STABILITY OF AGRICULTURE. 7 



future sreneration liabilities which should not have been made, 

 or if made, should have been promptly met. School dis- 

 tricts and fire districts, religious societies, railroads, and 

 almost every other corporation, have shared in these acts, 

 which have too largely anticipated future necessities, and too 

 largely ignored the lack of ability which a future generation 

 may have to cancel obligations which we have assumed for 

 them, in addition to those which will develop as necessary for 

 their own comfort and security. 



But the public mind is called off from the real to an 

 imaginary cause of the present great disturbance. Instead of 

 finding the cause in these large sums borrowed, — in these 

 wild speculations already culminated, or r;ipidly culminating ; 

 in expenses beyond means, and in receipts for labor which 

 labor never earned, and never could legitimately earn ; in a 

 continuation to create a supply for a demand which long since 

 ceased to exist ; in an exaggeration of values, and in a total 

 disregard of the natural relation between labor and value, — 

 it has been found in the administration of the national and 

 state governments ; in an exces.^ive issue of paper money ; 

 in the establishment of national banks ; in the high price of 

 gold ; in the tyrannization of capital over labor ; in everj'thing 

 except the one and only cause of the trouble, — the extravagant 

 indulgence in the use of money which only an extraordinary 

 and abnormal condition of the country enabled the people to 

 obtain. 



The trouble must continue until the equilibrium is restored, 

 and the unnatural price of labor reduced to its normal con- 

 dition, by a demand which will in is turn call for a supply, 

 and which, in the creation of that supply, will reestablish 

 legitimate compensation for labor. 



But we have two great evils produced by this abnormal 

 condition of the country, which the people may well regard 

 with deep anxiety. One is the general extravagance which a 

 very large portion of our countrymen at the North have and 

 still continue to indulge in. The very air is poisoned by 

 wastefulness. It has crept into homes where heretofore 

 there has been the most rigid New England prudence ; it has 

 entered towns where extravagant buildings have been erected ; 

 it has entered legislatures where ofllces \vaxq, been multiplied 



