Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 August 1887 — TRADE AND LABOR. [ARTICLE]

TRADE AND LABOR.

Philadelphia Record. Doctor McGlynn is a delegate to the Syracuse (N. Y-) labor convention. A new Tailroad town is to be built between New Haven and Hartford. A Spanish railroad company.has just ordered 20,4)00'tons of English rails. Aug. 31 is to be labor day at Wheeling. Henry George will be there. A new Bessemer plant is about to be completed at Belle Isle,near Richmond. The stone cutters between Detroit and Omaha propose to form a national assembly. The Central Labor Union of New York has arranged for a celebration on Sept. 5One hundred delegates represented the Connecticut Knights at Waterbury last week. There are three successful co operative concerns in New York with a capital of SIOO,OOO. The boycott against the American Tack Company in Fairhaven, Mass., is to be continued. A Connecticut mechanic, expects to soon have on the market a steam onehorse power tricycle.

Boot and shoe manufactures inf New York are to be held to a strict accountability of the law. A great deal of new textile machinery is being forward from factories to mills East and South. The South Baltimore' Car Company will erect a hundred houses with corrugated roofs for its employes. It is expected there will be 300 delegates at the Knights of Labor convention in Minneapolis in October. There are 7,609 convicts in the United States who turn out a litttle over $lO,000,000 worth of shoes per year. Great coal developments are being made on the Pacific coast, and large vessel contracts have been given out. San Francisco is to be connected with the Crystal Springs watei supply with a line taking 5,000 tons of pipe. There are indications that the extremists among the Knights will gain control in the next national convention.

The Pennsylvania Steel Company’s steam-power for its two furnaces at Sparrow Point will be 4,000-horse power. The six,th annual session of the State Workingmen’s Assembly of New York will be held at Rochester* on September 6, I Foreign silk manufacturers report an improving demand in all markets. Silks and satins are being contracted for far ahead. Three-fourths of the depositors in New England’s savings banks are Wage-workers, and their average deposits are $356 per year. Domestic consumers of natural gas pay 10 per cent, more than coal costs, and manufacturers 25 per cent, less in New York State.

Canals are being built in England to enable interior manufacturers to reach the seaport at less cost than is now possible by rail. The visible supply of cotton is the same as it was this time last year, and manufacturers are cautious about anticipating requirements. Pittsburg has eighty-six more puddling furnaces than it had a year ago. There are about 4,000 men waiting for work about the mills. Valuable coal mines are being opened in Virginia. One property allows four workable veins, aggregating a thickness of twenty-seven feet. A Philadelpdia company has a large force at Center Point, Ark., running machinery day and night, smelting and reducing ores. Fifteen hundred ’longshoremen have notified their employers that they will strike unless wages shall be restored to 30 cents an hour. The largest paper-mill order ever given out has just been taken by the Wilmington machinery-making concern, and is for four mills at Palmer, N Y. Within a few months capacity of the machine-shops of Bridgeport, Conn , will be sufficiently increased to allow 1,000 more hands to be employed. A factory has been started in Pawtucket to make Canton matting the same on both sides, as is made in China. Each loom weaves thirty yards a day.

The fraudulent immitatoin of trademarks has gone so far that the British Parliament is about to take summary measures to root it out by imposing severe penalties. I A Wilmington car wheel company recently bought 400 acres of land in Virginia, containing coal and lead, which experts estimate as worth $150,000. It cost SI,OOO. A rumor is rife that a gigantic coal pool is about to be formed to mine coal in the rich coal-field bounded by the Youghiogenv and Mbncngahela rivers in Western Pennsylvania. The coal operators in several of the Western States are endeavoring to to force their men to sign a contract waiving the benefit of the bi-monthly payments demanded by law. An Indian railway company has ordered 250,000 iron telegraph poles 9 inches in diameter at the bottom ind inches at the top, to be made in halves and screwed together with flanges. Foreign iron, steel and. machinerymakers are beginning to feel the swelling tide of trade, especially from the tTnited States; yet the bulk of colonial tool orders come to the United States. Large blast furnaces and

flouring-mills are to be built at Paducah, Ky. A bridge spans the Ohio at that point, and there are inexhaustible supplies of coal, iron ore and timber. A European conference is soon to be held to take some action to protect British trade from foreign competition. The British manufacturer have been working this matter up for twelve months. Foreign locomotive-makers have so snccesafully imitated American makes that the exports for eleven months ended June 1 Were only 54, against 71 for the same time the previous fiscal year. All the indications in the boot and shoe trade show T that aggregate traffic will be of unprecedented magnitude. In Worchester county, Mass., the boot and shoe deficit up to June 1 amounted to 100,000 cases. For every sl3 worth of steel and cutlery shipped from Sheffield to the States during the second quarter of last year $23 worth was shipped during the same time this year. The Scotch steel-works have orders for three months ahead. Companies are daily filing charters and investing large amounts of money to open up and develop gold,silver, lead, iron, graphite,granite and marble in the mineral districts of Texas. Tiffany, of New York, buys ther Llano pearl found in this locality. Abington, Va., seems to be a precious spot. Millions of tons of Bessemer ore are laughing out of the sides of the three mountains surrounding the town. There is an abundance of limestone and an immense quantity of coking coal. Near by are uncut forests of over 300,000 acres of white oak, chestnut, ash and poplar. Friction of sides of natural gas pipes retards the flow of gas. To obviate this George H. Westinghouse substitutes pipes of increasing diameter. A sixteeninch pipe will deliver six times as much gas as will an eight-inch pipe. He pro poses to start with an eight-inch pipe at the well, then let it empty into a teninch pipe, then into a twelve-inch pipe and so on. During the coming winter labor, both skilled and common, will be more generally employed than it was last winter on account of the large amount of railroad construction to be completed in the West and Northwest. Much of the Italian labor that returns to Italy for the winter will be retained for winter work. With the exception of three or four crafts, labor is more fully employed this season, and from all appearances the demand will increase.