Wall-Street end of the U. S. Treasury instantly flowed forth from its reserBuilding, and only there. Up to the epoch of the rise of railway ⚫ building and railway-share speculation, the main aliment of Wall-Street banks was the profit derived from the discount of commercial paper and from loans upon government and State se curities. But when railway shares and bonds, based upon lines of road which were constructed through the rich regions of the Union lying between the Atlantic and the Mississippi River, came upon the market in large amounts, affording ample security for investment and loans, the great banks of Wall Street were quick to appreciate the advantages of loans made upon such undoubted values, which were at all times convertible into cash on the stock exchange. In times of pressure, commercial paper is an inferior asset for a bank, all of whose obligations are payable on demand. At such times notes became practically unsalable, and are not always paid at maturity. A failure of one firm brings down others, and renewals are urgently required from banks just when they are least able to grant them. Salable securities are on such occasions an ark of safety, and, dating from the early fifties, this class of securities has always been the basis of a large amount of the loans of the banks of Wall Street and their near neighbors of the same class in lower Nassau Street and also Broadway. voirs in answer to the securities thus offered. And it may safely be said that but for the combined machinery of the New York banks and the stock exchange the actual developments of twenty years would have dragged laboriously through an entire century. Amid so much progress and activity, speculation was not idle. Those were the days of many of our greatest railway operators, daring, able, enthusiastic men, who had the rare gift of imparting confidence to their followers and the public, and realized the fable of King Midas, whose touch transmuted all things into gold. Their careers were those of conquest and accumulation, like that of Napoleon; and, like him, they underwent, with few exceptions, their retreats from Russia and their Waterloos. Of such were Jacob Little, Daniel Drew, Anthony Morse, and others, to whom now the motto of Junius applies: Stat nominis umbra. Merely the shadows of their names reach over to us from the horizons where their suns set so long ago. From "Wall Street: Past, Present and Future." By Henry Clews. From The Popular Science Monthly. SOME CAUSES OF SUICIDE. With the immense outgrowth of busi- The sad fact that suicide and educaness consequent upon the discovery of tion increase at an equal rate is now gold in California in 1849, and the con- generally admitted. Civilization does struction of the great railways of the not free humanity from grief, disgrace, Middle West, such as the Michigan and disappointment; but wherever civSouthern, the Northern Indiana (now ilization is highest the struggle for exthe Lake Shore, the Michigan Central, istence is fiercest, life is most artificial, the Galena & Chicago, the Rock Island, and there the most failures of the huand others of like importance and real man race are met with. There was a value, the banks and banking houses of time in Roman history when suicide Wall Street, and the stock exchange, was almost epidemic. It was when the grew into most important factors in de- great republic had reached its acme of veloping the prosperity of the country. civilization-when poetry, art, and eloEnterprises were originated by able quence were triumphant. It is probmen acting under corporate powers, able that the proportion of suicides due and when these were brought before to mental derangement is increasing, the committees of the stock exchange but how rapidly can never be exactly and duly approved and listed, capital determined. Morselli says that about one-third of all suicides may be attributed to insanity. Many people, however, anxious to stamp the act with reprobation, declare that every suicide is insane. This is wrong. While those who bring about their self-destruction may have acted wrongly or unwisely, we have not the right to declare them all insane. It is true that many persons brood over their troubles until everything loses proportion, their minds become unbalanced, and in such a state they kill themselves. In such cases the act may be correctly attributed to insanity. But what are we to say of those who are to all appearance rational and yet are the victims of sudden or growing impulses? Such people are not voluntary agents, and yet they cannot be called insane. They are abnormal. There is a fatal defect in their organization which is incompatible with their survival under natural conditions. This defect may give rise to sudden impulses or may cause a growing gradual propensity which terminate in the final tragedy. Instantaneous impulses are often brought about by the slightest circumstances. Thus, gazing steadily at the wheels of an approaching train or looking down from some great height may produce a delirium, a distention of the blood-vessels of the brain, that instantly paralyzes the will of the victim. In the consideration of those propensities which are of gradual growth we are confronted with an extremely difficult problem. We know that a great many of those who ultimately destroy themselves fight for years against the impulse. How are we to account in such cases for the persistence of the tendency toward suicide, which seems to be a part of their nature, a part which draws them instinctively to death just as the normal creature is drawn to a desire to live? For such cases heredity may be in a great measure responsible. It is clear that hereditary influences may reveal their force in the suicidal impulses as in many other of the problems of life. Whole families have been known to kill themselves. There are a great many human beings who by nature are predisposed to self-destruction, and . only wait through life for a calamity sufficiently great to prompt them to the act. They are victims of their own faulty organizations. Individual temperament may have a great deal to do with the question of suicide. In America the population is largely composed of the various European races, and although these are living under the same conditions, each nationality retains its own peculiar rate of suicide. Drink and crime are responsible for a large proportion of the daily self-murders. Drunkenness, the most active agent of degeneration known, is directly responsible for those which occur during a period of nervous depression following a debauch. Among the criminal classes suicide is quite common, but it is among the petty and not the grave offenders that it occurs. Poverty and disease are also strong incentives to self-destruction. Suicide is often regulated by the price of bread. Life has few pleasures for the homeless and friendless. Death to them is often a welcome friend, a happy relief from walking the streets hungry. es How many suicides are directly attributable to disease cannot be stated with exactness, but it may be said, nevertheless, that at the present time, with our advanced skill in surgery and medicine, suicide from disease is undoubtedly on the decrease. Of all suicides there are none to be pitied more than those who kill themselves to cape the racking pain of an incurable illness. For the victim of this sort there is no hope. Another class of suicides, which closely resemble those caused by disease, includes those due to infirmity. Often persons smitten with blindness, or who have met with some terrible accident, in a fit of discouragement kill themselves. From "Suicide and the Environment." By Robert N. Reeves. A TWENTIETH CENTURY BANK PARLOR. (Mr. Edward Bellamy's latest volume, "Equality," is an expansion of the industrial theories and prophecies which found expression in his earlier book "Looking Backward." The framework of the former story is utilized as the starting-point of the new one; and the book describes in detail the conditions of life and industrial activity which Julian West found around him in the year 2000, in the Boston of that period, to which he had been mysteriously transferred from the Boston of the nineteenth century. The following chapter shows how banking operations were carried on in the millennial republic.) The formalities at the bank proved to be very simple. Dr. Leete introduced me to the superintendent, and the rest followed as a matter of course, the whole process not taking three minutes. I was informed that the annual credit of the adult citizen for that year was $4,000, and that the portion due me for the remainder of the year, it being the latter part of September, was $1,075.41. Taking vouchers to the amount of $300, I left the rest on deposit precisely as I should have done at one of the nineteenth-century banks in drawing money for present use. The transaction concluded, Mr. Chapin, the superintendent, invited me into his of fice. "How does our banking system strike you as compared with that of your day?" he asked. "It has one manifest advantage from the point of view of a penniless revenant like myself," I said-"namely, that one receives a credit without having made a deposit; otherwise I scarcely know enough of it to give an opinion." "When you come to be more familiar with our banking methods," said the superintendent, "I think you will be struck with their similarity to your own. Of course, we have no money and nothing answering to money, but the whole science of banking from its inception was preparing the way for the abolition of money. The only way, really, in which our system differs from yours is that every one starts the year with the same balance to his credit and that this credit is not transferable. As to requiring deposits before accounts are opened, we are necessarily quite as strict as your bankers were, only in our case the people, collectively, make the deposit for all at once. This collective deposit is made up of such provisions of different commodities and such installations for the various public services as are expected to be neces sary. Prices or cost estimates are put on these commodities and services, and the aggregate sum of the prices being divided by the population gives the amount of the citizen's personal credit, which is simply his aliquot share of the commodities and services available for the year. No doubt, however, Dr. Leete has told you all about this." "But I was not here to be included in the estimate of the year," I said. “I hope that my credit is not taken out of other people's." "You need feel no concern," replied the superintendent. "While it is astonishing how variations in demand balance one another when great populations are concerned, yet it would be impossible to conduct so big a business as ours without large margins. It is the aim in the production of perishable things, and those in which fancy often changes, to keep as little ahead of the demand as possible, but in all the important staples such great surpluses are constantly carried that a two years' drought would not affect the price of non-perishable produce, while an unexpected addition of several millions to the population could be taken care of at any time without disturbance." "Dr. Leete has told me," I said, "that any part of the credit not used by a citizen during the year is cancelled, not being good for the next year. I suppose that is to prevent the possibility of hoarding, by which the equality of opera, all sorts of postal and electrical your economic condition might be un- communications, transportation, and dermined." "It would have the effect to prevent such hoarding, certainly," said the superintendent, "but it is otherwise needful to simplify the national bookkeeping and prevent confusion. The annual credit is an order on a specific provision available during a certain year. For the next year a new calculation with somewhat different elements has to be made, and to make it the books must be balanced and all orders cancelled that have not been presented, so that we may know just where we stand." "What, on the other hand, will happen if I run through my credit before the year is out?" The superintendent smiled. "I have read," he said, "that the spendthrift evil was quite a serious one in your day. Our system has the advantage over yours that the most incorrigible spendthrift can not trench on his principal, which consists in his indivisible equal share in the capital of the nation. All he can at most do is to waste the annual dividend. Should you do this, I have no doubt your friends will take care of you, and if they do not you may be sure the nation will, for we have not the strong stomachs that enabled our forefathers to enjoy plenty with hungry people about them. The fact is, we are so squeamish that the knowledge that a single individual in the nation was in want would keep us all awake nights. If you insisted on being in need, you would have to hide away for the purpose." "Have you any idea," I asked, "how much this credit of $4,000 would have been equal to in purchasing power in 1887?" "Somewhere about $6,000 or $7,000, I should say," replied Mr. Chapin. “In estimating the economic position of the citizen you must consider that a great variety of services and commodities are now supplied gratuitously on public account, which formerly individuals had to pay for, as, for example, water, light, music, news, the theatre and other things too numerous to detail." "Since you furnish so much on public or common account, why not furnish everything in that way? It would simplify matters, I should say." "We think, on the contrary, that it would complicate the administration, and certainly it would not suit the people as well. You see, while we insist on equality we detest uniformity, and seek to provide free play to the greatest possible variety of tastes in our expenditure." Thinking I might be interested in looking them over, the superintendent had brought into the office some of the books of the bank. Without having been at all expert in nineteenth-century bookkeeping, I was much impressed with the extreme simplicity of these accounts compared with any I had been familiar with. Speaking of this, I added that it impressed me the more, as I had received an impression that, great as were the superiorities of the national co-operative system over our way of doing business, it must involve a great increase in the amount of bookkeeping as compared with what was necessary under the old system. The superintendent and Dr. Leete looked at each other and smiled. "Do you know, Mr. West," said the former, "it strikes us as very odd that you should have that idea? We estimate that under our system one accountant serves where dozens were needed in your day." "But," said I, "the nation has now a separate account with or for every man, woman, and child in the country." "Of course," replied the superintendent, "but did it not have the same in your day? How else could it have assessed and collected taxes or exacted a dozen other duties from citizens? For example, your tax system alone with its inquisitions, appraisements, machinery of collection and penalties was vastly more complex than the accounts in these books before you, which consist, as you see, in giving to every per son the same credit at the beginning of rate, must have cost far more trouble the year, and afterward simply recording the withdrawals without calculations of interest or other incidents whatever. In fact, Mr. West, so simple and invariable are the conditions that the accounts are kept automatically by a machine, the accountant merely playing on a keyboard." "But I understand that every citizen has a record kept also of his services as the basis of grading and regrading." "Certainly, and a most minute one, with most careful guards against error or unfairness. But it is a record having none of the complications of one of your money or wages accounts for work done, but is rather like the simple honor records of your educational institutions by which the ranking of the students was determined." "But the citizen also has relations with the public stores from which he supplies his needs?" "Certainly, but not a relation of account. As your people would have said, all purchases are for cash only that is, on the credit card." "There remains," I persisted, "the accounting for goods and services between the stores and the productive departments and between the several departments." "Certainly; but the whole system be ing under one head and all the parts working together with no friction, and no motive for any indirection, such accounting is child's work compared with the adjustment of dealings between the mutually suspicious private capitalists, who divided among themselves the field of business in your day, and sat up nights devising tricks to deceive, defeat, and overreach one another." "But how about the elaborate statistics on which you base the calculations that guide production? There at least is need of a good deal of figuring." "Your national and state governments," replied Mr. Chapin, "published annually great masses of similar statistics, which, while often very inaccu of to accumulate, seeing that they involved an unwelcome inquisition into the affairs of private persons instead of a mere collection of reports from the books of different departments of one great business. Forecasts probable consumption every manufacturer, merchant, and storekeeper had to make in your day and mistakes meant ruin. Nevertheless, he could but guess, because he had no sufficient data. Given the complete data that we have, and a forecast is as much increased in certainty as it is simplified in difficulty." "Kindly spare me any further demonstration of the stupidity of my criticism." "Dear me, Mr. West, there is no question of stupidity. A wholly new system of things always impresses the mind at first sight with an effect of complexity, although it may be found on examination to be simplicity itself. But please do not stop me just yet, for I have told you only one side of the matter. I have shown you how few and simple are the accounts we keep compared with those in corresponding relations kept by you; but the biggest part of the subject is the accounts you had to keep which we do not keep at all. Debit and credit are no longer known; interest, rents, profits, and all the calculations based on them no more have any place in human affairs. In your day everybody, besides his account with the state, was involved in a network of accounts with all about him. Even the humblest wage-earner was on the books of half-a-dozen tradesmen, while a man of substance might be down in scores or hundreds, and this without speaking of men not engaged in commerce. A fairly nimble dollar had to be set down so many times in so many places, as it went from hand to hand, that we calculate in about five years it must have cost itself in ink, paper, pens, and clerk hire, let alone fret and worry. All these forms of private and business accounts have now been done away with. Nobody owes anybody, or is owed by |