St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1894-06-11
pluck not judgment was the touch
stone. of success.

Not only the regular dealer, but the
merchant. lawyer, doctor. workingman.
tie widow, the orphans trustee. and
even the clergyman and the servant
girl invested their savings in city lots
and watched with gamblers eye the
Trend OF the real estate market. Where
the city in the United States that Is
not now and for more than-a year past
has not been reeling and staggering
under tile effects of collapsed "boom, ~
debauched il not ruined by the un-
wholesome int0Xlcatlon OF speculative
prices?
There seems to exist some Intimate
connection between real estate Specula-
tons ami financial panicS. AS the rap
idly rising barometer foretellS the
twisting cyclone. SD does the quick ad-
vance OF real estate values presage the
coming panic. Unlike personal prop
erty, real estate is absolutely unstable
upon n deetiHsng market; no man can
unload OreDrOtect himself from further
loss. He is fixture, annexed to the
realty. and with it hs'etunbles to the
bottom.
For many years We have been in
dulging in this kind5of speculation.
sInside property" has attaiped fabulous
values, and suburban property FAR Out
| i'll the woods and pastures has followed
| with equal pace. Men bought in anticl-
patton of rise. Small cash pay
nenls were made, and mortgages given
| for the unpaid purchase price. Every
| body had Invested" and everybody
was in debt. We were gambling on
credit. Margins were small, credit
was boundless. As early as 1899 this
country was ripe for a financial con-
vulsion. The ''boom" had expanded
| to its utmost tension, the collapse was
inevitable.
AS look back over these years of
| dizzy prosperity l am forced to the con
| viction that the crisis which is now
upon us was as certain and unaVuid-
able as is the raeking headache and
the feverish pulse which succeeds and
aud Furnishes the prolonged debauch.
HARD TIMES IN EUROPE.
The house of Barring Byos., of Lon
don. was in fiscal importance second
| only to the Rothschilds. Its customers
were the nations and the great corpora
tons of the world. 1t had Invested
| largely in securities of the Argentine
! Republic and the real estate and rail-
way enterprises Of South America and
| Australia. Suddenly the bubble OF
| speculation burst, and the Earrings fell
helpless and bankrupt into the arms of
the Bank of England. The wise and
| powerful support of that great institu-
ton prevented the instantaneous
| crash which otherwise must have
| followed. This was in November, $780,
| The crisis had come. Speculation here, in
| Europe. ana round the globe stopped
| when the Earrings fell. The Australian
bank failures followed III quick success
sion. Everywhere money was tiled
up" people in debt, interest due, real
estate declining and unstable. Too
late, in common with the rest of the
world. we learned the lessen that for
the one man "who broke the bank at
Monte Carlo there were thousands
whom the bank at Monte Carlo broke.
Laughter.
With a sloppage of speculation depre-
cation began. Values fell, business
was depressed. wages reduced, factories
closed. men thrown out of employment,
labor troubles developed. and the era of
| hard times, with all its attendant dis
| asters aud distress, swept round the
! globe.
For time the United States seemed
| to withstand the shock of the Barings'
| failure, and the Semblanee OF prosperity
renamed with us. The American
| farmer came to the rescue of the Ameri-
| can speculator and intefposed between
| him and his ruin the enormous and TN
usual crops of 1890 and 1891. The first
year after the failure we shipped and
| sold abroad over 500, 100000 of
wheat and -four, more than we had ex-
| taI ~ TN mir
| Our exports of corn, cotton, cattle, meat
| products. etc., were also largely IN
excess of prior years.
| If it be true that civilized nations are
sympathetic. that they are so closely
allied and intertangIed by trade and
| financial dealings that when one is
struck the shock vibrates through all.
| then it is possible that we IN America
are today suffering from the reflex &C
| ton of the sufferings we then inflicted
upon others. Our Mckinley chickens
| have come home to roost. Applause
BAD FINANCIAL LEGISLATION.
| In the United States we had one ele-
ment of danger which did not exist
abroad. | refer to our silver legislation.
Ever since the resumption of specie
payments the business of this country
has been upon gold basis. Everything
we sole and everything we bought was
measured by the single standard of
| gold. True. we had other kinds of
money, paper and silver. butwe used
them as the representative or equiva-
lent Of gold, because they we're con-
vertible into gold.
| In 1877 the nd-Allison act was
! ri ip,fr fnr ftn DE
| S2,O0U,o00 of silver each month and its
coinage into standard silver dollars. At
that time tine market value Of the 37lI
grains of pure silver contained in the
dollar was about SO cents. 1t was then
| believed that this increased coinage
would so increase the price of silver
that the silver in a dollar
would soon have an intrinsic
or market value equal to the gold in a
gold dollar. Instead of this the in
creased coinage led to increased pro-
duction of silver. and its value continued
to fall in the markets.
Under this law we were constantly
adding to our currency dollars of con-
tinually depreciating value. Within
the United States they were by law a
legal tender, with debt-paying power
equal to gold. Outside of the United
States they had the market value of
37lI grains of silver. and no more.
The gold coin was dollar everywhere
the silver coin was not dollar any
where except here. The one was cos
mopolitan in use and value, the other
was local only.
For this reason foreigners long ago
began to grow suspicious of our ma
tional money. They realized that the
time would soon come when gold would
disappear and silver alone remain in
circulation here. Therefore, in all the
loans they made to US, in all the bonds
and mortgages they took from us they
stipulated in the contract that the
principal and interest should be paid in
gold coin.
In the ninety years preceding the
Bland-Allison act we had coined only
100000 silver dollars. In the twelve
years under that act. from 1878 to 1890
| Dr,O mn