Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/212

186 remember that similar disturbances occurred in the business life of other countries; but two years ago a collapse of speculation in Austria and Germany, a succession of failures in England, and similar things in almost all European countries, France being a notable exception. And it so happens that in the countries thus afflicted, especially Germany, not only no contraction of the currency had taken place, but rather an increase of its volume, partly by the influx of coin through the war indemnities, partly by an increase of bank currency; while in France business appears prosperous, although not only heavy drafts were made on the national resources for the payment of the German war indemnity, but—and I invite you to mark this—a steady contraction of the paper currency has been going on all the time for the last three years, for the purpose of returning to specie payments, which had been suspended during the German war. And when you study the condition of things preceding the collapses in European countries and in ours, you will find that agencies of a kindred nature were at work there and here; no contraction of the currency whatever, rather an expansion of it; but industrial enterprise overleaping itself; an extensive production of things for which there was no immediate demand; the sinking of capital in great undertakings which could yield no immediate return; windy schemes, stock gambling, wild speculation in all possible directions and the creation of imaginary values; wasteful extravagance in private expenditures and high living extraordinary; a morbid desire to get rich without labor; an excessive straining of the credit system—until finally the bubble burst, and people found that they were by no means as rich as they had believed themselves. So it was there, and so it was here. France, on the other hand, had gone through a disastrous and destructive war; she had to pay heavy sums of money—5,000,000,000