The Portland daily press., 1893-09-30
PORTLAND In THE PANIC.
A Veterans "reminiscences Of the
DAYS Which Tried Mems Pockets.

Tho Great Western Land Bubb1e-OtheI
Notable FolIies-Exciting Scenes on
Throngs-The Terrible Panic of '57-
ssMust Have My Pay in Specie" De-
| manded the Portland Hickman
Workingmen Threatened with starva-
tion-A Remarkable Showing of a Half
Century's Business vicissitudes.
"Can't change the bill, for you, sir. Nc
use to parley-I must have my pay In
specie"
A brief speech, but to the point and
full of meaning. 1t was the epigram OF
a Portland hackman. can never forget
it, although it was uttered six and
thirty years ago.
Scene: Boston g. Maine railroad depot.
Party addressed: a middle aged, slightly
elderly farmer from Bridgton, who had
rendered the jehu one dollar bank bill,
from which he was expected to extract
his fee for carrying him and young
hopeful-his grandson, the writer OF
this sketch-across the city. After
some difficulty my grandfather succeed
| ed in getting the bill broken; where
upon the..ssred-faced knight of the whip
drove rapidly away.
| The Portland hackman's monetary
ultimatum is easily explained. You see,
at the time he made that little speech
Portland, in common with all other
| cities and distant towns throughout the
land, was reeling before a business tor
| nado In short, 1t was the Great Panic
of '57,n compared with which the none
tary depressions of 1873 and of this year
of grace 1898 are as mole hills to noun
| tain.
Many a surviving Portlander of the
old school will recall, with vivid dis
I tinctness, the exciting scenes on Change
| in those dark days of 1857, when, the
| familiar faces of Portland's solid mem
ATTACHED to such names as Brown, Dow,
Gould, Wood, Shurtleff, Pavson, Poor,
Jose Deering, Kimball, Gerrish, Clark,
Hersey, Smith, Woodman, Libby, Win
ship, Mcclellan, Thomas, Little, Clapp,
ETC., to say nothing of noted professional
men and others of note--mingled with
represented every grade and kind of
business interests, and talked over the
situation. If this was the beginning,
what and where would the end be?
But this was not the first time Port
lands representative citizens were con-
fronted by great monetary panic. A
similar state Of affairs had existed just
twenty years before. a breaking away of
the apparently strong bulwark of public
confidence, disaster which was the
| logical sequence and immediate result
of the bursting of the "Great Western
Land Bubbleln But as it was, the
general commission and business revul-
sion of 1887 did not however, equal that
of 1857, the latter being known to this
day as "The Great Panic" A gray
haired Portlander whom ! have Just in
terviewed chats interestingly of those
two panics. Referring to the panic of
1887 he says: eyes, sir, those were fear
full days Why, would you believe it,
during that period of financial panic
and depression every bank in the United
States, with comparatively few excep-
tions, failed and suspended specie pay
ment.
"You see, up to the crash and just pre-
ceeding it, extravaganza pervaded all
classes of society, and so general and
feverish was the excitement in Western
lands speculations, that mon grasped at
lots in that bounstlhssl and almost I'M
tracked region astjb the fsupply was about
to be exhausted. a,,a .
"Indeed it is not exaggeration to say
that the land mania OF that period swal-
lowed up in it's mad whirl all classes.
Luck lily for me, I hadn't the means then
to embark in the general craze, but
could name lots of my fellow citizens of
Portland-the most of them dead and
gone-who were among it's vast army of
,5y,fo ,1a idao5
everywhere; the man of two or more
ideas was not visible. He who had no
money begged, borrowed or stole it;
he who had thought he made a generous
sacrifice if he lent it cent per cent. Mer-
chants, mechanics, farmers, professional
men and representatives OF every other
vocation left the certainty of good
wil'lo' the wisp, with Chicago and Mil
waukee the chief rallying points.
"Into the wilderness they plunged, and
then came difficulty and disappoint-
ments. Land lockers and other sharp
ers deceived and feeced them. Valuable
water power, pine lots and prospective
city lots were plentlful-but somehow
failed to materialize!
"But by and by this bubble burst
thousands of fortunes vanished into thin
air-the crisis and the panic came like
whirlwind.n
My mention of my grandfather's ex-
perience with the Portland hackman
started the aged Portlander on second
train of "reminiscences
ooh yes, that 81 business beat any
thing else our country has experienced
in business panics," he said. That,
likewise, was the effect of causes plain
and simple. The state of things i1nme-
diately before the awful crash of 1857 was
similar to the other Excessive debts and
almost incredible extravaganza and
speculations were the order Of the time.
Instead of applying their money to
legitimate purposes, moneyed men fairly
drained the cities and many parts of the
country for the constructing Of unproduc-
tive railroads or sunk it in Western land
speculations. The new territories, and
some parts of the Western States were
plastered over with paper cities, selling
to the credulous for almost fabulous
prices. For instance in the territory of
kansas ralone~-,where scarcely one legal
title had as yet been granted, there were
more acres laid out for cities than were
covered by all the cities in the Northern
and Middle Statesl
"Pretty much the whole West literally
swarmed with SPECTATORS, who had no
intention whatever Of cultivating the soil
or settling there. but who calculated to
realize fortunes, without labor, ssout Of the
bona fide settler. These operations, with