Wheeling register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1878-1935, 1900-07-23

ers lose more by idle months than they
gain by the temporarily advanced
wages. The business world as a
whole gets no benefit from .booms.
Stripped of all Of its DISCUSSES and IL
lusions, a boom is simply a cruel and
disastrous blow to the industrial
world.
THE increase in the buying power
OF the people, which comes from in
creased employment, is natural and
beneficial. Such earnings come with
regularity as reward to the worker
They are substantial. and as a rule are
expended in prudent manner They
are absorbed naturally by all branches
of business and are wholly beneficial
The increase In earnings which comes
suddenly from abnormal advances is
temporary and unnatural. 1t over
stimulates business and speculation; it
, raises values, particularly those most
easily transferred, such as stocks and
bonds, to abnormal figures. 1t is an il
lusory profit, and encourages unwar-
ranted expenditures. When the inev-
table decline to normal prices takes
place, 1t brings disaster.
No reformation Is needed in the
business connected with producing and
marketing the necessaries of life. The
government commissions have diseov-
cred that trade In food and clothing
is attended with comparative uniform
ity, in magnitude and in profits, in
bad times as well as in good.
All industries may be divided into
two classes-production of daily neces-
stiles and production of permanent
wealth. 1t is the last which suffers
from abnormally high prices. We can
stop building, but we cannot stop eat
ing. When the price of iron is under
proper control, the industries con-
nected with building will be as uni
forrnly profitable as trade in food and
clothing.
The only possible way to bring iron
under proper control is to accumulate,
in each of the iron-producing eoun-
tries of the world, stock of pig iron
equal to several months production.
1t will not suffice to do this in one
country only. The demand from the
others would carry it's price up with
theirs. Each country must accumu-
late an adequate reserve stock of its
own. If this be done during the next
few years, there will be no more per-
iods OF boom and no more periods of
industrial depression, except such
short temporary Interruptions as may
come from financial panics; in time,
they, too, may be understood and pre-
vented.
IF the manufacturers of building ma
ferialQ at INN ntor
lily and promptly, put down prices to
within 10 per cent. of normal figures,
which is as low. Also as they should ever
have gone, even in periods of most mark
ed depression, it would revive large
number of the building enterprises which
are now postponed or abandoned and a
prolonged industrial depression might
even at this late date be averted If on
the other hand, prices are held up, until
sales are forced by the accumulation of
excessive stocks made at a high cost,
then heavy losses and failures will oc-
eur, confidence will be lost, and no amount
of reduction will revive the postponed en-
terprises, until the iron producing nations
have passed through just such another
industrial depression as has heretofore
price of iron.
There is wonderful future for the
iron business the day these violent fuc-
tuations in price are ended. The annual
consumption of iron in the United States
is growing with cumulative force Fifty
years ago it was 100 pounds per capita,
two years ago 800 pounds, and last year
400 pounds per capita, Within twenty-five
years it should be 1000 pounds Not one
twentieth of the inhabitants of the earth
are comfortably housed, fed and clothed.
The world is not finished. Let everyone
work who will. 1t requires certain
number of workers to produce the daily
necessities of the people. Every addi-
tional producer put to work adds to
wealth. When the price of iron is under
control, the manufacturing nations will
make such regular and uninterrupted
progress as will astonish the world.
Iron is the most valuable gift nature
ever bestowed upon nation. The own
ers of the great iron properties have an
opportunity of untold wealth within their
grasp. They may, by wise action change
business which in the past has been
attended by one or two years profit, fol-
lowed by seven or eight years of loss, to
a business of uninterrupted profit.
THE act which puts an end to seasons
of industrial depression will inaugurate
iron-producing nations of the world"