Show THE STEEL WIRE NAIL COMBINE A dispatch from Plttsburg to the New York Evening Post says the steelwire nail combine is shipping nails to Germany I Ger-many at a dollar a keg less than the price to American jobbers The combine I com-bine is enabled to do this by means of the tariff the real benefit going to the German consumer and not the Americans Ameri-cans That there is a combine also has its effect in making the price of nails but the tariff allows it to force the price up to high water mark Under I the McKinley tariff the duty was a cent a pound on cut nails and four cents on horseshoe nails Under the Wilson I Gorman bill it is 25 per cent ad va lorem This same dispatch says it is stated I on the best authority that the Consolidated I Consoli-dated Steel and Wire company is earning earn-ing at the rate of 4000000 or 30 percent per-cent for the year On equally good authority au-thority it is announced that the earnings earn-ings for 1895 were 27 ½ per cent The company has an annual output of about 288000 tons of rods 482000 tons of plain wire 160000 tons of barbed wire and about 3000000 kegs of wire nails It does I about 65 per cent of the barbed wire business of the United States and 45 per cent of the wire nail business While it does over threefourths of the export business in barbed wire It has paid 10 per cent dividends since its organization or-ganization in 1892 Certainly the business of the company com-pany has been prosperous to have made such earnings as these If the Republicans Republi-cans elect the president and congress I this November will they undertake to give such infant industriesas these more protection If they contribute largely of their fat to the campaign fund they will undoubtedly un-doubtedly demand their pound of flesh and get it without any of the terrible conditions that were imposed upon Shylock when he demanded the fulfillment fulfill-ment of his contract |