Page:Memoirs of Henry Villard, volume 2.djvu/383

 the business situation of the country, much as in former years. In his speeches, as well as in published interviews, he did not hesitate to warn his audiences, in the strongest language, of the evil fruits the Sherman law was certain to bear. He told them that the blackest clouds were gathering fast, and would burst before long and sweep like a devastating tornado over the whole land, and exhorted them to put their houses in order, and especially to keep out of debt and new ventures, and prepare for the worst. From St. Paul to Tacoma and Portland, he got nothing for his pains except newspaper ridicule of him as a croaker and pessimist, and not a little abuse in the centres of silver sentiment. But he had the doubtful satisfaction, after the catastrophe of 1893, of being told by a number of his hearers that his predictions had proved but too true, and that they paid dearly for not having followed his advice. Scores of his acquaintances, among them the wealthiest men in St. Paul and Minneapolis and in the Pacific coast cities, were actually impoverished.

The journey depressed him not only because of the popular silver hallucination, but also because of his observation of ominous factors in the Northern Pacific situation. First and most threatening of all was the loss of business by the competition of the Great Northern line to Spokane. There was also the paralyzing effect of the great fires at Spokane and Seattle. The decline of silver production in Montana and the Cœur d'Alène regions in consequence of the steady depreciation of that metal in the market also portended more and more loss of traffic. But the most alarming impression of all made upon him was the revelation of the weight of the load that had been put upon the company by the purchase and construction of the longer branch lines in Montana and Washington, which he then discovered for the first time. There was the Missoula Branch to the Cœur d'Alène mines; the Cœur d'Alène Railway & Navigation, a mixed system of steamboats and rail lines; the Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern; and the roads built into