[LETTER XXIV.]
SPECULATIONS.
Johnstown, (Penn.) Aug. 4, 1835.
The present aspect of this country is, in a high degree, calculated to encourage the friends of peace in their hopes and wishes with respect to a rupture with France. The Americans of all parties conduct themselves in their private affairs like men who are convinced that business will experience no interruption from that quarter. A person who landed at New York, Boston, or Philadelphia, on the day that news was received of the effect produced in France by the President's message, and had since played Epimenides, would not now recognise the United States; the most unlimited confidence has succeeded to the general anxiety. Every body is speculating, and every thing has become an object of speculation. The most daring enterprises find encouragement; all projects find subscribers. From Maine to the Red River, the whole country has become an immense rue Quincampoix. Thus far every one has made money, as is always the case when speculation is in the ascendant. And as soon-come soon goes, consumption is enormously increased, and Lyons feels the effect. I said that every thing has become an object of speculation; I was mistaken. The American, essentially practical in his views, will never speculate in tulips, even at New York, although the inhabitants of that city have Dutch blood in their veins. The principal objects of speculation are those subjects which chiefly occupy the calculating minds of the Americans, that is to say, cotton, land, city and town lots, banks, railroads.
The amateurs in land at the north, dispute with each other the acquisition of the valuable timber-lands of that region; at the southern extremity, the Mississippi swamps, and the Alabama and the Red River cotton lands, are the subject of competition, and in the West, the corn fields and pastures of Illinois and Michigan. The unparallelled growth of some new towns has turned the heads of the nation, and there is a general rush upon all points advantageously situated; as if, before ten years, three or four Londons, as many Parises, and a dozen Liverpools, were about to display their streets and edifices, their quays crowded with warehouses, and their harbours bristling with masts, in the American wilderness. In New York building lots[CT] have been sold sufficient for a population of two million souls, and at New Orleans, for at least a million. Pestilential marshes and naked precipices of rock have been bought and sold for this purpose. In Louisiana, the quagmires, the bottomless haunts of alligators, the lakes and cypress-swamps, with ten feet of water or slime, and in the North, the bed of the Hudson with 20, 30, or 50 feet of water, have found numerous purchasers.
Take the map of the United States; place yourself on the shore of Lake Erie, which twenty years ago was a solitary wilderness; ascend it to its head; pass thence to Lake St. Clair, and from that lake push on towards the north, across Lake Huron: go forward still, thread your way through Lake Michigan, and advance southwards till the water fails you; here you will find a little town by the name of Chicago, one of the outposts of our indefatigable countrymen when they had possession of America. Chicago seems destined, at some future period, to enjoy an extensive trade; it will occupy the head of a canal, which is to connect the Mississippi with the lakes and the St. Lawrence; but at present it hardly numbers two or three thousand inhabitants. Chicago has in its rear a country of amazing fertility; but this country is yet an uncultivated wild. Nevertheless the land for ten leagues round has been sold, resold, and sold again in small sections, not, however, at Chicago, but at New York, which, by the route actually travelled, is 2,000 miles distant. There you may find plans of Chicago lots numerous enough for 300,000 inhabitants; this is more than any city of the New World at present contains. More than one buyer will, probably, esteem himself fortunate, if, on examination, he shall find not more than six feet of water on his purchase.
Speculations in railroads have hardly been less wild than those in land. The American has a perfect passion for railroads; he loves them, to use Camille Desmoulins' expression in reference to Mirabeau, as a lover loves his mistress. It is not merely because his supreme happiness consists in that speed which annihilates time and space; is also because he perceives, for the American always reasons, that this mode of communication is admirably adapted to the vast extent of his country, to its great maritime plain, and to the level surface of the Mississippi valley, and because he sees all around him in the native forest, abundance of materials for executing these works at a cheap rate. This is the reason, why railroads are multiplied in such profusion, competing not only with each other, but entering into a rivalry with the rivers and canals. If the works now in process of construction are completed (and I think that they will be,) there will be, within two years, three distinct routes between Philadelphia and Baltimore, exclusive of the old post-route; namely, two lines consisting wholly of railroads, and a third consisting in part of steamboats, and in part of railroad. The line that has the advantage of half an hour over its rivals, will be sure to crush them.
The manner of establishing banks here is this; an act authorising the opening of books in a public place, for subscription of stock, is obtained from the legislature, and all persons have the right to subscribe on payment of a certain sum, say five, ten, or twenty per cent. on the amount of stock taken by them respectively. The affair of opening the books becomes a matter of the greatest moment. In France, we form lanes (on fait queue) round the doors of the theatres; but in the United States, during the last year, the doors of the sanctuaries in which the books for registering the subscriptions for bank-stock have been deposited, have been thronged with the most intense solicitude. In Baltimore, the books were opened for a new bank, the Merchants' Bank, with a capital of two millions; the amount subscribed was nearly fifty million. At Charleston, for a bank of the same capital, ninety millions were subscribed, and as the act in this instance required the advance of 25 per cent., the sum actually paid in, in paper money to be sure, but yet in current bills at par, amounted to twentytwo and a half millions, or more than eleven times the capital required. This rage for bank-stock is easily explained. Most of the banks here are, in fact, irresponsible establishments, which have the privilege of coining money from paper. The share-holders, by means of a series of ingenious contrivances, realise 8, 9, 10, and 12 per cent. interest on capital, which they do not actually hold; and this in a country where the five per cents. of Pennsylvania and New York, and the six per cents. of Ohio are at 110 to 115. The Ohio sixes! What would the heroes of Fort Duquesne think of that, if they should come back?
Most of these speculations are imprudent, many of them are foolish. The high prices of to-day may and needs must be followed by a crisis tomorrow. Great fortunes, and many of them too, have sprung out of the earth since the spring; others will, perhaps, return to it before the fall of the leaf. The American concerns himself little about that; violent sensations are necessary to stir his vigourous nerves. Public opinion and the pulpit forbid sensual graduations, wine, women, and the display of a princely luxury; cards and dice are equally prohibited; the American, therefore, has recourse to business for the strong emotions which he requires to make him feel life. He launches with delight into the ever-moving sea of speculation. One day, the wave raises him to the clouds; he enjoys in haste the moment of triumph. The next day he disappears between the crests of the billows; he is little troubled by the reverse, he bides his time coolly, and consoles himself with the hope of better fortune. In the midst of all this speculation, whilst some enrich and some ruin themselves, banks spring up and diffuse credit, railroads and canals extend themselves over the country, steamboats are launched into the rivers, the lakes, and the sea; the career of the speculators is ever enlarging, the field for railroads, canals, steamers, and banks goes on expanding. Some individuals lose, but the country is a gainer; the country is peopled, cleared, cultivated; its resources are unfolded, its wealth increased. Go ahead!
If movement and the quick succession of sensations and ideas constitute life, here one lives a hundred fold more than elsewhere; all is here circulation, motion, and boiling agitation. Experiment follows experiment; enterprise succeeds to enterprise. Riches and poverty follow on each other's traces, and each in turn occupies the place of the other. Whilst the great men of one day dethrone those of the past, they are already half overturned themselves by those of the morrow. Fortunes last for a season; reputations, during the twinkling of an eye. An irresistible current sweeps away everything, grinds everything to powder, and deposits it again under new forms. Men change their houses, their climate, their trade, their condition, their party, their sect;[CU] the States change their laws, their officers, their constitutions. The soil itself, or at least the houses, partake in the universal instability.[CV] The existence of social order, in the bosom of this whirlpool seems a miracle, an inexplicable anomaly. One is tempted to think, that such a society, formed of heterogeneous elements, brought together by chance, and following each its own orbit according to the impulse of its own caprice or interest,—one would think, that after rising for one moment to the heavens, like a water-spout, such a society would inevitably fall flat in ruins the next; such is not, however, its destiny. In the midst of this general change, there is one fixed point; it is the domestic fire-side, or, to speak more correctly, the conjugal bed. An austere watchman, sometimes harsh even to fanaticism, wards off from this sacred spot everything that can disturb its stability; that guardian is the religious sentiment. Whilst that fixed point shall continue invariable, whilst that sentinel shall persist in his vigilant watch over it, the social system may make new somersets, and undergo new changes without serious risk; it may be pelted by the storm, but while it is made fast to that hold, it will neither split nor sink. It may even be divided into separate and independent masses, but it will still grow in energy, in resources, in extent.