1922 | Commerce
Commerce
The Amoskeag textile mill at Manchester, N.H., announces February 2 that it is cutting wages 20 percent and increasing weekly hours from 48 to 52. Hadley, Mass.-born financier Frederic C. (Christopher) Dumaine, 55, has headed the 91-year-old mill since 1905, and it now has 650,000 cotton spindles, 78,000 worsted spindles, and 24,000 looms; he claims that demand for gingham has shrunk and that Southern mills are better equipped and more efficient. Amoskeag's 14,000 workers begin a 9-month strike that ends only when earlier wage rates are restored and working hours cut back a little.
U.S. coal miners strike for nearly 6 months to protest wage cuts. The massive walkout by the United Mine Workers (AFL) cripples industry and begins a period of chronic depression in the coal mining industry, whose operators will employ cutthroat competition to remain viable.
A 13 percent wage cut announced by the Railroad Labor Board May 28 affects 400,000 U.S. railway workers; they strike from July 1 through the summer.
Coal miners at Herrin, Illinois, riot from June 22 to 23 to protest the use of strike breakers, 26 men are killed, but both coal and railroad workers return to their jobs, defeated, in September.
Moscow signs commercial treaties and trade agreements with Italy and Sweden.
A modified Franco-German reparations agreement permits Germany to pay with raw materials such as coal, but Britain places the burden of war debts on the United States. The Balfour note states that Britain would expect to recover from her European debtors only the amount which the United States expects from Britain. The Reparations Commission adopts a Belgian proposal August 31 permitting Germany to pay reparations in installments on Treasury bills.
Germany's stock market collapses in August; the mark falls in value from 162 to the dollar, down to more than 7,000 to the dollar (see 1923).
The Fordney-McCumber Tariff Act passed by Congress September 19 returns tariffs to the levels of the 1909 Payne-Aldrich Act. The new law gives the president power to raise or lower duties by 50 percent in order to equalize production costs, but presidents will use that authority in 32 of 37 cases to further increase duties in response to appeals for protection by U.S. business and labor (see Smoot-Hawley Act, 1930).
The Federal Reserve Board created in 1913 sets up a bank-wire system to eliminate physical transfer of securities from one city to another and thus avoid theft, loss, or destruction of negotiable Treasury certificates. A Federal Reserve Bank taking in a certificate for delivery to another Federal Reserve Bank retires the certificate and instructs its sister bank by teletype to issue a new one.
A U.S. business revival led by the automobile industry begins 7 years of prosperity.
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average closes December 30 at 98.73, up from 81.70 at the end of 1921.