St. Charles City Republican intelligencer. [volume] (St. Charles City [Charles City], Iowa) 1857-1861, 1857-11-26
Mistellanu.
WESTERN SPECULATION.

MEssRs. EDIToRs Certain newspa-
pers around us are now claiming from
the public large amount Of credit
for their wisdom and sagacity in pre-
dieting ruin and devastation that was
to come upon us from excessive spec
ulation in the Western lands. From
the LIST of last March to the 23d of
September have travelled over the
Western States, in the aggregate six
thousand miles, and consider myself
as capable of Judging of the truth Of
these charges against the West as
the penny-a-liner cooped up in a seven
by nine attic.
will ask these manufacturers of
editorials if it were Western land
SPECTATORS who, in New York, pierre
ed and collapsed the Ohio Life Insur-
ance and Trust bubble? Did the land
spectators bond all the sugar, hold
it at exorbitant prices, and then col
lapse because they failed to realize
those rates2 Was it the land specula-
tor of the West who accumulated the
railroad debt of thousand millions Of
dollars, filling all the Eastern States
with species of stock almost entire
ly valueless to the holder? Who
broke down the large iron houses
shut up importers stores? stopped cot
ton mills =? filled the country with IT.
responsible paper deranged the cur
rcncy, and turned out of employment
tens of thousands of operatives in the
Eastern States? Did the financial
crisis commence in the West or the
East?
Let sleepy economists rouse up and
turn the matter over again and deal
honestly with themselves and their
readers. Let them look to the returns
made to the Land Office, and they will
discover, probably to their surprise,
that the aggregate sale of land is
from three to four millions of dollars
less this year than the average for for
mer years. These writers have crea-
ted fanciful scapegoat, and are now
busily saddling it with the crimes and
follies of the East, and are claiming
honor and credit for their wonderful
ingenuity.
The man has travelled but little
and that little to no purpose, who does
not know, and is not prepared to de-
monstrate, that the West, in proper
ton to its industrial force as compar-
ed with the East, is far more wealthy,
solid and Independent Of contingent
circumstances, such as now paralyze
the Eastern States. The strength of
the West does not centre in Chicago,
st. Louis or St Paul, but cmanates
from the productive community, and
mainly from husbandry. Husbandry
feeds the hives of spectators at the
East, and gathers to itself the real
wealth of the nation. 1t sends for
ward its -four, meat, wool, hemp, to-
bacco, and fruits, and gathers a gold
en- harvest in return. The Western
world is substantially and really
wealthy world, and is not filled as is
too frequently supposed with stupidi-
ty, but with an active, enterprising,
progressive people.
New York is the very centre and
nucleus of spcculations and spccula.
tors. 1t is the great money and stock
emporium, the financial heart that reg
ulatcs the pulse of the nation. 1t
speculates in money, railroads, cotton,
sugar. -four, meats, coffee, manufac-
tured goods, lands, stocks of all con-
ceivable and inconceivable kinds and
yet when the giant overreaches itself
and is tripped up, all parties set up a
clamor against the West, and charge
the guilt of excessive speculation TO
that quarter. If business men of this
and other Eastern cities have unwise.
ly crippled themselves by sending
Westward their means or capital in
trade, locking it up in wild lands, be-
.yond the limits of immediate demand,
let them keep their folly and com.
plants at home, class themselves as
Eastern spectators, and not send their
anathemas across the mountains and
upon the Western prairies. The uni
versal expression through the West
is, if New York will take care of it.
self, protect our dcposites, and honor
our drafts, we are all safe. TIN.