The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1931-02-12
HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF


prosperity was followed by actual
widespread calamity. 1t was period
of gloom and agony-no price for
property or prduce-no sales but
those of the sheriff or marshal-no
purchaser at executive sales but cred
itors or some hoarder of money-no
employment for industry-no demand
for labor-no sale for the products of
the farnn-no sound of the hammer
but that of the auctioneer. Distress,
the universal cry of the people: relief,
the universal demand laundering at
the doors of all legislatures, State
and Federal"
This is not, as it might seem, an
extract from a recent speech on the
economic conditions of 1881. 1t is an
account of Thomas H. Benton of con-
ditions existing in the United States
when he entered the Senate from Mis-
souri, in 1920.
In his work, "Thirty Years Re-
view," Senator Benton thus quotes
from a speech by colleague in the
Senate in 1888, referring to economic
conditions at that time:
"a whole nation in the midst of
unparalleled prosperity and Acadian
felicity has been suddenly struck into
poverty and plunged into unuttera-
BILE VICE."
Woodrow Wilson, in his "History Of
the American People," thus describes
the conditions prevailing in 1910:
"The country went staggering thru
it's season of bitter ruin. There had
been nothing like it in the history
of America. Utter collapse and de-
spair came, soon or late, upon every
sort of undertaking the year thru"
In the same work Woodrow Wilson
writes:
widespread financial distress filled
all the year 1857 with deep dispute
tude, now sharp and now touched with
panic; now slow, dull lethargy, in
which merchants and manufacturers
and transportation companies and
banks merely waited and did not
hope"
Thus are described four industrial
panics within forty years prior to the
Civil War, each of them more gen.
eral and disastrous than the present
depression, which, severe as it is, has
reduced the level of business and en-
ployment 20 per cent below the high
water mark of 1929.
Those who attribute the present de-
preston to the effects of mass pro-
duction with resultant over-produc-
ton, may with profit contemplate the
fact that these greater and more fire.
quent depressions of the ante-bellum
period came while this country had
progressed little beyond the handi-
craft stage in industry.
A variety of causes entered into
each of these depressions, but it is
recorded that in each case depression
followed an era of speculation and in
fation. The year of the stock mar
ket panic which has been followed
by the present industrial depression,
was marked by the greatest imitation
of private credit this country has ever
witnessed.
The fact that America recovered
from all of these earlier depressions
and passed on into a degree of pros
perity and high standards of living
for the masses undreamed of by our
great-grandfathers ough to furnish
some consolation even to those pessi-
mists who are never so happy as when
they are wallowing in gloom.
We are often told that these recur-
ring depressions prove that there is
something wrong with our economic
system. There is, of course, some
thing wrong with every man-made
system, as there is with those who
create it. The only perfect system
is one that has never been tried. Once
on trial it becomes subject to the lin
itations and weaknesses of human ma
ture, and it no more works perfect
ly" than does the human body or the
automobile when abused. The task of
keeping in perfect adjustment a vast
system of production, distribution
and consumption covering so vast and
varied nation as ours is not quite
so easy as it looks to those who be-
lieve that ability to diagnose a dis
ease proves the capacity to cure it.
The remedy most often proposed is to
Asurrender all property and liberty to
the politicians. One must admire the
child-like faith in the wisdom and vir-
tue of politicians this indicates. What
experience it is based on is not at
this time visible to the naked eye.
Thebest we can hope from them right
now is that they will not make eco