The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1897-01-18
A COMMERCIAL BAROMETER.


curate a currency barometer We're pay
ments of customs made in the various
kinds of crazy-quilt currency, the gold
going in freely in times of calm and
beginning to disappear upon the APP
proach of a storm of political agita-
ton of currency questions. Then the
natural and universal impulse to re-
tain that which was the best and get
rid of that which was or might pos
sibly become the worse or worst, kept
back the gold and sent silver certifi-
Gates, treasury notes and greenbacks,
in about that order, to the treasury
for payment of taxes. Running down
! the table by months and years one can
thus read the variations of public con-
| f1dence with as much certainty as one
can read the atmospheric changes by
reading the barometric records.
Pig iron has long been accepted as
an industrial barometer, whose changes
| indicated commercial conditions, tell
| ing of general activity and prosperity
or recording the degrees of industrial
depression. When pig was in lively
demand, and prices we'll sustained, it
was taken to indicate prosperous con-
ditions, and these changed to hard or
disastrous ones as demand Slackened
or prices fell off. But pig iron was
more a thermometer, telling of pres
ent conditions, than barometer. fore
telling coming changes. Nothing in it's
conditions ever indicated a coming. but
present and actual crash. 1t was only
one brick in the Industrial row that
toppled over with the rest when the
panic wave struck. If we would find
among our various industries one
which served more as a barometer to
indicate coming change for veal or
for woe, no better or more accurate
and dependable one is to be had than
the condition of our railways and their
securities
That these are extremely and excep-
tionally susceptible to those influences
in the commercial world which begin
to operate before their effects are gem
orally noticeable, results from two
causes chiefly; their over capitaliza-
ton and the strenuous competition
among them, resulting from the over
production of railway means of trans
portation relatively to the production
of things to be transported Both
causes cooperating put upon railways,
and, by reflex action their securities.
q strain that makes them as sensitive
to conditions of trade and commerce
as the mercury in the barometer is to
variations in the weight of the at
moSphere. 1t is the strained wire and
not the slack one that gives out the
note of rising wind before our dulIer
sense perceiyes it.
This sensitiveness to coming changes
becomes apparent on an inspection of
the stock markets over a range of
years, and Of the record of railway
bankruptcies. The coming OF the panic
of 1884 was thus heralded before its
force made ali men and industries
aware of it. The panic of 1893 was
foreshadowed as early as 1880 by this
barometer. The receiverships begin
ming to increase prior to the crash of
1884 eliminated in A In 1885 and sub
sided to in 1887. They rose to 26 in
1890, with nearly 5000 miles of track.
| to SO in that prosperous year, 1892,
with 1O,5OS miles of track, foreshadow-
Ing the coming storm that sent IA of
them. with trackage of 29,340 miles.
into receivers charge in 1893. They
furnish additional proof, were it need
ed, that the prosperity of 1892 was un-
real, and that the forces that culminat
ed in 1893 had their rise as remote as
$780,