Cameron County press. [volume] (Emporium, Cameron County, Pa.) 1866-1922, 1898-07-28
Trade, Price and Midsummer.


can be no question whatever. The
stock market is dull in spite of
much advice to buy stocks. Grain
speculation has ceased. Textile
weeklies publish pages of authentic
interviews to explain the dull
market. Boot and shoe shipments
to-day only equal those of 1895.
The iron and steel trade, while
very large, is tenth less than it
was three months ago. With loan
able capital very cheap, exports
large and imports small, no activity
is apparent at any point.
The adequate explanation is
probably the simple but sufficient
fact that the doubt as to the i'm
mediate close of the war leaves
everyone hesitating as to the i'm
mediate condition of trade. A
turn of the tide has also come at
many points. Railroad earnings
have reached their largest amounts
and can scarcely exceed past
records, since grain next year will
be cheaper and the foreign demand
less. Cereals must average lower
for the next year, and cotton prob
ably will. Woolen manufacture
has not met the boom it tanticipated
and both wool and woolens are re-
adjusting prices. In cotton per-
manently lower level has been
reached and both the capitalization
and profits of mills have to be ad-
justed to it, The great payment of
farm and other Western mortgages
has been absorbed by the enormous
shipment of American securities to
this country, and there is no point,
house-building, railroads, manu-
factures or land mortgages, where
recent profits encourage invest
ments. Our cities, in particular
seem Over-built, and the number of
houses standing vacant in some
cities would surprise the public.
This situation has it's statistical
record in the interruption of the
increase in gross clearings, which
are no longer rising each week, as
they had for months down to the
end of June; in the same check in
the increase of railroad gross earn
ings; in the decrease for three
months in the output of pig iron;
in a like decrease in the shipments
of boots and shoes; in sales of wool,
a third of last year, and in the
short time of both wool and cotton
mills. These changes are alto
gether relative. The aggregate of
clearings, gross earnings, pig-iron
product and the output of textiles
are each and all larger than they
have ever been before at this time;
but the increase so long in progress
has stopped. In railroads, the
increase has not been carried be-
yond past records. The gross
earnings of 1O4, 926 miles of rail
road in the first six months of 1898
have been 1886 per mile. The
earnings of 100, S94 miles in the
first half of 1898 were S2,777 per
mile. As rates were low and the
aggregate freight larger this year
than fiveyears ago the proiitmust be
less. The loss in aggregate gross
earnings on 14S, ,772 miles, or three
quarters OF our system, in half of
1893 was S74, 800, 900. The in
crease since then on substantially
the same roads has been SO, ,232,
900 in 1895, O,OOO,OOO in 1896
and S57, ,44O,O 900 in 1898, or $50
go, 900 in all the years, 50 that,
making allowance for 10, 900 more
miles now reported on, roads have
thus far done little more than make
up past losses in gross, while ex-
penses are heavier and rates lower.
Gross earnings for July are now
below 1899; earlier they were above,
On the other hand, as the country
develops a larger and larger share
of railroad traffic is on high-priced
freights and less on raw materials
and coarse product, which accounts
for the very heavy increase III net
earnings now reported for May and
previous months on lines where
grain rates were being heavily cut.
Whatever relative decrease there
has been in the volume Of trade or
the output of various industries as
compared with previous years, yet
any impulse would swell the tide
Prompt peace would do this, and
the large trade certain with Cuba
will also have it's effect, and has
begun at Santiago. The war will
add the trade of very fertile
tropical State to our commerce,
and the effect will be as instant,
relatively, as that which attended
the supply of the South in 1865.