The Secretary of Agriculture has appealed to the people of the United States to eat less cheese in order that more of that food may be available to Great Britain and other nations resisting aggression.

"The people of this country," the Secretary said, "have never considered cheese an essential part of their diet to the same degree as the British. While our stocks of cheese are 29 million pounds ahead of what we had a year ago, the British are in the market for considerable quantities of this nutritious food."

An

Castor Bean Program Announced

emergency castor-bean production program designed to furnish this country ultimately with a supply of adapted seed stocks in the event that defense developments should make it expedient to increase domestic castoroil production in 1942, was recently announced by the Department of Agriculture.

The program will be limited to 11 counties in the black-land area north and south of Dallas, Tex. It will be carried out in cooperation with the Texas Power & Light Co., which has most of the available adapted seed stocks and technical information which it has acquired in its experiments with castor beans as a possible new crop in the agricultural territory it serves. The company is donating the seed and the services of some of its technical personnel.

Kentucky Dam Races to Completion

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The construction of Kentucky Dam will be completed in the spring of 1944, a full year ahead of schedule, adding 160,000 kilowatts to installed power capacity, opening a plete 9-foot channel to navigation, and more than doubling the present flood-control storage capacity of the TVA system.

The year's saving in time at Kentucky will be accomplished without any increase in the cost of construction; and, in addition, one more generator than originally planned will be installed without increasing the original cost estimate of $105,000,000.

Machine-Tool Revolving Fund Increased

Another $17,000,000 has been added to the War Department's revolving fund for the purchase of machine tools. This money will be used to purchase machine tools for the manufacture of certain ordnance items for which contracts have not been let.

Defense Savings Bonds

Sales of Defense Savings Bonds during the first week of June totaled $75,009,000, the Treasury reports. Also, $747,000 worth of

Defense Savings Stamps were sold.

May sales of bonds totaled $438,230,000. The first week in June raises the grand total of bond sales since the campaign began May 1 to $513,239,000.

The farm products and foods groups rose about 3 percent; fuels, 0.8 percent; housefurnishing goods, 0.6 percent; and metals and metal products, 0.1 percent. Hides and leather products and chemicals and allied products declined fractionally while textile products, building materials and miscellaneous commodities remained unchanged at last week's level.

Each of the 10 major group indexes is higher than last month. In the past 4 weeks, farm product prices have risen 6 percent; fuel and lighting materials, 4.5 percent; foods 3.2 percent; hide and leather products and textile products. 2.2 percent; and housefurnishing goods, 1.1 percent. Metals and metal products, building materials, chemicals and allied products and miscellaneous commodities are less than 1 percent above the May 10 level.

During the first week in June a large group of agricultural prices, led by wheat, cotton and wool, advanced. In addition to the sharp seasonal rise in prices for potatoes, the quotations for onions, apples, eggs and peanuts also moved higher. Wheat prices rose 1 percent, on reports of probable damage to the crop because of heavy rains, and oats advanced 2 percent.

Quotations edged upward for steers and sheep. However, prices for barley, corn, rye, flaxseed and for calves, hogs and live poultry were lower than a week ago.

Foods and Vegetables

Fruits and vegetables as a group averaged 14 percent higher than for last week, as short supplies of potatoes sold at a premium in certain markets; drought affected prices of fresh vegtables and citrus fruits rose seasonally. Prices also increased for dried fruits and canned vegetables. Dairy products were up 3.1 percent and meats 2.3 percent as butter, cheese, milk, pork, lamb and mutton all increased. Oleo oil and cottonseed oil moved upward while lard, edible tallow and olive oil receded slightly from their recent high levels. Lower prices were reported for flour and corn meal. The continued tight shipping situation accounted for higher prices for imported foods including cocoa beans, pepper, raw sugar and tea.

Chain Drug Store Sales

Chain drug store sales declined about 2 percent from March to April, based on reports from a sample group of more than 2,100 stores in the trade.

This decrease was somewhat less than the usual drop recorded between these months in recent years, and the Department's seasonally adjusted index advanced to 111 for April from 110 for March.

After allowance is made for the difference in the number of days in the respec

tive months, however, daily average sales without adjustment for seasonal changes were slightly larger in April than in March.

As compared with a year earlier, April sales were up about 11 percent.

Inventories

The cost value of inventories held by chain drug stores rose about 2 percent during April and at the end of the month were 8 percent larger than the April 1940 month end total. The increased volume of sales this April, however, reduced the stock-sales ratio for the month to a figure slightly below that of a year earlier.

All of the 1939 Census of Manufactures schedules, except those for printing and publishing and allied industries, carried inventory questions. In addition, establishments manufacturing textile products on a contract basis have been eliminated from the inventory tabulations.

Establishments whose value of products amounted to $52,094,454,603, or 96.4 percent of the total value of products reported to the 1939 Census of Manufactures, indicated that they did or did not have inventories at the beginning and end of the year.

This is a better ratio of returns than was received in the 1937 Census of Manufactures when questions on inventories were in

The reported data on chain drug store operations are summarized in the table. The inventory figures represent in almost all cases the cost value of stocks on hand at the end of the month. The ratio of stocks to sales presented in this report is based on stores reporting both items; it cannot be computed directly from this table, since total sales for the 18 firms reporting inventories are not shown separately.

Comparing 1939 and 1937

Inventories in the hands of manufacturers at the beginning of 1939 were materially above those at the opening of 1937, but at the end of 1939 inventories were on a lower level than at the close of 1937, according to preliminary figures compiled from compiled from the returns of the 1939 Census of Manufactures by the Bureau of the Census.

cluded in the schedules for the first time, for which census establishments representing 94.6 percent of the total value of products made satisfactory reports.

Only 3.6 percent of the manufacturing establishments failed to report inventories in 1939, as against 5.4 percent in 1937.

Inventories of finished products at the beginning of 1939 totaled $3,959,996,117, an increase of $437,027,160, or 12.4 percent over similar inventories reported at the opening of 1937.

Inventories of materials, supplies, etc., on the first day of 1939 were reported as $4,996,471,944, or only 0.4 percent above those on hand at the opening of 1937.

Total inventories of finished products and materials and supplies at the beginning of 1939 were 5.4 percent over those at the opening of 1937.

At the close of 1939 manufacturers re