The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-10-06

ifies of the custom house in this city. If late in September and throughout October and all the fall. the custom house re ports showed heavy exports. then it could be confidently assumed that England. France, Italy, Russia and Japan were buying heavily in the American markets. In August, however, no one ventured to predict that 1t would be possible to re- port on October 1 that the port of New York would have carried in single week commodities of the value of s9O,0oO, ,00o. For, in the first place. S20,o0o000 is of larger money value than that recorded for any export from New York in any pre- ceeding last week in September
 In the second place, our exports have been falling off and there have been none as large as this since the latter part of March of this year. Then, again, ex- ports were blockaded, so to speak i'm mediately after the war began. and in the middle of August reached an alarmingly low figure.
 A Sea Change
 Suddenly there comes as swift and great change in our international trade as was ever recorded, for in the first half o1 September there was loss of S4,000,- 00o in the money value of exports as com pared with a like period a year ago, whereas in the last two weeks there was a gain in a like period of approximately S,OoO,000 of money value as compared with the exports of the last two weeks of September of last year.
 It is not possible to report in detail the various commodities which made up this export whose money value was S2O,- o0o00o. A good deal of it was food. There were some military supplies and consider able export of iron and steel prod' cts.
 The encouraging feature of this report is found in the fairly good symptom It furnishes of continued heavy exports dur ing the rest of the fall.
 Meantime imports are not likely to be greatly increased. We shall have little or no imports from Germany, probably none at all from Belgium. Our trade~with England will, so far as imports are con cerned, be considerably, curtailed. What the international trade with South Amer ica will be Is something no one can now predict but the opinion is commonly held here that we shall maintain and increase our large trade with Canada
 There seems to be no doubt that the way will speedily be found by which our cotton trade can recover from the set back which was occasioned by the war How great that setback was is shown by the report from Washington which states that in August cotton exports were of the money value of les sthan $1, SOC, 900, where money value of less than $1,50O000, where Ndiue ol Cottoll eApOTtS was nearly Slf,- 00o000.
 The Gold Pool and Exports
 The S10,000,000 in gold which was shipped from New York city to Ottawa on the evening of September 90 furnishes a good supply of coin against which foreign ex- change can be drawn. The movement itself represents that unparalleled CO., operation which has made the banks of the national reserve system subscribers, each according to its own strength, to this gold pool. The banks of New York city. in anticipation of the completion of this equipment. advanced the s10,00o, --- as they had already sent to Canada other millions as a basis for the payment of ex- isting obligations of New York city.
 If by this artifcialized method which has attained nationwide cooperation it is possible for American merchants and importers and those who have made finance bills and the city of New York to pay their existing debts. then there should be speedily a reflex effect oc- casioned by the heavy exports of Amer ican commodities. The money value of the exports from the port of New York