188 LAND AND LABOR. 



overwhelmed with a deluge of idleness which has been 

 constantly increasing in volume ; and that since the 

 bursting of that deluge the aontraction of the cur- 

 rency has not at any time equalled the falling off in 

 the home trade and consumption, until now, with, as 

 is claimed, a largely reduced volume of money, mil- 

 lions of it are vainly seeking investment in business 

 enterprises at less than one half the interest it com- 

 manded eighteen and twenty years ago, and have been 

 invested in United States three per cent, bonds to the 

 amount of hundreds of millions of dollars. It was 

 more than twelve years after the close of the war that 

 specie payments were resumed, and for the last four 

 years gold and paper money have stood at par. But 

 during all this time business and values have surely 

 declined, until now we are far below any period within 

 the last twenty-five years ; and still the tendency is 

 downward. 



At the close of the Mexican war, when our whole 

 circulating medium was redeemable in coin, the gen- 

 eral condition of the country was prosperous, the peo- 

 ple being mostly employed. But when the armies that 

 had been engaged in that war, and the industries that 

 sustained them, had been thrown back upon the nor- 

 mal employments of the country, there was a growth 

 of idleness and business distress, like that since the 

 war of the rebellion, but which was greatly mitigated 

 by the large emigration to the gold fields of Califor- 

 nia, in 1849, and the following years, and by the yield 

 from the mines. Yet, notwithstanding the relief that 

 was there found, the industrial distress that followed 

 the close of the Mexican war resulted in the panic of 



