Birmingham age-herald., 1895-05-25
SECOND EDITION.
 IRON DISTINCTLY GAINS
Says Dun in His Size-Up of the
 Situation.
THE PAY ROLLS GROWING
The Speculative Fever Is at 0uce, the Recog- milton and Menace of Real Improve
 ment-Bradstreet'S Say,

New York, May 24-R. G. Dun & Co.'S weekly review of trade tomorrow will say:
 If wheat has been so greatly injured bS the snows and frosts in May that the sudden rise of F cents in two weeks is Justified the calamity will affect all business prospects. The markets do not believe it, for stocks do not collapse, iron, leather and hides still rise, and no holders of wheat would sell at so cents, a lower price than had been known at this season for thirty years prior to 1893, if current reports were credited. Some injury has undoubtedly been sustained, but our own dispatches do not show that it is really serious.
 The fact is that relief from long anx- iety and the abundance and cheapness of money for which industry and legiti- mate trade give as yet no adequate de- mand have excited the speculative spirit beyond all restraint.
 The hot fever will have nothing to do with the cold facts. The temper is to buy, regardless of visible requirements, in the faith that prices are sure to rise. Wild excitement in wheat with sales in one day at Chicago, alone, of 300, 900, ,000 bushels, about three times the wheat there is in the country, and a renewed frenzy in cotton, with sales in three days exceeding the whole visible stock in America, followed the furious rise in stocks in oil and in hides and leather, at once a recognition of real improve ment in business and a menace to it's progress. Exchanges include enormous speculative transactions, and for the month are 2S.6 per cent larger than last year, but 69 per cent less than in 1893, when with many banks failing a sudden fall began. It is not entirely encouraging that idle money still comes hither in large amounts from the west, while the demand for commercial loans is rather short.
 The iron industry distinctly gains and the improvement is no longer confined to prices of materials. Better wages at and west of Pittsburg convince buyers that prices must rise and there have been larger sales of finished products, with about S1 per ton bar prices for structural forms and steel bars, while Bessemer pig has risen to $11.50 at Pitts burg and grey forge to $10. The Thomas company has advanced its anthracite pig 50 cents, and higher freights %na1e southern iron cost more at the east
 Sales of rails to May were APO, 900 tons and deliveries 250,000, both larger than last year. Nail works are combining and coke pool is expected to raise prices soon. Pittsburg banks note with drawa1s for pay rolls in the past month were S-,ooo,oSf, dSdlHSl 9l,ooo,olo istSl year by the same works. Orders this year number 22,029 freight and seventy-two messenger cars, 5000 cars more than in the whole of the year 1894, but in 1892 and previous years the output was over 93, 900 freight cars.
 Purchases of dry goods, in the belief that the price must rise, have kept tex tile mills fairly busy, but the demand for cotton seems stacker on the whole and print cloths are one-sixteenth weak er There is no improvement in the de- mand for woolens, and strikes do not abate.
 Failures this week have been POT in the5 United States, against 183 last year. and 23 in Canada, against 2S last year.