The Emporia news. [volume] (Emporia, Kan.) 1859-1881, 1877-05-25
The FInnncIaI Situation.


The Financial Situation.
Philadelphia Press, April 18th, 1877.
r. &. Dun 81 Co.'s report of the
commercial failures for the first
quarter of 1877 has just come to
hand, and shows that the number of
such failures recorded January,
Febuary, and March, by that firm
were2, 1863, being an excess of 63 over
the same quar-. Of rs. Is this enor
nous and steadily increasing num-
Der of bankruptcies consequent up
on the failure of crops, the preva-
lence throughout the country of
cholera or other form of pestilence,
or are they caused by foreign or-in-
testine war? Happily, mono of these
evils have prevailed, and this sad
list of commercial disasters, togeth.
or with the exodus of our preduc-
ing classes, may, in our Judgment,
DO accepted as proof of financial
mismanagement. Messrs. Dun &
Co. find consolation for a suf-
fering community in the fact
that the average liability of
the bankrupts in the first quar-
ter of 1877 was but $1,000, while
in 1875 it was Splits and in 1876
S23,O3S. We would be happy to
accept their conclusion from this.
fact, but we think the London Tel
egraph, in its review Of the financial
condition of the United States dur
ing 1876, states its significance more
philosOphically than they. The
Telegraph says: ,..-
"Out of 630,o99 in the Union re.
ported to be engaged in business in
1875, no fewer than 1902 became
bankrupt, and the gross amount of
their liabilities reached the sum of
$I9l, ll7,7S6. The increase in the
number of failures compared with
1875 was 1850, while the latter year
showed the number to be 1000
moro than in 1874. The total in
debt edness of insolvents in 1876,
however, notwithstanding the aug
mented number of failures, was
less than in 1875 by nearly $l0,000,-
600; but the description of firms
which collapsed last year, combined
with reduced average liabilities
chargeable upon the previous year,
plainly indicates that the wave of
financial embarrassment is not vet
spent and that after engulfing the
mammoth houses, it has been grad
ually swallowing up the smaller
traders. s. -.- ...
The failures above referred to
were exclusively of commercial
l.
tant enough to be noted by the lead
ing commercial agency of the coun-
try. How many small dealers have
been sold out by the constable or
sheriff, or been compelled, by dull
inability of their laboring custo-
mers to pay for goods received on
credit, to close out and retire from
business we have no means of ascer-
tanning; but ii must have been very
great. These misfortunes were
among the humber classes, whose
sorrows find no chronicler. But in
addition to the terrible record pre-
sented by commercial statistics, we
had, during the first quarter OF
1877, the failure of an unusual num-
Der of banks and bankers, of many
life insurance companies, and the
collapse of the New JersY Central,
the Reading, and other leading rail-
road companies, and of the coal,
iron, and other auxiliary corpora
lions connected with them. We
are largely within the limits of
truth when we say that, from the
foundation of the government, no
three consecutive months have been
marked by such widely -ditl'used and
fearful financial disasters as those
to which we have been referring.
During this period the banks of
the country have, through their rev.
Citations to the Committee of Ways
and Means, announced the fact that
they, too, are travelling a downward
path, and paying their dividends,
not with current profits, but out of
the reserve accumulated in former
years, and held for the security of
depositors. In the course of a
speech made in the Assembly of
New York on the 18th instant, Mr..
Elliot G. Cowden, in illustration of
this sad truth, mentioned, as one of
many such instances, the fact that
the First National Bank of Troy,
in that State, the paid-up capital OF
which is 100000, was compelled to
draw $l4,2S5.5G from its previous
earnings or reserve, in order to pay
q modest and unsatisfactory divi-
dend to stockholders Impoverished
by the general shrinkage of values.
Meanwhile all values continue to
shrink, and taxes, the rate of which
was adjusted to the value Of prop
erty in happier times, and which,
like debts, cannot shrink, have be-
come unbearable; and the Now.
York Tribune, while persisteutly
demanding an unrelenting applica-
ton of the Treasury tourniquIt to
the circulating medium of the coun-
try, asserts that the debt of the city
of New York must be repudiated,
or the entire real estate In that city
pass into new hands at prices so
low that the reduced rates of rents
now attainable will give the holder
q reasonable profit after paying q
reasonable amount of taxes to main
tain the faith and credit of the city /.
Could the outlook be more gloomy
or do we put an irrelevant question
when we exclaim, Are we on the
way 20 hard pan, or is Simmes'
b0ttoMless hole before us?
COnsulnpEIOn of Beef I'm Great
Britain.