Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 November 1887 — TRADE AND LABOR. [ARTICLE]

TRADE AND LABOR.

Philadelphia Record. Good authority flay fl that the 'boatbuilding capacity of the y#rds along the lakes will be doubled within twelve or eighteen months. Western machine shops were never so full of orders as at this time. Everything in the way of building material has been ordered way' ahead. A recently returned traveler from the West says some shopkeepers are anxious to pay cash for discounts. There seems to be no scarcity of money among small traders. Iron is being much more largely used for rdofing and tile purposes than ever. A Cincinnati firm is running night and day on tiles, shingles, iron frames for roofs and iron-ore paints and cements. Many maufacturing establishments throughout the New England and Middle States are taking off their old roofs and putting on asphalt roofs and other new compositions. The cost in insurance is an important item. Kentucky mining and manufacturing interests are being stimulated by the influx of a great deal of Northern and foreign capital. Chief attention is now being given to the development of lumber and mineral resources. The tendency in our workshops is to make more complicated and delicate machinery. Inventors are apparently reaching the limit of improvements, and are preparing the 'Way for some radical improvement or departure from existing methods. A great many Americans are constantly going to Europe to seek work. All of the German rolling-mill owners have forced a combination and have divided the work up by percentages. A commission is now arranging a uniform scale of prices. Some railway companies have under contemplation the building of clubhouses for their employes, to be similar to the one ordered built by Cornelius Vanderbilt. The building recently completed in New York is as finely finished as the best appointed club-house. So great is the demand for anthracite coal cars that lumber cars are beings fenced up with boards and used. Much slaty coal is going to market, and more or less of it is subject to dockage toreturn. In the urgent requirements considerable refuse coal is finding its way St. Louis is keeping pace with Chicago in its industrial expansion. Some of the street railways are changing from horses to cables. New manufacturing corporations are springing up. Some fivestorj' structures are being run up to seven and eight stories. Birihingham, Ala., concerns are buying a good deal of machinery in that city. Topeka, Kan., will expend $250,000 on the sewer svstem. A St. Louis fire-brick concern has just been awarded a contract for 105,000 feet of sewer-pipe for the former city. It will lay twenty miles. The same company has an order for 400,000 bricks for a blast furnace at Sheffield, Ala. The new Cairo bridge across the Ohio river is to have two spans 518 feet each, seven 400 feet each, and three 350 feet each; total length, 4,670 feet. It will be fifty-three feet above high water mark, and will cost $2,500,000. It will take two and a half years to build it. It will be the-wonder of the West. The stockholders of the Toledo, Ann Arbor & Northern railroad are paying their workmen on theft profit-sharing system, precisely as if the sum they earned per month were so much stock in the company. The Pillsbury mills, of Minneapolis, are conducted upon the same plan. All eflorts of the kind seem to be yielding satisfaction to the employing interests. English locomotive builders haye been compelled to adopt the American pattern in many respects in order to control their continental traffic. The ideas of American mechanics are permeating foreign work-shops, and the stubborn adherents to old methods have been obliged to admit that much is to be learned on this side of the water. There have been 133 mills and woodpast three months in the South. The total number for the year is 562. During the past two years the number of mills erected foot up 750. If the average daily capacity of these mills be 15,000 feet, counting a run of 200 days per year, the total annual production of lumber in the Southern States must reach 2,260,000,000 feet. The Strong locomotive is attracting a good deal of attention among locomotive engineers and railroad men. Its makers claim four points of advantage—that it is capable of heavier express service than others, that no increased weight is placed upon ihe axle, and that it uses less fuel than the side valve engine, and that it burns either anthracite or bituminous coal. The weight of the Stroag locomotive engine (which has been tested) upon its driving wheels is 90,000 pounds. High speed engines are 'in great demand. Machinists are straining every energy to secure a little advantage over competitors. Western machinists seem to be leading the way on small engjpes, but in the East engines of immense capacity are made with i more economic results. Mechanical appliances of makers because of their greater adaotability to specific requirements. The lumber manufacturers are pur-

chasing immense tracts of timber territory wherever they can be bought cheaply. California red wood is being bought in rapidly. The cream of tae yellow pine region of the South is already controlled. A Michigan firm has lately bought 12,000,000 feet of yellow poplar in North Carolina. Michigan lumbermen say that the cost of logging this winter will be increased about 10 per cent., and that this increase will be reflected in the prices of lumber sold next spring.