Business Conditions and Prospects

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D.C. · Jun 18, 1914

Business Conditions and Prospects

According to the Philadelphia Record, business conditions throughout the country are far from depressing. The prospects for autumn trade are good. The June payments of dividends and interest from the combined business of the country will be $4,000,000 larger than a year ago. It is probable that the wheat crop will amount to nearly 900,000,000 bushels.

Dun’s “Review” notes a number of helpful indications. It states that in the dry goods market “there has been an abandonment of the lethargy so plainly evident of late.” In New England shoe factories “business has been better than at any time this spring, and a few prominent manufacturing concerns have received more orders than in previous years.”

And in the iron and steel trade, which is supposed in a large measure to be the thermometer of trade conditions, the Iron Age says, “Improved sentiment is everywhere admitted.”

A recent number of the New York Herald says:—

There are signs on every side that the period of retrenchment, economy, doubt, and gloom has ended, and that the country is about to enter upon an era of expansion and prosperity. . . .

What are the evidences of this? Well, bank clearings are larger than a year ago, although prices of the commodities exchanged are lower—an evidence of increased volume of business. The same story is told by recent comparative increase in the earnings of a number of the railways. Pittsburgh tells of greater purchases of basic pig iron—the inevitable forerunner of greater demand for finished steel products. Fall River notes an improved inquiry for cotton textiles. And so runs the better feeling through the whole cycle of industries.