Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1893-07-10

4
resumed specie payments and went on
in the period Of our greatest prosperi-
ty. And now I want TO ask . question.
| which may not be relevant, though il
seems so to me. Did we not make .
mistake in pushing development in
America through the second period Of
our prosperity? Did we not over-do.
following 1s7V, what we had done pref
| ty well down to the panic Of 1874?
Have we been IS conservative In our
operations since we came to specie
payments as we should have been, con-
sidering our magnificent credit, when
we marketed all our crops at Euro
pean war prices, or when Europe was
short of the necessaries of life? Is II
not the fact that those cities which
| had gained their maturity have sur
vived subsequent troubles, while al
| the places that have doomed since
1879 have been heavy upon our hands?"
Exclarnations went around concern
ing Kansas City, Los Angeles, Minne-
apolis. Fostoria, Findlay, Basic City,
| Cumberland Gap, etc.
The fact is" said one of my com
munieants, that it is high time some
check was called to the business of
| Transforming all our brainy people into
spectators. A good deal of the So
called prosperity for the past fourteen
.years has been selling new lamps for
old ones, as in Aladdin's tale. What
ever was paying a reasonable dividend
was acquired by spectators and sold
cut again, and future profits fore
stalled. Electricity itself has been an
agency of speculation. We have put
down too many transportation lines,
and tried 10 rout the horse out Of all his
occupations. Banks are not going to
take care of the spectators when they
can't take care of their customers. We
have pushed our credit in Europe too
far on the second bound. and have in
jured our standing over there by selling
to them quantities of things which
were husbanded subsequently. without
much principle or method. We sold
them ranches of cattle, consolidated
brewcries, and trusts of every kind,
borrowing their rotten financial ideas,
in sheer wantonness of desire to manu-
facturc something upon which we could
borrow foreign capital Consequently,
after we had discharged immense por-
tions of our debt, negotiated on real
things, we went in debt again to
Europe for things of much less value,
and now we are paying the difference.
Gold is being drained to Europe, to lie
up in conservative vaults and stand to
1. 8 -
them undertakes to initat, us in
coming back to gold s,andard."
Perhaps" said /, lit was necessary
for some check t. come to our easy
credit, or We might have turned out to
be nation of gamblers and confidence
men. Look at the lawyers in the
United States who have turned bank
ers. know an old rce~ion of the east
where The people voluntarily stopped
litigation from a discovery of the fact
that II was the most expensive job they
could take up, They fed from the
lawyers. and left them with nothing to
do. A bar composed of forty to fifty
members did not have $50, 900 to liti-
gate year, perhaps not half that
much. So, the lawyers. some Of whom
had formed connections with railroads
and town-booming companies. began
to cultivate the eastern money mar
kets. and setu private banks, with the
hope of capturing depositors from the
thrifty countryside people. They
would get Dunkers and other,sectari-
ans out of their hide-bound churches as
stool pigeons to draw deposits from
the superstitious and faithful. The
process went on everywhere of buying
outlying farms and cutting them up
into building lots, and charging for
the lots more than the farm had been
worth few months before per acre.
Factories were started without suffi-
cient capital or skill. Men successful
in some quiet development Of manu-
features would be drawn to the doomed
town, and would give up their vii
lage habits and conditions of repose
and content with quiet profits.