Year: No Improvement Yet in Cotton and Yarn Dee. 30.
The later piece goods auctions: this week were fairly brisk, main ly on account of a speculative demand, but otherwise there has been -searcely. any business in any line, the influence of the holidays, both here and at Home, being responsible for inactivity and natural—Jy there can not be much of a re covery until after the New Year. The cotton and yarn situation does. not show any improvement that can be depended upon: The rumoured institution sot short time at the cotton mills is now an accomplished. fact so far as many Chinese mills are concerned, a 25 per cent. reduction in working hours being the genera] rule. It is believed the cotton market wil] revive rather: strongly next month, principally on India's account, as that country has been without full supplies of the raw material for so long and must have: them. <A' good illustratiomeof the stagnation in the yarn trade has come to light. Over a year ago, one in charge of the yarn department of a big Bombay firm despatched a consignment to their Shanghai agents and for some months was busy rating the latter for not selling it. Then he was bimse]f transferred to Shanghai and now has to explain to his suc cessor why the same bales, now rotting and depreciating, remain un-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.