Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 38, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 October 1905 — COMMERCIAL AND FINANCIAL [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

COMMERCIAL AND FINANCIAL

Fall distribution of comChiCdQO. comodities is of excep- ■ tional proportions, indicating that business generally is making satisfactory progress. The "demand for money for commercial purposes has not suffered from the advanced cost of borrowing, nor is healthy expansion in industrial enterprise interfered with, funds being ample for known needs. Dealings were seasonably stimulated in fashionable retail lines and the aggregate buying reflects improved consumption of necessaries. v Heavy shipments have been made to many points in the West and Southwest, but the pressure upon forwarders has not yet ceased. Farm work in the winter wheat sections is abdut over, and this permits increasing activity at country stores in personal and’farm requirements. The markets for raw materials exhibit further strengthening in demand and higher prices developed in pig iron, steel bars, leather and hides, the latter material scoring the highest average in forty years. Iron and steel commitments again were on a record-breaking scale, the added demands extending the period of assured work into next midsummer. Other factory work is more animated, more hands being employed, and improvement is seen in machinery, heavy hardware and furniture making. Leather working trades are more fully engaged and building construction discloses no abatement. Failures reported in the Chicago district number thirty-two, against thir-ty-nine last week and twenty-two a year ago.—Dun's Review of Trade.

77 September, a period of fIBY 10Fn. almost unexampled activity in all lines of distributive trade and industry, closes with little abatement visible in demand and with optimism as to the future widespread. Favoring the satisfactory winding up of the month’s work have been good weather conditions, allowing the maturing of practically all food crops without damage from frost. Additionally helpful to distributive trade and collections have been the beginning of a free movement of spring wheat, large sales of cotton at. good prices South, an unprecedented demand at top prices for all kinds of building material, marked freedom from industrial friction and a market for labor and its products active as rarely before in the country’s history. Business failures in the United States for the week ended Sept. 28 number 185, against 173 last week, 179 in the like week of 1904, 153 in 1903, 164 in 1902 and 175 in 1901. In Canada failures for the week number 28, as against 30 last week and 21 in this week a year ago.—Bradstreet’s Commercial Report. S'