The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1893-06-28

doIIars; TO make excessive earnings
and percentages. to take away from
villages and stable towns their local
methods of accommodating the public,
and to turn everything into few vast
trusts and agencies.
The Lcountry still has plenty of
money. A large proportion of the
banks have guarded themselves like
fortresses, and have strengthened their
reserves. In spite of a good many fall
ures, and some difficulty in making
collections everywhere, the general
activity of the land is decided, but it
has too much collateral.
It is not an unmixed evil for an &C
tive country like ours to occasionally
have fit of illness. The vicious acids
and miasmas in the system yield to a
course of purgation and of diet. The
patient arises much stronger than he
was before he was taken to bed If
we have been doing anything wrong,
let us ask if any of our greater neigh
bors have been more correct.
England, with an immense trade,
and with tighter naturalization laws
than ours, has beheld hundreds of mil
lions of dollars go, enough to have
paid the expenses of one of the great
est wars in history, through the sheer
gambling propensities of it's people,
and their singular admixture of avarice
and aristocracy. The condition of
Canada is high encomium upon the
vigor and property of the United
States. Mr.. Goldwin Smith told me
last winter that in the city of Toronto
there were several thousand houses
idle and to let. 81 do not call that
prosperity" he said, (which goes on
building houses that nobody wants,
and manufacturing under high tariff
where there are no adequate markets,
while meantime losing our best labor
ing stock, which goes to the United
States, where we have cut off our nat
ural market"
Australia, in the light Of what has
transpired there in settling up, seems
to show that every cent put in that
country by England has merely been
paying back out of the principal for
limited number of years the interest
thereupon, and when the so-called
property and assets come to be esti-
mated at the conclusion of the loan,
the banks of the entire Australian con-
tinent reel and give up the ghost.
When we examine the incomes Of
many of our great properties which
have been conservatively managed, we
perceive the true riches of the land.
When we see the Pennsylvania railroad
doing business of more than one hum
dred and forty million dollars year,
of which more than one-fourth is net
business; when we see the old roads Of
New England compelled to reduce
their rates in order to keep within the
limit of lawful dividends; when we see
the infnitude of things in this fair
which are made fin this country, and
which are cheaper than they have ever
been here or elsewhere, we perceive
that these pinchings and crackings
from time to time are nothing but the
corrugations in the extending surface
of our population and equipment.
Over great area of continent we
have undertaken to maintain great
number of cities, and these cities have
been connected by an infinite number
of corporations. Now and then some
town falls out of the race and Lets go
its hold. Again, some fatality in our
Interpretation of our momentary
needs, to be the true law of life, brings
penalty. The drawing apart of the
forces of labor and employment is q
feature of that equal pressure to too
rapidly improving conditions on both
sides.
Still, here is the great fact, that
nearly every nation on the earth has
made it's appearance at the American
worlds fair. These nations do not re-
gard the United States as perma-
nently in decay. The illustrious
strangers who have come here,
including the princess of Spain,
find occasion for delightat every point.
The politics of the land is something
slipshod, but even that, like any other
muddy stream, cannot be so muddy
that it will not run itself clear.
In Fastening to cover every portion
of the land with cities and improve
ments, there must necessarily be in
CAPABILITIES and here and there calami-
ties.
After all, perhaps our greatest crime
is to mix banking up with speculation;
to depart from the plain laws of han
ding the money of other people, in the
hope that we may verify some dream.
and rid ourselves of application and
sacrifice.
The currency must be made sound,
for it is the circulating blood of the
race. GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSEND.
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