The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1858-03-30


WISCONSIN ..ss.................. 90 tSSooo
All the Territories .................. 10 3CS 900
Total in United States ..........1 4e5 $50, 63s 900
Total in British Provinces 45 l,o94 900
Total for U. States and B. Pr0vincesl $40 SAL 1888 900
Last year there were over six thousand fail
ures, with debts to the amount in all of nearly
three hundred million dollars. While the number
of failures for the first quarter of this year is in
proportion with last, it will be seen that the
amount is disproportionately small, showing
that it is small concerns which are breaking
down now.
One singularity about this statement is, that
it shows that the Central, the Western and the
sugar growing States, are in woful condition,
while the cotton growing States of the South,
and all the New England States, are sound.
All the failures which we record to-day should
legitimately have occurred last year. They
have only been protracted by the parties OBJ
tanning extension. That grace is exhausted
now, and they fall by sheer inanity.
This was inevitable; for these houses
based their engagements on tee prices
at which goods and produce rated before
the revulsion, and consequently they are unable
to meet them now that the rates have fallen
from IS to SO per cent. In 1887 the result was
the same, but then the smashing continued for
almost three years. and in all probability we
shall see the same thing now. In the first few
weeks of 1887 over five hundred merchants
in New York alone broke down. Others held on
for time, propping themselves by extensions !;
but until 1910 they continued to drop, when the
number of failures in the Union amounted to
nearly forty thousand, and the Bankrupt law
which went into operation in 1912 wiped out
S450,000,000 Of debts and released over thirty
eight thousand bankrupts. In panic large
houses are the first to go; then follow the banks,
and little concerns follow them. The great drag
down the small. The banks recovered them
selves quicker in this revulsion than in 81 be-
cause they held more specie, and their bills
were issued on a surer basis; but we see that
the failures of commercial houses are still
going on. There is but one remedy for
this, and that is a good Bankrupt law, ap-
plicable to individuals, banks railroads, and
breaking now could have settled with their
creditors long ago, by the operation of a Bank
rupt law, and started afresh, basing their bust
ness on the new state Of affairs which panics
always leave behind them, many Of them would
be now in safer and more thriving condition !;
but by the present system commercial disasters
are protracted, but not avoided.
We are indebted to the commercial agency
of Tappan, McKillop d Co., No. Beekman
street, for the list which we publish this morning
We gave OF the beginning of the year the list
of failures for 1857, furnished by the cori-
mercial agencies of b. Douglass & Co. and
Tappan, McKillop q Co., but for some reason or
other we have been able to obtain the list
for the first quarter Of this year from the latter
house alone. Owing, most probably, to the SUI
perior manner in which the books of Tappan,
McKillop a. Co. are kept, they were able to fur
nish us with the list in few days The others,
We suppose, keep their books on a different sys-
ten, like some of the Wall street banks, per-
hsps, who only know how they stand at the end
of the year, and many of them not even then.
Every we'll conducted establishment, whether
bank, commercial house or newspaper, is able
to tell exactly how il stands, at least after few
days notice. In the HERALD Office we know
precisely how we are every week, but there are
newspaper concerns in Wall street which, like
the banks, are in happy ignorance of their con-
dition until the end of the year, and even then
they often find themselves in a fog.
II lie clear, from this statement Of the failures
still going on that the effects Of the panic con-
tinue to be felt throughout the country; but if
we had Bankrupt law things would have been
reduced TO level long ago.