The daily Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1873-1877, 1876-05-17
Schools and Other Things.

To the Editors Of the Rock Island Argus:
The shrinkage of values and diminution
OF business since the panic of 1878, make
retrenchment and reform a necessity.
Public authorities can't ignore this neces-
sity and do their duty. Our city author.
tiles have not yet met that issue. They
have continued in the old line of issuing
more bonds, spending more money and
making more debts. They must change
soon or there are greater troubles in store
for US. The evil day Of payment will
come. Meanwhile our taxes must increase
annually to pay the interest.
Look at our case in the light of the
past. Fifteen years ago we all-the whole
west-still lay stranded on the desolate
and impoverished bar of financial disaster
where the follies and extravagancies of
1856 and 1857 cast us. From 1880 1857
we enjoyed period of great prosperity,
still greater apparent prosperity, for the
blast Of revulsion that struck us late in
1857 made it visible to the dullest eye
that much of our supposed prosperity was
only supposed. That the marvellously rap
id advance in values was largely supposlti
| tious-imaginary drafts upon the future
made current by the nearly universal en-
dorsement Of public opinion. When the
panic struck, they no longer had an en-
dorser. Pah! what poverty followed
what bankruptcy, Reputation and misery
The few of US still here who were struggling
against fate in Moline then, will not forget
| it soon.
So much do we Judge the future by the
past that few years, a very few years OF
prosperity are looked on as reliable
authority for expecting an indefinite con
tlnuance OF the same, in moderately in
creasing ratio from year to year. And
while the best means we have Of judging
of the future is by the past, in making
that judgment we are prone to make the
periods, the cycles of the past, which we
use as criterions for the future SO short, Of
SO few years, that they in fact form nc
criterion for anything.
But to any one whose eye has grown
weary with age and care, with the conflicts
and life-struggle of three score years anC
ten. and who has used it to note the ebl
and flow of passing events, the years Of
American history fall into financial cycles
with an ease and certainty of rythn
scarcely less striking than Astronomical
cycles. The flow of the financial tide
which by years of annual augmentation
had swept apparently fixed values from
their moorings and sent them drifting il
wild disorder. eliminated in 1916 only t,
be followed in hot haste by revulsion anC
disaster, the bankruptcy aud misery o
thousands upon thousands. Then came
the food tide of 1886, only to be succeeded
in turn by the terrible revulsion of 1887
and the dark and miserable years the
followed till 1912. The rythmic food o
1856 must be fresh in the minds of all, anC
none can have forgotten the distress, tn
misery and suffering from 1857 to 1862
Then the initiation consequent on the wa
took possession of business and prices. ant
soon made balloons Of the latter. Fabu
lous values attached to everything. Rea
estate doubled, ard some doubled agail il
less than ten years As values advanced
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