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TRADE, INDUSTRY, LABOR. Two hundred men at the Mikado mines, near Bessemer, Mich., have struck for an increase in pay. Massachusetts citles generally inaugurated city governments yesterday, including a Socialist mayor at Brockton. In nearly all cases the providing of adequate school accommodations for children was referred to as a most serious question. The icemen of St. Paul have formed a union and will demand 33 1-3 per cent. increase of pay. There are about 200 drivers and helpers employed by the half dozen companies, and it is understood that practically all have joined the union. A. Wettermark & Son, of Nacocdoches, Tex., and A. Wettermark & Co., of Henderson, Tex., bankers and merchants, on Monday went into liquidation. The liabilities and assets are each thought to be about $400,000. Trustees will settle with creditors. President Schwab, of the United States Steel Corporation, has cabled from Europe to the officers of the corporation, asking that 60 shares of preferred stock be allotted him under the offer recently made to all employes. Sixty shares is the maximum amount he could apply for. The extensive tin plate mill of Cumberland, Md., operated by 600 men and women, was closed indefinitely yesterday. The warehouses of the company are said to be overstocked with tin, and the high prices of coal in Philadelphia, where the tin is finished, renders it impossible to finish the product at a profit. The tobacco crop of the Connecticut valley, especially that grown in the open air, is not coming from the sheds in a satisfactory condition, and the prices which are being paid rule considerably lower than the growers were expecting. The cold and damp weather of last summer was not favorable to growing the best quality of leaf. The Eastern Steel Company has begun work at Pottsville, Pa., on four openhearth steel furnaces, which will have a capacity of 150,000 per year, and will be a part of one of the biggest steel manufacturing mills in the country. Work on the furnaces will be rushed day and night. President Gibbons states that the new mill will be working full-handed by July 1. Representatives of twenty-four metal trades organizations affiliated with the American Federation of Labor are in session at the headquarters of the Amalgamated Association in Pittsburg to arrange differences which threaten to become serious unless the cause of the trouble is promptly adjusted. The most important dispute is the right of members belonging to one organization when they are eligible to membership in another. Governor Odell has made the following statement in regard to a published story that he had signed a contract to become president of the Pacific Mail Company: "I have no contract signed, sealed or delivered by which I am to be made president of any corporation. Anyone who has made such a statement utters a deliberate falsehood. The only contract I have is with the people of the State of New York to serve them for two years, and that I propose to do to the best of my ability." A contract was made yesterday whereby a traction line from Columbus, O., will enter Cincinnati from Norwood and run to Fourth and Sycamore streets. The through line is obtained by an arrangement between the companies holding franchises between Norwood and Washington Courthouse, and between Washington Courthouse and Columbus. The line from Norwood to Washington Courthouse is to run through Madeira, Milford, New Boston, Fayetteville, Hillsboro, Leesburg, with a spur from Leesburg to Greenfield. It is expected to have the road in operation within a year. Announcement of the appointment of a receiver for the Keystone Manufacturing Company, of Rock Falls, Ill., was made yesterday by Attorney C. B. Haffenberg, who represented a number of petitioning creditors in the Federal Court, at Chicago. Bankruptcy proceedings were begun in the United States District Court several days ago, but were kept secret until Henry L. Wilson had taken possession as receiver for Judge Kohlsaat. The Keystone Company's principal plant near Sterling, III., consists of eleven buildings, in which 400 men are employed. Another large plant is at Council Bluffs, Ia., and this has also been placed in protection of Mr. Wilson
