The weekly Minnesotian. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn. Territory) 1852-1858, 1857-08-22
That Crash!

The Monticello Times thus pitches into
the croakers. We have no patience with
this class, who are forever running down the
West, and wofully predicting the ruin which
is to come upon it.
There is a cause as well as an effect, and
this western movement of population and
capital is founded in the oppression of capital
over labor in the East, in its Overcrowded
cities, in the dullness of navigation, lumber
ing and leading branches of industry, in its
unremunerative prices of mechanical labor, in
arbitrary laws fixing the use of money at a
certain per centage whatever be the agitation
of capital, in the redundance of foreign emil
grafton, and last but not least, upon the lit
tie confidence men feel and have long since
felt in.the leading investments of the East
This is the cause, the rapid settlement of the
west the effect and the increased rapidity of
emigration this year is proportionate to an
increased lack of confidence in eastern
schemes, more extended dullness in mercan-
tile and Industrious circles, and rapid de-
probation in real estate occupied for purpose
of agriculture /; and the eastern farmer, who,
by unremitting labor ekes out scanty SUBJ
sistence on his barren soil, as well as the
wcalthicr agriculturist on larger farm and
better ground and in the best year who OBJ
tains from crops the slight return of per
cent. on the cash value of land, fearing that
property will still further depreciate, that
competition will still further inure the chan
ces of remuneration, and being already losers
of their spare capital in railroad investments
look about them for new fields and new
home. They come west, their success and
their example bring others; till now mighty
flood of life, choking up every outlet and
swelling at every advance, flows over broad
prairies, where, five years ago, the voice of
white man was never heard.
That-is the secret, there is nothing unnat-
ural about it, but the rapacity that keeps it's
victims within its charmed circle. Hence we
hear the shriekings of the leading journals,
implOring those who have put their hands to
the plow, to turn back. Every instance of
i'll success is chronicled, every man who finds
fault and returns has his statement, and from
these isolated cases and this exparte testimo-
ny the West is denounced by these judges
who have the most to gain by such denunci-
alton and the largest interest in the Cause
But what say they of the millions that have
gone forth and never returned =? What of
the cities peopled as if by magic, that have
risen as by some potent enchantment on the
Mississippi, the lakes, and even on the prai-
ries? What of the steamboats,, the railroads,
the canals, the grand enterprises? Is it
strange that by binding their eyes to the
truth, they have fallen into the arms of false
hood?
"People that live in glass houses, should
never throw stones" Are your hands so
white, o East, that you can defle us.?-
Are you so we'll advised of your own stabili-
ty, of your own financial future, that you can
discredt US? Is there nothing in the signs
of the times? Why is it that your ships lay
idle at your wharves? why is the lumber
trade so proftIess, that the capital once en-
ployed in it in Maine, comes here b? why
comes the farmer and the mechanic and
coming as they do, the vanguard of still
larger army it is well you tremble for a fu-
ture that may result in disaster.
A financial crisis, great crash is nearer
you than u.s. The crash here, as we see late
ly observed in print is the crash of the forest
monarch deposed from his aerial throne and
made to minister to the wants of man the
crash Of the hammer, saw and anvil in every
town and by every stream, the crash of the
mill Just starting, the march of improvement
in the virgin forest, the crash of the piow on
the prairies, turning up the residum of centu-
ries destined TO feed even the mouths that
curse it; the crash of the sickle through the
bending grain, of the wind amid the tasseled
corn, the crash of the lumberman's ak, and
the logs rolling in the water, the crash of the
railroad car, and Of the steamboat eXulting
in its new discoveries and conquests. If this
is the crash let it come, for in this Territory
there is land enough for crops to feed the ma
mills of the world. Let the crash come.