The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1893-12-14
WE MUST LIQUIDATE.

The people of the great west no doubt
wonder in what estimate they must be
held bv the magnates of Wall street.
The contents of the circulars and reviews
sent out by Wall street, taken consecu-
lively for any three months, are so in
consistent as to appear foolish and child
ish. Yet these men have not failed IN
years to control every secretary of the
treasury, and to largely influence each
succeeding administration. Their best
hold has been the banks and bankin,,
laws, the volume of currency, gold lear
ing bonds, etc., the last effort being the
defeat OF silver which they unanimously
declared would bring prosperity to the
country.
The Cleveland administration prompt
ly knocked that great American pro-
duct in the head, while in the sue
ceeding months everything has gone
from bad to worse. Now these mag
mates are declaring that the only
necessary precedent to good times is the
speedy enactment of tariff law, it
making no difference what it may be
like only so that it be speedily and
definitely settled, high-protection or
low-free trade, any thing SO it is settled.
The practical wisdom, the compre-
hensive judgment of this country Is to
be found not only outside of Wall street,
but very largely west of the Allegheny
mountains. On the greenback and cur
rency question, the transportation ques-
ton, the silver and the tariff questions
the broad patriotic and conservative
west has been nearest right.
The prostration of thousand varied
enterprises, developed in every state
under the protective policy of the Re-
publican party, by threatened free trade,
and the uncertainty growing out Of a
deprecIating currency, have had much
to do with emphasizing and adding ad-
ditional disaster to the general situation,
yet back of these lies the primary
cause of the squeeze, lies an
enormously inflated debt begotten
of widest speculation, under the
enforced liquidation of which the
country travails in agony. Fore
closure proceedings and assignments
have largely cancelled this class of in
dividual obligations, but far greater in
the aggregate is that which can only be
wiped out through receivership. Cor
porations of every conceivable character,
and gigantic in their operations, stand
trem bling and struggling under load
of assumed obligations in amounts far
beyond the value of all their assets,
either of original cost, requirements or
OF earning power. The Arrangements
of these, in unison, by their APP
peals to creditors to stand by them, with
the added assurance that the storm Will
soon be over, are but delaying the final
and inevitable crash. The millions of
gold that goes i'll one eternal stream to
Europe is interest gold, and its flow will
not cease until the original investment
is wiped out and the property which
bears the speculative burthen is reduced
in its stock value to a basis of actual
cost and earning power, Liquidation
through receivership must ensue ere
renewed prosperity is possible. We
danced and now the fiddler must be paid
or his demand otherwise disposed Of.
The enterprise which is worth but ten
thousand cannot stand under a bonded
debt of one hundred thousand, be it a
factory, a store, or what not, ard the
united struggles for existence of such
but postpones and intensifies the results
of a final crash. No country can be tax
ed through freights, for instance, TO meet
the fixed charges of the railroads serving
it bonded for fifty or one hundred thous-
and per mile, when such roads can be
under existing prices and con-
ditons for from ten tCtwenty-five thous-
and Der mile. no more than can manu-
facturer pay American wages and COM
pete in an unprotected market with
English goods.
This country is liquidating its indebt-
edness TO the world and it must contin-
ue the process by payment, in full or by
other cancellation, to the bitter end, all
Wall street circulars, presidents procla-
nations and national legislation or other
schemes aud makeshifts 10 the contrary