The New Orleans bulletin. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1874-1876, 1875-10-10
THE SLOW TIMES.

The slowness with which business reyives
the sudden closing of large mills where work
had been resumed; the operation on half
time of other mills; the competition OF rail.
roads for freight and passengers, all point,
Enthusiastically, to the fact that by slow and
painful processes the national industry is to
be re-adjusted. The waste of the war; and
the sudden and temporary removal from their
usual pursuits of two millions of active and
productive men, who ceased to be producers
and became large consumers, gave an enorm-
GUS stimulus to manufactures and to business
The mercantile and manufacturing centers
grew with marvellous rapidly; money was
plenty and easily accumulated. Consequent
ly, it Was great time for new railroad pro-
jects for gigantic manufacturing projects, for
all sorts OF money-maklng projects.
When the war ceased, it found the coun-
try, in its facilities for business, adjust
ed, not to peace basis, but to war basis
We had manufactures and trade all estab-
lished upon the conditions of most wasteful
war. The government ceased to buy aud pay
wages, and the question of panic, disaster
and universal stagnation became only ques-
ton of time.
We have had the panic, the disaster and
the staguation, and the country has looked in
vain for revival. We have had measura-
bly, prosperous agricultural interest, which
promises continuance, but trade and manufac.
lures do not move. The almost incalculable
amount of money invested in railroads, in
mills, in business, lies unproductive, and it ia
becoming every day more evident that much
Of it must remain so. We have more rail-
roads than we need, more mills than can be
employed, more facilities for business and
more men to do business than the country in
Q state of peace has use for.
There can be but one end to this-a great
loss of capital and re-adj ustment of the ma.
tional industry. With this change there must
also come greater economy, and contentment
with smaller profits. The scale of living
must come down. Men who used to spend
twenty thousand dollars year must live on
ten thousand; those who spent ten thousand
must make themselves comfortable on five
thousand; those who thought themselves
straitened on the latter sum must manage to
get their expenses within twenty five hundred,
and SO on to the lowest. The laboring men
whose wages were so high during the war,
must stop striking, or they will get no work
at all. simply because the paying OF high
wages is an impossibility. Men who have
money will not invest it in business that pays
nothing. Men who own mills will not run
them at o loss.
There is no royal highway to a better con-
dition of things. Neither sea of rags nor a
sea of gold can float business that does not
need to be done. Of course no country can
live on paper lies. They have been a curse
to Us, and cursed be they who strive to make
the curse perpetual; but even if we move
squarely back upon specie basis, the "good
times" would not, could not, return. Business
that does not need to be done can not be done
without disaster. If We have more mills than
we need, more railroads than we need, more
commercial agencies and middle-men than we
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used, or it must be used without profit, and
in such way as to destroy the profit of all
engaged in common lines of interest.
So we do not look for a sudden revival of
business any longer. If our diagnosis of the
case is correct, there can be no sadden cure.
We of this generation will hardly live to see
the country genuinely prosperous. Great
masses of property are to be abandoned. The
capital stock of multitudes of corporations
win be sunk, and their property will pass
into the hands of bondholders and creditors,
at such a price that they may possibly be
made remuneratively useful Hundreds of
millions of invested fands will practically
cease to exist. The things in which these
funds have been invested cannot be used, and
they might Just as well have been thrown into
the fire. Thus the means of living have been
enormously reduced among capitalists, and
more men need work to do than used to need
it. With this fact on one side, we find set
over against it the other fact, that, of the null
ttude who had adjusted their industry to the
conditions Of war, only part are needed
under the conditions of peace Tens,
twenties, fifties are to be counted out of mills,
the factories. the shops. and sent either into
idleness or into some other field of industry.
In other words our national industry is 70 be
re-adjusted.
The cities and centers which have grown so
rapidly will naturally cease to grow. The
larger cities will grow, perhaps, as London
grows, by their attraction for men of wealth;
but the men of enterprise will not crowd into
places where there is no work or reward for
them. The boys will stand BY their fathers