FINANCIAL NOTES
STEEL INDUSTRY'S RECOVERY
THERE can be no denying that the British steel industry is now staging a most impressive recovery. Whether it be attributed to the reduction of prices at the beginning of the year, to the A.R.P. orders, to naval rearmament or to the absorption of the stocks unnecessarily ordered at the height of the 1937 boom, or to all of these factors together, the recovery dates from the beginning of this year and in two months has made good the greater part of the 1938 recession. Steel production in Great Britain during February amounted to 971,100 tons, compared with 811,700 tons in January, and with 655,700 tons in December, 1938. The rate of output was lower than in February last year, when 1,057,600 tons were produced, but it needs only an arithmetical calculation to show that in the longer months of March and April steel produc-
tion should with L000,000 tons a month and thus be com-
parable with the pre-recession rate of output. It could conceivably move to substantially higher levels since the extension of production capacity has continued with little interruption, and it will presumably be found that the figure of between t,t oo,000 and 1,200,000 tons a month which was the effective maximum during 1937 has been raised.
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