The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1897-09-13
RIVER AT s A. M.
E0RTUNATE FOR US.

The absence of gold imports, at a
time when we are selling immense
quantities of our grain abroad and re-
mittances in payment for it might pe
expected, is explained by the alleged
disposal by Europe of large quantities
of American securities. The stocks
and bonds of American railways IN
particular, which formerly found q
large and ready market abroad, have
been, during the past years of depres-
sion, cause of disappointment and
of the great systems that have passed
through receiverships and reorganiza-
lions have had to sacrifice all of their
Incomes and a portion of their prin-
ripal, and are as sore as investors in
such cases are wont to be. 1t is not
surprising that they made UP their
minds to get rid of these, properties
at the earliest moment when it could
be done without too great a loss to
themselves.
The great bulge in the market of late
furnished them the opportunity All
classes of stocks and bonds, even those
of properties which were thought to
be beyond repair, have gone soaring,
until the quotations are actually
higher in a large number of instances
than they were before the panic OF
1898. These are the conditions under
which an investor who has held at a.
loss in the hope of a rise hastens to
unload. The assurance of better times
on this side of the water, the immense
accumulation of capital in our own
moneyed centers, and the desire for in
vestment have kept the market steady
in the United States, Notwithstanding
the liberal sales which have been
made in England and elsewhere Thus
we have Europe paying for our bread
estuffs with securities thrown upon
the market to obtain the advantage
of present prices.
There is nothing to be regretted in
this. On the contrary, it is immense
ly more gratifying, and a better guar
antee for our future, than when these
stocks and bonds were going the
other way across the Atlantic and gold
was coming in to us in exchange.
There can scarcely be greater good
fortune for us than to become the
owners of a majority of our obliga-
tons The blessings of this years
great crop and great prices will be in
tensifed and multiplied if among them
Is numbered the purchase of Ameri-
can securities in the American mar
ket. We do not want to see these in
vestments ever go back again to Eu-
rope. We do not want our commercial
and financial systems to be, to any
capitalist and money broker. We do
not care to hear with every recurring
crisis the menace of a general mar
sxeting of American properties held
abroad We do not care to have the
foreign exchanges dominated and
thrust up or down, and the current OF
gold DETECTED to or from our shores
at the mere nod Of a syndicate of in
vestors' agents, who execute their or
ders by throwing our stocks upon the
market or withdrawing them.
It is time that we became arbiters
of our own destiny, and this has to
!le done by a nation, as by an indi :
vidual, through the achievement of in
dependence by the discharge of debts.
: man who is out Of debt is the archi-
tect of his own fortune. The nation
that is not in debt to any other, the
nation whose bonds and whose cor
porate investments are the property of
Its own citizens is secure against out
side attack Better for us than the re-
turn Of prosperity even, better than all
the gains that we expect to wrest from
IL rising market, will be cur release
from the power of the alien bondhoId-
e.. We can let the gold imports go
most willingly if, in consideration for
that, we lay our hand upon the power
which has hitherto been the secret mo-
tive force to direct the import or ex-