The morning journal-courier., 1908-02-28


 A feature in the early trading was a sharp rise in Interborough-M Metropoli- tan 4Iss to above 57. on fairly large transactions, which caused the total bond sales to double during the morn ing.
 The rail orders announced this week helped the position of the unlled States Steel shares Brokers state that most of their investment buying now is in Steel common. This, quite as much as the short interest, keeps the price steady. Eventhough the dividend is not being earned this quarter, there is no probability of reduction
 There evidently being very few stocks for sale at the opening Of the market. traders quickly took the pull side. Business was almost entirely pro- fessionai. New York Central declined as the result of the poor aearnlngs re- ported.
 With little more activity in stocks than Wednesday prices sagged off Tn the last hour. following the offering down of Union Pacific on few sales Reading declined with it. and the en- tire list became reactionary. rejecting effort by traders who bought early Tn the day to take profits on their pur- chases. Scarcely any buying develop ed and this, perhaps accounted for the willingness to get out of stocks at con sessions
 Some uneasiness was caused by the poor market for Erie bonds. The con- vertible As were quoted 42 bid and t6 asked There was no bid for the Bs. The former sold last year as high as 103 S4 They are convertible on the basis of $100 bonds for $200 stock. The Bs sold at S7 last year. They are con vertible into common stock at 60. The common now sells at 13.
 The Gould stocks did better than might have been expected in view of the receivership for the International and Great Northern. It was only na tural that. the Gould stocks should de- cline. Favorable comment was heard on MT Gould's plain and unvarnished statement of the circumstances out of which the receivership grew As one broker put it, 'It is an illustration of government ownership in effect without any corresponding responsibilities"
 New York Central's decrease of s1.- 560,000 in gross earnings for December attracted widespread interest, but ex- cept for q trif1ing setback when the news came out, 1t had no effect on the stock By midday the loss had been recovered It is popularly supposed that there is large outstanding short interest in this stock. which fact serves to kep it steady. The feature of this report was the falling 0 ffof S4l3.0N0 in the earnings of the little Pittsburg and Lake Erie-which fact, it was assum- ed, reflected conditions in the western part of the state of Pennsylvania where iron. steel and coal products make up a large proportion of the traf- fic of all railroads
 The quiet buying of Amalgamateo Copper this week has been based on the vague information that some good news was pending. This crystalized yesterday in the report that the Butte mines would open March 10 The large sales of late have reduced visible sup plies to a low point. Another condi tlon making for this decision is the distress among the miners who were the frst to feel the trade depression.
 investigations it was asserted yester, day, shows that commission houses Ire carrying less stock for customers than at any time since last November
 Railroad traffic in the south last week madethe reason for wage reduc- Nashville lost nearly s20l.000 gross. or over 20 per cent, Southern Railway, S25o,000, and Mobile and Ohio, s66.550
 Purchases of 5000 shares were made here for foreign account, mostly of the grangers and United States Steel though 1t did not appear that there was any significance to the trading There was some gains in stocks on the other side before the local opening.