The Birmingham age-herald., 1903-09-27
STOCK MARKET IS
 NOT RESPONSIVE The BuIIiSh Efforts Have Very
 Little Effect LAKE SUPERIOR A FEATURE Wall Street Is in Doubt as to What Is Going to -e Done With Steel
 comnon-Financal
 News.
LAKE SUPERIOR A FEATURE
BY ". c. NICHOLAS.


 market does not respond in satisfac- tory manner to the bullish effect or bull ish news. It rallies easily in obedience to manipulative action. but whenever quo tations improve a point or two stocks are 1 offered for sale freely and there is rapid subsistence. This experience has been re- peated so frequently that experts look skepucally upon any improvement which may appear Tn prices. The army of com mission payers. without whose presence in the market there is a dullness and de- spondency about brokerage offices, are discouraged. They can not "beat the game" and their capital is impinged upon every time they attempt to make turn. This kind of blood letting, if kept up weakens the trade and drives good people away from the market. One trouble seems to be that the rich men have been so badly hurt by the decline in securities values that they are in no mood for con- certed action for an advance, much as they would like to see one. The little people have lost confidence In the specu- lative situation and the result is dullness amounting to stagnation on the ex- changes. The succession of collapses among capitalized industrials leaves the financial district full of d'scredited bankers and promoters. Their failures have killed speculation for the time being and dragged down the prices of many securities of undoubted intrinsic merit. The increased cost of operation Of rall- roads has also contributed to the same end. The fact that sums of money, im-
 -ffI ffnA m in underwriting and syndicate schemes is another factor of importance In the gen. eral dullness.
 The collapse of Consolidated Lake Su- perior supplied an interesting chapter in the financial history of the week. It wuld appear from the latest surface de- velopments that practically all ot the $90 GOO 900 cash invested in the enterprise, mostly by Philadelphia capitalists, will be entirely wiped out. Purchasers of the property will have to take care of mort gage indebtedness to .he amount of s. 96O.oOO plus the wages due the workmen, amounting to about $250,500 additional. Wall street gossip has it that the pro- perties will eventually drift into the pos session of the United States Steel cor poration and that plans have already been matured by which insiders in Con- soidated-.who are also insiders in Steel, will be given a chance to recoup part, at least of heavy losses. Intimation IS heard that a syndicate will be formed to take over the property at the auction sale under the Speyer foreclosure, this syndi- cate, after a proper lapse of time, to make the goods over to the Steel trust al a figure which will net good round profit of possibly $5,0OO,0 900. If deal or Il. n..1xr Hrntsx few men will be the beneficiaries and the great mass of stockholders in the Con soidated Lake Superior corporation can paper the walls with their certificates of stock or sell them to the ragman. It is the fashion now to characterize MT. F. H. Clergue. promoter of the Consolidated en- terprises, as visionary proposition who drew on his Philadelphia packers by rose tinted representations having small foun- dations in fact. Those who are better informed have no words of harsh criti- cism for MT Clergne. They say that his plans are well grounded and that every prospectus promised would have been carried out had he been able to command little more capital. He had water DOW er iron mines, nickel mines, hundreds of miles of railroad and hundreds of thou sands of acres of virgin timber land: be- sides complete iron and steel mills, fleets of vessels. enormously valuable dock facil- tiles and all the elements that enter into the creation of a vast industrial enter prise embracing an infinite variety of products. The properties are still and will, doubtless. in time be developed for what they are worth, although the in- vestors in the expiring Consolidated Lake Superior company may never profit by the results of their past investments. The big ct4. f,1i11c water power and metal deposits of this company for a long time. and more than likely they will pass into the nav of the leviathan company.
 The worst feature in connection with