Hemingray among those who left the Ohio Valley

BESSEMER FAMINE.

PROFITABLE FIELD FOR CAPITAL.

"Cold Short" on the Outlook for the

Bessemer Steel Industry — The Results of

Competition With Natural Gas —

Industries Flocking Here.

Mr. P. H. Moore, in his weekly letter to the St. Louis Age of Steel, has the follow-points of interest:

The famine in the Bessemer bloom and slab trade is but very slowly abating, and if it holds to the present proportions a short time longer I will have to recant my recent counsel and include the steel bloom and slab business among those occupations offering the strongest inducement for further expansion and the investment of capital and enterprise. The supply has never been in excess of legitimate requirements or, strictly, in just proportion with them, but for the purpose of fending oil intemperate extention or overdoing conservative Mentors have discouraged the excitement of competition. It seems now that it is measurably underdone and open for the employment of prudent, temperate enterprise.

In the Wheeling district there are four Bessemer steel plants and one building, the Jefferson; one more company disconnected with any mill or factory annexes is being organized, with very able business ability and experience at its head.

The East and West are acknowledging fealty to the natural gas of this region. Compelled by their inability to compete with upper Ohio Valley manufacturers, by reason of the great economies gained in the use of this natural fuel, they are one by one submitting to the inevitable and are preparing to move to the gas territory. Disston, the saw manufacturer, of Philadelphia; C. H. Robison & Co.'s large butterine factory, of Chicago, and the Hemingray Glass works, of Covington, Ky., lead the van this fall, and the procession has only started. It is becoming a settled conviction that the great fuel supply is not only here, but that it is in practical potency, restricted to this region. It is claimed that Mr. Diston will gain economies amounting to $60,000 by this removal. It is also generally conceded that the gas supply will be permanent, at least none of the youngest of existing generations will see its failure. These cities, within this territory, occupy a very favored position, and it behooves them to take prudent advantage of it at once — to make hay while the sun shines; without vain glory, however, for "let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." There is a large territory included in this gas belt — sixty miles long from Wheeling to Pittsburg, and about the same width, starting from Wheeling as the western limit. There are some outlying points, it is true, in Pennsylvania and Ohio, but at Pittsburg and Wheeling the grand triumvirate of advantages center — natural gas, perfect water and rail facilities for transportation, and that unfailing substitute, should the gas supply weaken, the most magnificent bituminous coal measures in America, with seams 5 1/2 to 8 feet thick cropping out everywhere on the flanks of the hills and in the curves of the valleys — coal that imparted to both Pittsburgh and Wheeling their super eminent prestige as iron, steel, glass and pottery producing centers — as grand a heritage as natural gas. The fitting of residences, factories and public buildings with natural gas equipments has created quite a scramble in Wheeling with the accompaniments of inability on the part of the victims and a feast for the plumbers. The advent of natural gas, it is said, increased the guild of gas fitters in Pittsburgh from the original number, 300, to over 2,000. The increase to Wheeling is about sixty and there is not nearly enough. Housekeepers claim that the advantages gained by its use are indescribable, but the crowning glory is its cleanliness. The heat is dryer and more pervading, producing, unless artificial moisture is supplied, disagreeable sensations of compression about the head.