The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-06-01
BIRMINGHAM TRUST. MONTHLY LETTER ON TRADE CONDITIONS
Healthy Growth of Domestic Trade Indicated-Export Business Doubles That
 of a Year Ago

The general letter on trade conditions and business forecast for the month of June 1915. issued yesterday by the Bir- mngham Trust and Savings company was as follows:
 Were it possible for America to de- liver to Europe all of the goods, supplies and commodities purchased or ordered immediately, this country would be, by edch action, plunged into a period of almost unbounded prosperity. Orders on hand and unified for goods to be shipped abroad are estimated by various authori- ties all the way from a billion to bill lion and a half of dollars in value. Nat urally, the sale of this quantity of goods and commodities and the bringing of this much money or credit into this country would stimulate local or home demand to just that amount. Some of these Flu rcpean orders will take months to i'll and we are Just now beginning to feel the commercial effects and benefits of the European war. These benefits will increase as the weeks pass, and faster than they have been increasing because we are rapidly adding to our facilities.
  to nowadays as war orders,' means ap- proximately that the same amount of domestic trade will immediately follow it. We are even now beginning to feel a considerable growth in domestic de- mand which can reasonably be depended upon to steadily increase. One large manufacturing concern doing usually business of over $50,000,o10 annually and which is not accepting any war orders is doing business at present at the rate of more than s75.000,000 a year. There are numerous similar evidences of the healthy growth of domestic business.
 Bank Clearings Increase
 Bank clearings for April exceeded $15, O00.0 600, an increase of nearly l per cent over the same month last year. This is in the face of the fact that the estab- lishment of federal reserve banks would naturally make a material reduction in the showing of bank clearings because of the new method of clearing in the fed eral reserve cities.
 ''Business failures for April were some thing over 1900 in number compared with 1883 in March and 127S in April of last year. The total liabilities of the failed concerns were approximately $S9,oOo00O compared with liabilities of $l9000,OoO for the concerns failing in April 1914 This failure record on its face would look bad were the assets of the failed concerns not considered in conjunction with the liabilities. It is customary to talk about the number of concerns failing and the total liabilities, leaving the assets out ol account, but the concerns failing in April with total liabilities of 39,00o000 had as sets of over $20,O00, GOO, while those fail ing in April of last year, with liabilities of only s19,O0O.o00 had assets of only s. O00,0o0
 "Money in circulation in the United COG dtdpvalleyethe1
 States on May 1. amounted to S3,i93, O00 900 compared with $3,476, ,000,00e q year ago. The per capita circulation was SEATS. compared with $35.20 a yea ego. The federal government esti- mates the present population of the United States at 100, Al, 000 Leading government officials in recent patriotic speeches have referred to our "90000,- 900 of people," They should now dis cover than we are a nation of more than 100, 100000.
 "6tur March exports fell only s1,o00,- oco under $300000,000 total whicn compares with exports of only $751;