Morning journal and courier., 1884-12-27
Saturday, December 97, 1884.
RUSTNRsa


 Careful observers are prophesying "bettel times, 1" and their prophey seems to us req sonable. An interesting view of the busi ness situation is taken by writer in the Philadelphia Press, who says that it is familiar fact in the ebb and flow of trade that when hard times and low prices come the first effect is to freeze out all factories which a poor plant, bad management or un favorable. location places at disadvantage This process continues until the reduction il the price of labor and the wedding out oi weak concerns make it possible for strong manufactures to turn out goods at profit under low prices. The writer considers Bradstreet's figures showing the number oi workmen out of employment and the reduction of wages, and then pays attention to the volume of production. He finds that in the case of boots and shoes the output has been uncurtailed. While 1S,000 fewer operatives, or IA per cent. less, are at work than in 1880, and the wages of the 86 per cent. at work are reduced, the amount of boots and shoes is as large as ever. In New England, New York and Pennsylvania one cotton operative in eight is out of work, and the other seven are not receiving more pay than six of the opera tives at work in 1880, but these mills, in the first three months of the current crop year, only took 70 per cent as much cotton as in 1881. The reduction in volume of wages ie here close to the fall in the quantity of raw material used. Iron employees, from blast furnaces up to locomotive works, have now 60,000 men out of employment, one-ffth of the whole, while the wages of the remainder are heavily reduced; but the reduction in the output of blast fur naces is one-third as compared with 1882, and one-fourth as compared with 1880, while scarcely one-half the capacity of steel rail mill is employed. Woolen goods in New England and the middle States report 24 900, or 16 per cent, of the operatives em- ployed in 1880 out of work, but the sales of wool and it's consumption show no such de- crease. Here, as in boots and shaes, there fore, such eheapening is taking place in the cost of production as presages improvement And the writer continues. The same recast- ing of the conditions of profits is about to take place in coal, where prices are certain to be brought lower by the new relations into which produces are en- tering. Such a change brings with it cheap CT conditions for the manufacture of anthra- cite iron as well as for other manufacturers In other words, in two great trades men toned above, the cheaper output, which ia the first requisite to profit, has appeared and in the iren trade eheap coal will do much in the same direction. A like change is yet to occur in cotton goods, and there arc other trades in which it is painfully taking place. Like so much else nowadays, Bradstreet's fgures show that the worst has come and is passing, and the conditions for 6 revival of business are preparing.
 This is both forcible and cheering and we believe that it is fair view of the situation. There is no probability that there will be Gloom" immediately, but business may req aonsbiy be expected to grow better.