LOW RECORDS OF FAILURES.

Favorable Statistical Showing for Six Months of 1906.

The figures on commercial insolvencies in the United States in the first half of 1906 are on the whole favorable, according to the returns compiled by Bradstreet's, though the increased volume of business has its effect in the total number of failures and the amounts involved. Therefore, the totals for the first half of 1906, while better than in the last three years, are not as favorable on their face as in the years of corresponding prosperity in 1902-3.

The figures for the six months just closed are 4,852 failures of individuals, firms, or corporations. This is a decrease of 7.4 per cent. from the corresponding period last year and an increase of only 1.3 per cent. from the low total of the first six months in 1903. Liabilities were $59,035,116, a decrease of 5.7 per cent. from 1905, and a gain of only 3.7 per cent. on the very favorable year 1902.

The failure returns for June amply confirm the reports of excellent trade, active industry and general large volume of profitable business doing in this period in a total of suspensions and of liabilities the smallest reported for several years past. It is, in fact, necessary to go back to 1902 to find a monthly total of liabilities or of failures as small as that reported for June.

Following are the statistics of business failures in the United States in the first half of each calendar year from 1896 to 1906, inclusive:

Good Times Even in Midsummer.

From Washington Post, August 7, 1906.

Business activity throughout the United States is unprecedented. Instead of midsummer dullness, there is a constant increase of energy. The gross earnings of the railroads were 14.27 per cent. greater for the first six months of 1906 than during the same period last year. Bank clearings for the seven months were 12 per cent. greater than last year. Bank deposits are larger than ever, in spite of the fact that enormous withdrawals have been made by people building their own homes. Building operations over the country are larger than ever before, and in some places are hampered by lack of structural steel and other material, as well as by scarcity of labor.

ness.

The iron and steel industry is more prosperous than ever. The United States Steel Corporation has resumed the payment of dividends upon its common stock, as a result of enormous busiThe net profits for the June quarter were $10,000,000 more than the June quarter last year. The company has orders on its books for 7,000,000 tons of steel. The steel mills are making greater demands for pig iron than the furnaces can meet. There is an actual scarcity of various kinds of pig iron and crude steel, while the coke famine promises to become serious in curtailing steel production. Orders are pouring in for all kinds of bridge,. structural, and railroad steel, and the pipe mills are receiving heavy orders.

The assurance of immense crops of cotton, wheat, and corn has stimulated business and building. Merchants throughout the South and West are putting in heavy orders, now that they are sure of the prosperity of the farmers. The market for cotton goods in China is beginning to mend, in addition to which the domestic conditions have made a strong cotton market. Prices have been steady, the decreased supply and increasing foreign

demand having offset reports of big crops. Wheat prices have tended downward as the certainty of a big crop has become manifest. Immense exports of wheat and lower home prices of flour are expected. As the corn prospect improved, prices went downward. It is now thought the corn crop will measure up with some of the largest yields in history. The American farmer will also profit by the diminished size of crops in foreign countries. For the first five weeks of the fiscal year the exports of breadstuffs, including flour, were 9,900,000 bushels, as against 5,500,000 bushels in 1905.

The demand for labor is one of the best proofs of good times. The scarcity is greatest in the coke regions and in the West, where harvesting is hindered by lack of help. The building trades are actively employed at big wages, and railroads in various parts of the country are seeking laborers.

The Midsummer, 1906, Business Outlook.

Dun's Weekly Review of Trade of July 28, 1906, said: Comparisons of the volume of current business with results at the corresponding date in previous years are so uniformly favorable that the outlook can only be regarded with confidence. Semi-annual statements are now sufficiently complete to make it certain that the first half of 1906 was the most prosperous six months period in the nation's history, and unless heavy cancellations occur in the last half of the year will establish a still higher record. Contracts come forward freely in the iron and steel industry, the only idleness being due to repairs necessitated by the vigor with which production has been pushed, and footwear factories are receiving orders for delivery next February, while even the textile mills report that purchasers have ceased efforts to secure more attractive terms.

Complaints of inadequate labor supply are universal. Building operations are extensive and would be much greater if the cost of labor and materials had not caused the abandonment of many plans. The week's crop news is encouraging and grain will soon be out of danger. Buyers are arriving in the primary markets in large numbers, placing orders freely and often urging quick delivery, which substantiates the claim that stocks are low in all positions.

Railway earnings in July thus far surpass corresponding reports for last year by 8.5 per cent., and foreign commerce at this port alone for the last week shows gains of $2,110,472 in exports and $1,589,518 in imports. Prices of securities advanced to the highest point in over a month, and monetary conditions were improved by the satisfactory placing of the Panama Canal loan: Bradstreet's of July 28, 1906, says:

In the leading industries more than seasonable activity rules, with the iron and steel trades leading in volume of demand and output. Building continues active and materials move well, though ease in Southern yellow pine is expected to last until the autumn. The crop situation seems to lose nothing as the growing season advances. Estimates of total wheat yield tend to grow as the spring wheat crop approaches maturity. A bumper yield in the Northwest is thought not impossible, and corn is doing well, with moisture needed in only a few States and a record Southern crop in sight. The heavy movement of winter wheat to market, while tending to some ease in prices, has a favorable side when the export business is considered. Reports are that a large future business in this direction has already been booked.

An interesting side light on the pessimistic predictions current some time ago as to the meat trade is found in advices from Chicago that cattle and hog prices are at the highest point of the year. Railway traffic returns point to an unprecedentedly heavy volume of business offering. Export trade in iron and steel keeps up surprisingly well, this being made possible, probably, by excellent trade in foreign markets.

As regard the money situation, it might be observed that some authorities take a rather more optimistic view as to supplies for crop moving purposes; and the free marketing by farmers of the winter wheat crop, despite the lower prices obtained, is a matter or encouragement.

President Roosevelt on the Campaign.

A TRENCHANT ANALYSIS OF THE ISSUES.

The following letter of the President to Representative Watson presents clearly the predominant national policies that would be jeopardized by the election of a Democratic House of Representatives next November:

Oyster Bay, N. Y., August 18, 1906.

My Dear Mr. Watson:-I hear, through Speaker Cannon and Representative Sherman, that you have volunteered to give your services to the Congressional Committee for the entire campaign, without regard to the effect it may have upon your canvass in your own district; and I feel like writing you a word of congratulation and of earnest hope for the success of your efforts. If there were only partisan issues involved in this contest I should hesitate to say anything publicly in reference thereto. But I do not feel that such is the case. On the contrary, I feel that all good citizens who have the welfare of America at heart should appreciate the immense amount that has been accomplished by the present Congress organized as it is, and the urgent need of keeping this organization in power. With Mr. Cannon as Speaker, the House has accomplished a literally phenomenal amount of good work. It has shown a courage, good sense and patriotism such that it would be a real and serious misfortune for the country to fail to recognize. To change the leadership and organization of the House at this time means to bring confusion upon those who have been successfully engaged in the steady working out of a great and comprehensive scheme for the betterment of our social, industrial and civic conditions. Such a change would substitute a purposeless confusion, a violent and hurtful oscillation between the positions of the extreme radical and the extreme reactionary, for the present orderly progress along the lines of a carefully thought-out policy.

The interests of this nation are as varied as they are vast. Congress must take account, not of one national need, but of many and widely different national needs; and I speak with historic accuracy when I say that not in our time has any other Congress done so well in so many different fields of endeavor as the present Congress has done. No Congress can do everything. Still less can it, in one session, meet every need. At its first session the present Congress, in addition to the many tasks it actually completed, undertook several tas which I firmly believe it will bring to completion in its se

ond session next Winter. Among these I hope and believe that the bills to prohibit political contributions by corporations, and to lower the duties on imports from the Philippine Islands, each of which has been passed by one House, will be enacted into law. I hope, and I have reason to believe, that favorable action will be taken on the bill limiting the number of hours of employment of railway employees. These and one or two other measures, the enactment of which I have reason to hope for, are important. But far more important are the measures which have actually been passed, and as to these measures I wish to reiterate that they are not important in a merely partisan sense, but are important because they subserve the welfare of our people as a whole, of our nation as an entirety. They are important because those who enacted them into law thereby showed themselves to be fit representatives of all good Americans.

In affairs outside of our own country our great work has been beginning to dig the Panama Canal. The acquisition of the Canal strip was due to the initiative of Congress; and the fact that the work thereon is now being done in the most thorough and satisfactory fashion is due to the action of the present Congress at the session just closed. Only this action rendered the work possible, and the heartiest acknowledgments are due to the far-seeing patriotism of those who thus made it possible. The digging of the Panama Canal is the colossal engineering feat of all the ages. No task as great of the kind has ever been undertaken by any other nation. The interests banded together to oppose it were and are numerous and bitter, and most of them with a peculiarly sinister basis for their opposition. This sinister opposition rarely, indeed, ventures openly to announce its antagonism to the Canal as such.

Sometimes it takes the form of baseless accusation against the management, and of a demand for an investigation under circumstances which would mean indefinite delay. Sometimes it takes the form of determined opposition to the adoption of plans which will enable the work to be done not merely in the best but in the quickest possible way. Had Congress been either timid or corrupt, and had not the leaders of Congress shown the most far-sighted resolution in the matter, the work of building the Canal would never have been begun or, if begun, would now have halted. The opposition to the adoption of the treaty by which our right to build the Panama Canal was secured; a part at least of the opposition even now being made to the ratification of the Santo Domingo Treaty, which is one more step in the effort to make peaceful and secure the waters through which the route of the Canal leads; the constant effort to delay, on one pretext and another, the actual work on the Canal-all prove how essential

it is that if the American people desire the Panama Canal to be built in speedy and efficient fashion they should uphold the hands of those who, in the present Congress, have so effectively championed this work.

No less praiseworthy has been the attitude of this Congress in continuing to build and maintain, on a high plane of efficiency, the United States Navy. This country is irrevocably committed to the maintenance of the Monroe Doctrine. It is irrevocably committed to the principle of defending and policing the Canal route. But its championship of the Monroe Doctrine and its announcement of its intentions as to the Canal route would both be absurd on their face if the nation failed to do its duty in maintaining a thoroughly efficient Navy at as high a point of perfection as can possibly be attained.

Our external affairs are important, but our internal affairs are even more important; and no other Congress for many a long year has, as regards the betterment of our internal affairs, so much and such excellent work to its credit. The tremendous social and industrial changes in our nation have rendered evident the need of a larger exercise by the National Government of its power to deal with the business use of wealth, and especially of corporate wealth, in interstate business. It is not too much to say that the course of Congress within the last few years, and the hearty agreement between the executive and legislative departments of the nation in taking the needed action each within its own sphere, have resulted in the nation for the first time definitely entering upon the career of proper performance of duty in these matters. The task is peculiarly difficult, because it is one in which the fanatical or foolish extremist, and the reactionary, whether honest or dishonest, play into one another's hands; and they thereby render it especially hard to secure legislative and executive action which shall be thorough-going and effective, and yet which shall not needlessly jeopardize the business prosperity which we all share, even though we do not all share it with as much equality as we are striving to It is a very easy thing to play the demagogue in this matter, to confine one's self merely to denouncing the evils of wealth, and to advocate, often in vague language, measures so sweeping that, while they would entirely fail to correct the evils aimed at, they would undoubtedly succeed in bringing down the prosperity of the nation with a crash. It is also easy to play the part of the mere obstructionist; to decline to recognize the great evils of the present system, and to oppose any effort to deal with them in rational fashionthereby strengthening immensely the hands of those who advocate extreme and foolish measures. But it is not easy to

secure.