New Britain herald., 1916-03-09
IRON PRODUCERS
 BEHIND IN ORDERS
EmbargOes and Car Shortages
 Partially Responsible

New York, March 9.-The Iron Age says: Shipments from mills were very heavy in February and some of the latter, notably those of the largest Chicago district producer, broke all records. In the Pittsburgh district the mills are working as never before 10 reduce piled-up orders, and some are succeeding. Generally, however, and partly due to embargOes, the month left producers farther behind in deliveries.
 Reports of embargoes and car shortages show that the railroads arc getting deeper in the mire and that situation, with the added threat of strikes, is giving shippers no little concern.
 While some consumers continue to Lombard mills with business on which price is quite unimportant compared with deliveries, others enlarge on the dangers of recent rapid advances and are moving with caution. But what seemed famine prices a few months ago are readily paid today and the | expectation of higher levels is general Mills Ovcrsold.
 In districts east of Chicago the scarcity of plates, shapes and bars IS 1 bearing most heavily on manufactur- l ing consumers. since producers near est the seaboard were first swept off their feet by war demand. Thus it l happens that while Western buyers are covered for most of the year, many dependent on Pittsburgh and other Pennsylvania mills cannot get the latter to enter their orders for tine second half. One reason is that buyers, instead of specifying about two-thirds of the maximum figures in contracts have gone to the limit and many mills are thus so oversold that, without formally opening their books for the last half, they will be at work far into the third quarter on what IS called first half business.
 Considering the close connection some furnaces have made on coke shipments, the February pig-iron out put was surprising. The total ot 3.OS7,212 tons for 29 days, or 106,4 tons a day, compares with 3,1S5,12 tons in January, or 102, ,746 tons a day. There was a net gain of six fn active furnaces and the 312 furnaces in blast March 1 represent 1O7, ,5lO tons day as against 106,372 tons for 3O6 furnaces on February 1. Produce ton is now proceeding at the unpre- ccdented rate of 39,500,000 tons a year.
 To Break Passage.
 An index to the remarkable scale of blast furnace operations is the ironi ere sticks at Lake Erie docks only C2OO,000 tons on March 1 against 7,5OO,O00 tons a year previous. Ore shippers, realizing the enormous strain of the coming season, are plan ming to break the ice in the channel at Escanaba, the Michigan port, be- fore the end of March. to make a new record in the opening of the shipping season.
 There has been another week of heavy pig-iron selling in all markets outside of the East. Prices of North ern iron have moved up at Chicago, Cincinnati and Cleveland and buying of Southern iron has been enough to make $15.50 nearly as common as $15, Birmingham, on early deliverieS, and one producer after selling 50,000 tons, is holding for $16. Southern warrants are still selling at $14 and $14.25, however, and Northern resale iron has gone at considerably less than Buffalo furnace prices.
 Pittsburg sales include 35, ,000 tons of basic at SIS to $1S.40 at furnace, 0,000 to 35,00O tons of foundry iron and 10000 tons or more of Bessemer. Inquiries for Bessemer iron are lar&e, and one interest is reported to be in the market for S0,0O0 tons for the i last half.