Stocks rose slightly in early trading today as a surge of dividend-related trading caused business to heat up from the previous session, the slowest since last Thanksgiving. The Dow Jones average of 30 industrials edged up 4.64 points to 1,946.12 in the first 1{ hours of trading. Gainers narrowly outnumbered losers in the overall tally of New York Stock Exchange-listed issues, with 578 issues up, 541 down and 529 unchanged. Volume on the Big Board came to 61.44 million shares as of 11 a.m. on Wall Street. In economic news, the Commerce Department said orders to U.S. factories for ``big ticket'' durable goods rose 0.8 percent in April, boosted by a jump in orders for military communications equipment. The third consecutive monthly increase, which fell in line with expectations, followed gains of 0.9 percent in March and 0.1 percent in February. It confirmed most analysts' views that the economy is growing robustly. Murray Ohio Manufacturing Co. leaped 7~ to 59[ after a delay caused by an overload of buy orders. A federal judge ruled Monday that Sweden's AB Electrolux could proceed with its bid for Murray, and Electrolux raised its bid for the company to $52 a share, or $197 million. Utilities dominated the list of most actively traded stocks as traders sought to capture their dividends. Northeast Utilities was up [ at 19} and Kansas Power and Light was up \at 24\. Among blue-chip stocks, Boeing was up 1 at 52}, Citicorp was up \ at 22, Texaco was unchanged at 46[ and Eastman Kodak was up \ at 40~. The NYSE's composite index of all its listed common stocks was up 0.18 to 142.39. At the American Stock Exchange, the market value index was down 0.26 at 290.42. On Monday, the volume on the floor of the Big Board came to 102.64 million shares for the full session, the smallest total since 86.36 million were traded in a post-Thanksgiving session last Nov. 27.