Bismarck daily tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1881-1916, 1910-01-02
The Business Year
Extracts from Bradrees Review Of the Business Year 1907
- With Forecast
With Forecast.

lew Of the Business Year 1909, ?
Forecast.
great forward steps in American
: trade, finance and industry. Withal
however, there was evidenced an al.
most inexhaustible capacity for look.
ing on the bright side of things
which made for fresh trlumphs and
for a virtual new birth of aggres-
siveness in pushing enterprises for.
ward toward successful futures.
The events of the year tended to
confirm earlier Impressions that the
great collapse of 1907 was a purely
financial affair, not involving any
great weakness in the business and
industrial structure. Whatever may
be said Of the merits Of the years
tariff revision, there is no denying
that the work was skillfully done
with a minimum Of unsettlement to
trade, and with uncertainty as to
this removed in mid-year, the opti-
mism in the stock markets, the ease
Of money, the preparations for and
good results from abundant harvests
the steady monthly reduction in bus
mess mortality and failure damage,
the expansion in leading industries
the boom in that readiest of all
ready-money producing trades
building-and the preparations made
to fill the void in the consuming
markets made by two years of repres-
sion in buying, all combined to cause
a great onward surge in all lines of
trade, which, despite the steadily in
creased cost Of all that enters into
human consumption, resulted in a
total trade turnover which will com.
pare very favorably with the best
that was witnessed in previous years
of abundant prosperity. That great
backlog of all of the country's inter-
ests-agriculture-prospered as new
or before, not so much in the mat
ter of quantity, because bumper
crops were few, but in the matter of
financial returns, which, indeed, plac-
ed the farmers of the country in a
class by themselves. 1t is true that
the price advances bore hardly on the
consuming class. and there was
shown in the utterances of public
men and journals a disposition to
question the reality of all the appar-
ent benefits that flowed from high
prices.
Some Results of the Year in Trade.
The crops Of the year, taken as a
whole, were abundant though few
Of them broke the best records of the
past. Yields Of foodstuffs were large,
wheat and corn showing rext-to-rec-
ord production, and yields of oats,
rice, sugar. potatoes and tobacco
broke all records, while cotton and
hay fell of from the high level
yields of the preceding year. The
high prices ruling, however. placed
the aggregate returns to the farme
at points never before reached.
While ease Of money no doubt hel ted
toward encouraging speculations in
commodities, the high recJr.is of pri.
ces at time of heaviest movement:
showed demand waiting closely on
supply, If indeed not actually sur.
passing it, and this too in a year
when. owing to high prices of our
foodstuffs foreign demand was con-
spicuously small and exports fell be-
low those of the Tires preceding
years. Large imports previous to
tariff revision were partly. no doubt,
due to desire to anticipate this leg
islation, but the record breaking ar.
rivals of foreign goods not all of
them raw materials for manufacture,
in the late fail swelling the coun-
try's import trade to dnpi eceleEted
totals, indicated an expansion Of con-
sumptive demand SURPRISING all ex-
pectations. In the l.adihg indus
tries the story was one OF large. in
some cases record expans!cr Iron
ore and copper producttoc broke all
records, while that Of pig iron equal