Mohave County miner and our mineral wealth., 1920-12-18
(By E. F. Hutton & Co.,

STOCKS-Liquidation that set in early in the month became more pro- |. nounced as time went on and brought about a lower range of values in the security market. Shorts covered freely from time to time, but they had no trouble in getting stocks and = this encouraged them to hammer the list, whenever stock or group of stocks acted heavy.
 The principal factor in the market is the deflation process, which is gaining momentum and, apparently, has not as yet run its course. Wall Street usually discounts the future, and the general opinion seems to be that the decline in stocks has already discounted the present fall in com modity prices with margin for a further drop. The action of the mar ket gives evidence of this by showing signs of rallying power on any lit tie encouragement, although there is also a tendency to run to cover on dll lIlulSdllOl Ol lul tiielF uiil1aNOl aUiS developments.
 Several large Industrial Corpora tions have seen fit to either reduce their dividends or pass them entirely, this cast gloom over the street, and rumors of similar action to be taken by other large corporations gave the bears the ammunition they were look ing for.
 Why it should be supposed that the depression in business should not be reflected in dividends is not quite clear. In most cases, these past divi- dends represent the earnings of an inflated volume of business conduct ed with an expanded capital neces- sary to meet the high costs of pro- duction. That demand has now fal- len off and has done so ahead of the deflation in labor and materials.
 This. deflation process is now bear ing heavily upon industry, commerce and agriculture and even upon trans portation and no class or element of the community can hope to escape. Industrial reaction is hitting first all of those commodities in which there was the greatest speculative advance, due to boom conditions. In the course of time, it was bound to react upon general industrN-espec- ially as the greatest item of cost in most manufactured articles, labor, has only just begun to be, deflated. Considering all the deflation, it is re- markable that there has been so few failures, which speaks we'll for the fundamental conditions, which, so far have proven sound.
 It is very generally admitted now that the policy of the Federal Re- serve Board has been vindicated and that instead of a temporary depres- sion which we are now passing through, we would have had real if nancial panic.
 The independent Steel producers have now fallen in line and have an- nounced reduction in finished steel prices and are now down close to the levels of the big Corporation, which has been steadily maintained through times of abnormal demand and which are now likely to vindicate themselves by stabilizing the Steel industry in times of great stress.
 The Railroad Stocks held we'll, but were finally forced to yield, when the selling of the Industrials became acute, but the decline did not go very far.
 The Oil Stocks were allowed to drift lower on the theory that any general let-up in business was sure to curtail the demand for oil and the fact that several large Automobile Companies closed down several of | their plants gave grounds to the be-, lief that curtailment in the use of gasoline might become factor in causing reduction in the prices of | the commodity. Several of the East ern Companies made slight reduc- tion in the cost of fuel oil, but this was by no means general.
 We believe the market has seen the 1 worst of the deflation talk and, while | We are not looking for bull market, we believe prices are not far from bottom.
 RAILROAD STOCKS-Through- out the past month, railway shares have been relatively strong as com pared with the industrials, and at tim es have advanced aggressively at the