The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1895-07-19

affairs, and never allow themselves to
see things of lighter color than in
digo blue, are forced to admit that
the storm is about over. The timid
will be braced up by the prospect of
of a good winter trade, and those who
have been wrecked will have learned
their lesson and will proceed to re-
cover their fortunes with courage
tempered by caution. We are ust
sanguine enough to believe that we
are on the verge of period of uDex-
ampled prosperity. Courier, Sept.
q, 1898.
"lf things keep on this way, what
are the howlers about the mischief
that the promise of tariff reform is
doing TO the business of the country
going to do for their calamity talk?
Industries all over the country are
picking up to a degree positively
alarming. "-Courier, Sept. ~, 1898.
"This country is making perceptible
progress in recovering from the recent
panic. Distrust has subsidized, boarded
funds have returned to the channels
of trade, and the premium on curren-
cy seems like a dream. Mills and
manufacturing concerns are resuming
work; plans forrairoad building next
year are being favorably discussed;
the tariff will be revised and raw ma
terials generally placed on the free
list in the interest of labor, and all
signs are hopeful for rapid emer-
gency from the abyss of general de-
preston into which the country was
plunged last summer."--Courier, Dec.
30, 1898.
When the Courier saw, in the
spring of 1894, that there was very
little prospect of any such radical
tariff Legislation as it advocated, but
in its stead the passage by its
party of a measure that the Courier
itself had characterize ed as "a hybrid
bill that no class will own and unfit
to be named after any honest and re-
spectacle citizen" the editor of that
paper saw he was getting his party
into mighty deep water if he estab-
lished the theory that the tariff was
responsible for the hard times, and
yet that the democratic party refused
to enact such Il tariff law as he had
preached would cause a return of
prosperity, SO he hedged on May 4,
1894, as follows:
mo one thing can be assigned as
the potent cause of the financial panic
of 1893. Only the ignorant or the
demagogue ascribe the tariff as the
primary or inducing cause. The re-
cent panic was in every essential fea-
ture purely a bank-a money panic,
and commercial ventures and pur-
suits were not affected until they
could no longer secure from the
banks the usual accommodations in
loans and discounts. In the begin
ming of the panic, and for months,
ten banks failed or suspended to one
manufacturing enterprise that closed
down. No one will assert that our
banking system is fostered, maintain
ed by, or dependent upon tariff laws.
Why, then, should the banks be the
first to suffer if fear of change in
the tariff were the cause of the panic?
Why did no manufacturing enter
prise, depending wholly or in part
upon upon protective policy, fail,
or even close its doors until forced to
do so by the stringency of the money
MARKET"
The consistency of the above ut
terances of the Courier, as compared
with its cuckoo chronology, is, how
ever, fully as great as could be ex-
pected in any paper that advocates
free trade and at the same time tries
to defend "hybrid."
AS to the chronology for 1895,
with the rosy picture of returning
prosperity and general revival of
business, we indeed hope it is cor
rect; but we can as yet see no marked
evidence of it in this community. Our
business men, one and all, complain
of poor business and slow collections,
unless, indeed, the boosted demo-
cratic prosperity has struck the Cou-
rier; we are indeed glad if its Golfers
are filled while the finances of the
rest of us poor mortals run mighty
thin and small.
Perhaps, however, all any of US
need is little of the faith cure. May
be we are all right if we only think
so. Possibly the Courier has special
mission to convince the sturdy farm
ers and honest business men of old
Van Buren, county that they are now