The Emporia news. [volume] (Emporia, Kan.) 1859-1881, 1873-10-10
CREDIT.

w uOeNcT examines carefully the
British and American systems OF
commerce. industry, banking, rail
roads and credit, will find the
former so much more expended
than the latter, so much more risky
from the narrow margin of reserve
or crash upon which everything
depends, as to excite 4 feeling OF
surprise at the suspicion and dis
trust felt about our own. 1t is
not that ours is proof against
calamity, for the recent panic
shows that it is not. Nor is it
any more likely to withstand the
wild alarm OF a period when all
confidence disappears and every
man grasps and clings to whatever
of cash or substantials may be
within his reach. But certainly it
cannot be disputed that we have
gone much further and done much
more than the English towards
guaranteeing and insuring the
rights and interests of the people
in the management of financial
corporations under all circum-
stances. Mr.. Bagehot's recently
published treatise on Lombard
street, London, admits this frankly,
at the very time when many of our
people are inclined to attack tho
system as having failed to stand
the test of the late disturbance.
In the bitterness of the catastro-
phe we find many persons break
ing forth into the same denuncia-
tions of the credit system that
characterized the old anti-bank
times of President jackson, CEN
sure as unreasonable and foolish
as anything in modern history.
People who do not seem to under
stand the most ordinary principles
of modern commerce and finance
talk about bankers and financiers
being men who want to grow rich
without work, when the intense
mental labor, the wear and tear of
mind and body, and the incessant
and severe application of those
who handle the great problems of
railroads, manufactures, commerce
and finance, far exceed any posi-
BILE manual labor, no matter what
it may be.
We are aware that very much
ought to be pardoned and over
looked when calamities come thick
and fast, and thousands are half
distracted over sudden losses and
unexpected distress. But we beg
to say that those who choose to
forget all the prosperity, the good
fortune and enjoyment they have
in times past owed to this credit
system, because it has in a partic
rllar moment failed them, scarcely
deserve the consideration they
meet with. Credit is the mightiest
engine invented by modern civil
ization, and the numerous forms
it assumes in England, France,
Germany and Austria constitute
the most potent instrumentalities
in the advancing progress of those
nations. Take countries like Rus
STA, Turkey, Spain, Brazil and
Mexico, where credit is feeble, and
the agencies it has given birth to
limited in scope, and We see at
once what a nation is without it.
The Irish mob, who, in the infancy
OF banking in Ireland, collected
all the notes of an obnoxious
banker, made 4 bonfire of them
and then exultingly exclaimed,
Now what will he do" illustrates
the ignorance of a rude people re-
speeding the nature and uses of
credit.
Within a very brief space of
time the recent panic has undone
very much of the results of long
years of labor in organizing and
Certifying American credit, in Gre
ating safeguards for banking and
currency, and preventing the gen
eral spread of disastrous alarms.
But the circumstances preceding
the catastrophe were so peculiar
that we are inclined to think a
well-organized clique of financiers
had been for several years endeav-
oring to create a general panic,
and had been foiled by the obso-
lutte strength of the nation. If it
had FRUSTRATED some of the con-
spirators who have been engaged
in this desperate work we shall feel
very we'll satisfied with so much
of it's consequences. In any event
the losses of all parties in the des-
truction of credit and the rapid
depreciation of values have been
such that 1t will be at least some
years before another gang of finan'
cial banditti can be raised and
drilled.
While everybody was denounc
ing the bold and daring tinancier'
who had carried along the mighty
American railway movement, there
suddenly failed the banking house
of Henry Clews IL Co., which wa:
not in railways at all, but purely
in q legitimate banking business
discounting commercial bills. i
suspended with it's hands full o
that kind of paper, unavailable be
cause money could not be haG
Here we see illustrated the abso
lutte destruction OF credit, ant
those who could rejoice over tn
calamity of the railroad banker
began to stare in blank dismay q
this indisputable evidence that tn
injury done was to general credit
and not merely to railroads. Henc
we say to the merchants and bus
ness men that if they want thei
own credit to stand firm and VI
, impaired they must combiR
: against the enemies of all credit
and especially must cease to in
:. weigh against the bankers an
: financiers, who have done so niue
J, to stimulate the general progress
of the nation and to build up til
power and enterprise of America
! capital, and to create the vast raj
. road system of which we are all s
: proud even while we are so liber
of censure.-Philadelphia Mort
!, American.
). The most popular fish story
the season, is that concerning Il
{ woman of Penn Yam and her Sc
en-year-o boy, who were driftil
> in a boat in Lake Keake, when
n gigantic trout seized the child
the nose, and was thence draw
!. into the boat and killed.
5. Whispered advice to young