The Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1877-1885, 1884-01-29
Tuesday January 20, 1854.
BUSINESS AFFAIRS.
The Outlook in New York, Viewed
by Correspondent
How Speculation Operates ON the
shipping Interests ana Foreign
7sartcfs--.SOme General
Reflections.

NEW DIRK, Jan. ~. -HGaUn says: Lnu
from letters that there is desire in the west
to understand the business situation in New
York. Business has been duh here com
pared to the booming years Immediately
preceding for perhaps one year past Yet
the people have not been discouraged;
and in the legitimate business circles,
whether of merchandise or manu-
factnres, nothing has happened to sug-
gest crisis or a long stagnation. IL is gen.
eEally admitted that too many goods have
been rapidly manufactured, owing to the i'm
proved machinery, which quickly creates
enough for long supply; but the trade
understands what this machinery can do, the
mills prepare for gluts and shut down; and
the best information ! have is that, other
things being right, general trade ought to be
good in the spring.
With regard to the shipping business in
which the Americans have not much inter
est it has been affected by speculation on
the one hand and competition on the other.
Ever since Chicago initiated New York, in
turning into huge speculative hive to pro-
mote gambling her chamber of commerce,
and New York caught the infection, it has
been predicted that this arti fetal cause would
teach the English and others who take our
crops and produce to let us warehouse them.
The old custom was for the Briton to order
hiswlieat and other stuff Immediately, and
carry It 70 liverpool and store it, to be sold
according to the market, the prices having
been generally made on that side of the globe
But when grain pools started up, with the
magnificent scheme of cornering the grain
OBTAINING it in Chicago, examining the eleva-
,l-t,,
TO buy at our prices, the Englishman learned
that he might as well let the Americans take
care of their own crops until he wanted them
Two or three years ago sent Dispatch
whiclwas made the object of a congressional
misunderstanding that there were hundreds
of vessels lying in the hsrbor of New York
paying wharfage and desiring to get grain to
take to Liverpool, which they could not
have, because the spectators had locked
M all the grain in Chicago. The shipping
interest has, therefore, slowly adapted
itself to the vices OF the American specu-
lators It is understood abroad that we
speculate in wheat and produce as We do in
railroad stocks, and that there is no reliance
to be placed prices here until, by patience
and by working other fields, the English
market can bring the prices down to what
they consider u reasonable figure.
To some extent it is believed that the de
cine in the price of grain has arisen from
the speculative cause alone l do find excep-
tiunal persons who say that, owing to the
high prices maintained here, grain has been
stimulated in India, Buenos Ayres, and
other countries and that the ware
houses at Liverpool have enough grain
on hand to last them at least to
the close of next spring. No matter what the
cause, speculation had much to do with it. If
a large amount of grain is grown in India,
and cultivated with the miserable tools they
employ, under conditions altogether inferior
to ours, it is because the spectators in the big
pools set up the price Of grain year after year,
and make it an object TO the rest OF the world
to beat us. s1A
The shipping interest is still decrepit, be-
cause the crops do not come regularly for
ward at the rates fixed in London, bnt stay
back about Chicago-eitherd detained there by
combinations or because of belief latent
among the farmers and wheat merchants that
the old prices must revive. 1t Is very much
like the clothes-dealer who haggles for more
and more until the customer walks away
from him. Baldwin, the agent for the State
line Of steamers, says that he considers the
speculation in futures and options of wheat
to have been the main cause Of the decline of
prices and of the injury to the shipping trade
Had there been no artificial cause coming be
tween the farmer and the consumer probably
an inferior rate for wheat, but better rate
than the present would have prevailed.
Gambling has dug into the very bowels of
this country, and affected innocent people
just as the gambling of the head of family
affects his children and his neighbors That
is the trouble with this country. When
man concludes to get rich he can take any
steps he chooses to do SO, regardless of the
misery he inficts on his whole day and gen
Grafton.
| may say one word more: While much of
the money TO build new railroads has been
drawn from Europe, a good deal of it has
been picked up in this country In either
case we pay a certain penalty. If we have
sold securities in Europe which lose conf
dsnce there, they will be returned to US, and
take away the money which came here in
payment for them. In our own country the
number of rich men has been very much in
creasing; and all these finding their ex-
penses to grow with their capital, have been
On Cub lOokOul uuTlHS Lills peIIOu Oh low III
terest for some place to invest their wealth
Many of them have put large parts of it
into the new railroad enterprises. Many
of these new railroads were launched in
good faith. The Mexican railroads belong
to that class. Nevertheless, the men who
spend money for luxuries, who pay 81
pound for gilt-edged butter, and 81 pound
for their cuts of beef, are going to eat cheaper
butter and cheaper beef if they find they
have sunk from sl00, 900 to 81, 100000 apiece
in some of these railroads Therefore, when
money is locked up in things of this kind, and
has passed off into the hands of Italian
laborers and Irish contractors, there will he
certain dullness in purchasing for awhile.
We may have some of that kind of cOptrac-
ton.
1t is not believed here that any of the bank
lg institutions are unsound, or that we are
threatened with any such panic as that of
1878, when the people were comparatively
young and could not reason out subjects of
this nature 1t looks as if, for little while
to come, our rich men would carry the heavy
end of the pole, and the poor men, with the
light end of the pole on their shoulders, would
not mind much