Savannah morning news. [volume] (Savannah) 1868-1887, 1882-04-17
The Outlook for the Spring Season.
Baltimore SlCn

1t is not difficult to account for the period
of great business activity through which we
have been passing. The economies of pre-
vi0us years made resumption possible in
1879, and the bringing the greenbacks to q
par with gold had the effect of adding to
The currency all the gold and silver hoard
ed up since 1862. These additions to the
circulating medium tended naturally to
promote commercial activity. This activity
was stimulated immensely, however by
our extraordinarily large crops of cotton
and grain in the three years beginning
with 1879 The failure of the harvests
of Europe during these same years Gre
ated an unusually remunerative and
steady market for American agricultural
products; and, to add further to the West
ern farmers good fortune, the substitution
of steel for iron rails on land and the screw
propeller for the paddle-wheel and sail at
sea, cheapened transportation to such an
extent that the grain growers margin of
profit became immensely widened and
strengthened. immigration added also
largely to our resources of capital and skill
ed labor. These many favorable circum-
stances have created the present era
of unexampled prosperity. For the
future the promise of crops is fairly
good. A mild winter and an open spring
have been favorable to the opening up of
many new farms in the far West, and in the
older sections of the country, with the ex-
ception of the flooded district, agricultural
preparations are reasonably well advanced.
The large disbursements to be made by the
Treasury Department during the spring and
early summer will maintain a high tide of
available funds for business ventures, and
perhaps defer any such tightuess of the
money market as must necessarily precede
he approach of hard times. Nor can it be
forgotten that the earnings of the railroads
continue to be expressed In large, and in
many cases, growing figures.
There is another side of the picture, more
sombre in color, to which our attention is
frequently invited by those who think the
high-water mark of our prosperity is already
in the past, and believe that financial
crisis Is imminent. The cotton crop of the
coming season will certainly be smaller than
during the past three years. The crops OF
Europe promise to be good, diminishing
thus the demand for our grain. From 1873
to IS79 as many as 100000 acres of new
land per annum were put in grain in the
United States, but since the aforementioned
year the average has not exceeded $500, 900
acres per annum. Cities, with their COM
merce and manufactures, have been
more attractive to our native youth than
the country, and, as the Sun recently
showed, less than twenty per cent. Of our
immigrants take to the plow. Capital by
the hundred millions has been put in bridges,
tunnels and roadbeds in the Southwest not
to mention other sections of the country,
where it will remain unprodnctive for per-
haps a decade of years. Tourists spend
large amounts abroad. Our decreasing ex-
ports and increasing imports are unfavora-
BILE signs with those who hold an excess of
exports to be essential to national pros D. eri-
ty. In some industries strikes are threat
ened for higher pay at a moment when EN-
ployers find it impossible to yield without
inviting bankruptcy. Reviewing the whole
field, 1t must be admitted that there is rea.
son for caution, but not for anxious solicI-
tude. When stocks are high the omens an
nounced by brokers interested in decline
are TO be received with some degree of
dnuht