STABILITY OF AGRICULTURE. 3 



everywhere taken by surprise. An event, though occfisionally 

 predicted, was actually upon us, and a stagnation and paralysis, 

 as the result of the general alarm and consternation, succeeded. 



The intelligence of our people, however, speedily enabled 

 them to adapt themselves to the necessities of the case. 

 Thousands, and tens of thousands, and hundreds of thousands 

 of men were called from the productive industries of life to 

 enffaore in the duties of the soldier. Two immense armies 

 were gathered upon American soil, each struggling for the 

 mastery ; one determined to destroy, and the other equally 

 determined to preserve, the government. The producers, 

 South as Avell as North, had been largely drawn upon to 

 make up the antagonistic forces. 



The products of labor at once fell off, simply because the 

 producers were so few and the consumers so many. Prices 

 advanced and continued to advance, until at one time it 

 seemed as though no limit could be put upon the price of 

 merchandise. Manufacturers realized fortunes ; ordered new 

 machinery ; increased the number of their mills with marvellous 

 rapidity ; and yet the price of cottons and woollens, and the 

 other necessaries of life, continued to advance. The merchants, 

 in like manner, doubled and trebled the price of goods on 

 hand, but the demand Avas apparently inexhaustible. Orders 

 succeeded orders by express and telegraph, until an actual 

 frenzy pervaded the business community, and mills were 

 built and goods manufactured as though the war was to 

 continue forever, and as though a million of men engaged in 

 its prosecution were forever to be consumers, and never again 

 producers. 



So excited Avas trade, and so universally were prices 

 sustained and increased, that no dealer could buy a pound 

 of cotton or wool, or a yard of cloth, or a wooden pail or 

 chair, a cheese or a tub of butter, or any other article which 

 was the product of labor or skill, without realizing a large 

 and illegitimate compensation for the capital employed, or the 

 time occupied in the transaction. 



During a great portion of this time the existence of the 

 government was so grently imperilled, that its promises to 

 pay dropped to a fearful discount. Gold, the world-accepted 

 standard of values, was at a fabulous premium, reaching, in 



