New Britain herald., 1918-02-28

Steel and Pig
 Iron Markets
The Iron Age says:

 as indicated by 75 per cent blast furnace operations at Steel Corpora ton plants, accompanied by S5 per cent. active ingot capacity and 80 to S5 per cent. in rolling mills. Some ! companies have not fared so well. Eastern Pennsylvania, which was hardest hit, is still very short of coke, and biast-furnaces there have scarce exceeded a 50 per cent. operation, with steel works at 60 per cent. or less
 Pittsburgh and nearby districts are suffering from new car shortages. Loaded cars have left the mills, but are not returning and the giving of Speclal priority to food s!1ipm ents has resulted in the sending of empty cars all the way from the East to the far West. Coke shortages arc much aggrava,ed from this cause.
 Steel nlanufact will confer in New York on Friday preparatory to meeting with Government represen- tatives to consider the prices that will prevail after April l. Steel produc- CTS, after months of hamperings, With steadily advancing costs, now ask for stabilized prices over a peri cd of six to nine months. The un certainty as to prices and pig-iron and steel supply is beginning to affect consuming industries in number of lines, and the next conference at Washington is considered of more'r1o> :nent than any that have preceded it.
 Foundry operations have been cur tailed here and there for lack of pig iron but therc gre also cases in which the demand for castings has fol ai n in the less essential class have found their sales diminishing or have had to stop for lack of fuel.
 Inquiries recently before the mar ket from Canadian shipyards have been Withdrawn, and the needs of these yards. which are put at 30o,o00 tons for the year, will be supplied by American mills under government ar rangement, the distribution being made at Washington. At Toledo, Ohio, four vessels have been booked that will take about 10000 tons of steel.
 With moro plates available for gen. eral usc demand is cropping up. OH companies are now planning to add to their field tank capacity, and from other directions feelers are being put out At Cleveland an order for 13,- 900 tons; Of light plates for subra- rine fighter is one result of the new activity at Detroit.
 The belief that even more ship plates can be rolled than will be needed at home is indicated by an of fer of 3.75c. at mill on a large ton- mage for export-Quite little below what has been regarded as the export market
 On some of the Japanese ship plates on which rollings were held up by the embargo last year credits have now run out. The proposed new placing of this business. amounting to many thousands of tons, at gov crnment prices as against 9c. and loc. in the original contracts, is a factor in the negotiations between the two governments. It will bear in an i'm portant way on the prices tho gov ernment will pay for Japanese ships.
 Fabricated steel business dropped 10 95.0OO tons in January, from the 205 900 ton total of December. When the rush for munitions plants had run it's course in 1915, culminating in 2oS,5O0 tons of fabricated work in December of that year, the total for January. 1916, fell to 119,000 tons. The recent large lettings of fabricated steel for ships now leave little before the bridge and structural shops
 A proposal to tear up the rails of the Hudson Bay Railroad for war purposes abroad lends interest to an effort to sell some 65,000 tons of heavy rails. bought and paid for by what was once Russia, but still stored in this country. They may vet bo fn, and the question of title settled after ward.
 France has bought 1900 forgings i for 155-mm. guns and 250 for 75-rnnn. | guns. The transaction is added evil l dence of her inadequate raw material | supplies but of abundant gun making 1 facilities.
 Mills working on shell steel have 1 accumulated large stocks of discards. 1 which ultimately may be worked off | as hard steel bars, but arc little 1 called for today. Some discard steel 1 is being worked off in billet form and | at s45 to $50 ton is diSplacing old 1 steel rails as raw material Of re- rolling plants.
 Tho effort 10 make sure of full pig iron supply through the year has led to a scramble in some districts for what the blast furnaces have to sell. Makers arc declining a good doal of offered business, and while their con- tracts carry the provision for adjust ment of prices. if necessary. after April i. they are disposed to await the next prico-6Xing conference.
 The scrap trade iG accepting the DOW rulings Of the regulating com mittee not Nithstanding the devil ation< from long established price re- lations Opposing views on the ques- tion of commissions to holders of ward stocks have not vet been threshed out and meanwhile author