New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1873-09-19
SHALL NE TAKB BRANDY


we expected. OF the crash in Wall Street yes
terday, whereof full details are to be found
in our news columns, it may be said
that every one expected it, and few
expected the chief disaster that marked
it. Speculation in third rate railroad bonds
has been enormously OverdOne. Dozens OF
financial institutions are loaded down with
securities that secure nothing, and have with
drawn money from legitimate business to carry
them. The condition of the money market
and the alarm excited by the constant dis
coveries of defacatiOns, made tho col
lapse of these bubbles certain. But OF
all the speculative enterprises on which
prudent business men have lately come to look
with disfavor, the most deserving has been the
first to break. We can only speak of the fall
ure of the great house of Jay Cooke a. Co..
on account of its advances to the Northern
Pacific, with profound regret. With much
that the house has done we have disagreed,
and of the late Syndicate operations for which
it was largely responsible we have spoken
with the censure they deserved. But nothing
can wipe out the debt the Country owes the
patriotic and marvelOusly energetic bankers
who in the darkest hours of our civil
war popularized the great loans, and furnished
the money to pay our soldiers ;-nothlng
can obscure the fact that the very enterprise
which has finally dragged them down was OF
national concern. Whatever may be the re-
suit of the crisis in Wall Street, we shall
regard the disaster to Jay Cooke g. Co. as
nothing less than public calamity.
On other details of the crash we do not care
ha md 10 rot
well nigh as pretentious as the great house
that has gone down are loaded with stocks,
beside which Northern Pacifcs seem like Five
Twenties or British COnsOls 1t Is a
good time to stand from under But
it is our duty to look further ahead and
further back than from the rising to the
going down of the sun. There is strong
party in this country who believe that our
financial SYSTEM based as it is on nothing
but the Governments suspended paper is
safe and salutary one. The events which are
now happening from day to day ought to I'M
deceive such people. Experience teaches but
one lesson on this question of the currency
that no money consisting of paper not con-
vertible on demand into the actual quantities
of gold or silver represented on its face can
be safe or permanent. France reaped
speedy harvest of ruin from her assignats.
England suffered perhaps greater severity of
punishment for attempting the same expert
ment that we are trying - undertaking
to make irredeemable paper a permanent
standard of value. Her experience extended
over forty years, and not until the great
panics which eliminated in 1887 was the old
paper system fully uprooted. Raging with the
fever of speculation, Frustrated by the inev
liable reaction, from the close of the great
wars with Napoleon in 1915 to the grand
downfall of 1887, she led the life of gambler.
Is our history to furnish simple repetition
of England's blundersf Are we to learn
nothing from the experience of our own faith
ers and grandfathers and of every civilized
nation that has tried and failed in the same
experiment.
Our currency is deprecated. The premium
on gold, the increased cost of living, and the
complete withdrawal of coin from circulation,
afford sufficient proof of that. 1t is depre-
ciated because too much has been issued To
add to the volume will only depreciate it the
more. When greenbacks were made legal
tender and prices began to rise, the debtors of
the country found that their debts could be
settled for much less value than they originally
received from the creditor. Speculations were
thus encouraged and an era of reckless Dor
rowing was inaugurated. The Juror of gam
bling spread on every side. The morals
of thousands Of men in business be-
came contaminated. We sowed the wind,
and we now reap the whirlwind. The insidi-
GUS disease which for ten years and more has
been poisoning the blood of the nation now
shows It's horrid work to the light of day and
the ewes of the world. Faithlessness to their
trusts in officers of Government, from the
highest to the lowest, and in custOdians of
private funds; rapacity and unscrupulousness
of corporatiOns; cOwardice and venality of
those who should be the guardians of the
honest and simple-these have at last worked
out their inevitable result The indignation
of the public is reused. The confidence of the
public is gone.
What may be the consequences of the sus
pension of the great firm of Jay Cooke g. Co.
it is impossible to predict. The fact Is an
impressive and awful one. The people re-
fused to buy the bonds of the Northern Pa
cifc Railroad, the grand enterprise-we might
have said speculatiOn-with which the for
tunes of the house were linked. Their difficult
ties got nosed abroad, deposits were withdrawn
from their keeping, and they were compelled
to stop payment We have shown how the
Secretary of the Treasury himself stepped out
of his way to save this firm (for
the explanation of his crooked deal
ings with the Syndicate is now clear
enough), but even Secretary of the Treasury
is powerless to contend with such forces as
are shaking the fabric of public credit.
He can do much mischief He can do little