like steel, which have been correctly priced all through the big buying period are not now suffering. They have been doing business on ihe sound basis to which thi other fellows musi now come. ' When the first two reductions In price on tho p;irt of automohlle manufacturers man-ufacturers weic announced, it was generally gen-erally felt that all motor-car prices would be forced to tumble. But what has happened only goes to prove that what was true of geneeal business Was Inn of the automobile industrv Ite-ecssions Ite-ecssions have occurred where Inflation Infla-tion must have been present, but a majority of the prices have stood fast so they were correctly figured on the right basts in the first place. STANDING FIRM 'According to latest reports only ' about two dozen motor car end truck i makers have reduced their prices slnci ' Henrv Ford dropped his. The othei have found their price to be honest Iv hundred odd manufacturers then must have found their prices to be honesth arrived at nnd are standing firmly upon the policy which has governed their price-making through the period Immediately following the wai ' Another ihlng you must remember is that some manufacturers who have announced a reduction coupled with n the promise that an advance might be necessary before the first of the i year. "Naturally, at such a tlrne as we are now passing through, the public In Insisting that you show them how final pi ices arc determined. In a statement which was released to the newspapers recently Mr. ISdgar Appei- son, president of this company, sgys " App'Tson prices alwav i li'iv,. been and always will be determined by the market cost of raw materials, plus the actual cost of labor and overhead with ;i fair margin added for manufactur-' manufactur-' lug profit ' " no |