The Hickman courier., 1877-05-25
INCOBPEIENCY AH IN ELEMENT I N
FAN LJrRJcS.

The multitudes of men and women
who have lost their fortunes through
mismanagement within the past four
years have now full leisure for coutem'
plation, while within their dazed con-
prebension light begins to break in he
realization that, beguiled ty avarice on
their own part, they have suffered more
at the hands of incompetents than inn
real knaves. Men and women rushed
into the widest ventures, and placed
their fortunes in the hands of men d-void
of every qualification necessary for sue
cess in business enterprises, and skilled
in nothing save the power to paint in
rose color their every undertaking.
Looking back over the fortunes that
have been wrecked by the wayside, in
the march of enterprise and commerce,
the most conspicuous failure is that of
JAY Cooke His schemes, now divested
OF their brilliant hues, must appear even
to the disappointed as the silliest ven
lures with which sensible neighbor
might be gulled. His great scheme was
nothing less than building railway
through forests and over deserts across a
continent to seek traffic from an ocean at
a point where but trihing traffic exists.
Next to Cooke in incompetency stands
John Taylor Johnston, of the New Jer-
sey Central road. Johnston at one time
controlled the only road from the coal
fields across the state of New Jersey to
New York city capable OF accommodating
a great coal traffic. He had az feeders
to his enterprise the roads of the Lehigh
valley, and also that of the Delaware.
Lackawanna and western company to-
gether standing ready to insure a traffic
almost more than his road could trans
port. From sheer strength of position
he drifted into a quarrel with those
feeders and drove them to seek, at an
outlay of many million dollars, other
outlets which, when created, forced
upon his own company the necessity of
purchasing, al four-fold its value, new
traffic for his own road, the mistake en-
LdllluG IOI ali ltLilC W N0lAlC Il ACGQlcSS
tax upon the coal at the seaboard, and
at once carrying his own enterprise into
financial ruin. In his first position his
enterprise was impregnable, and he had
success assured TO every dollar invested
in his ventures. His high character, his
integrity, and his faith, were urged as
reasons that his enterprise could not fail.
When F. b. Ciowen was elected presi-
dent of the Reading company no enter
prise in our whole country stood higher
in financial credit or in good prospects,
engaged AS it was in the legitimate pur
suits of transporting coal, but Mr.. Gowen
thought that the time had come for his
company to go back to schemes which
long before it had tried and abandoned,
viz, the mining as we'll as the transport
ing of coal. Tract after tract of land
was purchased, most of it at four-fold its
present value, shafts were sunk, celliers
constructed, and breakers built at grfat
cost. Nor was this alone Satisfactory
his enterprise must embark in steam
ships to transport coal, in the manufac-
turing of iron, in the retailing of coal, in
the express merchandise business, in
telegraph lines and it's business, until
not anything seemed too much, and
until staid, old, conservative, business
men gazed on with wonder. His enter
prises totter on the verge of bankruptcy,
and the time mas fully come when men
asking to be trusted with the fortunes of
Others should be weighed from the stand
point of their competency, as well as in
tegrity, and when they should be held
up before the public to all the response
bilities theiE assumption and their posi- {
tions entail.--Bellsonte (Pa.) Republican,.