The necessity for stiff, non-inflammable, but light partitions and fittings, suggests that the development of steel backed or strengthened building members will be accelerated This covers the field concerned with such things as steel walls, floors and ceilings, where a strong movement has grown based on the welding of steel sheets to veneers of traditional material like plaster, cement and boarding, and also with that centred round the development of steel windows and doors. According to reports from firms already engaged in this department of industry, the market demand is resisting the general trade decline and even expanding. Some steel window companies have more orders on hand than ever before. in spite of contraction elsewhere.
To sum up, it is evident that the nation is committed to a thoroughgoing campaign to provide adequate air raid protection and to put existing structures in a condition to resist attack. This will give an appreciable stimulus to steel production, and particularly to the sheet trade and the lighter rolling mills. On the manufacturing side, steel frame fabricators and producers of steel fittings for building will chiefly beneft. In the steel industry proper the impetus will be substantial ana widespread, though it will not cause any radical change in the basic conditions to the trade. In the manufacturing departments, the trade stimulus will be more specialist in form and will be felt by well defined group million tons of steel. The space to be allotted to each person in underground shelters of the steel arch type is apparently equivalent to about 18 inches of lineal length. This means that some 13,000 miles of tunnelling would be necessary to house the whole population. The top figure for the steel tonnage required would therefore be under 2,500,000 tons This is a substantial amount, and if jit were spread over a working campaign of a few years it would be of major importance to the steel inausiry. It is quite unlikely, however, that full protection would be extended to the whole populace. Persons living in scattered and remote districts would hardly require it. In any case, great numbers of people [would seek shelter in other direc-
U.S. Imports from Sudeten Area Washington, Nov. 10.
That full duty would now be applied to products imported from the Sudeten area of Czechoslovakia was confirmed in a statement issued by the Customs Bureau here today.
Thus, this action denies the tariff concessions which were formerly granted on importations from this district.
Textiles, glassware, hops, pottery and earthenware will be particularly affected by this ruling.—Reuter. tions and in existing buildings and tunnels of one description and an-Other. No estimates can be accepted, of course, as anything more than a general indication of the order of the tonnages likely to be required The figures suggested are almost certainly on the high side.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.