The San Francisco call., 1909-10-31
nA.44A44A.44Aa

fHE late Coils Z. huntington,
being in reminiscent mood, as
~ he often was in his old age and
garrulous once told the state
railroad commission that he had
%% I never been out of debt since he
3 & was 10 years of age. He was
then past 20.
6~>%~+<%%%&.%S For something like 90 years
he had been bearing up under the remorseless
pressure of per cent, not hundreds nor on
thousands, but on millions of dollars. He suffered
severely in the panic of 1893 and for six months
after the crash he was compelled to borrow $4,000
every working day in the week
LOSING HIS GRIP
Now this was man OF extraordinary mental
and physical quality. 1t was his habit to say that
he meant to live to be, hundred and there was
no reason why he should not had the unrelenting
pressure of compounding interest not hastened his
end. When he died suddenly at his lodge in the
AdirondackS he was on the point OF losing control
OF the great railroad property he had created. lmme
dately after his death the Southern Pacific system
was taken over by Speyer & Co, the London and
New York bankers, who had financed him in his
closing years. That is to say, he had been work
ing for the bankers with the halter OF compound
interest about his neck
Most of his life, being a OF genius and
marvellous administrative capacity, he had been
able to stall off compound interest and hold It
down TO the simple per cent, but it finally got
him, and had he lived few years longer he would
have been shorn of the great power he had created
and nursed
SLAVES OF COMPOUND INTEREST
That is what happens to all of the great railroad
builders They become the slaves of compound
interest and finally the money lender takes the
road That is what is happening to the Wander
bilt system today and Uncle Jim Hill is merely
a figurehead for Pierpont Morgan.
When Speyer & Co. took over the Southern
Pacific it was another set of bankers that took it
away from them and this was the cause of
bitter financial feud that existed for years between
the Speyers and Kuhn Loeb & Co. 1t was
OF banker eat banker and the longest purse got
the persimmon. Kuhn, Loeb & Co.. allied with
the National City bank of New York Standard oil
concern, were irresistible. Such will be the fate
of every big railroad property in America, of most
of the great mines and the big industrial concerns
THEY GET THE BEST
They can afford to pay for the topnotchers.
Huntington, Hartman and now Edwin Hawley
have been simply working for the bankers and
bucking against 4, or 8 per cent. They are given
opportunity in the process to accumulate great
fortunes for themselves but they would not be
kept on the job for a minute if they did not make
good on the 5 per cent.
HOW IT PILES UP
wonderful romance in which the motive for crime,
intrigue and adventure is supplied by sum of
$4,000 francs invested at compound interest
mulated for 800 years until it amounted to meal
cuable millions? Reflect, then that for 800 years
more this never ceasing process of compounding
interest has been in operation night and day, while
men sleep and while they wake, and in the last
hundred years this has been going with vastly
accelerated force A million dollars regularly
pounded at 5 per cent will have grown into
Sl3OOOOOOO in the course of a hundred years. The
wealth of the world does. not the average
increase so fast
WITH OTHER PEOPLES MONEY
In reality the is greatly stronger than this
showing might imply The banker is not only
compounding interest day in and day out his
own money but on that of the whole community
besides. There are plenty of banking houses that
have been compounding interest for the last hun
dred wears on millions of other peoples money
OF course, there are occasional losses, large losses
and setbacks, but that merely interrupts the
inexorable process for the moment The interest
mill begins to grind again with unerring certainty
and little delay Quite true there are considerable
expenses, but other people furnish the money
the cost can be afforded.
BEATS EVERYTHING
1t is this that makes banking SO profitable When