Year: 1879

Set lasts and feass seldom offer the news paper writer the opportunity for anything but the commonest of common places. No people are ever so badly off that they cannot find some occasion for thanksgiving, without any great stretch of ingenuity. No people are ever so we'll off that they cannot find plenty of occasion for fasting, repentance and public humiliation. The Thanksgiving of 1879, how ever, can show special cause of more that usu- al weight for its joyful observance. After six years of unexampled depression; after the de- preciation of values, not only of every descrip- tion of personal property but of lands and | houses, to an extent that no one ten years ago would have believed possible; matters have experienced decided change for the better .Property that has been falli: lower and low then has fallen way down lower and lower still, has at last taken sharp turn upwards Wall Street feels the favorable breeze first of all. Stocks have run rattlng up, at rate that to us quiet country people seems pure in- sanity. Later indeed they tumble back, part way, but still the net appreciation is Immense.

 One branch of manufacturing after another renews its old prosperity. Even the farmer finds an appreciable difference in the prices of some at least of the products of his farm. With a nation so sensitive as ours to prosperity or adversity, so springy in recuperative strength, the first step upward means every thing. The turning point once past, the rest of the advance is assured

 There is moral lesson conveyed by our cycles of business revolution which the Amer ican people seems never able to learn-the lesson of prudence. Generation after genera tion finds itself overwhelmed-one might al- most say at stated intervals business panics. The causes which lead to them are always the same; over-production, speculation, inflated values. Yet although collapse invariably follows expansion, collapse as invariably takes every one by surprise. Unluckily political economy IS not one of the exact sciences The tyro can predict that depression will surely follow expansion, but the expert cannot tell exactly when. So men, knowing very well that there is precipice ahead, hurry all the more rapidly towards It because of that knowl- edge, meaning always to stop just at the edge of disaster, but always making that one step too many which plunges them into it.

 It is a wonderful instance of the stupidity of onr race, taken collectively, that these fre- quently recurring crises should cause such re- peated disasters in business. Men move on like sheep, and as one goes over the precipice the rest never fail to follow the stupidity of the crowd seems incurable yet perhaps the statesman may yet arise who will find some palliative, if not some sure cure, for these con- tagous levers of the business public.

 Until the sum of human wisdom has ad- vanced to the point where some Neao Proba- blities can give us warning of the approach of these destructive business cyclones, they must contin ue periodically to surprise and scourge the earth and, in the meantime, as their circle of greatest violence has passed, let those who have escaped alive show their gratitude in just such glad thanksgivings as the survivors of the cyclone of '73 are now offering for their deliv- erance and for the new prosperity so plainly dawninu upon our magnificent country.

 Ub~x no C:I>-k0