Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1867-12-24
Mercantile Failures.

Failures among the wholesale mer
chants continue to be the order of
the day. During the week several
suspensions have occurred among
firms in the China trade, and in the
dry goods importing business, .and
serious fears are entained that these
are but the beginning of series of
heavy failures. The suspensions OF
the last few weeks, including those
of cotton firms, must aggregate
somewhere near $4,000, 900. Be-
sides these, not few private com.
positions have been made, and
large amount OF paper not provided
for at maturity has been 'extended "
As rule, the failures have exhibited
light proportion of assets to liabil-
tiles and have been TO large extent
among importing houses. The very
heavy importations of the last two
years are doubtless at the root of
these reverses. 1t has been patent
to the most superb ial observers that
immense amounts Of goods have been
sold much below the cost OF imports
alton; and this having BEEN done
through succession of seasons, the
result could not be otherwise than
disastrous. 1t is a potable feature in
co nnection with the failures they
have not been among the YOU and
generally esteemed weak FIRMS
Those who have failed have been
houses of long standing, high credit
and reputed wealth, the class that
would be expected to weather 0n ad.
verse gale the longest. 1t is difficult
to explain this fact except upon the
paradoxical supposition that the very
caution of these firms has proved
their ruin. They were our steady
conservative merchants. During the
initiation Of prices consequent upon
the war and the suspension of specie
payments, they were alarmed at the
apparent reckless tendency of affairs,
believed everything unsound and
tending to rottenness. and therefore
kept a'oof from business as much as
possible, leaving the trade to be done
by those who cared less for conse-
quencos. They thus lost three or four
years chances of making large prof
its upon advancing prices when
they began to awake to the fact that
those who had done the business
which they had declined, had realiz-
ed handsome profits. Discovering
their mistake, they entered into ex-
tensive operations, supposing it to be
only necessary to reverse their past
policy in order to correct their error.
Here was their grand mistade. They
began to expand their operations at
{. time when the fall in gold, the
pressure of taxation and natural
reaction in the markets were CONS
bining to turn prices downward ;
and having been trading largely up
on a falling market they have lost
their capital Those who were ap-
parently reckless during the rise in
prices made profits which enable
them now to withstand the losses of
the decline, and are among the strong
est of our merchants. 1t thus hap
pens that caution without sagacity,
defeats itself and incurs consequences
as disastrous as recklessness. 1t has
been one of the great dangers of our
currency arrangements that have
produced a condition Of things to
which the ordinary rules Of business
management were inapplicable, and
in which ripe experience was of no
avail, but rather misleading. Those
who, in addition to experience have
possessed a sound theoretical knowl
edge, enabling them to unravel the
complication and to judge OF the prop
er course Of action under any cir
cumstances, or who, lacking this,
have yet had any broad common
sense sagacity, have been enabled to
shape their course to the extraordin.
nary state of affairs and are the parties
who have been the last to suffer 1t
is strange how, in view of these sad
consequences ofinfiation, there should
be found those who can advocate its
perpetuation and depreciate the re-
turn to stable currency basis, = e
! S. Economist