Birmingham age-herald., 1894-09-01
WEEKLY REVIEW OF TRADE, As Compiled From Dun's Corps of
 Correspond dents.
IMPROVEMENT WILL COME
Is the PrediCtion-DecreaSed Demand for LoanS-lron
 Market Quiet-Failures.

NEW YORK, Aug. 31.-R. C.. Dun &
 Co.'s weekly review of trade tomorrow
 will say: The activity which came with
 exhausted stocks and was increased by the
 removal of uncertainty about the tariff has
 continued, with heavy entries of foreign
 goods since the bill became law. But the
 people who know best are saying: "Im-
 provement will come,'' rather than tim-
 provement has come.'' The gain is not
 yet what has been expected, and business,
 if good in comparison with last year, is
 still poor in comparison with years pre-.
 ceding.
 Presumably there has not been time to feel the full effects of the change, and a
 gradual gain will be more healthy and en- couraging than spasmodic rise, but the expansion of commercial loans has sud- denly ceased, prices of manufactured pro- ducts show weakness rather than strength, /, and there has been a reaction in the stock market.
 August has ended, but the interior de- mand for money still merely balances the
 receipts of superfiuous currency from east ern points, although the crops are moving quite freely. The recent material increase in demand for commercial loans appears to have been due to payments for sugar 1m- ports, for whisky taken out of bond and for
 Imported goods taken out of the custom
 
 unavoidable conclusion is that the desired | increase in domestic distribution has not yet reached such proportions as to in- huence the loan market.
 The mills are not running full, though the stoppage at Fall River looks every day
 more like an effort of the operatives to | force curtailment of production in order to | lift prices and make reduction of wages seem unnecessary. So far print cloths have advanced A os a cent, but without lt,,o~ it. nf fhnr md | while the demand is encouraging, 1t does | not compare with years before the last. | Neither in cotton nor in woolen mills has | there appeared this week an increase in | production. Woolen orders for spring | goods of certain qualities have been quite | large, buyers concluding that prices are | about as low as they will be. The demand for products of iron and | steel has increased, but prices tend down | ward where any change appears, as there | is not enough business yet to employ the | works in operation. Steel bars are sold at cent at Pittsburg, wire nails $1 .o6, | with Bessemer iron st $11 .65, several addi- tional furnaces having gone into blast. An encouraging sale of O,000 bundles of cotton ties, in competition with foreign ties, duty free, warrants the hope that cur rent prices in other branches may be low | enough to meet the coming rivalry, and a | sale of Mesaba ore at $2. .25, delivered at lower lake ports, is reported. There is a
 better demand for structural work, though | one considerable contract for Cuba was broken off by the advance in Spanish duties.
 Failures are still few and small. For the third week of August reported liabilities
 were $2, ,976, 518, but for the three weeks only SS, PA, ,470, of which $2, 845, 338 were of
 manufacturing and $3, 384 414 of trading concerns. The average was only S11 ,52l per firm failing. The failures this week have been 1S8 in the United States, against 356 last year, and forty in Canada, against twenty nine last year. fg