, 1879-07-26
THE ROTHsCHILD.
Their Great Capacity for Bmsiaess-- Thei
InfMenee. Conservation and Aoaord6
Dealing.

IME hO nSVnAAWs
Their Great Capacity for BHstNeas-- Iheti
I.aMenee. Conservation and Hssorab''
1 Dealing.
Among the loan.mongers OF the world
the firm Of Rothschild undoubtedly stand,
the first. The house has for three gener
ations succeeded in keeping itself wonder
fully exempt from lawsuits. from default
ing agents and from sp ,ndthrift partners
but there can be no doubt that from the
magnitude, whether from its own re-
sources or Of the sums of which it oan
dispose it has no rival in its own work in
the world. A great state wanting great
loan quickly thinks of the Rothschilds
first, as a matter of course, and if the
transaction is snormous-as, for example,
in the payment OF the French indemnity
thinks of no one else They have the
option at a prics Of almost every loan.
The management of such q business re-
quires of course great capacity, for the
loan -mongers who looks out for it must
acauaint himself with politics, out OF
which the necessity of loans arises with
the "resources," that is the available
wealth of the states with which he deals,
including often strange items, such as the
quicksilver mines in Spain, and above all
with the credit in open market of the
borrowing government, which is of course
the ultimate security they offer him.
Moreover, he must not only know these
things and the course of the exchanges
which ne may derange and the effect
which the loan will produce ON the mar
kets, hut he must be able to use this
knowledge with great decision and in a
preat many places a, once. The man who
can do that even in one state with ANY
certainty is an able man, and the man
who can do it over the whole world IS a
most remarkable one. The late Baron
Rothschild was such a man. Without
entering into the private affairs of the
house, which are curiously well concealed,
considering that its members live almost
as public lives as princes and premiers,
it is wei! understood that the baron was
the effective head of the house and that
the honse operates not only in London,
Paris, Frankfort, Rome and Vienna, but
even in the United States, upon a most
extensive scale 1t is virtually the banker
Of at least five great governments, and IS
engaged every now and then in operations
before which those of the largest banks
are comparatively insignificant The baron
managed such operations for thirty years
successfully; that is, he must have guided
for that term the larger business Of five
or six great financial firms. composed of
many individuals whose judgments cannot
be all alike, have known the precise con-
dition of all European treasures, have
selected and controlled scores Of agents,
and one of whose blunders might have
been serious, and have arranged many
first-clasS leans, SO as to be satisfactory
to the borrowing treasures, acceptable to
the investing pahlic and prof able to the
firm. Those facts are unden!able, and
they seem to us of themselves to prove
that the baron, though a silent man in
public, must have been first-rate admin
istrator, a good and successful diploma
tist, keen judge Of men, and q man of
very exceptional business nerve-tiie equal
i'll short, in mental power of most states
men. That he never made mistakes is
most improbable No man not possessed
of prescience could have avoided mis-
takes IN a cataclysm like that of 1913,
no man who felt that external
order was essential to his prosperity, and
it may be questioned by those who have
watched finance whether the baron ever
quite realized the extreme nnwOrthiness
of Oriental inanciers, their readiness not
so much to cheat-he would have b :en
for that-as to surrender them
selves to the impulses of an almost insane
caprice. 1t is very difficult, even for the
wisest, to take into his ca culatiOns the
chance that a man may repudiate his
debts when it would save him money to
for them, and still more ditfi-
cult to fancy that he would do it without
caring whether he injured himself or not.
the baron for thirty Years
guided transactions SO delicate, SO large
and Sd likely to inspire nervousness, with
great general success, and deserves to be
as one of the greatest, if not the
greatest, Of his kind
For there is fact about the house of
Ruthschild under his control which We
have never seen mentioned and which
deserves to be recorded. 1t has done no
mischief, and when We remember the
enormous power it yields, the deadly
blows it could, if So inclined, deliver to
great banks, the temptation it must some
times feel to form alliances with particu-
lar states or parties aid Vienna, say,
against Berlin, or the second empire
against the republic, to have abstained
from mischief and to have acted on cold,
even if selfish, reasonableness Is very
great merit, 1t indicates the possession
of the judicial mind. The baron has
never been accused Of waging war with
rivals like the great American capitalists,
or of " making a revolution like great
French banker, or Of entering into vast
speculations outside Of his business, like
So many Of the contractor capitalists OF
the great war, and, indeed, of our own
time. He has been loan ulOr5er and
banker and not Fl ghting 6nancier, and to
that moderation In the use OF his great
power some of his success and not little
of his popularity must be ascribed- This
popularity was very extensive, and 1t Is
another and not the least credit to the
sound sense Of himself and his house that
although great capitalists and great loan
monge-s and avoxedly Hebrews of He
brews, they have entirely escaped the dis
like which usually. indeed, all but uni
versaily, fastens upon sush men. In
four great capitals the classes which pos.
ssss nothing wish well to firm which OF
all others most distinctly represents capt
tai. That is very good proof of Con-
summate ability in management.
COATING An OsELIsK. famous
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