Year: 1879

relation to the business and industrial
affairs of this country. As predicted by
the Transcript year ago, the country is
now in the beginning of an era of infla-
ton and high prices, and the effect of
this initiation is matter of great import
ance to every one. A late number of the
New York Commercial Bulletin refers
;; to the enormous amount of lawful money
that is accumulating in New York, and
shows that while the effect of this accu-
mutation is temporarily delayed by using
$100, 100000 of it to move the crops of
the West and South, this ''immense
amount of currency will flow back to the
chief financial center within the next
few weeks" The Bulletin thinks that
an extraordinary expansion of operations
will follow, either purely speculative, or
such as relate to the inauguration of SOL
id enterprises. The New York money
market shows fairly the condition and
tendency of financial affairs throughout
the United States. The volume of cur
rency is Increasing at the rate of about
fifteen million dollars per month, by the
importation of gold from foreign coun
tries, the coinage of American gold and
silver, and the increase of national bank
circulation. Vast sums are accumulat-
ing at the financial centres, aud will soon
seek investment in each and every branch
of American industry. The business and
commercial interests of the country have
already become so active that the iron
foundries, the mills and factories are un-
able to meet the demand for their pro-
ducts, and the prices of most articles
have gone up from fifty to seventy-fve
per cent in three months. There is a
productive and remunerative opening,
therefore, for the hundreds of millions of
dollars that will be thrown upon the
market for investment next year, and the
foundries, factories and railroads that
will be built during the next few years
will astonish the civilized world, and be
without a precedent in history. The cur
rent rate of interest on loans will have
an upward tendency, Notwithstanding the
enormous amount Of money in the coun-
try, as it always does on a rising market.
Every kind of property will soon be
reached by the boom in prices; land in
the West will advance a hundred per
cent, and perhaps fifty per cent in the
East and South. During the next two
years land in Morrison county will dou-
BILE in its real, marketable value, and may
possibly advance 200 per cent. This is
not mere fancy, and we are confident
that the logic of events will prove that we
are right. Every person who has any
good tillable land should break it up and
improve it as much as possible, for in
vestments on rising market are almost
| certain to be remunerative. Hundreds of
thousands of workingmen will be drawn
into the work of constructing railroads,
manufacturing iron, etc., ETC., and instead
of being producers of agricultural pro-
ducts and such other things as are an
nually consumed, they will become con-
sumers, and will stimulate the home
market. The result will be that nearly
everything produced in this country will
be consumed in the home market, just as
was the case between 1867 and 1873, and
the balance of trade will be turned
against this country, gold seeking mark
cts where labor and the products of labor
are cheaper. Of course the outcome Of
the whole matter will be a general finan-
cial crash in five or six years; gold will
flow to other countries, the national bank
circulation will be withdrawn, and there
will be nothing to help bridge over the
terrible difficulties of that time but the
old reliable greenback, from which some
of the financial idiots are now trying to
take away the legal tender quality, so as
to render even the greenback unfit to aid
the country any during the miseries of
the next financial crash. Cash payments
are always preferable to credit, and debt
should never be incurred except with
due caution, but any Of our readers who
contemplate buying property on credit
should do SO at once, and should make
their plans to be entirely out of debt be-
fore the next financial crash, say within
four or five years. The next crash will
fully develop the fact that the national
banking system is bad thing. The ma
tional banks will throw several hundred
million dollars of additional currency on
the market during the era of imitation, to
feed the flame of wild speculation and
lay the foundation of certain ruin; and
they will withdraw it when the crash
comes, and thus aggravate and make
more terrible the depression that will fol-
low. 1t will be developed that the only
safe paper currency is one the volume
and quality of which is controlled by the
Government, like the greenback, so as
not to add to the momentum of either
wild speculation or financial depression.
But while the era of good times lasts, the
people will oppose any financial legisla-
ton, and the national banking system is
therefore secure for the present. In ord
er to show how far the Transcript is reli-
able in predicting future conditions of
finance, commerce and industry, we print
below an extract from an editorial that
appeared in the Transcript of Jan. 2,
1879, nearly year ago. 1t will be re-
membered that at that time the boom in
prices had not commenced, and that no
newspaper in the United States, except
ing the Transcript, had discovered that
the purchasing power Of gold itself was
unnaturally and artificially high, and
would certainly have to fall before the
end of the year. After showing the un.
naturally high price of gold, and explain.
ing some other matters, in the editorial
of Jan. 2, just referred to, the following
words are found:


"An era Of prosperity never before equal!ed
in this or anv other country, is about to be-
gin; not because q currency based on gold
necessarily brings prosperity, nor because the
management of the finances has been good


but because the resources of the country and
the enterprise and industry of tho people are
such that prosperity is the normal condition "1
affairs. The fact that the use of = currency


based on gold does not necessarily render 8
country prosperous, is shown by the condition


of Great Britain and other European coun'


tries at the present time. Thousands Of f"mi


lies in England and Scotland are destitute


Idle and starving men, women and children


are swarmipg in the streets of Glasgow An!