UNITED STATES TRADE.

New Zealand Mail, 21 February 1901, Page 11

UNITED STATES TRADE.

The New York correspondent- of “Commercial Intelligence” gives some particulars of the apparent decline in the United States of the industrial boom. This time last year there was not a. furnace or mill anywhere, either in the Southern States or in Pennsylvania and Ohio, which was not at work. Railway companies, contractors and shipbuilders alike had to wait for the fulfilment of their ordex-s. The steamers bringing ore down the Great Lakes to the Erie ports, connecting with the Pennsylvania ami Ohio furnaces, were earning so much money in the ore business that they refused coal cargoes for the North-West, and returned light to the Upper Lake ports, in order that they might make their trips with greater expedition. Today, instead of the railway companies and the other large users of iron and steel stumbling; over each other in their eagerness to place orders, and outbidding each other for early delivery, they are standing off, and refusing to place orders, because they are convinced that the boom is at an end, and. that in the iron and steel industry pidces must inevitably continue to move downwards. The same applies to the cotton trade, in which the China troubles do-not by. any means wholly account for the slump that is taking place. What does this mean to Europe—to ourselves? If ther© be any ground for the theory that with a decline in American prosperity American competition will be more keenly felt in Great Britain, some signs of this increased competition ought soon to be visible.