Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1897-09-13

Its day and generation. New inventions
might have made it more, but for each
year the labor of each nation is the sum of
that years creation of wealth.
What makes men work?
Their own mental condition In the old
savage state, when any man made Up his
mind to work, he could go into the forest
and by the stream alone. and his wigwam
had fish and flesh and fowl and blankets
and scalps and other necessaries of life.
But modern life is not so simple. Civiliza-
ton is complicated beyond all hope of I'M
ravellng. For the most part, ali you can
do is to let 1t unrayel. 1t is a knot which
must unite itself. No sword, even of Alex
ander, can cut ii.
All modern making of things requires the
union of many men. The prosperity of
modern society demands a simultaneous
action of all. When that comes everything
comes. After a great smash like that of
1898 or that of 1878. there is nothing TO do
but wait and let the business of the world
settle itself, carefully keeping meanwhile
the medicine men of finance. with their
feathers and rattles, out Of the way of the
sick man. When public confidence is pro-
foundly shaken it must re-estabish itself.
1t has been shaken by causes, and those
causes must he removed
Men and nations and the whole civilized
part of the race go from one extreme to
another. These alterations seem as nee
essary as the ebb and flow of the tides of
the ocean. When the business of the word
gets inflated at certain periods it will go
too far, and then there must be settle
ment. 1t must be settled who owns the
property, and until that is established
nothing else can be done. Those who NOM
inally own property resist this. They hope
some miracle will help. Then after settle
ment, If any laws be deemed necessary,
they must be passed or there will be
further delay. Some false starts may be
taken, like that to which the Venezuelan
war cloud gave such chilling frost.
The Return of Prosperity.
But finally, when all things are ready,
something always happens which develops
the fact that confidence has returned and
10! the whole world has different aspect.
Wheels begin to turn, freight begins to
move, commerce resumes her full sway,
ore by one each employment takes up its
march ard the nation as whole goes to
work again, urged on by the never-dying
yearning for the increase of wealth to be
consumed for pleasure wealth to be
bearded for reproduction-Intil the time
comes all stand fearful on the brink. When
1t will come no one can tell beforehand but
that it will finally come, every wise man
knows.
Has it come now? Is it close upon us? 1t
is always unwise to prophesy about the
immediate future, for it may be remem-
hered against You if you go wrong. and as
you are only mortal the chances of being
right are against you. 1t is better to
prophesy about things to happen in hun
dred years, CT preferably in a thousand,
for then if you go wrong you are all dead
and distributed
Nevertheless, all the SYMPTOMS of pros
perity are here. Men are willing to lend
me ney and sensible men are willing to take
II and risk it in new enterprises. In word.
1t looks like 1879
Another ENCOURAGING svmptor is that the
III ancial medicine men are low explaining
III low tone of voice why what they said
IN II, such loud tones last year was not So
IEls is the prelude to the utter silence
WI ich will fall upon them in due time. a
silence which will be the signal that the
world has settled one other financial prob
ZEN IN the only way it can be settled, and
that Is, in the minds of the people
A good many que stions have been settled
these last few years. In all the debates in
the House this past session there was but
ore man who even mentioned the con
sumer, and he was from Kentucky In
ctner years, If you could believe our de-
Dates, we had 10 population except con
sumers; producers did not exist Not
"ord dld we have in the debates of this
year about the need of low prices We al.
ready had them, and mouths whic h used to
start the echoes in wild longings for low
Prices We're devising plans for raising prices
ara acted as II they had never helped on
what MI Thomas Carlyle used to call 1.-The
career of cheap and nasty"
The Rise I'm the Price of Wheat
AT this moment these blind leaders of the
blind are explaining why the rise in whea.
Is no nelp to farmers. 1t is only an accl-
dent, they say. Poor crops elsewhere. and
SO we sell at profit: that is ALL You will
be no better off in the end for such acct
dents cannot happen in the future You
VIII have to pay high prices for what YOU
BUY, and so you will be in the same case
IN another year you were year before
last.
What idle talk this is! The returns from
the wheat crop and the other Cereals spent
in purchases start the nation to work
Wien the nation once gets to work ii will
and then it will halt, and then it will go
on again-a succession Of like events forever
and forever.
These eminent gentlemen might as well
say to the pendulum OF a wound-up clock
just started You had better give UP this
weary job. You were started with a push
and nobody is going to sit up nights to
keep on pushing you"
Every historic period of revival has been
like this. Some event at the ripe moment
happei S, like the resumption of specie pay
mentS, the setting of money in motion by
reduction of the interest on part of the
national debt, the passage of a tariff bill
which, rightly or wrongly, the people be-
ieved in. Human nature and human af-
fairs, made ready for the change, have al
ways done the rest.
This talk of these gentlemen about prices
and accidents and this recrimination about
dead and buried speeches show them to
be still cropping about among the under
brush, while sensible men are standing OF:
the mountain top ard beholding the earth
to the very horizons edge. The view may
not be of the whole round earth. but it is
better than the view from the jungle.
THOMAS B. REED.
cruel. CONDUCT ALLEGED.