Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 January 1886 — IRON AND STEEL. [ARTICLE]

IRON AND STEEL.

Review of tlie Trade of the Past Year. Philadelphia telegram. A review of the trade of 1885 has just been prepared by James M. Swank, General Manager of the American Iron and Steel Association. The beginning of the year was marked, he says, by a continuation of the depression of 1884. There was a steady sagging of prices from January to “July, except for steer rails, quotations for which Improved a trifle in May. In July and August all prices stiffened, and in September a slight advance was established, steel rails taking the lead and continuing to advance until December. Quotations for four leading staples for each month in the year will show that prices at the close of the year were much more favorable than at the close of the first half of the year. A comparison of price shows that pig non was $lB in January, $17.75 in July, and $18.25 in December. Steel rails were $27 in January, $26 in April, and $34.50 in December. Bar iron was $40.32 in January, $38.08 in July, and $39.20 in December. Cut nails were $2.10 in January, $2.15 in August, and $2.65 in December. These quotations are monthly averages for No. 1 anthracite foundry pig iron and best refined bar iron per gross ton at Philadelphia, for cut nails per keg at Philadelphia, and for steel rails per gross ton at Pennsylvania mills. Steel rails, however, show the greatest advance in price during the last half of 1885. In April, sales were made at Pennsylvania mills at $26 and $26.50, and a few sales are said to have been made at the astonishingly low price of $25.50. The European iron trade exhibited no symptoms of a revival in 1885, but on the contrary, the backward movement which has from the first more than kept even pace with our ora depression, continued until the close of the year. Taking the iron-making countries of Europe as a whole, the iron trade situation in that grand division is much worse to-day than it was six months ago- '

Mary Anderson is accused of having learned to drink beer while abroad. Patti is said to have lost SjLSJM)Q by not being able to keep her engagement in Holland. W. D. Henderson has assumed the managing editorship of the San Francisco Examiner, vice Clatence E. Greathouse, resigned. Baron Rothschild, of Paris, has subscribed $25,000 toward a fund for purchasing six genuine “Old Masters”ior presentation to the gallery of the Louvre. A lawsuit in New York which cost over SSOO was all about a safety pin the nurse had lost. She was dischnijged and refused pay for full time, but the court has decided m her favor. Miss Fanny Davenport, the actress, has sent a check for $l5O to the fund beidg raised for the widows aiid orphans of the dead miners in the Nanticoke mine at Wilkesbarre, Pa. Harry Brown, a colored man 95 years old, still living at Texas, N. Y., was once the slave of Governor DeWitt Clinton, and obtained his freedom under the State manumission act, July 4, 1827. M. PaStehr has his theory of happiness. “True happiness,” he says, “appears to me in the form of a man of. science devoting his days and nights to penetrating the secrets of nature and discovering new troths.” ‘