OCR Text |
Show What Booms the Iron Trade. New Yobk, Jannary 4. Businese men throughout the country are watching with much interest the course of the iron market, which has come to be the barometer of trade in this country. The recent sharp advance in the price of steel rails and the meeting of steel manufacturers to be held in Pittsburg this week to advance prices, seem to tradesmen trades-men in general to indicate a possible advance ad-vance in the prices of iron, and so to give warning of the general revival of business. Andrew Carnegie, of the great rail manufacturing manu-facturing firm of Carnegie Brothers, of Pittsburg, attributes the recent advance wholly to natural causes. He says: "A new era of railroad building has set in in the Northwest and Southwest, having Chicago as its centre. One company alone I know to have just placed an order for 70,000. tons of rails for the extension of its system. In addition ad-dition to this, there is a demand for rails for new lines, and the recent disinclination on the part of the railroad companies to expend money for new track iron to replace the old, has resulted in the wearing out of the old equipment. These rails, now worn out, must be replaced. The demand during the coming year for replacement purposes promises to be very much greater than usual. The conditions con-ditions are favorable for the companies just now, ag old iron finds a ready market at so good a figure that rails may be replaced by new ones Of steel at a comparatively small outlay." |