Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 January 1888 — TRADE AND LABOR. [ARTICLE]

TRADE AND LABOR.

Philadelphia Record. An electric elevated railroad for the conveyance of newspapers and small parcels at a very high rate of speed is under consideration at Baltimore. Popular science lectures are being delivered in various towns and cities of England, at which the admission is two cents. They are doing much good. Textile manufacturers are devising numerous things to increase the pro* duction of their mills and add to the convenience of handling manufactured goods. The turtle-canning industry is assuming large proportions in Florida,and vessels are being employed to bring turtles from Yucatan and the West India islands.

Georgia gold fields are being worked more industriously than ever. The cost of working has been reduced to. thirty cents per ton. The deepest mine is 250 feet. Daring the past year the distribution of lumber at Chicago was 100,000,000 feet in excess of 1886. Prices did not move up through the year, as had been expected. Manufacturers are discovering in a great many instances that more work can be obtained out of factories that are lighted by electric light than where gas is ÜBed.

A Lockport (N. Y.) engine-builder has just .booked an order for a 10,000,-000-gallon engine for Kansas City and a 2^ooo, 000-gallon engine for McCormick, of Chicago. A coke manufacturing syndicate has purchased 15,000 acres of land in the Connellsville region. Another syndicate has purchased 5,000 acres of land in Washington county. It is quite encouraging to note the number of shops and factories that are running at night. Most of them are running on patent devices or appliances of one kind and another. French and English ship-building firms are negotiating with Spanish capitalists with a view of establishing shipyards and marine engine-works on the banks of the Bilboa river.

In four y< ais the commercial efficiency of electric machinery haabeen increased from 60 to 90 per cent, and the cost of a given current ia not 25 per cent, of what it was a year ago. A syndicate has just purchased 50,000 acres of well trimmed land in Florida. Most of ’he timber is black cypress. A mill with a capacity of 160,000 feet per day is to be erected on the land. A car-maker at Fullerton, Pa., is building 100-ton gondola cars to be used in transporting heavy foreign machinery from New York to Bethlehem. The axles are seven inches in diameter. Rome has 1,835 telephones in use, London 1,200, Glasgow 1,472 and Liverpool 1,399. There are as. many telepnones in 5$ ew i or& as m aii itwiy, ana twice as many in New York as in London. An engine for a Sound steamer has just been ordered from Detroit enginebuilders that will have forty-inch cylinders, twelve feet stroke, and feathering wheels twenty-six feet in diameter.

The boot and shoe manufacturers are running full time in nearly all establishments throughout the East. Gutting of stock is going on vigorously everywhere. The traffic in morocco is heavy. On account of the great care taken in silk weaving and SDinning in Italy, it is claimed that Italian raw silk possesses an evenness and finish which make it superior to hand-reeled Chinese silk. Thirty million pounds of copper are used annually in Waterbury, Conn Orders* for goods in whieh eopper is largely used have fallen off 50 per cent, on account of the advance from 10$ to 18 cents.

Manufacturing enterprise has broken loose in North Carolina. Subscription lists have been started in about a dozen towns within thirty days for factories and shops. The preference is for cotton factories. The Illinois millers have taken the credit question into hand and propose to demand more prompt payment. They want a system by which they can know something about the character [of the flour dealers everywhere. Notwithstanding all that has been said about the damage done to the shoe business it is 80 per cent, better in several Eastern establishments than it was at this time last year. There are no labor troubles at the present time. A recent Westingbouse circular states that every consideration of efficiency, convenience and economy, not to speak of humanity, urges the substitution of mechanical for animal power npon the numerous street-railway lines ot the country at the earliest practical moment. There is a great demand for small boilers to suit the numerous small shops and factories starting np over the country. The Philadelphia boiler-makers are oversold, and business is coming in frequently without being sought. A Chicago company proposes to make and sell a mixed water gas and coal gas at prices ranging from 50 cents per 1,000 feet;to 25 cents. The company also agrees to furnish incandescent electric lights at a cost not exceeding f 1 per 1,000 for illuminating gas. English electricians are trying to make an incandescent lamp which will bum without vacuum. It will be necessary to find a conducting material of high specific resistance. A great many doubt the possibility of such a lamp.

The production of hard wood during last year, it has been estimated, will be fully 25 per cent, in excess of that of any former year, and the heavier demand for it will, it is believed by lumber authorities, prevent any decline in prices.

In some places tnnnels with endless, belts or aprons Dave been constr jeted through yards and across streets between the mills, through which the cloth from the different weaving-rooms is delivered directly to the finishingrooms. J Eastern mills are storing up with cotton as fast as they can get it. About 100,000 of the 200,000 bales of cotton consumed at Fall River have already arrived, and there is a great want of storage capacity. It is proposed, to bnild sheds for that purpose. The gossamer rubber pool is in trouble over the fact that there are more mills than are Deeded, and unless they shall be bought up by the trust they will startup and turn out goods. The manufacturers are as yet nnable to agree upon the percentage of restriction. The Rochester shoe manufacturers ai*B throwing their hats in the air over the defeat of their workmen. It was brought abcut by sending to several shoe-manvfacturing centers and employing non-union labor. There are twentyfive manufacturers there, employing 3,000 hands. The number of permits taken out since Dec. 1 is something larger then that of a year ago, and a good many of the buildings are costly. Those in the Weet are for manufacturing, railroad and grain handling purposes. In the Southern States the bulk of the new work is mostly of a manufacturing sort. In the smaller towns in the New England and Middle States a great deal qf small house building is projected for the coming year.