It is understood that the largest fortunes in the country are made by magnifying this kind of property. It is known that a panic seldom strikes its fangs into the manipulator. It is believed that the public is usually the bitten party in the gambling circle. But in the present case it is not probable that any but the Wall Street men have much suffered, or that any fortunes have been made in the street. What has had to be done is to distribute through the street a large aggregate of losses incurred since 1881. The sum total exceeds five hundred millions, according to some statisticians. This sum is divided into two parts: 1st, losses from July 1881 to January 1883, estimated at three hundred millions; 2nd, losses from January 1883 to May 1884, estimated at two hundred millions. We mean losses as measured by the fall in market price of railroad paper of all kinds. It is believed that before 1883 the public at large had suffered a loss of perhaps two hundred millions, that since that the said public has had little to do with the Wall Street market, and that the street (including all the men doing business on the stock market) has had to distribute a loss of three hundred millions. It is presumed that the public has, since January 1883, recovered from its losses, but the street is in the agony of its punishment. It was inevitable that some of the losses should be thrown on the banks; and through these losses the panic directly reached the public, in the double form of impaired confidence and stringency. The country has borne both evils with good sense. The impairment of confidence did not become general distrust: the stringency, which for a day or two made money worth four or five hundred per cent. per annum, passed off in a week. The fact that the troubles concerned one kind of property only, and was localized in Wall Street, was quickly understood by the country at large. The wounded banks were relieved by their neighbors, and the brokers on whose books the bad balances are found have been left to settle up their business as they may be able to manage it, while business in general goes on as before, with, however, a considerable increase of caution. The first effect of this caution will be depressing. Nor is it to be denied that considerable depression already existed in legitimate trades. The trouble is not serious, but it is annoying. At bottom it is based on an excess of enterprise in a part of the manufacturing and trading public. Anxious to be rich, they aim at impossible growth in business. They make certain kinds of goods in larger quantities than the public will consume them. This trouble may be called over-production or under-consumption; it does not much matter. Whatever name we give it, the thing is self-corrective, and involves no large disaster. It compels men to content themselves with less than they wish, teaches us that we can not all be millionaires, cuts down our ambition for social importance or ostentation, but it does not tend toward a crash. It is painful to go slow when we desire to go fast; but the breaking of bones occurs when fortuitous combinations permit us to drive on like Jehu. It may be dull, but it is safe to be dull in the economical world. It is the roaring activity of prosperous times that makes our financial ruin.
SOME POINTS ON THE GENERAL CONFERENCE.
The General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church held in Philadelphia last May was in several respects remarkable. It was in the first place a picturesque body for the eye of a moral artist. The “war horses” of older days were there with the sound stentorian neigh which one expects to hear at a camp meeting. Probably there were more of these than in recent sessions of the body. There was William Taylor from everywhere, Ram Chandra Bose from India, and the venerable men of a former generation who are called Trimble and Curry. But the moral picturesqueness of the Conference lay rather in the variety and independence of young Americans from all sections. There was a very lively Bear from Wall Street, a still livelier lay preacher from New Jersey, a choice collection of young pastors from all over Zion, and a sprinkling of college men and newspaper men, bankers, railroad men and physicians, ex-generals, ex-chaplains, and farmers. The face of the body was so variegated and its separate limbs so independent that some spectators said it was not a body at all because it had no community of life and no head. Its independence of traditions and its refusal to be led by anybody added to the picturesqueness of the assembly. Nothing could be thrust down its throat. It threw all the men who successively tried to lead it. It voted with reference to an order of ideas and aspirations which no one can find written down in the press of the denomination. We believe there was but a single caucus, and that was a gathering of the colored delegates. It was a piece of most adroit management. It will probably be the last of that series of caucuses; and if it had been held half a day sooner, it would have defeated its own purpose. The white delegates would have defeated anybody who had asked them to go into a caucus. A very manly and self-respecting independence of dictation or management was in the air.
Another striking fact was the form which the independence of the body took on—the results which it reached. It might be called the Missionary Reform Conference. From the first it was clear that this branch of church work would receive a push forward on new lines. The single large debate of the session was over the proposition to locate a regular bishop in India. The bishops opposed it vigorously. The special adherents of “presbyter writ large” opposed it. And yet the measure received a majority of votes, and was defeated only by “dividing the house” and getting a lay majority against it to kill a clerical majority for it. After that defeat by a formal device for distributing a minority so as to give it veto power, the Conference had its own way. It made Chaplain McCabe Missionary Secretary, and elected William Taylor a Missionary Bishop for Africa, and it lifted Daniel Curry, who had led the movement for an Episcopal residence in India, sheer over the heads of all the editorial staff and set him down in the chair of the Quarterly Review. Each of these facts means more than meets the eye. Chaplain McCabe is the prince of collection-takers. The best man in the church to raise money is set to increasing missionary collections. William Taylor has been a bishop for thirty years—a bishop de facto—he is now bishop de jure in Africa. We doubt whether he will confine himself to Africa; but it will certainly require all of Africa to hold him. The Liberian grave-yard ceases to be the Methodist Africa. Bishop Taylor will lay siege to the whole continent—the Nile, the Soudan, the Congo, the Cape, as well as Liberia. Nor is this all. He believes in self-supporting missions, and will give a great impetus to the movement toward self-directing independence in all missions. Some time or other a mission must become a church; that time, many believe, is at hand in India, Africa and Europe. The reversal of judgment in Dr. Curry’s case is a conspicuous proof of the independence of the Conference. Eight years ago he was retired from the Christian Advocate at New York for insubordination. Part of his offense was a singular freedom of pen on this same subject of missions. For example, he once wrote (concerning the return visits of missionaries in the other hemisphere): “We need a few graves of missionaries in heathen soil,” or words of this significance. The General Conference was persuaded to vote him out in 1876; but the act emancipated the paper, and under Dr. J. M. Buckley it is independent in a wider sense than Dr. Curry ever dared to make it. And now with the burden of seventy-five years upon him, Dr. Curry succeeds the other venerable Daniel as the editor of the chief and only universal organ of the denomination. “Whedon on the Will” will probably cease to be the conspicuous feature of the Quarterly Review, and if it should drop out of the “course of study” for young ministers, the loss might be a gain.
The choice of the Conference for new bishops will probably be approved after some experience. Bishops Ninde and Mallalieu are probably universally popular selections. Bishops Walden and Fowler are yet to be approved by the intelligence of the denomination. But from one point of view the last two are better selections than the former. Bishops Ninde and Mallalieu have to be seasoned to a life of travel and hardship. They have lived in the study; and men past fifty (Bishop Mallalieu is 56) usually break down in the Methodist Episcopacy. The other pair of new bishops have long been inured to travel; and their physical preparation for the hard work before them may prove, on trial, that these were almost the best selections that could have been made. If Ninde and Mallalieu should soon follow Kingsley, Thompson, and the two Havens, the effect would probably be to direct the choice of the denomination in future elections to men accustomed to real itineracy. But, after all, on that view, or any other proper view, the largest bishop chosen by the last General Conference is the one who must write “Missionary” before his title. William Taylor has long been a bishop; his church has merely recognized, at rather a late hour, a fact which has long been conspicuous. Whether or not there is a great bishop, or more than one, among the other group of four remains to be proved by their work. There is little doubt that the judgment of the Conference was perplexed in the matter of voting Dr. J. H. Vincent into the Episcopacy, and so voting him out of that vast work which he supervises as the head of the Sunday-school organization. His friends will see in the vote of 178 for bishop, a proof that the Conference wanted him on the platform; they will see in the fact that for his old place the Conference gave him 316 ballots—all but nine of its votes—the reason why he was not made bishop. The figures are in both cases the highest possible compliment—both votes were complimentary.
CHAUTAUQUA OUTLOOK FOR 1884.
It is fitting that, in this last number of the Chautauquan year, we should remind our readers that the gathering of our students and teachers is at hand, and that the opening of the sessions of our schools and the breaking of silence on our platform are to occur this year under auspicious circumstances. Our columns afford indications that the class of this year is unusually large; our correspondence shows that the interest of the public in our work is enlarging its boundaries; the program for the sessions is the richest and most attractive ever furnished. Dr. Vincent has taken great pains in the selection of topics, teachers and lecturers. Old and tried men and women remain in the force, and it has been increased by addition of talents approved by excellent work and good fame in other fields. The Chautauqua Idea is still peculiarly Chautauquan. No other place or organization does its work. It is a school for all—a university in which, by joining self-instruction with the schools and platform of Chautauqua, a man or woman of any age may pursue knowledge in almost any field with profit and pleasure. The original impulse to this work of ours was given by providing for the wants of those who had not good advantages in early life; but it has been found in the actual work that an arrangement of subjects and lectures could be made which enables any man to add to his knowledge and quicken his interest in personal study. It has come to pass that our best patrons and friends are those who have graduated in other schools, while we continue to increase the usefulness of Chautauqua for those in whose behalf it was founded. The success of the “Idea” along the whole line is not merely a satisfaction; it is a promise and a prophecy. There is every reason to believe that its broad, philanthropic, refining and elevating tendencies will continue to develop new methods of giving knowledge to all. But, of course, a benevolent enterprise like ours depends upon the sustained interest and enthusiasm of its friends. We are just as liable to flag in this as in any other benevolent work. It is not carried on to make money; money is made to carry it on. All the conditions of failure which must surround an undertaking which has not the force of self-interest behind it, exist of course in this large and expensive enterprise. Therefore we may properly remind the friends of Chautauqua that their patronage and coöperation in many ways are essential still, and must always be, to its progress. We make these suggestions, not from any doubt of the fidelity and perseverance of our friends, but, to recall attention to the fact that the Chautauqua Idea is a philanthropic and not a commercial one. Chautauqua does not exist to enrich any one, but to increase knowledge and spread culture in the land. It has no antagonisms, and need not have, but it can not dispense with the active zeal of its numerous friends.
The managers have done their whole duty in making preparations for the approaching campaign. Let every high private emulate their industry and zeal. Bring your friends to the Lake. Remember that we want the coöperation of the sober, thoughtful and earnest people. The Chautauqua season is not a picnic; it is a season of rest, because a change of scene and occupation always refreshes mind and body. But our patrons are expected to bring their heads with them—and their consciences—that when they return home they may carry back new force and larger power to influence their neighbors. Chautauqua is ready to receive its pupils and guests. It has wide arms and a generous heart. The season will be what its patrons choose to make it. We are confident that they will choose to make it the best of the series.