The New York herald., 1873-11-05
. Financial sftuatlon-Its Evils
and Nostrums for Relief.

Yesterday. being legal holiday, gave Wall
street rest but to-day does not seem likely
to show much recuperation of wasted financial
tissue among those who put their trust in
Buchu. The troubles which first took shape
in Wall street have spread over q
great part of the country, as stone
dropped in the sea sends out its concentrc
rings over the water. The tightening of the
money sources by the yet solvent banks, pro-
duced by the general distrust, has led TO
stringency everywhere. What is most signif-
cant in the manner in which this stringency
is being felt by the mercantile and manufac-
turing community is that the largest houses
have first shown signs of going under. Our
correspondence from Rhode Island gives
us among the many reasons which have
brought the great concerns there to practical
bankruptcy as the chief one that the way of
Briereus-handed business extension was
chosen instead of safe and healthy business
expansion. It was the policy to look for
more mercantile worlds to conquer before
those already occupied were safe from their nat
ural foes. What would be said of the general,
who, taking almost the entire male population
from his own country, and borrowing Swiss
and Hessians at high rates wherever he could
get them, should march out to conquer2 1t
would be very unsafe for his own country.
What would be said Of his skill and common
sense if after entering q new country at
great cost Of men, he left only a corporals
guard to occupy it and carried his
swelling name and his diminished forces
into the next country ahead, and there
repeated the process2 The first rising
would cut his line in two. The heart
of his own country would be defence1ess. 1t
would only need Moscow. q hard winter to
retreat in and Cossacks to harass him to make
the Napoleon ready for his inevitable doom,
without q single battle fought. Yet, in
finance, this is what has been done. In busi-
ness it has been done and overdone, and we
see the result in banking houses with preten-
tious names and business houses of the hugest
proportions laid in the dust or on the
verge of being tumbled down. The lines
of speculations were too long and the actual
money forces too small to make their perma-
nent occupation possibility. The borrowed
moneys (the Swiss and Hessians of fnance)
had to be paid for or returned Long credits
are of no avail when the means of making
money are shut of. Such is the condition of
the bankers and merchants who have unwisely
yielded to the prevalent temptation to be little
C@sars in business or finance.
What will strike the observer most in the
present evils is the immense number of the
working classes who suffer grievously for the
senseless imprudence of their masters. The
latter may imagine that they owe nothing, in
weighing these matters, except to themselves.
But there is public opinion which will cry, in
no uncertain tones, "Vdre, leyiones reddei' We
learn that railroad corporations are attempting
to save themselves from the effects of their over
reaching ambition by turning their workmen
out in thousands to face pitiless winter.
Will not the magnates at some time be asked
why they entered on an i'm prudent course
which necessitated this disaster to the poor?
1t is, of course, necessary in this hour to
encourage every movement which will bring
relief Every effort should be exhausted to
prevent the disaster falling on the poor, and
other. 1t will be cheaper in every way to do
this than to have to feed the poor in hundreds
of thousands after the trembling institutions
have oscillated to their fall. The annual
report of Treasurer Spinner comes freighted
with the elaboration of plan which has been,
in some form, before the country for weeks
past. His plan is to issue legal tender notes
to the amount of about one hundred and fifty
million dollars, to be convertible at the
will of the holder into bonds bearing in
terest at the rate of o cent day on
one hundred dollars. BY this means
he thinks an elastic currency would be
reached and 'scorners' prevented forever
more. But he admits little further on that
there is possibility that even this might fail
to corner the brigands Of the street, and then
more of the convertible legal tender notes are
to be issued, at the will of the Secretary of the
Treasury, in exchange for six per cent bonds
We cannot quite share the enthusiasm of Gen
for all our financial evils. Undoubtedly one
of the great sources of present difficulty
is the impossibility of getting currency, but
convertible legal tender notes cannot be
issued in exchange for wildcat railroad bonds
shares in great mercantile houses of cards or
on the stock of banks whose officers have
been largely specuating with and peculating
from the deposits. We want more rigid
commercial honesty, safer, if slower way of
doing business, and money to be seen some
where when money is talked
The JUDIcIARY.-The democratic judicial
ticket in this county appears to have been