Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 40, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 November 1907 — COMMERCIAL AND FINANCIAL [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

COMMERCIAL AND FINANCIAL

CHICAGO. * t—Steady improvement appears in financial conditions, further gold importations, Increasing note circulation and larger use of checks in place of specie mating it easier to view the outlook with confidence. The pressure for currency is gradually finding relief, and with the liquidation and readjustments in process a return to normal conditions is closer at hand. Pay roll needs are now more easily provided for, and the new medium of exchange conserves moneys at the banks and is readily accepted in ordinary transactions. Savings banks depositors have virtually ceased giving withdrawal notices, jand there is more activity In New York exchange. Foreign buying of products is yet In excess of a year ago, and a continuation of this favorable factor seems likely and will provide the means for additional purchases of gold abroad: to strengthen local bank resources. Mercantile collections are no worse than expected, and, while there are more calls for extensions, the record of failures makes a better exhibit than for both last week and a year ago. Distributive trade is favored by seat sonable weather, and advices as to both local and Interior activity in the necessaries remain satisfactory. It is fortunnte that stocks of fall and winter goods are not excegstve. Most buyers bought conservatlvely a advance, and -those bow- in the market limit selections to ascertained needs. Dealings in the principal jobbing branches thus far this year make new high records, and the present curtailed buying. is not regarded as more than temporary. The movement of holiday goods shows satisfactory proportions. ; Receipts of raw materials for factory consumption fall below those at this time last year, an indication that there isTib unhealthy pressure upon forwarders, and the prices for finished -products have undergone no especial change. More closing down of plants for repairs and reduction in hands and -working hours appear to be mainly for the purpose of bridging over the difficulty in obtaining funds. The lack of cyrency throughout the agricultural sections accounts for decreased marketings of crops, but it is also evident that there are large withholdings for hjgher prices. Failures reported in Chicago district number 26, against 37 last week and 27 a year ago. Those with liabilities over $5,000 number 7, against 10 last week and 11 In 1906. —Dun’s Review of Trade.

NEW YORK. Trade as whole Is quieter and fndustrial operations are being curtailed In accord with the readjustment process forced by the prevailing‘monetary stringency and the spread of the acute currency scarcity to the country at large. Evidences of this are found In the restriction of wholesale buying for future delivery, in the confinement of jobbing trade to purely filling-in proportions, and in the curtailment of retail buying by the necessary employment of credit instruments. In manufacturing lines there As apparently a determination to fill orders only as they are received and an indisposition to accumulate stocks, the result here being a slowing down of operations pending the settlement of affairs upon a substantial basis. This industrial! quieting is also in no small degree due to the fact that manufacturers unable or unwilling to ask their employes to take pay in credit Instruments chose rather to reduce production (to a point where operations can be "conducted free from dispute as to the methods of payment employed.—Bradstreet’s Commercial Report.