1945 - Commerce

Commerce

German industrialist and Nazi supporter Albert Voegler commits suicide April 14 at age 68 following his arrest by U.S. troops (he has been responsible for war production in the Ruhr).

Congress acts June 12 to reduce gold reserve requirements for Federal Reserve banks from 40 percent on notes and 35 percent on deposits to 25 percent on both. It ends the Treasury Department's power to issue Federal Reserve Bank notes that have had no gold backing.

World copper reserves are estimated at 100 million tons. The world will use roughly that much copper in the next 30 years, but the reserve will then be 300 million tons as a result of new discoveries and demand will fall as substitutes are found for copper wires.

The top 8.5 percent of Americans hold 20.9 percent of U.S. personal wealth, down from 32.4 percent of personal wealth in 1929.

President Truman lifts the wartime wage freeze August 16 but says wages may be increased only if the increases do not force price increases. He orders full resumption of consumer-goods production August 18 with a return to free markets and collective bargaining between labor and management. Walter P. Reuther heads the United Automobile Workers (UAW) unit at General Motors and asks for a 30 percent wage boost, demanding that GM open its books so everyone can see whether the company can afford the increase without raising prices. He knows GM will not agree, and GM workers walk off the job November 21 (see 1946).

Family allowance checks go out in August to more than 3.5 million British families under welfare law enacted by Parliament at the initiative of MP James "Jim" Griffiths, 55, who has led coal miners in his native Wales. Families with more than one dependent child receive 25 pence per child each month (the law will later be repealed).

Membership in U.S. labor unions reaches its height: 35.5 percent of the work force is unionized, up from 11.6 percent in 1930, but the percentage will fall to 31.4 percent by 1950 and continue to drop, reaching 14.1 percent by 1997. Nearly half of all U.S. women have held jobs at some time during the war, working in offices, factories, shipyards, and shops. Some 250,000 women have worked in plants making electrical equipment, 100,000 on production lines producing ammunition, 300,000 in aircraft plants, 150,000 in shipyard jobs as riveters, welders, and crane operators. Washington has told women that victory could not be achieved without their entry into the workforce (1.47 million mothers of young children have held war jobs, despite the official government direction, "Now, as in peacetime, a mother's primary duty is to her home and children"). More than half of all female workers have for the first time in history been married women, and columnist Max Lerner has expressed fears that the war has created a "new Amazon" who will "outdrink, outswear, and outswagger the men."

U.S. women lose their jobs as men return from the war and reclaim positions they left when they joined the service, but the number of women in the workforce has climbed from 14 million to 19 million and will never again fall to 14 million (although most women workers are from families with below-average incomes).

A U.S. tariff act empowers the president to encourage reciprocal trade by reducing tariffs to 25 percent of original schedule rates (see 1934; GATT, 1947).

A revenue act passed by Congress November 8 provides for nearly $6 billion in tax reductions and eliminates the excess profits tax. The war has cost the United States about $321 billion (10 times as much as World War I), of which 41 percent was paid by taxes (as compared with 33 percent from 1917 to 1918) and the rest by borrowing. The U.S. National Debt has quintupled to $259 billion.

The U.S. Gross National Product (GNP) for the year is $211 billion, up from $90 billion in 1939 and double the booming 1929 figure, even though strikes have closed down Ford, General Motors, and other plants. Strikers shut down bituminous coal mines through much of the fall.

France nationalizes her four leading banks under a December 2 law that makes the Banque de France a state-owned institution.

The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank) comes into being December 27 (see Bretton Woods, 1944); 21 countries have subscribed nearly $7.2 billion, nearly $3.2 billion of it from the United States. The bank's first loans will be made to France in May 1947 at interest rates of 3 and 3ΒΌ percent.

Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average closes December 31 at 192.91, up from 152.32 at the end of 1944.