Ashland tidings. [volume] (Ashland, Or.) 1876-1919, 1913-05-05
HARD TIMES.


times. There are times which are
hard because of crop failure, de-
structive flood or devastating storms
Hard times of this description are
usually local or are confined to com
paratively small areas. Another and
more common sort of hard times is
an era of business depression. This
is largely, if not in the start, entire
/ ly psychological. 1t is often the re-
action from a state of unhealthy
speculative activity. Legitimate bus
mess activity cannot be unhealthy.
1t is only when the greed for sudden
and easily earned or unearned wealth
seiZes upon community or a coun-
/ try that the activity becomes un-
| healthy. 1t then becomes a fever
which pervades every part of the So
cial fabric. The business man gets
dissatisfied with the results of legiti-
mate growth and plunges into specu-
lation. The manufacturer is not sat
isfied with his usual profits and
boosts the prices of his products.
The laboring man becomes dissatis-
fled and envious and strikes and agi-
tations ensue. The entire body poll
tic becomes wrought up way above
concert pitch. Everybody is out
painting the town red.
But oh, the next day! ''It is no
time for mirth and laughter, the cold
gray dawn of the morning after"
The business man who speculated
finds his products unsold on his
hands or his operatives striking and
perhaps rioting and destroying his
property. The laboring man wakes
up from his dream of making him
self the equal of the millionaire in
property as we'll as in opportunity
and finds himself in the bread line
and no job in sight.
1t is then that there is need of
clear head and a courageous heart
to bring things back into their nor
NAL relations with each other.
Hard times will come just as long
! as men permit themselves to so far
surrender to the desire for gain as
to permit it to cloud their better
judgment and to lead them into un-
wise and unsafe speculation. The
reaction is sure to come, So sure
as the pendulum swings to one ex-
treme it will swing back to the 9TH
er. The only preventive of hard
times is to curb speculation before it
reaches that stage which compels
dangerous reaction.
When hard times are upon us,
however, the impulse is to go as far
in the other direction as we went to-
ward speculation. Then clear head
is required to separte the true values
from the fictitious; to tell what to
buy and then to have the calm conf
dence in the return of reason to the
people which permits one to go for
ward in the face of apparently ad-
verse conditions.
The foundations of many large
fortunes have been laid in hard
times. Men with sufficient foresight
and courage have tackled problems
and investments which seemed hone
less and foolish and ridden into sue
cess on the crest of the wave of re-
turning confidence.
A man whom the writer knew
when boy, and who had arisen
from being stage driver to possess
ing about half million in a coun-
try town in the then west, told him
once that he had made most of his
money by buying when everyone else
wanted to sell and selling when
everyone else wanted to buy. In
other words, he took advantage of
the proneness of others to 60 in
droves in the matter of Investment
both in real and personal property.
The man who has a clear head, a
firm confidence, based on knowledge.
in the commodity he intends invest
ing in, and a reasonable amount of
capital can often make more money
by buying in hard times than in any
other way.