Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 35, Number 84, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 June 1903 — COMMERCIAL AND FINANCIAL [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

COMMERCIAL AND FINANCIAL

Hev York.

“Eicegt in those branches of business that are always quiet at this

season reports indicate a steady demand and prices of commodities are firmly mainlined. Manufacturing returns are irregular, idleness in textile lines partially offsetting the good effect of activity elsewhere. Earnings of railroad* reporting for the first week of June are only 3 per cent larger than last year and 7.8 per cent greater than in 1901, a condition due entirely to western floods. That furnace stocks of pig iron increased only 40,000 tons despite the unprecedented output testifies to the great consumption of the steel industry. Quotations are without alteration, although much business is delayed by labor troubles. In case of a general settlement of these conflicts there would be resumption of work on many buildings, aud, including the requirements of railroads, a heavy tonnage would be sought.” \ R. G. Dun & Co.’s Weekly Review of Trade makes the foregoing summary of the industrial situation. Continuing, the review says: It is an evidence of confidence in the future that blast furnace operators nre forcing production beyond all previous maximum figures. While the demand for structural steel has diminished, there is notable inquiry for rails and plates. Machinery and hardware lines are doing remarkably well for the season, which is usually quiet in these departments. Coke ovens are surpassing allprevious records for activity, and the output of anthracite coal promises to establish a new high water mark this year above 00,000,000 tons. Failures this week were 215 in the United States, against 102 last year, and 14 in Canada, compared with 20 a year ago.

Chicago.

Two widely divergent views came out during the week almost simultaneous-

ly, through inquiry prompted by the reports of lighter trade received from some by the course of the securities market, which was on a steady decline. One interview was with an American who has been styled the leading merchant of the country; the other opinion emanated from the head of the London branch of the great hanking house of Rothschild. Marshall Field of Chicago sees in the labor situation, in the continued disaffection and persistent demands of various labor organizations for increased compensation, a menace to the welfare of tho country. Labor, in his opinion, has gone too far in our ebuntry, and there is a day of reckoning to come, when with a lessening of trade activity and recessions all around, labor, too, will find its value on decline. This day, he believes, is being hastened by the laboring men themselves in their insistence upon concessions which employers are obliged to grant under tho stress of a temporary labor scarcity; concessions which having been wrung out of employers through threats of ruinous strikes, will be the less likely to hold long after an easier tone develops in the labor market. While noting every element of an adverse nature, Mr. Field would put the labor question above them all in importance as bearing upon the question of a setback to American industry. Lord Rothschild confined his observations principally to stock market affairs. He says: Two years ago when’Wall street was almost crazy with ball speculation no American talked of anything but further advances. To-dayi--wjth a record of heavy declines, there has been and there still is much pessimism and the prediction of further heavy declines yet to come. It is often true that one must stand outside his local environment to see the conditions surrounding him in their proper relation to conditions of wider extent, and it is probably true that Americans are more likely to be;blinded by the light of their own fires in which they stand, than arc the men who watch them from a distance. The time for the American pessimist is gone. • A year ago there was a chance for the cautious business man to go on record as predicting a turn of lessened activity, and some few did this and had their predictions fairly well borne out. But the man who turns pessimistic now, after the passing of some of the most unfavorable features and the full discounting of the unfavorable features that still remain, is likely to be ns wrong as was the man who shouted for still further expansion when the country was honoring beyond the limits of safety.