New Britain herald., 1917-10-11
Steel and Pig
 Iron Markets
The Iron Age says:

With the leading iron and steel makers in conference at this writing
 with the War Industries board, O fur
 ther announcement of agreed prices
 may be expected at any moment. Tho
 effort will be to settle on the upward
 Of one hundred items, products and
 classifications of them, but the Ameri-
 can Iron and Steel Institutes com-
 mittee prior to leaving for Washing
 ton late yesterday afternoon had not
 gotten far beyond a consideration of
 semi finished steel products.
 What will interest the trade nearly as much as prices Is the extent to
 which there will be reaignment of
 basing points and other changes in trade practices. The sweeping rec
 concentrations proposed in fixing pig iron prices at the same figure for all furnaces are conspicuously epochal. Whether finished steel will be quoted
 at equal figures for Chicago as we'll as Pittsburgh is a question; it was not, appears, discussed at the meet ings in Washington out of which came the price promulgation on Sept. 24. The effort will be made to se- 1 cure a special base price for shell steel, on the ground that it introduces I ! from the rolling of ordinary steel 1 rounds. The place of the jobber in | the price fixing program and the 1 status of export sales for commercial 1 use, or under classification c, may ! bring out definite rulings.
 Pig iron manufacturers through l their representatives on the Ameri- can Iron and Steel Institute commit l tee have recommended the adoption of a uniform price at furnace, re- 1 gardless of location, with differen- tials 4f the various grades in harmony with time-honored analyses, but with en effort to establish uniformity in nomenclature. While it Is proposed to have a uniform base price as
 maximum, furnaces will be allowed to name lower prices when they wish
 to do so.
 In addition to recommendations as
 to base price, and differentials to be submitted to the War Industries
 board at Washington, some perplexing problems are also to be submitted.
 One of these is as to whether buyers of pig iron at about $50 tidewater for export who have not been able to obtain vessels can, without violating the spirit of the agreement, sell at a higher price than the $33 basis. An- other question relates to the com- mission to be allowed brokers.
 The sale of about 5000 tons of vir- ginia iron takes all that a leading in- terest will have for this year, and numerous other furnace companies North and South are understood to be in similar condition. Hence, If the new schedule extends only to Jan. 1 the tonnage of iron to be sold under 1t will not be. large. Some fur naces in Eastern territory have in- dicated willingness to sell for the first half of next year on the schedule proposed for the remainder of this year. The making up of contracts for castings has been delayed owing to the uncertainty that melters are al- ready covered for about 90 per cent of their pig iron requirements for this year. New buying in steel Is still negligi- ble. With the announcements from time to time of fresh and enlarged government building programs, the trade is coming to accept the attitude of mills in refusing further commit ments for the time being, for, in ad- dition to the direct government needs, it is recognized that the effect passes through the ramifcations of the in- ! dustry to the provisions of plant ex- i tensions and the building machinery 1 and apparatus. Our pig iron produc- |! ton statistics have shown how diff1- 1 oult it is. with fuel and labor short age, to increase the basic output. i
 Thus it is that cancellations of ! contracts have not occurred; con- sumers cannot discover other sources of supply. Efforts to secure readjust- ments of contract prices have not, however, been forsaken. Many of these expire this year, but deliveries