Page:A History of Banking in the United States.djvu/142

 of whom is under a load of long debt, by which he has pledged his future production and savings; even if the load is not, under favorable circumstances, excessive. Taking into account the vicissitudes of life:—natural calamities, disease, personal and family misfortune, there will be a percentage of such debtors who will fail to carry out successfully the enterprises which they incurred debt. This is so even in a new country, where the drafts on the future are in fact honored to a marvellous extent, even when they were rashly and unwarrantably drawn. In the case, however, in which the plans are excessive, extravagant, and ill-devised, and where the capital is carelessly and recklessly managed, the only consequence must be a wide sweep of financial disaster. Then, if the bankrupts are voters, and the institutions of civil government are those of a democratic republic, a general indebtedness comes to appear like the worst of political and social diseases. This disease has ravaged the United States again and again within two hundred years. It is no doubt attendant on a spirit of feverish enterprise, indomitable industry, and a sanguine temperament. It has impressed on our national life a character of endless vicissitude, and alternations of heats of prosperity and chills of disaster. How much more capital have we, how much more secure are fortunes, how much more really efficient is the productive power of the nation, than it would have been on a system of cash and patient accumulation with realizations?

"Money is scarce" when a great many people have given money for goods in the expectation of giving the goods for money again at a gain. Then the time comes when the people who have money will not part with it for goods at the prices ruling because they think them too high. They withdraw the money from circulation. This is the "contraction" which tells. There arises a complaint of "sluggish circulation of money," of "over-production," of the "cruelty of competition," and the "tyranny of the conjuncture." The attempt always suggests itself to remedy the trouble by "issuing money enough for the wants of trade." If this remedy could be made operative it would force the holders of money to part with it for goods at rates satisfactory to the holders of the latter. This device has never been made to work. To see the reason why, it suffices to ask one's self whether one would allow it to be put in effect against one's self. "In vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird." The people who have the advantage of the market must be slaves, imbeciles, or cowards to give it up and exchange places with those who are on the other side. As to outstanding contracts the case is different. There the "sovereign" steps in. Ethics and metaphysics are invoked. We hear of "distributive justice," and the legislator and judge go to work to administer it. Stay laws and legal tender laws are their chief engines. The only effect which results is a dissolution of the bonds of society and a reign of injustice, with a suspension of all the recuperative operations which would otherwise automatically begin.

.—The Bubble having burst, the time had now come for "relief." Relief meant that some were left long of goods on a market which