Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1857-08-28

TAB LATE FAILUREs.-The leading topic of
discussion is still the failure of the Ohio Life
and Trust Company. Although this institu-
ton has stood so high in the public confidence
that its fall creates panic, and drags down
weaker houses, not only among those con-
nected with it, but those which are not strong
enough to stand the general shaking caused
by so great an explosion, yet there is nothing
in the decline of Western securities that takes
prudent men by surprise. For long time
the East has been pursuing the ruinous policy
of sending its capital to the West. not for the
development of agricultural and natural re-
sources, but to enable spectators to hold
lands out of the market, to lay out cities
where they ought to plant corn, and to initiate
the prices of the chief necessaries of life. The
flow of Eastern capital to the West has given
an unnatural stimulus to emigration, and has
carried away enterprise and skill that were
needed at home. Providence and Worcester
have been helping to build up Chicago and
Milwaukee, and to transfer the seat OF empire
to the West even faster than 1t is moving
from natural causes. The main motives for
this have been the rapid rise OF lands and the
consequent high rates of interest Everybody
knows that there must be an end TO the con-
stantly accommodating value of property that
experienced no other change than passing
from one owner to another, and that men who
hired money at two per cent month to spec
ulate with, must ultimately fail; but every
body hoped that his investment would be safe
and that his loan would be repaid before the
crash.
The natural results of the great expansion
that has so long prevailed in all the depart
ments of business cannot be arrested, and
perhaps for the general interests of the coun-
try, they ought not to be. They come as
surely as headache follows debauch, and
they will as surely relieve the system and re-
store it to its regular operations. New men
will step into the places of those who fail, and
learning little from the example before
them, will pass on in the same way, through
the same stages, to the same results; and IN
due time we shall have prosperity, large pro-
hts of legitimate business, expansions and
explosions. A few colossal fortunes and
good many wrecks will remain to mark an
other decade in the commercial history of the
country. But with every period something
is added to the general wealth, and, with all
the individual loss and suffering, something
is secured for the general good
The countryis in better condition to bear
commercial revulsion now than it has been
at any previous ole. There are greater &C.
foundations of actual wealth, and greater IA
cilities for commencing the accumulation
anew. The improvident extension of rail-
roads, in advance of the business which is
relied upon to support them, ruins the pro-
jectors, but adds a real value to the lands
through which they pass, and TO the points
which they connect. This is especially true
in the West, where they project railroad
between two g cities" before the trees are cut
for the first log hut. Eastern capital has
bailt the roads, and Eastern men have filed
up the cities. The West has the improve
ments to show for its part of the bargain the
East has large amount of exceedingly we'll
engraved bonds, with coupons attached, the
exact value of which may be ascertained at
the paper mill Providence Journal.