The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1919-08-21
New York Evening Post)

Two hundred years ago there was a
worse high cost of living period even
than this One-although it was more
spectacular, superficial and short lived
and the recent senatorial sugges-
tons that a solution of the present
trouble may lie in reducing the amount
of currency now in circulation, harks
back to the Paris of 1919 and 1920,
when scraps of paper were as plenti-
full and had less behind them to back
them up.
Men died of suffocation in the last
of those days, stampeding the Bank of
France in an effort to get coin for the
scraps.
They called the Rue Quincampoix
the Mississippi in those days, and little
Louis XIV, who was five years old and
precocious, was worried because that
street wasn't gilded and so made diff
ferent from the rest 1t was a frantic
avenue Of speculation. They turned
all the shops into restaurants, so that
every one could breakfast, lunch and
dine right on the scene of action, and
hardly go home at all. And it was all
in vain, for the Mississippi did not
flow gold as the QuincampOiX Specula-
tors thought.
An Orgy Extravaganza.
Surely nothing more eXtravagant,
untrammelled and i'll advised and in
dicative of the propensity Of people
! to believe what they want to believe
has ever happened in the world than
! this swift flight of imagination into
/ the realms of wealth. But it is a fas-
cinating romance to look back on, even
now when the world is none too sane
and when commodities are high. Per
haps John Law, of LaurstOn, himself
+ believed there was gold in louisiana.
But it he hadn't thought so, perhaps
he would have pretended he did. At
any rate he would have thought up
some way to get those scraps of paper
into circulation, and work out proper
system of credit and exchange. The
| Mississippi Bubble happened to be the
bubble he would blow.
Speculation went madly on in the
Rue QuincampoiX, and then some of
the investors began to want a realiza-
ton of their riches and began to buy
things-estates, houses, land. dia
monds and an eXtravagantly good time
and prices went up. Cloth which had
sold for IS to IS francs a year went
up to 125 francs a yard. Details OF
food prices elude us. Contemporary
~
speak of them. And later writers
knew they would not do them justice
But there was a fowl that brought 200
francs ($40) at auction.
Laws Spectacular Career
John Law, of Lauriston, was wor
SHIPPED as a god. They waited six OF
ten hours in his reception rooms to
have word with him. And women
went to extreme lengths to get a look
Beau Law, they called him.
One had her victoria or sedan chair
or whatever it was in Paris in the ear
ly eighteenth century carefully upset
in front of his house so that she might
he carried gracefully in and get word
of coincidence from John.
Laws little son, the same age as the
baby king, was graciously received by
him, and they had many playtimes
together, and the little Law daughter
eight years old, gave a ball. to which
all Paris fought to come
But all this came to an end. Vol
taire, with an eye to the comedy OF
the thing, wrote: From a needy ad
venturer to a lord of magnificent
estates, from a banker to a minister
of state.
Il have seen him arrive in the salons
Of the Palais Royal followed by dukes
lords, marshals of France and bishops
cat last, in the same year, Law, load
ed with public execration. was com
PEELED to fly the country which he had
wished to enrich and in which he had
produced such disorders"
Bursting of the Bubble
The famous edict Of May 81, 1920
which finally acknowledged the worth.
lesness of the West Indian company
by proclaiming progressive reduction
in the value of shares and notes, was