The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-04-13
THE WEST IS RESTRAINT.
IT SEES SIGNS OFA LET-UP IN
 THE BIG BOOM.

Order of Five Thousand Cars Car-
 ceIIed by One Railroad, and One for
 Three Thousand Cars by Another
 Eighteen Hundred Telephone Labor
 CTS Have Been Laid Off in Thirty
 Days.
 The industrial prosperity has reached point where manufacturers are spread out to their full capacity and are doing an immense business large ly on borrowed capital. Capital has lately become somewhat doubtful, am has occasionally suggested retrench- ment. The latter is seen in the curtail- ment of new ventures the cutting off of all unnecessary expenditures on the part of the railroads and industrial companies The steel men say there has been very little cancellation of or ders, which Is true, but a statement was made privately by large consum- CT of steel that good percentage of the orders taken by the big steel man ufacturing companies are with a can cellation clouse,
 As yet, consumers of steel have not had their orders cut down to an extent that would necessitate the cutting off of purchases by the larger producers The car factories are full of orders, but there have been cancellations of late of five thousand cars by one railroad and three thousand by another. The state ment was made In private conyersa- tion by car manufacturer, and was not for publication, but it has leaked out. All information of this kind is be- ing closely guarded by the big manu- facturers who know from experience the effect of .the circulation of such re- ports on the trade in general. It is eX- pected, in the natural order of affairs, that other purchases of cars will be cancelled unless they are delivered in the immediate future, as the railroads are trying to get along without as many cars, although they need all the cars they can get.
 The most striking feature in the line of curtailment is the raction of the Western Electric company In laying off eighteen hundred men inside of thirty days. An official of that company ex- plains their position by saying that for more than a year they have taken all the men securable and worked their forces night and day to get out their orders. The rush work has been com pleted and retrenchment is now in line, every departmen cutting down as much as possible, and they are down to their normal condition. The extent of the expansion in this line is seen in the swelling of the Western Electric com panys business from forty million in 1905 to seventy million in 19O6 All the new construction work has been caught I'D with and they say the tele- phone business, which is large part of their trade, runs in cycles, three years of great activity, and three years of normal conditions.
 Producing capacity of all manufac- furers throughout the west is now the largest ever known, and it requires an Sifninense- consumption to keep it in op- eration to the limit. Prices of raw ma terial and labor have advanced to a point where they exceed the apprecia- ton in the selling price of the manu- factured article, There are numerous lines of goods being put on the market, agricultural implements particularly, where the manufacturers profits have been so greatly curtailed by the cost of production, that some evening up' is necessary to enable manufacturers to continue indefinitely in business. La bor was never paid such prices for per forming the same amount of work Chicago Letter to the New York Even ing Post,