Year: 1859

A celebrated English writer has declared that this is the only country in which there is constantly supply of food for all its inhabt- ants and that nowhere else occurs so frequent vibration of prices, now up, now down, each change from high to low occurring so sudden ly as to cause pecunary disaster, though the quantity of food remains the same. The cas- ualties of this year and the last will help the reader who may be desirous of verifying the formula. It is quite certain we shall have an abundance of food for year to come It is granted that the Wheat crcp has been full one, and that its price cannot be forced up in consequence of failure of the Corn crop, be- cause the hot sun and abundant rains of the past few weeks have insured that the latter will be an average yield. The fact then, is manifest that the country is full of food--of Corn alone the crop is estimated at 00,000,- 900 bushels, in place of 592, 100000 ten years ago. Indeed it is so we'll known that the pros pect of highprices in Europe, as @ consequence of the Italian war, stimulated the planting of unusual quantities of grain, that careful men look for more than an average quantity. But few millions of bushels either way is of little consequence. Another fact of equal import ance now starcs the farmer in the face-prices are low, and the foreign market has disap- peared. Worse than this, the farming interest throughout the West is deeply in debt, con- tracted when grain brought high prices, and to be paid now when it has sunk to less than half The sad evidences of this indebtedness appear in many ways. Brokers and mo ney- lenders in all the Eastern cities are overrun with applications from borrowers, many of whom offer prime mortgages bearing twenty per cent. interest. Property ill growing towns is offered at extremely low prices for ready money. Western newspapers are filled with advertisements of large quantities of houses, lots, and lands for sale. Trading is eagerly solicited, merchandise being sought ill ex- change for real estate, and that, too, without much scrutiny as to prices affixed to the for mer Merchandise, being portable, can be peddled off for money. This demand for money from the West is not to prosecute new enter prizes, but to mitigate the disater of old ones. It is mere staving off of the evil day of pay meut, devoured in the mean time by excessive interest. When timus were flush and real es- tate, even in paper towns, doubled in value annually, men felt twenty per cent per annum to be no burden. On the contrary they ap- peared to grow rich under the depletion. But with corner lots no longer saleable at any price, the case is essentially different and as some men grow rich by lending at six per cent, those are likely to become beggars who pay ten.

 While the West it thus seeking to borrow of the East, it is already deeply in debt to it. Every one must remember how, before the crash of 1851, the West was vehemently ap- pealed to to pay what it owed us; how the f. nancial Caesars of the press laid at her u,- lucky door the onus of the great stricture which preceded the great crast how the mails groaned with durcolored appeals to distant debtors; how sharper creditors sent out their clerks, CT went themselves, to make collec- ] tions; and how, after the crash came, ten per