(Good) Signs of the Times

"The first half will be stronger than the second half of '98, with paper and products growing about 4 1/2 percent this year, about the same as in '97," McDeVitt says. "But the expectation right now is if we were to take the fourth quarter of '98 and look at it from an industrial production point of view, it will be about 3 percent above the fourth quarter of '97—which was close to 6 percent above the same quarter in '96. So we're definitely going to be seeing a slowing in the rate of growth—almost half of what we had in the fourth quarter of last year."