Ashtabula telegraph. (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1874-1880, 1876-09-29
HON. A. F. PERRY
ON THE CAUSES OF HARD TIMES.
Extract from Speech at UrOanA Ohio. September g..

I
i II has generally been assumed that the
| distress of business was occasioned by the
condition Of the currency. l am not satisfied
| that the currency has had much to do with it.
| / do not offer myself as financial expert.
/ have read, thought and conversed upon the
| subject, but am not al expert, and if any
/ body is entitled to dogmsti7e about it, am
| not the man. What propose to do is to sub
NIT for your consideration some observations
which have occurred to my own mind, and,
/ If / mistake not, you will agree with me
that there is another cause quite distinct from
the currency, abundantly adequate to ac-
/ count for all the distress which has over
whelmed the prosperity Of the country.
allude to the railroad system. I am un-
der faint impression that when had the
pleasure of addressing an audience in this
house, about two years ago, made some al
/ lusiOn to it then. But since that time l have
come upon what l suppose to be authentic
statements of facts, without which no state
ment could be made very satisfactory or con-
! Eineing upon the subject. This system of rail-
| road building was commenced before the war.
| But allude to the accelerated and fevered
system of railroad building which was directed
for speculative purposes, chiefly for the profit
to be made by contractors in building and
( speculating, and not for the profit Of the peo-
( pie along the line, or the country through
which the road passed. This system reached
| its climax in 1S71-72. In that year $40 miles
of railroad were constructed. Now, pause, if
/ you please, moment and let your minds rest
| upon that. What an army Of men that en-
plOyed, and how it necessarily tended to raise
wages in other pursuitsl What demand it
created for uOnl How it employed iron
| founderies and rolling mills and how,
| through them, it employed other armies. of
men and how those men so employed had to
be fed and elothedi And how, through that
process, still further armies of men were en-
ployed in mercantile business and manufac-
lures of various kinds You recollect the
rising market for iron; that iron could be pro-
duced scarcely fast enough, SO that new mills
were being constructed in the neighbOrhood
of each other and the attention Of men of en-
| terprise was directed to that as a source of
almost unfailing wealth. This was the eli
max. In 1928 was begun a descent. That
year there were 1900 miles less of railroad
built than in the former year. Consider for
moment the multitude of men discharged
from employment by the falling off of the
building of 800 miles of railroad. Consider
| the diminished demand upon the manufac-
lures of iron and the production of ores and
thesprOduction of food and raiment for all the
men so employed.
The next wear there was a still further fall
ing off of over {, 200 miles, and the next year
1900 miles, making falling off in those three
years of nearly three-1uarters of the entire
amount Of railroad construction falling off
of $3.50 miles of railroad. Why, in Ohio, last
year, the report of the Commissioner of Rail-
roads shows that but ninety miles of railroad
were built in the State at all. Thirty miles
of that was Strengthening the Marietta and
Cincinnati Railroad, near the Ohio Rivera
cutoff there shortening the road-and road
built for that purpose, thirty miles. One or
i Il.
tending line ten or eleven miles; but most
of it was side-tracks. You may say that in
Ohio, to great extent, and elsewhere, the
entire business was discOntinued-nO literal
IL, but it might be so expressed without being
far from the truth.
WHAT'S to be done with these men so thrown
out of employment Why, the Republican
party has been charged with having con-
tracted the currency, and headed toward
specie payment IN a manner which has pro-
duced this distress. Is there not cause enough
for this distress without attributing anything
to the currencyi How could 1t be otherwise
than that there should be distressf have
spoken of the men thrown out Of employ
ment, and it would reach through pretty
much all branches of industry. 1t would
stop the iron mills. The cessation of the de-
mand for iron would lower the price, and the
sale on a falling market would set them to
underselling each other, and the result is that
the mills would stop, and have stopped. Men
who supposed themselves wealthy by the
ownership of large establishments, find no use
for their establishments, and they can not sell
them, because nobody viii take them.
What was that plan of railroad construc-
toni Most railroads that have been con-
structed for the last ten years have been
constructed by what is called Construction
Couipanya Many of you know what that is.
Some of You will need little explanation,
and if I should not make 1t clear enough to
anv gentleman, will ask him to refer to his
neighbour who can tell him more about it.
But. for the present, let me state, in very
simple and elementary way, what construc-
ton company means in railroad building. Let
us suppose that dozen neighbors cooperate
to build church or bridge, each one agree
ing to put in a specified proportion of the
cost. They naturally have committee of
one, two or three to transact all the business
and make contracts for building. They find
a contractor whose name we will say is "a
B." and the committee itself enters into a
contract with "a B" to build the church
or bridge; and so the firm is called
"a B & Co." And the committee
peing interested In. the profits, and inter
ested with the. contractor more than
they are with their associates, they make the
contract at as big a price as they think they
can get through with, and, when they do get
applied to q railroad, would be the simplest
explanation of q construction company.
If the neighbors should find that out, and
should take their committee into q Court of
Justice, and take the contractor into Court
of Justice, there is not Court Of adequate
jurisdiction anywhere which would not say
that the transaction was wrong. And even
as to the contractor, who was not one Of she
committee, it would hold to be wrong in
hlm, because he knew it was the duty of the
committee to protect the interests Of their
associates. 1t was a breach of trust in them
to be interested on both sides, against their
associates as well as with them.
There is not q court Of adequate Jurisdio-
tion In the United States, when the faots were
disclosed to it. which would hesitate i've
minutes IN compelling those parties to dis
gorge every cent of the profits they had made,
and order an account to be made as 70 how
much the labor was really worth. When you
state this with reference to railroad COM
panies, Il becomes more complicated, and l
shall not attempt to 60 through the step Illus
tratinR it IL Is enough 70 say thas they get
ali the subscriptions along the line Of the
road-whioh they will generally tell you
ought to be- about half the cost of the road |
kbaw urill 0af tba r30hk of uav giVeu. then l