State Convention—Finance. 
139 
of that pump, and exhausts both money and enterprise and action 
from the common fund. 
If this room was being exhausted by air-pumps, and the question 
should be asked here, shall these pumps be stopped, and shall the 
windows be opened? some whose heads were very near the orifices 
where the air was rapidly pressing out would say; “By no means; 
I have plenty of air; I never was so well supplied.” The faster the 
air is going out the more redundant it is in these air-centers. The 
average occupant would fall dead of asphyxia, while some cry, “ too 
much air,” and with reason, owing to their standpoint at the place 
of its accumulation for final departure. Such is the cry that is 
sometimes heard from certain cities; but the financial atmosphere is 
now becoming quite thin, even at these orifices. 
e 
The alternative is simply repeal this bad and cruel act, or witness 
the ruin of this generation of active business men. They are fall¬ 
ing each day thicker and faster. When they are all gone there 
will be no need for currency, as no debts will be paid, and, con¬ 
fidence being gone, we will resort to the natural though barbaric 
system of barter. Moreover, instead of lowering the price of gold, the 
operation of this act has been to raise it. In the month of Decem¬ 
ber, 1874, the lowest price of gold was 1101, the highest price being 
112d; while in December, 1875, the lowest price was 112f, and 
the highest 115U 
In 1874, the number of failures in the United States were 5,830; 
liabilities, $155,000,000. In 1875, during the operation of this act, 
the number of failures has been 7,740, and liabilities $201,000,000. 
So say Dun & Barlow, commercial reporters. The loss on $200,- 
000,000, less 33 per cent, realized from assets, is $120,000,000, equiv¬ 
alent to one-half of our cotton-crop, and about 50 per cent, more 
than the product of all the gold and silver mines of the United 
States, Mexico, and Australia during that year, the yield being 
$80,880,037. In California, in 1875, where business is done on a 
“gold basis,” 237 failures, with liabilities of $5,281,000 indicate that 
one trader in every forty-two has failed in 1875, in that State. In 
Canada, say Messrs Dun & Barlow, with a low tariff, a most ad¬ 
mirable (?) banking system on a gold foundation (!) and a light 
taxation, the number of failures have been one in every twenty- 
eight traders. 
I include the statement regarding failures in Canada and Califor- 
