The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-10-03
TIE FINANCIAL CENTER
 OF THE COUNTRY The West and the South Have Not Yet Over
 come Wall Street. THEY ARE GROWING Eastern Capital Goes to De- velop the WeSt-West-
 ern Capital Used.
THEY ARE GROWING

ern CapltaI used.
 The West and South are now engag- ed in their annual demonstration of their financial independence of the Northeaster section of the country, and although this process affords com plete satisfaction to local interests, the fact that it has to be repeated every year excuses the scepticism that ex- poets the financial center of gravity in this country to remain for long time in the vicinity of Wall and Broad and New and Pine streets.
 Of course the West and South are far richer than they were twenty years ago, but so is New York. The general relations of the financial metropolis and the agricultural sections of the coun- try have not necessarily been greatly changed by an increase of wealth that has affected every part of the coun- 1 try Of course there has been good deal of change in the details of these relations, but the idea that the West and South are now rich enough to pro- vide themselves with all the capital they need Is a good deal like the idea that an individual, having acquired 1 very much more money than he had l when 6 youngster, has no need, but he 1 desires it, and he is borrowing more capital at sixty than he did at thirty because he has better credit and more opportunities to use it.
 The South has had several years of immensely profitable cotton crops, and it has also diversified it's agriculture i in some measure Thus it has achieved 9 double independence; it has less need | of borrowing money in tho East and | of spending it in the West for corn and hay and pork and farm imple-, ments. It raises more of it's own sup plies and It has more money to buy tools with. But the inevitable result Is that it increases its operations It Is able to devote a good deal of atten- tion to other things than agriculture, and the more capital 1t has of its own the more capital 1t seeks in the f1nan- 1 cial center of the country for mills and railroads and the other large enter prises which it undertakes.
 Several years ago the West began telling us that it would no longer need to get money from the East to move
 its crops with; it had enough money of its own. The event proved autumn after autumn that the capital it owned was not in it's possessions; 1t was loaned here, and the effect of crop moving up- on the money market was about the same whether the West borrowed mon- 1 ey here or whether 1t withdrew it's de- posts in either case money had to be | withdrawn from employment here in order to meet the more pressing de- | mand for 1t in the agricultural sec- tons, We are now treated to varia- tions of the Western claim One put forward by writer in magazine de- | voted to financial matters is that the West is no longer sending its money to New York for temporary employ ment, because 1t has such abundant opportunities for investing It's capital at home. But this describes no new condition. Ever since there has been a West 1t has been a great field for investment of Eastern capital, it cer- tainly afforded no less fo the lnvest- ment of it's own capital from the time t began to have capital Of it's own, and that was good many years ago. But while Eastern capital was going
 into real estate, railroad and manufac- turing investments of permanent character in the West, Western capi- tai was regularly coming to New York for temporary employment, only to be recalled at and after the harvest sea- son.
 At the meeting of Nebraska bankers the other day President Hall said that between $7,O00,000 and $9,000,000 in short loans have been placed weekly in the New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chi- cago and other cities during the past year by the Nebraska banks There were present at the convention, he slid, representatives of Eastern brok- CTS and investment concerns anxious to place their paper with the Nebraska banks. He attributed this unprecedent- ed condition to the fact that much of the ready cash which heretofore has
 been in the habit of piling up in the Eastern banks is now being held by the Western institutions seeking legiti- mate investment"
 The change is interesting, but it is not revolutionary. What it amounts to is that the demand for money Is so
 active in the East that investment concerns in this part of the country
 are sending agents West to seek idle
 funds instead of waiting, as in previous
 years, for those funds to come East;
 the investments are seeking capital in
 stead of the capital seeking invest.
 ments. The rising rates for money and
 bonds and the declining prices of shares have already indicated that both 1T this country and in Europe invest
 ments are seeking capital; they are of fering more for 1t, and they are sending
 for it where capital is produced.
 On the whole we do not see that tn increasing wealth of the West and th'
 South very greatly alter their relation; to the financial metropolis. They havt long offered tempting fields for perrna nent investment, and their Idle fund continue to come East for more tenn porary investment in the money ant stock markets. When the harvest make them especially busy those sec tions come here for funds, whethe 1 they are loans or deposits, and whe