ONE PEE CENT. 



77 



commercial whole, which very intimately con- 

 nects their financial fortunes with one another. 

 What occurs in one of these organically-associ- 

 ated states — for they are nothing less — produces 

 direct and very extensive effects in every other. 

 If one member suffers or rejoices, the others are 

 generally, though not always absolutely, affected 

 in the same manner. Trade knows of no nation- 

 alities, if only governments will suffer it to pur- 

 sue its own course undisturbed. Have other 

 countries bowed their heads in suffering under 

 the commercial depression ? Let America be 

 the first to speak. In 1873 she experienced a 

 crisis of a most formidable kind ; she has not 

 recovered from the shock at this very hour. 

 Her people have been out of work in large num- 

 bers ; immigrants have left her borders to return 

 to the old countries. Her commercial centres, 

 her banks, and her financiers, have poured forth 

 loud lamentations over the bankruptcies which 

 have assailed them and the losses they have en- 

 gendered. Business has dwindled down in dis- 

 tricts once alive with energy and hope. Collier- 

 ies have been reduced to short time ; so' bave 

 iron-works, and some have been stopped alto- 

 gether. Her railways, and still more those of 

 Canada, speak of diminished traffic and curtailed 

 earnings ; in not a few dividends have been 

 swept away altogether from their shareholders. 

 If railway earnings have slain their thousands in 

 England they have slain ten thousands in Amer- 

 ica. Her imports from foreign lands have fallen 

 away wonderfully, without creating more em- 

 ployment for her protected people ; there was 

 less ability to buy any commodities of foreign 

 origin because they bought more largely of those 

 manufactured in their own country. 



This fact, that the Americans were not dimin- 

 ishing their purchases of English goods merely 

 because they bought more largely of those manu- 

 factured within their own country, bears decisive 

 testimony that they were under the depression, 

 that the pressure of the commercial atmosphere 

 which weighed on England embraced America 

 also within its sweep. It will give material help 

 in discovering the causes of the disorder which 

 had attacked both countries. We still find 

 America acting mischievously on England, as 

 England did on America ; they were two prov- 

 inces of one single commercial country. 



Let us now return back to Europe across the 

 ocean and visit Germany — Germany the conquer- 

 or in a great war, and the exacter of an unheard- 

 of indemnity. What do we find in that coun- 

 try ? Worse commercial weather at this hour 



than in any other. Nowhere are louder com- 

 plaints uttered of the stagnation of trade. Her 

 manufacturing industry is spoken of as paralyzed. 

 The sharpness as well as the unexpectedness of 

 the suffering has been humorously described in 

 the German press under the guise of the aston- . 

 ishing discovery made of the commercial effects 

 of the great indemnity. It is the gold which Ger- 

 many received in such profusion which has ru- 

 ined her. trade and made her poor. France paid 

 the millions, and moves with lighter step than 

 any other nation in Europe. Let us have another 

 war, cries the jealous writer ; let us be beaten 

 and be sentenced to pay an enormous indemnity ; 

 every finger will then point to Germany as the 

 prosperous people. France, with her store of 

 gold, will be in commercial despair. For a long 

 time past Germany's impoverished traders have 

 been raising schemes in her Parliament for the 

 improvement of their condition. The agitation 

 is said to have made even the imperial chancel- 

 lor uneasy ; if this is so, it would be impossible 

 to have a stronger sign of how violent has been 

 and continues to be the shock to German indus- 

 try. The commotion must indeed be great when 

 we hear that the feeling for protection is ad- 

 vancing with rapid strides. There are clear 

 thinkers in Germany within and without the 

 Governments who know perfectly what protec- 

 tion means ; yet in spite of their intelligence and 

 their efforts the tide of protection is on the rise 

 in public feeling. Yet what is it that they seek 

 to accomplish ? Nothing less than to raise a 

 charity-tax on the whole German people for the 

 benefit of those employed in a few particular 

 trades. Protection, under the plausible disguises 

 of not throwing poor people out of work, and 

 not allowing them to be trampled upon by for- 

 eign rivals, sends round a begging-cap to all 

 buyers of goods to make charitable contributions 

 to particular individuals. Free-traders are called 

 hard-hearted, but what sort of a feeling is it 

 which inflicts impositions by force of law on 

 every consumer for the advantage of some of 

 his neighbors ? However, even in intelligent 

 Germany, in the presence of the sufferings under- 

 gone by distressed manufacturers, the sense of 

 justice and of the public good is giving way, and 

 the movements of the iron-workers are troubling 

 the Government and the Legislature. What can 

 paint more forcibly the severity of the commer- 

 cial depression ? 



Austria and Hungary repeat the cry, but in a 

 somewhat lower tone ; and so we come round to 

 France, the people whose well-being has been 



