Charlevoix county herald. (East Jordan, Mich.) 189?-1953, 1907-12-21
PANIC SHORT LIVED
VAST DIFFERENCE IN TWO FL
NANciki SHOCKS.
Country Suffered for Years from Eff
fects Of Wilson LsW--Under Pro-
lection Confidence Is Re-
stored in Few Days.

storeo IN rev DAYS.
Many have been the explanations of
the stock market crash and the runs
on banks. President Roosevelt and a
majority of the American people are
agreed that the financial shock was
due to elimination of abuses by men
who have played fast and loose with
honest and honorable business prin-
ciples. There have been those, how
ever, who have blamed not the evils
which were threatening our most
sacred institutions, but the president
for turning the light on the evils.
Some have accused newspaper head
lines for announcing that the clearing
house committee was throwing high
financiers out of the presidency of
banks and trust companies, and for
telling that there were runs on de-
positories when there were runs. 9th
ers have charged the disturbances to
the defects of our currency system.
Still others have offered different
reasons-some weird, yet not insane;
some picturesque, yet partly true.
But it has remained for the sapient
tariff editor of the Evening Post to
discover that the thing to blame for
the whole business is the Dingley law,
or. since the panic befell us under the
Dingley act that no one ever again
shall be able to say that the Wilson
law was responsible for the bank
ruptcy, poverty and misery which
overwhelmed us at the beginning of
President Cleveland's second admins
tration and continued to rage like q
plague until the voters of the United
States went to the polls in 1896 and
cast their ballots for the restoration OF
the American tariff system now in OPP
Grafton.
There are some facts of sensational
difference, of course, in the two events.
The Wilson law panic did not expire
in 4S hours; it endured for several
years. Then, season after season,
farmers burned their crops in their
stoves for fuel and in the fields to
clear them, because it did not pay to
send them to market Now there are
hundreds of millions of profits in the
crops, and at this moment the farmers,
with mortgages paid off and bank ac-
counts fat, are sending to market some
six or seven billions of products bid
for by our people and by the world at
prosperity prices. AS they receive
their checks for their new wealth now
pouring upon them the farmers, going
to their banks to deposit the proceeds,
ride in automobiles. Then the fac
tories and mills and forges closed;
they remained closed through the
gloomy weeks and months and years.
Now there is an unbroken hum of in.
dustry over the land. Then wage
earners had their pay cut, lost it alto
gether, ate up their savings in the
banks and joined the bread lines. For
full presidential term the most con-
spicuous thing in the world was the
empty dinner pail of America, the
most active industry in this country
the charity souphouse. Now this is a
nation of workers on full time, with a
surplus of wages and profits, the week
after the panic as the week before, to
swell the savings banks accounts by
millions, to buy homes and to give the
best living anywhere on earth. Then
the United States government, along
with the public, went broke" 1t had
not enough income to equal it's eX-
penditures; 1t could scarcely borrow
enough money to pay its bills from day
to day Now the treasury piles up
such daily surplus that it can toss a
few hundred millions into the banks
to supply currency and stop prosper
ity panic.
In the Wilson law period there was
panic of long duration, not because
there was insufficient currency with
which to do the business of the people, |
but because there was no business to |
provide American bread and butter |!
Farms were wastes, mills and factories |
were abandoned. Industry was pros
trate. And this misery-the misery of
a poverty panic-was long continued. |
Yet the jocose free trade oracle tells |
us, though the facts of the two panics |
the prosperity panic and the poverty |
panic-are different, the principles in
volved are the same. Wherefore is
protection now banished from us as a
superstition; wherefore shall this be
the end of the American tariff system.
Perhaps-when the people of the
United States are able to subsist on
green cheese imported from the moon.
New York Press.