Current Situation

The summer season is now at hand when production and trade slacken, and when the farmer begins to see where he will probably come out with his autumn harvests. During the past week, attention has thus naturally centred on crops. In general, the outlook is unusually good.

Increased Canadian and European wheat crops, as well as the mishaps attending our own winter wheat this year, will render 1925 a much less profitable year to wheat growers than 1924. Yet a mammoth corn crop is now apparently under way, and also a cotton crop of unusual magnitude. From the standpoint of domestic conditions, corn is our most important crop. Cotton is a good export crop, and lower prices should prove of considerable international significance--particularly to England, whose cotton industry has long been depressed by high raw cotton prices. England needs, more than anything else, a revival of her export trade, in which cotton fabrics formerly composed a tremendously important item. With cheaper and more abundant U. S. raw cotton, cheaper cotton textiles are now likely, attended by increased consumption and an expanding market.

Money remains easy, after the mid-year tightening of rates. But the present outlook seems to be for higher rates in the fall, owing not so much to crop-moving as to expanding industrial and commercial operations.