The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1874-06-22


We see now and then in our rural exchanges,
which, as General Garfield well observed, have
an Independent value Of their own as repre-
sentatives Of public opinion, an echo of the
Responding cries of the panic Those cries
were sad enough, and represented many sor-
rows But now that we look back upon the
panic, through clearer and calmer atmos-
phere, We see that after all it was the burning
out OF certain foul chimneys, the explosion of
hundred quackeries and false pretences. the
inevitable and just termination of business
systems which never had any honest life
The war was over but not so many re-
suits generated by the war. Speculation,
adventure, wild enterprise, an irredeemable,
unchecked and inconvertible currency, the
one abomination called legal tender, and
other denominations in the way of financial
expedients, which seemed to pledge the largest
amount of national credit for the smallest
amount of money, shoddy, frauds on the
living building railways from nowhere to
nowhere a generation before they were
needed, issuing bonds that had no genuine
security at false rates of interest with con-
sequent and unavoidable reputation these
are among the results that came with our war,
as they come with all wars, like the ravens
and the carrion birds that follow in the wake
of armies and live upon the CHASTITY remnants
of heroic legions
These indeed are among the prices we paid
for the glory and achievements of our war.
From them came the panic, which was really
another Appomattox surrender for it meant
simply that dishonesty and cant in business had
come to an end. Since then we have heard
great deal about suffering, and business dis
tress and shrinking in values, falling in rents,
in interest in stocks, in the demand for money,
in the price of land and in every form of en-
terprise The true view is, not that there
is falling in prices but rising in values.
Before the panic true values were oppressed by
speculation, and false values were highly
esteemed. In real estate and stocks, for
instance, instead of honestly purchas-
ing what we wanted and paying for
it as property, the custom was to deal with
them as with everything else, as speculation,
to buy and sell on margins, to pay practi-
cally as much for worthless stocks and fancy
lots of ground as for the best shares and the
most desirable lots in the market. As con-
sequence therefore-with our business con-
Quoted upon this basis-it became the interest
of all buyers and sellers to sustain the false
values upon which they traded with margins,
as earnestly as in more wholesome times true
values were sustained. The panic was the
end of this and of the system of falsehood
upon which it was based. To use one of the
most expressive phrases that have come to us
from that land Of forcible expression, Cali
fornia-s'we came down to hard PAN
We are still 9'coming down to hardpan." All
the signs OF genuine prosperity are suspicious.
The other day we learned for instance, that
California, which is now the land of golden
grain as well as Of grains of gold, was prepar-
ing to export more wheat than Russia; as
much, perhaps, as the best part of the States
combined. The fear that the cotton crop
Southern fellow citizens, who have not had
many cheerful hours recently, talk in bright
fashion about ''1ush times" in the fall From
all parts of the West we have good tidings
about the harvests, and our wharves are
crowded with ships to export our products to
foreign lands. Railway and other shares
which have long ruled at false rates
on account of dishonest management,
watering and adding false quantities to their
values, real estate which has been bought and
sold SO long, not for what it is worth, but for
whatever brokers or spectators could be in
duced to lend ''on a margin" are coming to
their true value. In few months the fever
ishness and anxiety which these transmutatons
naturally produce will pass away, and we shall
find that our property is really property-not
brokers margins-and that we have again an
honest, healthy, steady growth, such as we
should see in q community which had
thoroughly recovered from the effects of the
war and of the era of quackery and false pre-
tence which was among its painful conse-
quences, and felt that at last it had reached
hardpan.
We suppose also that the newspapers will
rejoice in the coming down to hardpan, like
the rest of mankind. We shall certainly well
come the hour which brings that opportunity
as another opened door IN the career of
journalistic advancement. Newspapers in
New York have made a great deal of money
since the war. It is incredible to think of
the money that has been made by our con-
temporaries and the enormous circula-
tons that have been achieved, and which
we find written or limited in their advertise
ments and prospectuses and appeals to the
public" With the extraordinary prosperity
which surrounds them, therefore, and re-
Numbering that paper is as cheap now as
before the war; and that they still charge their
subscribers war rates, it is natural that they
should think of charging peace rates. A