Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 9.djvu/95

Rh THE BUSINESS ELEMENT IN AMERICAN HISTORY.

When this country has attained to twice its present age, and Americans begin to think more of life than they do of money, some careful historian will trace the province of business in our national history, and make that chapter of American history one of the most readable in our chronicles. Since the days of Miles Standish, we have been a business people; and the phrase has meant more on this side of the Atlantic than it has in any of the mother countries. Blankets for corn, and whiskey for venison, has changed in the century to stock-jobbing and mark-down sales; but nevertheless business is and was a dominant factor, and a matter of astonishment. One hundred years ago the old Dutch store-keepers of New York stood still in their doorways in mute astonishment as they saw farmers and strangers come by with their produce on their wagons, and a determination for a good bargain on their calculating faces. The same sentiment is with us who are idlers to-day, and stand at an elevated-railway station any morning, and watch the horde of passengers. If the Nick Van Stans stared in amazement, so do we, as we look at the trains discharging their loads, and see on anxious, worried, and excited faces the deep-worn signs of the never-ceasing struggle for business prosperity. It is quite the same to-day as it was in 1784. Then men traded under difficulties, and now gains are not to be had except at extreme risk. Then pirates, Indians, and other treachery lurked somewhere as a perpetual terror, just the same as treacherous Speculation stalks through our daily markets ready to devour. Then there existed gigantic bubble companies that are the direct ancestors of our modern stock enterprises. Then as now big sums were risked, and at times the ventures exceeded in magnitude any thing we have seen.

I like to hear wise men say that we of to-day are fools in business. Of course it is true; and why should it not be, when the men of 1884 are sons of men who in the years of a not-long-gone century did much foolish business? There is nothing new under the sun that has shone on a goodly lot of American business folly. To him who points the finger of scorn at our Wall Street, I like to talk of the "Darien scheme," the "south-sea bubble," or perchance of the "scheme of William Law." Alas, we cannot make men like Law in this year of grace, our best efforts in that direction only resulting in a Ferdinand Ward! Just think of that man and his Mississippi scheme! He went to work on an arbitrary court, professing magnificent faith in boundless sources of credit. He made ready converts of wise men who could find no bound between the real and ideal. Under his sophistry Paris lost its head, and the world witnessed a financial excitement never equalled. There was a rush to the Bank of France, to change gold and silver for empty promises concerning an American scheme. The Scotch parvenu held levees, where the nobles of France were his obsequious courtiers. In short, he was the fashion, and has had no successor. He