Morning journal and courier., 1882-06-20
The Political Economy of seyenty-Three
 Million Dollars.

l By Henry D. Lloyd in the July AtIAntic.I | Thsre is not, says Comte, any purely in | dustrial human being. But occasionally there flourish outside the jails, persons who
 are almost ideal exemplifcations of the prin- ] ciples of competitive political economy. l America has produced the most successful of l these practical political economists. His ca
 reer illustrates what may be accomplished by
 a scientific devotion to the principles of com petition, laissez -faire, desire of wealth and l self-interest, if not the harmony of interests. 1 While the Crystal Palace exhibition of 1853 | was open in New York there came to seek his 1 fortune in the city a slender, black-eyed, l black haired boy, from the interior of the State. He brought with him very hand
 some mahogany box. In the box was an in
 vention; "a little thing" he once said, q | had brought from my country home, and
 thought was going to make my fortune and
 revolutionize the world. It was 8 mouse | trap" The unsophisticated boy left his
 treasure on the seat of a Sixth avenue car,
 while he stood on the platform to stare at the crowd, and 1t was stolen. But he pursued and caught the thief, who was an old offend CT, for whom the police of New York were looking at that moment. The Herald of the
 next day, under the heading How Mouse
 Trap Caught Thief" gave his first taste of publicity to the youth who for the next thir- ty years was to be continuously before the
  ways in connection with some kind of trap. The genius that had divined from afar that
 the great city was full of mice, and had con-
 trived a trap to catch them, could not be
 stolen. Its first impulse grew to be a pas
 sion Brains and strict attention to the laws
 of supply and demand have made the coun-
 try boy the greatest mouse catcher of Ameri-
 ca and his traps have become the envy of
 every man of feline aspirations
 Four of his inventions were masterpieces
 In the first of them he gained the confidence
 of his simple prey by assuming position of
 trust as director, and afterwards as president,
 of the lar gest railroad but one in his native
 State. At once there began to turn before
 the eyes of the stockholders and the public
 a kaleidoscope of ruin shower after shower
 of stocks and bonds issued to run the road,
 while the trustee and his pals-pag is Old
 English for fellow trustee-drank dry the
 stream of earnings; devils dance of law
 yers. judges, legislators, Governors and Tam
 many politicians hinging themselves into every attitude of betrayal of trust,-an orgy of fduciary harlotry, led by a great law re-
 former 8 tangled web of injunctions and counter iniunctions and more injunctions, contradictory ord,ss of courts, perjured afh- davits,- every thread spun by its poisonous spinner around and around trust phan- tasmagoria of prosperity, of busy trains and steamers,~ crowded ferries, marble opera houses, bursting warehouses, glowing mills, precious franchises and rich contracts,-a fair but hollow scene, where all the expenses go to the owner and all the receipts to the trustee.
 It was no ordinary trap in which Wall street and the whole country were caught on that darkest day of all our financial history, Black Friday, September 24, 1869. On one side it was supported by the New York Sub-Treasury, whose chief held his place for the purposes of the gold conspiracy. On another side it rested in the coffers of the Erie railroad, whose president was the boy of the mouse trap. At third point, it had, apparently, a personal connection with the President of the United States. Through the Tenth National bank, whose president was the president of the Erie, it had the fla cilities of the National Banking association. | The Stock Exchange was the pitfall. Black 1 panic, which this conjurer of the irresistible laws of trade had before called to his aid, | came, bringing ruin to thousands, madness | and death to more than one. In the Stock | Exchange the wires melted under the fire of | dispatches. There are to-day men proud to | tell you that in that moment of frenzy and i horror they hunted, rope in hand, for this | disciple of self-interest, and if they could | have caught him would have hanged the | maker of the mouse trap that caught thief | only sixteen years before But the president | of the Erie road fled to his arsenal on Twen- ty third street and was secure. He saved his | millions, for while his partners, by his ad- | vice, were buying, he was selling, selling, | selling. He was promoted from investiga- | ton by committee of the New York Legis- | lature to investigation by a committee of | Congress. He told them, ''I had my own views about the market and my own fish to | fry" He saved the millions of his magnetic | lieutenant Fisk by teaching him to repudiate | the orders given to his brokers. Before their | victims could crawl out from under the ruins of Black Friday they were served, as Charles Francis Adams, jr., in his Chapters of Erie" tells us, with injunctions prepared in patches by David Dudley Field, forbidding them from pressing their pretended claims
 by any proceedings" law reformer devised a scheme, and judge supported it, 1 by which the men who had been knocked 1 down and robbed were prohibited, in the name of justice, from seeking justice. Phy- scians, licensed by the State to heal, prepar- ing poisons for the use of assassins
 In December, 1880, what may be accom- plished by steadfast faithfulness to the prin- ciples of competition shown by a state ment made by the most trustworthy financial ] paper in the United States, that our political economist was in control of ten thousand 1 miles of railroad, or more than one-ninth l the entire mileage of the country. ]
 Inequality Among Individuals.
 From the London TimesJ