Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 100, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 August 1899 — BUSINESS SITUATION. [ARTICLE]

BUSINESS SITUATION.

Chicago Correspondence: From nearly all sections of the country come stories of an increasing volume of business, and the showing made by the bank clearings and other trade and financial statistics furnishes Verification of these statements. It is seldom that conditions have held so well during a season which ordinarily is accounted the poorest in the year for trade. Not only is the ground gained during the earlier months of the year being held, but in some directions still further advances have been made. This is particularly true of the iron and steel situation, which is always watched with a high degree of interest by all students of general business conditions. According to the trade journals, the demand for iron and steel products of ail kinds is unprecedented, and several of the larger mills are said to have booked orders for delivery as far ahead as the middle of next year. Experts are unable to discern any weak spots in the situation, and the consensus of opinion is that the iron and steel market will continue to gain strength for some months longer. Money is working easier, and feare of a serious tightening of the market seem now to have been allayed. The weakness which has lately been shown by sterling exchange is a hopeful sign for the money market, pointing, as it does, to the possibility of a gold-importing movement during the coming fall and winter months. The stock markets have shown a better tone during the week. London has been a fairly heavy purchaser of its specialties, and this has been followed by more activity on the part of commission houses. Several pools are now believed to be at work in the market, and the initiative taken by these has given the whole list a decided stimulus. Considerable activity marked the week’s speculative dealings in wheat, corn, oats and provisions. The tendency of prices was, on the whole, moderately upward. Interest in those commodities gave indications of broadening. The general public, that only takes an interest in them when there appears to be good ground for expecting higher prices,' is making its influence felt in a gradual enlargement in the volume of business. The incentive to the increased desire to buy wheat for a rise came from a growing conviction, on evidence being furnished from abroad, that the supplies of the world from the harvest now being gathered, will be perhaps 300,000,000 bushels short of the previous year’s production, with the principal deficiencies in the countries usually raising a surplus for export, Ahus throwing the price-mak-ing power to a more than ordinary extent into their hands. Of such countries this is the chief, and it remains to be seen whether the believers in comparative scarcity will have the courage of their convictions to a sufficient extent to keep in check the ineradicable tendency of that other class of traders which at all times considers prices higher than they should be. The slightly upward tendency of corn was altogether the result of growing scarcity of old corn in the country and the urgency of the consumptive demand, both foreign and domestic. The growing crop continues to make satisfactory progress and gets a little nearer the goal of its promising immensity. Packers of provisions were kept in good heart by the excellence of the consumptive demand for their products and the comparatively high prices they could command for certain descriptions of their meats which are not dealt in speculatively on' the Board of Trade. The high price that hams are bringing, for example, compensates to a great extent for the comparatively low prices of barreled pork and bacon, while it affords indubitable proof of the prosperity of the masses to whose consumption of the more expensive commodity is due the comparative highness of its price.