The Bennington evening banner. (Bennington, Vt.) 19??-1961, 1908-01-11
FRANK E. HOWE. Editor and Publisher
"Panic" Was Conspiracy.

The New York Morning Telegraph,
the most thoroughly independent and
unprecedented newspaper in New York,
has the following to say relative to
the recent financial troubles:
IF further evidence were needed
that the late panic conditions and
present currency hardships were the
result of design, the daily industrial
reports furnish it, Everywhere mills
that had shut down because they
coud not get money to pay their
hands, are opening again with large
arrearages in the way of orders. The
condition produced toward the latter
part of October was the outcome of
great conspiracy which was nothing
short of criminal. Financial institu-
tons were wrecked, regulations at
tackled, unfortunate men driven to SUI
icide, because others more fortunate
perhaps, and with keener perceptions
of structural weaknesses in business
fabrics desired to add to millions, of
which every dollar required disinfec-
ting, other millions equally in need of
sanitary treatment. Now that it has
been dOne-businesses wrecked rep
utations injured as far as possible
matters will run along for another six,
seven or eight years and the same
thing will happen all over again. We
endure these things in this country.
There may be new beneficiaries of
the wrong, for some of our present
Black Boards of finance may have
walked the plank themselves as they
made others, or they may have sailed
home to that final port where all good
pirates go. 1t may be tropical as to
conditions, bit that should not fret
the present kings of finance.
ITO return to the evidences of fin
ancial iniquity and the entire lack of
reasons for anything like an October
panic and hard times-these were con-
ceived as a political threat, and work
ed out as an easy means of gaining
other peoples money. The new div
ision of information at the Bureau of
immigration in Washington, in four
days last week received requests for
twenty thousand men. Prior to Oct
/. Terence V, Powderly in charge, had
been requested by heavy manufactur
ers 10 furnish them with 100000 men.
After the middle OF October, several
of these requests were cancelled. but
they have since been renewed. All
through the iron regions in Pennsyl-
yania and Ohio, and from the East,
where cotton is manufactured, bust
ness held better promises than for the
coming year. All the works are start
ing up, and in Massachusetts boot and
shoe and cotton factories the demand
for operatives is far in excess Of the
supply. In the case of Fall River,
Mass, alone in 1907 certain cotton
mill corporations paid in dividends
upwards of three millions of dollars,
and two millions additional have been
paid in stock dividends which, added
to the cash dividends noted. makes
the total of nearly nineteen per cent.
on the $25,500,O00 at which these mills
are capitalized The owners nave
not been the only ones to realize ben
eflts. The operatives at Fall River
for the year 1907 received the highest
wages in the history of the cotton Dus-
mess. In 1908 they will receive fully
as much These iron and cotton fab
ric instanceS are not isolated. What
is true of them Is true of all industrial
conditions all over the United States.
They are merely cited because We of
New York are more familiar with the
rolling mill and factory conditions
than we are with other industries.
Every sign, we repeat, goes to show
that the panic was a crime"