302 A HISTOKY OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 



the cyclone without suspension, six managed to make terms for 

 reconstruction or obtained time, and the remaining twenty found 

 dishonourable graves under the auspices of more or less hostile 

 liquidators. The twenty-two land and investment companies, many 

 of which had enticed considerable deposits from the public, all 

 passed into the limbo of liquidation, leaving behind them little but 

 bitter memories of wrecked hopes and broken fortunes. It was 

 under these two divisions in the Stock Exchange that the dealer 

 in gambling counters found an arena that was even more attractive 

 than the mining share market. But it must not be supposed that 

 the figures given above represent anything like finality in the vortex 

 of speculation that raged in Melbourne. Fully fifty companies that 

 got on the register failed to secure the dignity of exchange quota- 

 tions ; but probably quite as much money was lost in the operations 

 of syndicates, private partnership for land dealings, which were 

 very numerous in 1887-88. Some of the most cautious and prosper- 

 ous merchants of the colony were entangled in the gilded devices, 

 but in nearly every case they were well able to pay for their ex- 

 perience. There were not half a dozen cases where failure in the 

 ordinary mercantile sense overtook business houses as a result of the 

 all-pervading speculation. The same cannot be said of the profes- 

 sions, for barristers, solicitors and doctors were fairly prominent in 

 the compositions of the day. Many wholesale houses in various lines 

 took advantage of the rage for investment to turn their businesses 

 into limited liability companies, but the public did not hastily rise 

 to the prospect of profits in legitimate trade. All the breweries 

 gravitated into this form of investment, and the fevered public found 

 2,000,000 of capital, and undertook a liability of an equal amount 

 in the sure and certain hope that the drinking habits of the people 

 would produce fat and permanent dividends. Curiously enough a 

 mania also arose for building so called " Coffee Palaces " on a 

 gigantic scale, but despite the laudable object in view, the temper- 

 ance people suffered as acutely when the day of reckoning came as 

 those who catered for the hard drinker. Needless to say that in 

 all cases the companies were grossly over-capitalised, and three- 

 fourths of them proved to the shareholders a crushing liability. 

 Profuse new issues of capital were made in 1887-88 by nearly 



