The age-herald., 1901-01-27

the National Tube Company the $sOO0O. 900 combine now controlling the pipe trade. Officers of the company said today that they would not sit idly by and allow Mir 1arnesie to engage in the business without retaliating.
 Joshua Rhodes, chairman of the board or directors of the National Company, said
 prices will drop as soon as the new Car negie plant is putinto operation" Other officers hinted that with all the advantages they possess in the way of money, supply or raw materials, etc, there is nothing to prevent them from engaging in the rail ana steel structural business in opposition to Mir. Carnegie
 MT Morgan's control of the railroads rom the Atlantic to the Pacific favors them Tn the matter of rates and supply of cars.
 Details, such as the number of men to be employed when the SIP, ,000 900 tube plant at Conneaut is to be ready for operations, cannot be obtained now. In all probability the works will be about large as the National plant at McKeesport, and will em- ploy 5000 or 5000 men.
 One important development was the news that all mills to be erected in the future by the Carnegie Company will be built at Conneaut. This will be severe blow to Pittsburg.
 It is stated the Carnegie Company will soon announce it's intention of engaging in the sheet steel trade also Along with the original plan to erect the mammoth tube works at Duquesne, on the Monongahela river, it was proposed to build there the largest sheet mills in the world, a plant of some thirty mills, to cost about $2, ,00O,00O
 Wire, tin plate and coal are other lines in which MT. Carnegie will also engage. When he announces such intention he will have the trusts now controlling these trades after him, and the fight for trade will be bitter
 Carnegie's announcement about the tube mills was a surprise to the officials of the National Tube Company. Recently they gave up we'll defined plan to erect an open hearth steel plant in connection with their Riverside works at Wheeling, which to cost about $2,OOOOO0, and make the company independent of the market for it's supply of steel. It is said that this project was abandoned through an understanding with the Carnegie and other concerns on which the tube trust draws for a large part of its supply of steel
 The Carnegie Company is now turning out such immense quantities of raw steel that it will have to engage in other lines to work up this material, it being impossi- ble to sell 1t all This and the refusal of the railroads to reduce rates caused the de- cision to build at Conneaut The railroad combination is now charging IS cents per 100 pounds for iron and steel articles from Pttsburg to New York and to Chicago It has haggled over a proposal to reduce tnls 10 It cents or even l5 cents per lOO pounds.
 The Carnegie Company can ship steel from Conneaut harbor to New York for 5 cents per 100 pounds and steel has actually been sent to Duluth for 50 cents a ton, trip of 900 miles.
 It is also asserted that coal can be sent and has been sent on grain vessels from Buffalo to Chicago for 1 cent per 100 pounds and that steel can be sent from Buffalo to New York by way of the Erie canal for 30 cents per ton. These figures are considered so startling by iron and steel men that they reel that in many ways the proposed Car negie lake plant will be able to sweep away every opposing obstacle