Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1884-12-04
Worldwide Hard Times.

There is nothing to Indicate anything
like turn In the extraordinary ebb of
prices and activity which is now obser-
vable everywhere throughout what we
call the civilized world. Never before in
the modern era has the like of the pres
ent situation been witnessed The wisest
heads are unable to peer through the
mystery of the markets. The trouble
is not matter of tariffs, for the coun-
tries with prohibitory tariff are not suf-
fering more than those which call them
selves free trade. 1t is not money
question for the countries with paper are
not worse off than those with hard
money, and those with the single stand
ard have as a deep depression to re-
port as those with double standard
1t is not the awfnl cost of standing
armes, for Australia, Canada, and the
United States, with no standing armies
to speak of, make no more encouraging
commercial statistics than the peoples
which sleep in armor. 1t is not ques-
ton of overpopulation, for there is dis
tress of the same kind and nearly as in
tense where the population is scant as
where it is dense
Paris is trembling in fear of bread
riots, and when the Lord Mayors show
passed through the streets of London
the other day the stencil of the starving
bodies that crowded out Of the slums to
gaze on the happy few who were on
their way to.enjoy the famous Lord
Mayors banquet sickened every sensi-
tive nostril. The English farmer wants
the wheat of his American competitor
kept out by '.fair trade and the peas
ant cultivator of France has already
had the promise of such protection from
the French Minister of Finance. In
Sunderland one pawnbroker has
within the last year taken in pawn, an
English paper states, not less than 1900
wedding-rings. Spain, with Its prohibit
tory regulation of trade, is in SO low an
industrial condition that the Black Hand
seems to the distressed people the only
organization that Is worthy of their
loyalty. DeLaveleye, who has lately
made a tour through Northern Italy,
finds that the population are in a state
of almost abject wretchedness in large
masses. Their mpoverishment and
that of the soil 90 together. In whole
provinces aridity has been cultivated
by the destruction of the forests and con-
sequently OF the watercourses, and entire
districts are ravaged by diseases which
spring directly from the lack of proper
food. Russia cannot discover any more
prosperity in selling wheat below cost
than the United States. There is very
strong financial element in the recent
religious disturbances in Belgium, and
the increase in the Socialist vote in Ger
many is quite as distinctly an indication
of popular suffering and financial pres
sure as the wave of bankruptcy which is
rolling through its great sugar industry.
In the United States we know so well
the signs of the hard times that it is a
waste of time to recapitulate any OF the
evidence. We are ON the edge of the
most terrible winter that has ever been
seen here. Hundreds of thousands of
men are already out of work. and the
newspaper accounts of suspensions of
work or redutions of wages fill columns
daily. Here, as abroad, the tightening
shrinkage of the invisible enemy is felt
by the tillers of the soil as we'll as by
the artisans of the cities, and is eating
as deeply into the capital of the employ
er as into the wages of the employed.
This is the state of things in this
world of ours as we near the end of the
most prolific year on the whole that has
been known to this century. ALI round
the world the god of harvests this year
has poured on the sons of men golden
grain and ripened fruit as if there were
two worlds instead of one to be fed.
This is the state of things after centu-
ny given to the perfectlng of millions of
cunning machines, which in every coun-
try are now ready to make in a month
or so as much as the world could use in
year. This is the state of things after
years of almost universal peace, and of
at least the usual health. 1t is truly
singular state of affairs that with too
much money there should be so much
biting poverty; with so much surplus
grain, SO much starvation; with SO
many sp;ndles and looms, so many shiv-
ering bodies; and with so much 'slabor-
saving" machinery, so much work un-
done. Chicaq0 Tribune.