Press and Sun-Bulletin from Binghamton, New York • 24

Bub iness Eyes Product Safety, Fines The Evening Press Business Sept. 28, 1973 from being made and sold. It can police manufacturers and retailers a retailer who sells a non-conforming product is just as guilty as the company that made it and prosecute violators in federal court. THIS MAKES the CPSC one of the most powerful independent agencies in the history of the federal government. Simpson says he is not going to be backward about using the powers given the commission.

If he did not use them, he said, "I can only feel we would be negligent." One thing the CPSC inherited when it came into existence May 14 was an elaborate, computerized system for collecting information on accident injuries, called NEISS, there would be almost nothing left on the market." One consideration is the "voluntary nature" of the risks in using a product. Is it ski equipment, or a baby crib? If the latter, the CPSC will be much tougher in setting safety 'standards. As a matter of fact, cribs are a product that the commission jumped to regulate, even before it had decided on its priority list dangerous, products, which will be out later this month. A standard is almost ready on cribs, including the spacing of bars in their sides to eliminate the danger that babies will strangle themselves, as more than 200 do every year. Once the crib standard is issued, the commission will have absolute power to keep non-conforming infant beds Montgomery Ward To Sell City Store Montgomery Ward Co.

said it has agreed to sell its four-story, foot department store at 35 Main Binghamton, to Kradro Realty Corp. of Bing-i hamton. The closing for the sale will Jake place by the i first of the year, the firm said. Hillard H. Rozen, secretary-treasurer of Kradro, said, "We do have a potential customer that we are working with at this time." The building will be remod-, eled and air conditioned, Rozen said.

Plans are to lease the building in its entirety to one customer, he added. Montgomery Ward recently completed a 135,000 square-foot building to open soon at the Oakdale Mall in Johnson City. In The Tier into effect June 7. Industry wanted a delay. The commission refused to grant one.

But it did give a grace period of six months to firms that could not comply at once, assuming that these would mainly be small ones. They can keep on selling mattresses that do not conform until Dec. 7, but they have to attach a conspicuous label that warns purchasers the mattresses do not measure up to the federal safety standard. The CPSC was sued both by mattress-makers who said the commission was being too tough, and by Consumers Union, which thought it was too lenient in granting a delay. The commission won both cases.

Simpson was pleased. "If we get sued from both sides, and win them both, I think we must be doing something right," he said. That is the way he feels the commission will operate deliberately and conservatively as it writes and issues regulations, but toughly and aggressively when it comes to enforcing them. SUNDAY: What consumer organizations think of the Consumer Safety Product By LEE HICKLING Gannett News Service WASHINGTON American business is going to have to become product safety conscious, now that the Consumer Product Safety Commission is looking over its shoulder, or face serious legal penalties. So, for that matter, are importers.

Imported products also fall under the CPSC's power to see that consumers do not face an "unreasonable risk of injury" from the products they buy. What is an "unreasonable risk?" Commission chairman Richard Simpson cites power saws as an illustration. An adult who uses one must know that if a person is careless, he or she can lose a finger. This is the kind of danger the commission may not be able to do anything about, short of removing the product from the market the risk is inherent, obvious and avoidable. But what if a saw has a wiring defect that makes it likely it will electrocute a user? This is a hidden, avoidable risk, and something should be done about it.

"COMMON SENSE has to come into play," Simpson said. "If you try to make every product perfectly safe. PRESS SPECIAL Frithiof V. Johnson, con-: suiting engineer of General Electric's aircraft equip-: ment division, Binghamton, has won the Charles P. Steinmetz Award for GE employes who have dis-: tinguished themselves through unusual technical achievement.

New Consumer mg Power Johnson, 520 Murray Hill Road, Binghamton, has received 18 patents for his creative technical work and currently has two pending. He has been employed by GE for 43 years. Brokers Shiver as Banks Offer Stock George Nigolian of Sherburne was appointed to a new position of manager of Leo D. Craine Realty of Sherburne. He was economic development coordinator for the Chenango County Area and the State Office of Local Government and was former executive vice president of the Chenango County Chamber of Commerce.

Sigmund A. Smith, president of Broome Commu- nity College, will be the featured speaker at the International Management Council meeting next Tuesday at 6:30 p. m. in St John's Memorial Center; Johnson City. Victor M.

Taylor, 4529 Salem Drive, Vestal, was appointed assistant trust officer at Endicott Trust Company. Taylor owned the insurance agency of Taylor and Chubb, Inc. until 1969 when he joined Endicott Trust as a trust representative. By STEPHEN CARPENDER The financially troubled retail securities business has greeted a new stock in-vestment service offered by asset-rich commercial banks with a shiver. But only one of the Binghamton area commercial banks offers customers a stock investment plan, and that doesn't seem to raise the hair on the back of the necks of many Triple-Cities brokers.

A form of the automatic investment service recently introduced by two of the country's banking giants, Security Pacific. in Los Angeles and Chase Manhattan in New York City, has been growing at Marine Midland Bank-Southern since the mid-1960s. The giants' plan permits customers to buy a choice of 25 blue chip stocks directly from the bank with funds from $25 to $500 automatically deducted monthly from a bank account. At Marine Midland a special "Equity Advisory Account" can be started with a minimum of $8,000, and can be increased, in increments of only $2,000. The account is -operated through the offices of the bank's trust department.

Although Marine's plan is not an automatic monthly deduction from a customer's checking account, the program is aimed at the same clientele the larger city banks are looking at the small investor. WHEN BROKERS began turning away small customers in favor of the more lucrative industrial account.s some bankers began musing over how to accommodate them. Banks say their investiment programs will bring the disappearing small investor back into the market. And bringing the small investor back into the market might not be such a bad deal for brokers, who have been trying to keep up with a iifill It is likely bicycles will be high on the priority list, however: So may be matches, both paper book and kitchen. Simpson has long felt that they need not be as dangerous as they are.

s-. When the commission decides to issue a standard, it is supposed to take no more than 150 days to write it a period that some industry critics think is too short. Then come 60 days for hearings or comments, with revision possible before the regulation is made final. Simpson said the CPSC is not going to be hasty or arbitrary in using its great power. He cites the commission's first major action as an illustration of how it will operate.

Before it was two weeks old, the commission had to decide what to do with a standard for the flammabflity of mattresses, set by the Commerce Department, due to go al banks from engaging in the sale and distribution of securities. On Feb. 27 of this year, however, the comptroller of currency issued a statement that appears to permit the banks' automatic investment programs. But, while maintaining that such business may still be unprofitable for them, the big city brokers view the move by banks as a thrust into their midst that could, if unchecked, devour them. Several area brokers, asked for their opinion about the bank stock investment plans, said that they were unconcerned and unaffected.

One said he was aware of only one. bank in the- country that had introduced the investor account, when in fact, along with Security Pacific and Chase Manhattan there are another 20 major banks that have signed up for the program and another 100 banks reported to be thinking about the program. -AERIAL PHOTO BY GEORGE BOWEN from the Dow Jones Wire 8-E for National Electronic Injury Surveillance System. Every day, a computer in Washington collects, automatically by long-distance phone lines, data on the causes of injuries treated in hospitals chosen as a representative sample of the whole country. In July, for instance, there were 34 injuries caused by electric dryers.

Gas stoves caused 428; drinking glasses 2,501, bicycles 16,367 and so on, in about 400 categories, But the gas stove injuries were generally serious burns and asphyxiation. The drinking glass injuries were mainly cuts, not so serious The bicycle accidents involved a lot of children. SUCH THINGS are taken into account, along with the raw statistics, as the CPSC uses the NEISS reports to guide it in deciding what products ought to get its earliest attention. tually scorned the business of the small investors, don't want to give up any ground, this broker said. "THE SECURITIES industry fears future problems," Manchester said, "but it is too early to tell if the banks will compete with stock houses." Meanwhile, charges of "unfair" practices on the part of the banks are coming from Ray Garrett chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), James.

Needham, chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, the Mutual funds industry and the Investment Company Institute. The brokerage fraternity argues that it has been the intention of Americans ever since the Great Depression of the 1930s to separate the banking and securities trading function. The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 sought to prohibit nation While the administration has a "new-found modesty" about forecasting, he said, the decision not to say anything led to uncertainties and the belief that the government Fellner Favors Rapid End to Phase 4 Controls WASHINGTON William Fellner, president Nix- on's nominee to the Council of Advisers, told reporters he favors a rapid end to Phase 4 controls. Fellner said if controls aren't lifted by the end of the year, "they certainly shouldn't last much longer." Fellner said that should the government follow a "reasonably restrained monetary policy." The nation has a "fair chance" of getting inflation down to a mod-erate level "without a tax increase." iji However he urged that present monetary policy continue restrained and he urged the Federal Reserve and, budgetary authorities to continue to "clamp down" on monetary and iscal policies. 4 FRiTHIOF V.

JOHNSON ST il Thev also said some in vestors were disappointed major banks failed to follow the lead of a St Louis bank in lowering their prime "rate from a historic high of-10 per cent. Area Firms The following quotations are furnished by E.F. Hutton and represent merely an indication of. current market value in trading as of about II a.m. to Bid 9'4 34' 57.

40? 37 I6'l 30S 27V4 4 71 1 37 63 43 10 17! 26 3H 24 24 13 26 29'4 19 29 54'4j 1 3 Asked Allegheny Bank of NY Bankers Trust NY Becton-Oickinson Bendix Champion Products Charter NY Columbia Gas Crowley's Fays Drugs GAP- Gannett GE Gladding IBM Keith-Clark Kroehler Lincoln First US. Good Maple Press Marine Midland McOonough MelvMIe Shoes Morton-Norwich Raymond Robintech Sinaer 17'A t04t 26'. 3' 20 Spauiding Subaru of America. 3' 4P4 71 Uniersal Instruments Victory I1 3 Treasury Balance uicuiur.Tnu i oi Th rath tk 1 Plans JEROME H. KANE, vice president and trust officer at Marine-Southern, said that the bank plans are working in concert and not in competition with the brokerage firms.

Bank programs for the small investor are merely a conduit for funds between customers and the brokers. "Eventually we have to buy stock through brokers, so they get some business that, might otherwise be lost," he said. The blue chip stocks that are offered to customers may be the same ones that banks keep in trust departments. It is conceivable that some bankers might be able to buy and sell stocks within the bank, matching orders from their own stocks within the bank, and thus never paying broker commissions at all. But for all the interest that the bank's investment plans have drawn accounts are not growing at a fast rate.

Kane said although the "Equity Advisory Service" is almost a decade old, there are fewer than 1,000 account holders. The lure of the program is a lower commission cost for buying or selling stock than a customer could get with a stockbroker. The bank can, by making a single monthly purchase or sale of a block of stock, effectively negotiate the best transaction price. MARINE MIDLAND fees are based on the market value of an account. They are deducted from quarterly remittance and the annual rate is of one per cent with a minimum quarterly charge of $40.

Unlike the recently an-; nounced investment plans which do not offer any investment advice, in an attempt to avoid SEC regulation, Marine Midland may give suggestions for purchases which are not necessarily among the 23 blue chip stocks offered by the plan. Another drawback to the banks' plan is that the individual does not get the advantage of having his order executed at a precise time and price, as he would through a broker. Kane stressed that the Marine Midland service is not for someone looking for a quick entrance and exit, but rather is aimed at the long-term investor. John R. Evans, SEC commission, says, "The whole concept of competition between banking and the securities industry is new" and "the staff is now trying to, consider where there is need for additional legislation to regulate banks." we will have a lot of company," he said.

"It is hard to get out of controls if there is strong political demand for them. I think that demand is much weaker than it was." The newly authorized strikes at the six additional plants two production plants and four parts depots don't threaten Chrysler production as seriously as do the four plants already targeted for Monday. The Monday group includes Eldon Axle in Detroit and Indianapolis Electrical. Both plants are vital to full produc- tion. bouncing market during the past couple of years.

"If this rose becomes popular with small, investors, it may give support to the open market and could take away some of the volatility in some stocks," said John Manchester, vice president and manager of Hugh Johnson in Binghamton. "Brokers have lost money on the small investors for years and still they don't want to see competition taking any potential business," he said. "But there have not yet jieen many great inroads' and brokers are not losing many customers Manchester added. A Wall Street broker noted that the voices being raised against bank investment plans are not really concerned with losing the small investor, but rather fear encroachment of banks into other areas of broker interests. Many brokers, who have ac 1 the United States would con- tinue into 1974, but would not be so severe as to cause a re- cession.

He said economic growth would be "a little below" the 4 per cent considered normal for the American economy. AT THE SAME TIME, he said, the jobless rate in the United States would be "es-; sentially leveling off" at about the present rate of 4.8 per cent or DerhaDS a little lower. Stein said the administration was stepping back into the game of forecasting the economy's future, a practice it dropped in midsummer when inflation was booming among far ahead of its Bank Drops Prime Rate ST. LOUIS Southwest Bank of St. Louis lowered the prime rate to 9 per cent from 10 per cent, effec-live immediately.

I. A. Long, president of the bank, said the bank low- ij: ered its prime rate to bring it "more in line with the re-cent trend toward lower rates by the U.S. government and other prime short-term securities." Most New York banks had no immediate comment on the Southwest Bank's move. jj: An official of one major bank said privately, how- ever, that his bank hasn't "seen any decline in loan de-mand.

We've noted this dip in short term interest rates but it's too early yet to say whether it is a trend." 8 111 -aT- IV IX iHuPiir BAR-uMertR I ill I II IlilllillllllllllUllllllllllllllllllllllllllllUllllllllllllllljtllll't'lH, BACK AT THE MALL Montgomery Ward Co. buildings at Large building in center of photo is the main retail store, and the Oakdale Mall in Johnson City are scheduled to open Nov. 7. smaller building to left is planned as an automotive center. Aide Predicts Inflation Price Ease NEW YORK (UPI) With major banks maintaining their 10 per cent prime rate and traders taking profits from recent sharp gains, prices plunged Friday in moderate trading on'the New York JStock Exchange.

The Dow Jones industrial average, which had gained more than 60 points in the previous seven sessions, was off 8.28 to 944.99 shortly before noon. Declines led '868 to 397, among the 1,608 is-. sues crossing the tape. The two-hour turnover amounted to more than 6,560,000 shares, compared -with lO.nao.ooo traaea auring 1 the same period Thursday. Analysts noted profit taking began late Thursday and carried over into this session.

IThis is a normal procedure, they said, in light of recent sharp gains. Standard Poor NEW YORK (UPI) Standard Poor hourly indexes for Friday. (14-43 equals 10). 425-lnd IJ.RH 60-Utll SOO-Stkl a.m. 121 35 3 11 54.15 IOI.2I Noon 121 1 36.71 54.11 106 43 lrv.

close 122.31 37.02 54.2 109.08 D-J Averages 11m. 2 175.11 103 72 2 37 sun 17111 1032-219 56 noon A 9M42 176 36 Net chg. Pet. eng. 6 15 -0 27 -071 -CIS ii 0 33 0.53 1 0 Chrysler tr ikes OK Nixon NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) President Nixon's chief economist predicted Thursday the U.S.

rate of inflation would 'drop to about 3.5 per cent in mid-1974 as the American economy cools down and food prices level off. Herbert Stein, chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, said he expected a "real settling down of food prices in late spring or early summer" next year. The U.S. rate of inflation has been rocketing along at an annual rate of more than 8 per cent, and food prices recently have been climbing at an annual rate of more than 20 per cenL The price explosion has seriously undermined Nixon's effort to control prices and wages. STEIN SAID in an interview there should be a "little lull" in food prices now but predicted they will be going up again later in the fall.

Stein also said the drop in short-term interest rates in recent days in the United States has been occurring somewhat ahead of the Nixon administration's predicted timetable. "We had thought interest rates would reach a peak somewhere in the fourth quarter." he said. Stein said of recent interest rate developments, "I wouldn't say that we are now on a continuous downward path," but he indicated a peak had probably been reached. Stein said the economic cool-off now taking place in had given ud on inflation. Getting out of wage-price controls will require political support in the United States, Stein said.

"When we got out this time, The action brought to 10 the number of Chrysler plants targeted for strikes next week. The first four walkouts were authorized for Monday. The UAW signed a national pattern contract with Chrysler on Sept 17, three days after 127,000 workers staged an international walkout which cost the automaker an estimated $279 million, pr $31 million a day for nine days. DETROIT (AP) Chrysler officials are bracing for a second bolt of labor lightning which could hit as many as 10 of its plants sometime, next week. The United Auto Workers union announced on Thursday it had authorized workers at six more Chrysler plants to walk off the job next Wednesday if local contract agreements haven't been reached by strike deadlines.

iii'nce ot me ireasury aepi. on 771 77t 54.