THE Stock Markets are experiencing the benefit of the cautious
attitude adopted by.dealers for some few months past. This is particularly true as regards any eventualities connected with the coal situation. From the outset the disposition in business circles, when the situation was met last summer by a subsidy, was to regard the crisis as merely postponed. Some, indeed, feared that the very fact of the :twelfth-hour concessions of the Government might render more difficult the task of a final settlement. To some extent, of course, the situation has been simplified by the insistence on the part of the Coal Commission that there should be no renewal of the subsidy, but nevertheless the public has had so long, an experience now of the tendency on the part of successive Governments to be swayed by the pressure of organized bodies rather than by the unorganized, if larger, section of the community represented by the consumer, that not a few who believe that the present crisis will be surmounted without anything in the nature of a coal strike or lockout base their opinion upon the possibility of some further concessions. Meanwhile, however, by reason of the caution referred to, the technical position of markets keeps very sound, and not the least interesting feature in recent weeks has been the general upward tendency in the securities of the various Trust companies.
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