Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1907-09-02
Wall Street and the Country.

4
; slaughtered and that ruin stares the
country in the face as result of Pres
, idcnt Roosevelt's assertion that thu
laws must be enforced against all evi
doors alike, the great and powerful a.
well as the obscure and weak. Per.
hans there has been no more scathins
rebuke administered to these New York
gentleman than q two-cClumn editoria
which appeared in the Philadelphia
North American last week. 1t is one
of the richest specimens of satire
which we have seen in contemporary
Journalism, and if the New Workers
are blessed with a sense of humor q
careful perusal of it would be of great
benefit in their case.
Speaking of them as "the IslandersT
know very little of the rest of the
country, and urges that q 'seeina
| America" tour be organized for their
benefit The inhabitants of Manhattan
Island, says the North American, know
their own city very well, hut the
trouble is that they persist in taking it
for the United States. Europe is a
part Of their civilization and they know
the boulevards of its great cities as
well as they do Broadway, but on this
| side of the ocean they seldom get far
| Their away from home than the Long
| Island race tracks. Occasionally few
| of them venture as far as Newport or
touch the farthest north of Bar Har-
outposts of Chicago, st. Louis and New
Orleans and know of Pittsburg as the
place from which came Carnegie and
Harry Thaw. They know there is
West and a South because i'll those re-
gions grow the wheat, corn and cotton
which give them a preteXt for gam
blirS. These are the men, asserts the
North American, whose collective ig-
norance constitutes the sentiment of
w an street. IlleH Jul iiiitiueiPllie1
contemporary proceeds to discuss their
sad case as follows:
These men are not wilful anita sonists
of America ana -Americanism. They
are simply objects for charitable SYM
pathy. They are worthy recipients for
new educational movement such as
the Ogden fund fer the negroes and
mountaincers of the Southern states.
All the arguments for the educational
upift of the mill-hand and the field
hand have been good. But the call is
all the stronger upon the men who
have amassed wealth in every Ameri-
can state that lies west of the Hudson
river to organize and capitalize the
education of the New Yorker.
The tuition must be by observation.
You cannot tell the New Workers any
thing. The true New Yorker either
chose his parents 50 we'll that the
fronJ-font value of their old farms re-
lieveS him from the need to possess
brains. or else he becomes trader. bro
kcr, banker or gambler with just sufiI-
Gent mental stature to reach to the
glass cover of the stock ticker when
he stands on tip-toe.
The telling of truths to such is
wasted time. You must "show them
The only hope for the lifting of the
shame of utter ignorance from Man
haitian island is to establish Seeing
America" tour for the men Of Wall
Street.
ASK any man among these whose
mental picture of the Mississippi. Mis-
souri, end Columbia rivers is something
like the pretty little stream he calls
the Hudson what is the worlds great
est waterway He will think quickly
of Su"z and London and Liverpool and
i*rcm"n and Hamburg and Hong Kong.
after resisting his first impulse To name
New York harbor All the statistics
will not convince him that more ton
| nag" PASSES one point in our north
western lakes than the total Of all TIL"
ports of Great Britain.
The country is going to the dogs
whenever Il, reads that 100000 Of GOLD
| has been engaged for export. Columns
| of gloomy comment appear when New
| York banks SNOW a quarter Of one pel
! cent. decrease in the reserve. Cal
money is pcddlcd Wholesale at ~ pei
cont. with no gamblers grabbing it
| while last year il was fought FOR at
per cent. Therefore. the islanders pro-
! claim depression and disaster.
| Europe has its own troubles. and
even the weekly scalpinCS of foreign
| exchange scarcely suffice to pay fol
the downtown club lunChconS and the
uptown midnight supperS. Naturally
tn Islanders d"nouncc RooSeveltiSm as
tn cause of our civilization being a
| failure. Money is in such demand for
commerce and manufacture that the
only dealing in stocks is not margin
| gambling. but outright buying Of bar
gains hy investors. OF course. the is
! lana. rs claInur depression and sue in
til" future only gloom.
Kansas? That name is familiar to
them. That is tn llacc they had mort
gagged once. or late years they M
| longer receive the l. per cent interest
| they formerly did. What do they know
Of the twenty-five hundred million
| bushels Of the corn crop?
| The South? OF course they know the
| South. That is where cotton comes
from. Theodore Price tells them al
/ about it every spring. He tells then
before the crop is planted. But they
in hr1y n.