Birmingham age-herald., 1895-05-18
IT NIPPED RETAIL TRADE The Severe Cold Snap of the
 Past Week. LITTLE DAMAGE TO CROPS Cotton Up ao 'h in Face of the Biggest
 v-,rop Yet. THE SHo sANuFAcTuRER DOING WELL Failuy how a Decrease-Heavy Gain in tSk Clearings-Im in cS Trade in Southern Cities.
 What Reviews Say.
LITTLE DAMAGE TO CROPS
THE SIC. s'ANufAcTURER DOING WELL

New York, May 17-R. c. Dun & Co.'s weekly review of trade tomorrow will say.
 The severe cold snap. with extensive frosts and in some states snow has for tunately done little damage to the grain crops. though much to fruit, and has considerably retarded retail trade. The best news of the week is the advance of 12 per cent in wages by the Carnegie wcri;s, followed by the Jones X Laughlin establishment and evidently implying similar advance by many other concerns. The Illinois Steel company Is starting it's furna cs without granting the demands O. employees
 Ne advance has been founi practicable in the wooden mills, where conditions as to prices and foreign competition are very different, and about 10000 workers are still idle at Olneyville, where the works should consume 600,000 pounds per week. In other departments of labor troubles are not serious, and the demand for manufactured products increases.
 With ma terial and steady enlargement in domestic trade, there Is still great want of employment in the interior for money which comes hther, 900 during the past week, and this, with the millions distributed by the syndicateson bond &C., count, stimulates speculation
 Cotton is an eighth stronger in spite of the fact that 9,496,OS1 bales had come into sight last Friday, which is over 400, 900 bales more than the largest crop ever recorded Northern spinners have taken a little less than three years ago to date, when the crop was over 9,000,00G bales, but at least 500,000 more than they have consumed as yet and foreign spin ners hold nearly S00,000 bales more than they have consumed, while commercial stocks here and abroad are 246 900 bales more than three years ago. The manu- facturer is prospering, though no one can suppose that consumption is quite at the maximum, and for the year it cer- tainly has not been. Goods are in fair demand for the season and recent ad- vices in price are fully maintained.
 Advances in the wages of iron workers by MT. Prick of the Carnegie company are as significant as were the advances in wages of coke workers by the Prick Coke company. Apparently it is a strat- egic movement in the great battle be- tween iron producing interests, although II is generally interpreted as a proof that the outlook for trade Is sufficient to warrant material advance in wages and prices, Most furnaces in the Ma honing valley have also advanced wages, and Bessemer iron has risen to $11.40 at Pittsburg, with gray forge to $9.65. Fin- ished products are in larger demand, but as yet not enough larger to cause any general advance in prices, and proposa's of combinations in merchants steel. structural iron, cast pipe, wire rods and cut nails, with the existing combination in steel rails, show that the market does not rise of itself.
 The shoe manufacturer is doing re- markably well.
 Failures during the past week have been 211 in the United States, against 219 last year, and 37 in Canada, against 24 last year.