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When he was asked to predict the future, General Wood wryly recalled that last summer he felt that conditions were good and went away for a six-weeks hunting trip. "When I came back I found I was 100% wrong." This time, however, General Wood was ready to guess that good times were not far away, for Sears, Roebuck inventories, having been cut some 40%, in common with most inventories are "pretty well worked off."
Inventories. Since most economists have stoutly maintained ever since the present depression began that with a few exceptions 1937 inventories were low, it was striking that Messrs. Eccles, Knudsen and Wood were agreed that inventories had lately been at abnormal peaks. Other Senate Committee witnesses last week included Lammot du Pont and William Green and the latter also commented on high inventories.
Of retail inventories, Editor Stanley Shaw of Standard Trade & Securities last week declared: "The majority of large retail distributors appear confident that by the end of their fiscal years on Jan. 31, total inventories, which in many cases showed increases as high as 10% to 20% above year earlier levels last fall, will be down to within 3% to 5% of those carried at the fiscal year-end in 1937." Automobile factories work on an order basis and so have rather small current inventories of cars. But GM dealers alone, according to President Knudsen, now have some 200,000 cars, 60,000 more than normal. This led Pundit Hugh Johnson to comment last week: "The essential cause of this slump was too much inventory in the whole automobile industry."
*Between October and December, 1929, said Mr. Lubin, 1,400,000 lost their jobs.