The Camden chronicle. (Camden, Tenn.) 1890-current, 1896-02-21
THE TULIP MANIA.
Recalled BY the Kafir Diamond
Craze.
An Extraordinary Epidemic OF
Financial Insanity.

run through nations like epidemics arc
pure extrayaganzaa AT one time all
France Is carried away by the Wild
eyed folly Of the Mississippi scheme.
which raised real estate TO such a
price that il is valued al one hundred
years purchaso-that is to say. its
rent pays only one per cent on its
cost A little later and England ex-
plodos into the kindred absurdity OF
tho South Sea bubble, creating such
hunger for special corporations that
one man, who advertised an unknown
scheme, 10 be revealed at the end Of
the month, two pounds to be paid
down for each share, takes in So, 900
the very first day. Twenty years ago
Bavaria was seduced into pouring
all its movable wealth into the lap of
a woman who had no security 10 of
fer, simply because she paid high rates
Of interest and covered her banking
operations with the lowered robe OF
priestly confidence. A dozen years
ago all New England, which is sup
posed to be the present home Of the
Goddess OF Reason, was taken in by
swindling female banker of the same
sort, who offered the impossible inter
est of SO per cent per annumt to depos-
itors
Aud now we see before us the spec
tacle Of millions of hard earned money
pouring into the diamond schemes OF
Kafirland.
OF all things in the world in which
to make a corner, to excite a specula-
ton, to be pulled by brokers, it would
seem as if flowers must be the last.
That whole nations should go mad
after diamonds is not SO extraordinary
as that they should go mad after bulbs.
And it adds to the extraordinary fea-
lures of the latter craze that il should
have been developed among so phleg-
matte a people as the Dutch, and
should have spread to so thrifty a peo-
pie as the English. Yet in the early
seventeenth century the ferocious lust
after tulips developed into a raving
insanity.
The tulip had long been a favorite
among the Turks 1t was unknown
to Christian Europe until 1869, when
a single specimen found its way from
Constantinoplo to Augsburg. Soon
the plant grew into demand in Hol-
land as we'll as Germany. Wealthy
burghers began paying large prices
for choice bulbs. In 1900 tulips we're
first seen in England. For a period
they were the objects of an admiration
which had it's enthusiasts bat not its
insanities. By 1884, however, en-
thusiasm had burst its bonds in Hol-
land and became rank fanaticism. The
ordinary industries of the people
were neglected. Necessaries we're
showed aside to give room for this
useless luxury. Everybody turned
to the cultivation of tulips, As the
mania increased prices increased. A
bulb of the kind known as a Viceroy
would bring 81, 200 and Admiral Liet-
kin was worth 81, 800, and most prec-
ious of all, Semper Augustus was
thought cheap at $4,000.
The last named was O. late
introduction. In 1886 there were
only two bulbs of this species
in the country-one in Harlem, the
other in Amsterdam. There was
tremendous competition among bulb
fanciers. Finally, the Harlem speci-
men was disposed OF Tor twelve acres
of valuable building land, the Am
sterdam one for new carriage, two
gray horses, complete set of har-
ness and the sum of 81, $40.
Strangers in Holland we're unable
to understand this frenzy. A story
is told of how a sailor, mistaking a
bulb for an onion, made breakfast
worth 81, 400, and was tearfully in
formed by the owner, when he com
planned of the lack of the true onior
flavor, that ''it would have beer
cheaper for him to have breakfastet
the Prince of Orange and all hi
court"
Marts for the sale of tulips were