Jasper County Democrat, Volume 2, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 November 1899 — BUSINESS SITUATION. [ARTICLE]

BUSINESS SITUATION.

Cbleago Correspondence: As the fall season advances it become# more and more apparent that the favorable predictions made earlier in the year are to be realized. There has beep no such confidence in mercantile circle# since the Baring collapse as exists to-day, and so far as one can see no ordinary condition can check the expanding movement. A marked feature of the situation is the complaint on the part of buyers of the slow deliveries sellers are making on existing contracts. This is, perhaps, most pronounced in the iron trade, but it also applies to a considerable extent to several other departments of industry. Mills have in many cases contracted to deliver more goods than they can easily turn out within the prescribed time, and in some lines of manufacture a sufficient amount of business has been booked to keep the works running »« their* full capacity well into next year. The favorable business conditions have exerted a strengthening influence on stock market values during the week. Many rates are still too high to warrant anything like an aggressive bull campaign in stocks, but strong interests have been taking advantage of the present opportunity to quietly pick up the standard shares and hold them for the rise which it is confidently believed wilijeome within the next few weeks. London has been quite an important buyer of its American specialties, and with positive news of British victories in the Transvaal the speculative fever in London is likely to assume large proportions. Inactivity of the trade and indisposition of the public to take an interest in the futureof wheat were the most prominent features of the dealiogs in that commodity for speculative account. The foreign demand for wheat and flour was said by those who make a specialty of that branch of the business to be depressingly small, but notwithstanding the actual shipments to foreign purchasers from all American ports amounted to the handsome aggregate of 4,416,000 bushels. The market only occasionally gave indications of a tendency toward recovery of the previous week’s decline, and it wa* feeble at best. The chief reason for the heaviness of the market was that notwithstanding some decrease in farmers’ deliveries and liberal exports, addition# continue to be made to the commercial stocks. In other words, farmers are supplying more than is needed for both home requirements and the foreign demand. Corn has ruled strong and 1 cent a bushel that was added to its price raised the value of that crop to the farmers $22,000,000 since a week ago, if they raised, according to the latest estimate, a crop of 2,200,000,000 bushels. So stupendous is the aggregate of that on* item of American farm products, therefore, that an addition of only 1 cent a bushel mean# many millions of dollars to the producers. While corn did not maintain to the end the entire advance it made during the week, the demand for it is such that the most experienced and bestinformed people in the business look with confidence for a considerable further advance between now and next spring.