The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-04-10 00:00:00

THE IRON TRADE.

WOLVERHAMPTON, Wednesday.

At the quarterly meeting, on Wednesday,
priees were declared unaltered. They therefore
remain for the ensuing quarter at £6. 10s. for
Lilie,hall cold blast, and £5. ss. for Lii,eslial
hot-blast iron. and the other-best pigs in pro-
portion. Cinder pigs were £3. to £3. is. 3l ,
,vhieh is a decrease nnnnl!st I;l7tA-r of from 2s.
6,1. to 35. 9d. ; a;,o tt;n qittUies were
equally eown on three months. Finished iron
remavie. on the basis which it attained when at
the o..teber quarterly meeting best bars were.
sold at £ll., and thereby reduced £l. per tone.
There was a very quiet tvarket, the transactions
reported being only few.
The chief exporting merchants who were upon
'Change this afternoon did not accept -the
" position " as unalterable even during the rest
'of the quarter. They gave out orders only to a
very small extent, and do not hold many which
, they are compelled to distribute at the market
' prices. It has seldom happened fit the Lady-
. day quarterly meeting that merchants have held
so few indents for iron, or, indeed, for iron
goods. Their customers will not, they say, buy
with spirit till prices get down to their level
during a normal state of the trade. They admit
that, neither in their own nor their customers'
hands, are stocks heavy—in truth, that they are
quite low, with few exceptions ; yet nothing,
they maintain, will entice a trade but lower
prices.

Men who do business with Canada, and with
certain other markets where the iroDui asters
aud hardware producers of the United States
meet the English producers, complain of the
extent of the competition which is being now
experienced from the Stites. Makers there
have, during their period of depression—not yet
run out—gone into those markets, and afford
goods on terms with which it has been impossible
for us to compete, and at prices which would not,
in all probability, have been quoted but for the
necessity which the Americans were under of
getting money. To so large an extent have
some exporters in this district been influenced
by this condition of affairs, that there are in-
stances in which scarcely one-sixth the business
has been done with Canada this year that is
usual up to the close of March, Nor are mer-
chants suffering from a want of the customary
orders only. There are cases in which, judg-
ing by past experience, stocks have been laid
in to supply an anticipated demand, but laid in
at prices much below those at which the whole
of the purchases could now be replaced. The
extent of the losses under this head will appear
when we state that every ton of the five-sixths
surplus stock in the hands of one exporter had
has cost him from ,Cl. to £l. 10s. per ton more
than he could how buy at. Happily the instan.
ces of sanguine expectation leading to over-stoa-
ing are not, as we have intimated, numerous.
And if in respect of the exeeptions the over-
stocking was all that had to bo feared, there
would be less cause for apprehension than now
exists. The fear, however, is that Canadian and
other customers having begun to buy from the
States they will contiune to supply their wants
from that country, although they may by and
bye have td pay more money than that which
they are now giving; for the disagreeable truth
is no longer to be blinked, that a certain quali-
ties of iron and descriptions of iron hardwares
the United States products are very superior to
those turned out in this country.
That in goods of a high quality the United
States manufacturers should ae able to success-
fully compete with us is not suprising when it is
known at how cheap a rate some of their high-
class charcoal Dig-iron in produced through the
close proximity of an abundance of timber to fine
mountain ironstone. An illustration of the abi-
lity of the proprietors of charcoal furnaces to
compete to some extent with English charcoal
ironmakers even in England was furnished in
the transactions some time ago in Liverpool,
where Alabama and Georgia pig-iron was
sold at £7. a ton, and a profit made by the ship-
per; and that there is still room for competition
even at the lower prices now prevailing in this
country would appear from the statement in this
paper last Monday, to the effect that arrangements
have been n ade for another shipment of such iron
to_this country. Nor would it seem that we
should look for any any diminution of competition
of this class. This afternoon it became known to
some leading ironmasters of this district that dur-
ing the last six months of 1874 an ironmaking
company in America turned out 3,460 tons of pig-
iron at a net cost per ton of £2. 19s. This en-
abled a dividened of 10 per cent. to be paid to
shareholders, and a further 10 per cent. to be car-
ried to the reserve fund. At least one-half of the
iron made, if we are correctly informed, was char-
coal iron. Twenty per cent. profit by making raw
iron in America, during one of the worst yt are for
the iron trade upon record, should be a little
cheering to those ironmasters in this country who
have an interest also in ironmaking in the
United States—and there are such ironmasters in
South Staffordshire. Certain of them, moreover,
it is no secret, are amongst the shareholders of
the concern we have just mentioned. By invest-
ments in iron-making in the States English iron-
masters would soon be able to make up for some
of their losses in iron-making in England.
Towards the close of the meeting it became
known, not without satisfaction, as it seemed, to
many, that the proceedings instituted by
liquidating trustees against Messrs. Thomas and
Smith, lately ironmasters at the Regent Works,
Bilston, had that morning been withdrawn at the
County Quarter Sessions, upon conditions with
which the liquidators were content.—Birminghani
Daily Post.