The age-herald., 1900-01-27
 DUN'S WEEKLY
 TRADE REVIEW No News is Not Always Good
 News. BUSINESS HAS BEEN LIGHT Iron and Steel Prices Have Been Yield ing for Several Weeks and Are Shade eLower-LargeC Com tracts Ahead

New York, January 26.-R. G. Dun & Co.'S weekly review of trade will say to- morrow
 '.No news is not always good news. Bus mess for manufacturers thus far has been light and much below the production of last month It is perhaps too often for gotten that industries start this year with larger contracts ahead than ever before and when half the work of the whole year has been ordered in advance there cannot continue quite the same activity in new buying. The woolen manufacture has Just opened a new season with the largest transactions ever known in a single week. it Is said, but In most other lines contracts previously booked would make similar ac- tivity impossible. Yet, there is seen enough of hesitation caused by advanced prices to make inactivity trying. Distribution to consumers throughout the country is rapid and large especially in quarters where 1t has been feared retailers were over buy ing, so that there is strong confidence in the future.
 The boot and shoe manufacture is re- ceiving small orders as jobbers pay the price asked only for such limited supplies as are needed for sorting, but their ur- gency to receive goods heretofore ordered is marked, and shipments from Boston have been 3S0, ,963 cases in four weeks, about per cent. more than in 1898. and 16 per cent more than in 1895, with greater in- crease over every other year. Leather is inactive and slightly weaker in spite Of heavy exports, and hides are yielding at Chicago with action of stocks.
 Iron and steel prices have been yielding for several weeks and are a shade lower for products than at any other time since the moderate sales of September. Besse- mer pig and billets are now scarce and firmly held, only two sales amounting to 5000 tons are anywhere reported. Agree merits to hold the price of bars do not pre- vent sales at Philadelphia for S2.071s of iron considered by buyers best refined. according to the Iron Age. though sellers call it com mon and plates and sheets are both ar- regular there with narrow plates sold at Pittsburg below $2.2o. Structural shapes are not quoted lower but the New York Central contract for 13,000 tons of bridge material went to the Pennsylvania, Peni- coyd and Detroit works, and two orders for 25 000 tons of rails are taken at Chicago. Last year 13,620, 7O3 tons of pig were pro- duced according to the official record, the consumption being 13,7I472l tons. In minor metals, tin only haS been actlVe, January options being quoted at 2715c.
 The cotton manufacture meets but mod crate demand for goods and extensive fam inc in India is expected to reduce British sales in that country, while the addition of S963, 1884 spindles at the south in 1899 reported by the Textile World would inn ply a heavier increase than has been sup posed in consumption not by northern mills. Scarcity of water has curtailed the out put for weeks past, and yet prices are hard l. held, with distant contracts shade lower. Cotton has risen to cents. AL though exports during the month have been 2T4 900 bales smaller than last year, receipts f, om plantations nave diminished about as much. Middling uplands now sold at a higher price than has been quoted since September, 1891.
 Wheat llas advanced to 757sc., with no clear reason for such a sharp advance Western receipts small, in four weeks only 10,9S4,92S bushels against IT ,290,2 ,297 last year; but the Atlantic exports have been only 7,737, 474 bushels, flour included, against r ,037 ,3S3 last year.
 Cash corn has declined about %c., al- though option prices are about the same as at .fle close last week.
 Failures for the week have been 231 in the United States against 226 last year, and cl in Canada against 31 last year.
 BRADSTREET'S REVIEW