, 1840-08-08

OF things in 1924! Successive unthrashed
crops OF grain perishing in the barns for
want ola market! Universal bankruptcies!
No employment to be had! Hungry office
seekers providing over the land! Stay laws
passed! and property reduced, in a few years
observe-to half its .tomer value! Yet
during these few years, and for years before,
the q. S. Bank had existed and acted and
regulated. Eight years was a pretty fair
trial. And yet commerce was Frustrated,
the farmer ruined, relief laws required, and
property sunk to the lowest ebb. How can
modern Wing logic explain this? No stink
ering with the currency" no Jackson or Van
Buren,. with their hard money humbug, or
their Sub-Treasury notions, to scare pros
perity from the land. Not one Of the causes
in existence. which they say are now reduc-
ing wages to the level of those obtained by
the reasantry of Europe. But let us read a
little further from the same speech, and hear
what Mr.. Clay says on this very subject Of
wages.
"The truth is, that no class Of society suffers more
in the stagnation of business than i,he laboring class.
That is a necessary effect Of the depression Of agri-
culture. the principal business of the community
The wages of able bodied men vary FROM FIVE
TO EIGHT DOLLARS PER MONTH: and such
has been the want Of employment, in some parts
of the Union, that instances have not been unfrequent
OF men rorking merely for The means Of SuJsi,ieHee.
II the rages Of lGtor here and IN England are rom
pared, they will be found NOT TO BE ESSENTIAL.
LY DIFFERENT"
If had not pointed TO day and date, book
and PAGE. ! should expect the Wing Party
stoutly TO deny, that these were Henry Clay's
words in 1924. Wages fret 10 eight dollars
a month! Many men working fora bare
subsistency! And hardly any difference
between the wages of the working man Of
America and the English labor! And all this
in the very hey-day of the United States
Bank. that panacea for the cure Of the pres
ent hard times!
Let them twist Mr.. Buchanan's speech as
they will. and add Mr.. Davis's comments
until they are weary; and what results, even
then. can they prophecy from the lndepend-
ent Treasury Bill. that were not actually
produced in 1924, by Clay's own showing,
under a United States Bank!
At what loop-hole will they creep out
now? Perhaps they will argue, that the
hard times in 1924 were produced by bad
crops and unfavorable seasons. Of which we
have not now to complain. If this be their
argument, Henry Clay shall set them right
again. In the same speech (pages 1853 and
lS4 of Prcnlice's Work. Mr.. Clay beautiful
ly says:
"All our distresses have sprung from human caus-
es. The showers of heaven fell upon our fields as
bountifully as ever; the morning sun and evening
dew visited hi!l and valley with their qnicknins DOW
er; the vea,ly offering which the husbandman cast
upou the earth was touched with the blessings Of
- -. H. 49,. an II Il. -ra,Lat ~
old, which was crowned by the fire at the hill OF Car.
mel; no "scourge of God" was passing among us,
10 blast our plains with fire and nil Gle blood in the
fountains of which we drink. And therefore, what
erer might be the causes of the distress that pervaded
the land. they were to be sought for in erents Hiihig
our orn control"
So that the seasons and the harvests were
not the cause. Ii was ''Tithin our o'rn con-
troll"
Now, If a United States Bank were char
tered tomorrow; nay even if, by granting
liberal accommodations all over the country,
it caused an appearance OF easy times for n
season, who shall assure US that in a few years
from now the very same commercial desola-
ton which swept over the land in l824,may
not. even under the fiscal rule Of the8 Great
Regulator" visit us again?
Some nave argued, plausibly enough, that
the panic Of 1924, was chiefly a POLITICAL
trick. employed to aid the election Of John
Quincy Adams, who took his seat as Presi-
dent on the fourth of March following
This may have had som effect; but we
should probably do wrong to consider that
the chief cause of these hard times; for they
continued, with greater or less severity,
through the whole four years when John
Quincy Adams was President; a proof, by
the way. how little the success of the Wing
Party of those days. with their United States
Bank TO aid them, improved the hard times.
1t is true that, for a short time after the
election of Mr.. Adams, things seemed TO
improve with marvellous rapidity. In 'Gouge's
history of banking" (page l79) the follow
ing facts are recorded:
GThree million dollars were subscribed in one day
lin January 1920 to tho stock OF the New Jersey
Lombard and Protection Company though its capital as
fixed BY Law was only three hundred thousand dsllars.
Nine million dollars were subscribed in April TO the
New York Water Company; and by some contrir-
ance its scrip was raised in the market to thirty per
cent. above par. Thirteen millions were subscribed
in NAV to the Delaware and Raritan Canal Comps-
nv. Between the 9Th and 9th OF February, the stock