The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-05-26

The bad crop reports have had their effect in forcing further liquidation Tn stocks. One can only hazard a guess 1t the amount of money yearly received by the railways from the grain harvest Talk ing the grain crop at ninety million tons, it is safe to say that a third of this tonnage is kept by farmers. giving sixty millions tons to the railways. The aver age rate received by the railways for this traffic may be placed at $150 a ton. mak ing a gross revenue of ninety million dollars. Most of the wheat is carried to the mills a hundred million bushels to the mills of Minneapolis and Duluth alone-and is afterwards shipped to con sumers as four A very large part of the railway grain tonnage Is carried all the way from the western farms to the seaboard for export. With a ninety-mll- lion-dollar primary grain revenue as a basis and taking into consideration the many more millions of revenue received by the railways for transporting grain products, and then the further revenue received from carrying back to farmers the products they receive In exchange for their grain, and then adding the re- ceipts from the passenger traffic which is developed side by side with the freight traffic, 1t is probably safe to say that the harvest brings to the railways a gross revenue approaching four hundred million dollars or one-fifth of their entire revenue
 Many of our western roads depend al- most entirely on the harvest for their income. quarter of the freight earnings of a great railway like the St. Paul or the Southern Pacific is derived directly from transporting agricultural products. Successive crop famines in the west would bring bankruptcy to some of our great est railways. Our agricultural interests are now so diversified and cover so large an expanse of territory that we need have little fear of widespread crop disaster, but every year the earnings of our western roads rise or fall with the varying volume of the crops. A short age in any particular crop or in the crops in any particular section always gives anxiety to the owners of the roads af-
 fected. Prosperous farmers make pros porous railways. e
 A bull on Steel common thus argues his case: Very few even of the gilt edged issues on the stock list have shown
 as clean bill of health since the March
 panic as the Steel Corporations com
 mon stock There are a few bears left wno expect, or say they expect. to see l this stock sell again around 15. but 1t Is
 extremely unlikely that 1t will lose the high favor it has won in the estimation | of the public The common stock of | the Steel Corporation represents good l will, prospective earning power In ex- | cess of the preferred stock dividend, and
 all the residual assets and equities after satisfying the specific claims of the bond
 and preferred stockholders. At s37 share
 for the common stock, all this value is
 appraised at less than s19O,o0O,O00, but we | know that the corporation has spent | since organization nearly s42S, 100000 for l improvements. extensions and capacity work. all of which actually belongs to | the common stockholders. At the present price of the common in the market, all | these extraordinary outlays are ignored, l and all the intangible and prospective l values attachin2 to tha shares are >s----A-