The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-11-17
sPxRxT OF xHn PRESS.
Editorial Opinions ofthe Leading Journals
upon Current Topics s-co implied Every
Day for the Evening Telegraph
THE PAPER AGE.

bronze, and those who dig deep amid primeval
strata tell us also of an age OF flint, ante
dating known epochs, involved in much fog
and uncertainty, and not very useful to con-
template. We have heard somewhat of GER
tain golden ages, so called, wherein nature
seemed attuned to human needs, and wherein
Joyous generations lived without hunger and
without toll, drinking the wine of life without
planting its vineyards or treading its press.
We don't believe much in these latter epochs.
It is quite likely that they we're very much
like others of less smiling renown. People
strove and wrangled, and got into debt, waxed
lean and cursed their luck in those days as in
these. But we will letthe tradition stand for
what it is worth We are not so much inte-
rested in the brazen or the iron or the golden
age as that wherein we live, and which un-
luckily belongs to mono Of these metallic cate
gories, but is in sad fact merely an age of
paper.
What tremendously rich people we should
be if debt were only property! How pros
porous if the written or printed promise to
pay created the wherewithsl to pay! Un-
happily debt is not property, but rather its
negation or counterfoil; and a promise to
pay, instead of being wealth, is a confession
and certificate of present poverty. Printing
presses may print never 80 copiously solvent
looking documents, decorated with water
falls and goddesses and fringed with fiatter-
ing coupons; and a plausible president, a
SNUG secretary, may append signatures with
get any richer by these procedures.
Nay, we even wax poorer; paper is
wasted, and SO is the time of those
who affix its Inscriptions. We have
been turning out a good deal of this orna-
mental sort of paper for the last decade; our
promises to pay of one sort or another
amount, perhaps, to more than we care
L. - 1c
nourish the delusion that these promises to
pay of themselves constitute wealth and
carry with them an inherent capacity of
solution. They don't. They are so many
mortgages on the toll of the future-so
many liens on the wheat ungrown; the cotton
unwoven; the iron unsmelted. We have
got to face this not altogether enlivening
music some day, and it may be well enough
to begin now. Already there are signs that
the paper edifce which we have been build
ing, with about as much confusion of tongues
and general lack of wisdom as the builders of
Babel evinced, has got as high as it can be
carried without topping over so that it is
full time to stand aloof and contemplate the
proportions and estimate the solidity of the
architecture we have wrought.
If some shrewd cypherer would take pencil
and slate and set down in due succession,
first what the nation collectively owes; then
the municipalities, greater and lesser, have
respectively promised to hand over at stated
times and seasons, and add up the same, the
sum total would probably astonish him. If
he could add to this what the counties owe
for ourt-houses, jails, and the like; and the
towns for bridges, and roads, and almshouses;
the railroads for their iron, ties, and rolling
stock; the SCHOOL, houses for their shingles,
and the churches for their steeples and
1to CYla ofyalu oNn1 t,ir,c
the inquiry to its final limit, what
proportion of the individuals who CON-
prise the nation eat to-day the meat and
wear the raiment which they hope to pay for
out of the labor of tomorrow and next day,
he would have glimpse of bog of debt to
which the Slough Of Despond was a puddle
a bog in which we are all wallowing, and
from which we shall find it no holiday task
to extricate ourselves. We cant float out of
it on paper life-p preservers, nor be lifted out
of it by paper balloons. Only stern, diligent
toll will avail us; sober and useful labor, long
endured; the chastisement of that irrational
desire to be rich grown of late into disease
among us-only these will lead US out upon
the solid ground of prosperity; and to these
whether we like it or not, we have one and
all got to come.
There is proverb, somewhat weather
worn and out at elbows, which declares that
attests the truth of this apothegm in the cases
not only of individuals, but of peoples. The
road thither is quite apt to be paved with
debt; slippery causeway growing ever slip
perier and sleeper, and whereon the bacl
track is taken with pain and difficulty. Giles
borrows q hundred dollars, and goes comfort
ably in the direction of the devil while
shilling of it remains in his pocket. rail
road issues its bonds for ten millions and
Ia hot Loot TO- ricip botg
it is TO open up branch lines and build nev
depots where they are not wanted. 1t is sur
prising how easy the bookkeeping is, and hoy
liberal and sanguine are presidents, board
of direction, and 80 on. A State gets shor
of cash There are river-courses to be i'm
proved, canals to be extended, edifcss to b
built, and other desirable objects to be pre-
NOTED. The State goes into the marke
with its promises to pay, gets a part G
their nominal value (perhaps), and is as on
terprising and progressive as you pleas
while q cent remains in the treasury. Blu
the time comes when individual and railIoa
and State find out that they have got to SCI
tie, and that it is much easier to spend none
than to pay it. If the Individual has spen
his money in drunkenness and debauchery
the railroad in building opera-houses, equiI
ping fancy regiments, and keeping harems
and the State in corrupt Jobs to enric
favorites and oil the itching palms of legii
lators, payday is bitter period, yer
table dies ire, the wrath whereof falls O
innocent and guilty alike. Does any
body think We are going to escap
some such day OF. settlement as this? If Sc
we envy him his sanguins temperament, br
we can't eonseientiously say that we envy hil
his brains. We have been dancing for som
years, and we have now got the piper to pay
Let us lay it to heart, and, above all, remen
Der that il is faithful and diligent work alon