New-York daily tribune., 1859-08-03
COMMERCIAL SYMPTOMS.

Public attention has been very pontedly drawn
10 our excessive importation of Injuries and
tIinkets that We do not need, and OF fabrics that
ought to be manufactured here. This influx eI-
c,eds that of any previous year. TIE organs OF
the power which make the laws that invite this
excess have discovered the evil, and have uttered
warnings of the consequences, just as We have
done for years past. But, while they warn Us
they offer no other remedy than threatening OF
loss TO those European merchants who are so i'm
prudent "a thus to crowd our markets. We all
know what such warnings are worth. During the
war Of 1872 the best of us were content to be
clothed with the coarse fabrics produced BY the
hastily built factories which sprung up all over our
country. It is true they made but few dandes,
while the number Of fine ladies' was sensibly les-
sered. Yet, under the general consumption OF
home fabrics which then prevailed, the country
was beginning to prosper 10 spite of the war.
Though foreign commerce was suspended, yet
agriculture and manufactures constituted them.
selves maintaining power, which kept the nation
alive and sound. The dsDdies and fac ladies Of
that day were clothed in such foreign goods s.,
happened TO escape the general blockade OF our
ports, or be brought in BY our privateefs. OF the
latter, The London Times complained that, 10 the
first three months Of the war, they had cap
tured six hundred British vessels. But, when
peace came, and abolished the tariff which the
war had practically enforced, the glut Of foreign
goods shipped to this country was so monsrous that
every manufacturing establishment was ruined.
Specie, while the war lasted was at a premium of
20 to 40 per cent over bank notes, but the Influx
Of foreign goods cleaned out the little that left
and reduced the nstion to condition OF helpless
bankruptcy. We lost the control Of our own
movements, and We were At the mercy of for.
eign woI kshops We became their depen lent VIC
tins. But the loss was not all on our side. The in
terruption of commerce oc:asiOned by the war had
caused great stocks of goods 10 be piled up in Europe
which usually found market here These being
suddenly liberated BY the peace, gorged the country
beyond It's ability to pay for them. They were
sold on credit to multitude of buyers in every
country town, who again sold them on credit TO
people who laid aside good domestic clothing for
the imported inery, and wound up BY never paying
for t. The dealers, as 8 consequence, failed to
pay the importers ard they in turn failed TO
pay the foreign owner The case was similar 10
the California trade ten years ago. when twenty
adyenturers each loaded a ship for that market
with the same description of goods, producing
glut which ruined not only them, but those who
had trusted them.
This career of blind credulity in foreigners and
of folly among ourselves has been periodically re-
pested since. II is, moreover, curious TO note, IN
passing, how contemptuOusy the British speak and
wIIte Of the American market, while actually de-
pending on il for existence; and how impudently
they clamor against US whenever BY their own
ereedness they have gorged it beyond its ability to
pay. II was so in l5i0, when all England WAS
bolsterous with denunciaton at American insol.
vency. 1t was so in 1851, when the crash Of val
ues, beginning here, vlbgated with desola,ing fury