It was expected that the industry would climb into the billion dollar fold—men said that the fourth industry in the country had the financial stage set for starring the “Big Billion,” and they never permit themselves to see a possibility of a recession unless steel becomes too great to be kept within bounds—in short material price is the only problem the venturesome automobile maker will put down for earnest discussion. Accurate figures spread on the records of the National Automobile Chamber of Commerce indicate that retail sales of motor vehicles in 1916 totaled $1,068,028,273. This total includes a production of 1,525,578 cars and 92,130 trucks. The passenger cars were valued at $921,378,000 and the trucks were listed at $166,650,275. When the statisticians of the national organization compared figures and found the gain was 80 per cent, and paused long enough to find that the gain the year previous had been 36 per cent, they talked about the complete automobilization of the country and the inevitable addition of more than 2,000,000 to the total of cars in operation in the United States. PRICE DROP IN ONE YEAR. Weight decreased, as the engineers had planned, and the average price of cars decreased in one year from $671 to $605. In the eight previous years the average price of automobiles had dropped from $2,125 to $814. Wall Street, which once had only the cold shoulder for the automobile producer, took a permanent seat at the table where daily the industry was dissected, analyzed, weighed, discussed and reviewed; and, as a result, it is as difficult to keep from the financial eyes of Wall Street the operations of the great automobile factories as it would be to hide the clearing house reports. The keenest financial and commercial experts of the United States have learned to keep the motor car industry constantly under surveillance—not that they mistrust the manufacturers, but that they have found the industrial situation is so firmly linked to the dollars and cents program of the country’s economy that nothing may successfully act to deprecate the importance of the auto industry. Time was when General Motors sold as low as 40—what Stock Exchange expert would expect to see this stock sell for less than 105?—and if conditions were to become so chaotic that General Motors, with its prosperous units, were to break to a point or two under par, what financial student would not search for something akin to a Black Friday?