The United States entered the field eight months ago, when the United States Steel Corporation sent seven men here, experts in steel making and transportation; assayers and others, to work with Brazilian enginee: After five months of study they agreed that steel could be manufactured profitably in Brazil and presented to the Brazilian Government a 100-page report and declared the desire to undertake the job and form a corporation jointly with the Brazidan Government with a. capital of 800,000 contos, or about $40,000,000.
The record of Canadian business conditions in the past year may be divided into three distinct phases states "The Times," At the beginning of the year the Dominion was still suffering from the recession which developed in 1938. From the end of the first quarter, however, there was a revival in industrial production under the lead of the lumber, newsprint, and heavy industries, and this advance continued steadily to widen until the end of August, Thus the official index of the physical volume of business stood in August at 125.2 (1926=100), against an, average of 112.9 for 1938, and the employment index at 115, against 111.4.
Before the outbreak of war, then, and in spite of recurrent political tension oversea, Canada had already experienced a measure of economic recovery. And most observers were of the opinion that this gradual recovery movement would have continued irrespective of political events in Europe. Actually, the outbreak of war, which marked the beginning of the year's third phase, quickened up the process of trade expansion, and in fact to a large degree altered the face of Canada's industrial life, The rise in the volume of business was sharp enough to bring estimated industrial production up to the record high levels of 1927 and 1929, Total domestic exports, exclusive of gold, rose during the year from $837,584,000 (£1167,000,000) in 1938 to $90,928,000 (£180,000,000), or by 8 per cent, Canada's Role It was apparent after the declaration of war that the main role or Canada during the conflict would be as a source of supply to Great Britain, Insufficient prominence has perhaps been given to the big changes in the Dominion's economic structure in the past couple of decades, Industrial development has been such that the economy is now far from a purely agricultural one, important though the farming industry remains. It is true that since the end of the last war the tota. area of field crops in Canada has been raised from 51,400,000 acres to 58,300,000 acres, but the expansion in other directions has been much greater and there has been a really spectacular increase in the production of minerals, and particularly metals, which are so valuable to the war effort, The value of the mineral output last year reached the new high record of $470,179,000. Outputs of gold, nickel, copper, lead and zine were many times those of 25 years ago.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.