Riches have wings; or, A tale for the rich and poor

by T. S. Arthur

Mr. Townsend loved money for its own sake, and, therefore, although worth some two or three hundred thousand dollars, the loss of thirty thousand was felt severely. It made him exceedingly unhappy, and by the reaction of his state upon his family, disturbed the peaceful atmosphere of home.

A month after the intelligence of this loss came, he received account sales of ten thousand barrels of flour, shipped to Montevideo, where very high prices had ruled in the market for some months. He expected to make from five to ten thousand dollars by the shipment. But the arrival of half a dozen ship loads of flour, simultaneously with his own, had knocked down the price, and he lost by the adventure over twelve thousand dollars. As a remittance, his consignees sent, in part, a cargo of cocoa, upon which there was another loss; not of much consequence in amount, but serious as to the effect produced upon the merchant’s mind. Hitherto, almost every commercial enterprise had been successful. All his previous losses did not amount to twenty thousand dollars, and now, in the space of little over a month, he had seen nearly fifty thousand dollars pass from his hands, without even the opportunity of an effort to save it. And the worst of it was, he could blame no one. The ship had been wrecked in a storm. Previously, the supercargo had sent by the first vessel that sailed, after he had determined upon the nature of his return cargo, all the information necessary for purposes of insurance. But the winds and the waves had retarded her progress until after the news of the wreck came. If the loss had been the effects of clearly apparent human errors or inefficiency, Mr. Townsend would have felt less disturbed about it; for greater care on his own part, or a nicer discrimination in the selection of his agents, would prevent a recurrence of like events in future. But the satisfaction of mind such a reflection would have produced, he was not permitted to have.

For months after this, nothing but ill-luck attended Mr. Townsend’s shipping interests. After this, followed several losses through the failure of old customers, whose solvency, not only he, but every one else, considered undoubted. During a single year, his riches, to the amount of over seventy thousand dollars, took to themselves wings and flew away, beyond the reach of recovery.

In spite of every effort to put away from his mind the intruding recollection of what Mr. Carlton had said about the nothingness of human prudence, the prominent features of the conversation he had held with the clergyman were continually forcing themselves upon him, and impressing him with a sense of his own powerlessness never felt before.

From this time his trust in commerce became impaired. Hitherto he had considered it the surest road to wealth, because it had borne him safely on to prosperity. But now he hesitated and reconsidered the matter over and over again, when proceeding to send out a ship, and thought with doubt and anxiety about the result, after she had spread her white sails to the breeze, and started on her voyage to distant lands. This uncertain state of mind continued, until Mr. Townsend began to think of some other mode of using his capital less likely to be attended with loss. He had been raised in the counting-room of a shipping merchant; had sailed ten voyages while a young man, as supercargo, and was now, from twenty five years active devotion to business, thoroughly conversant with every thing appertaining to commerce with foreign countries. As a shipper he was at home. But although, like other men of his class, he had a general and pretty accurate notion of the operations of trade, he had no practical knowledge of any branch but his own. A few years before, he had said that any man who, after ten or twenty years successful devotion to any business, was silly enough to change it for another, of which he knew little or nothing, deserved to lose, as he stood ten chances to one of losing all he had made. And yet, notwithstanding all this, in the darkness and doubt that had come over his mind, Mr. Townsend had serious thoughts of directing his capital into some other business.

This important crisis in the merchant’s affairs occurred during a period when every thing was inflated, and speculation rife. In his younger days he had made, in one season, by speculating in cotton, twenty thousand dollars; and, on another occasion, ten thousand dollars in a single day, by operating in flour. Fortunes were lost at the time, but he had been wise enough to stop at the right moment. Rumors of this one having made twenty or thirty thousand dollars, and the other one fifty or one hundred thousand, in the course of a few months, were floating through all the circles of trade, and inspiring men who had never made a dollar in their lives, except in regular trade, to stake their fortunes on little better than the turn of a die. The whole commercial atmosphere was filled with the miasmata of speculation, and all men who inhaled it became more or less infected with the disease. Property, estimated for years at a certain price, suddenly changed hands at an advance and again at, perhaps, double the original price paid for it. Why it had become so much more valuable all at once, nobody could clearly explain, although reasons for it were given that appeared to be taken for granted as true. A lot of ground that the owner would have taken a thousand dollars for, and been glad to have got it, all at once became worth two or three thousand dollars, and was sold for that sum; and, in the course of a month or two, perhaps, was resold for five or six thousand, on the rumor of a railroad terminus being about to be located in the neighborhood, or some great change in the avenues of trade in progress that would make it immensely valuable. Imaginary cities were bought and sold; and railroad and canal stocks, while not even the lines of improvement they pretended to represent had been surveyed, passed from hand to hand at twenty, thirty, fifty, and sometimes a hundred per cent. above their par value. Men stood looking on in wonder at this strange state of affairs, or plunged in headlong to struggle for the wealth they coveted.

Nor were individuals permitted to remain the passive spectators of all that was going on around them. Daily, and almost hourly, some one, infected with the mania, would present himself, and urge, with such eloquence and seeming fairness, a participation in the vast benefits of some imposing scheme of profit, that to withstand his persuasions was almost impossible. And these individuals were so generous, too. They were not content to make fortunes themselves, but wanted every body else to take a share of the golden harvests they were reaping. If you had no cash to spare, that did not matter. Your credit was good, and your note, as an acknowledgment of the purchase, and a formulary of trade all that was wanted. To give a note of ten thousand dollars, to-day, for a piece of property that there was a fair chance of selling, in a fortnight, for twenty thousand, was, certainly, a temptation. Of course you had to sell, if you did sell, as you bought, for paper, not for cash. But that was nothing. Every body was getting rich, and, therefore, everybody was safe. There was no risk in taking a man’s note for ten or twenty thousand dollars, payable six or twelve months hence, when he was known to be worth one, two, three, or four hundred thousand.

Mr. Townsend had a neighbor whose name was Cleveland. This man called in to see him at least once every day, to talk about schemes of profit, and the chances of acquiring great wealth suddenly. He was also engaged in shipping, and had made a good deal of money by fortunate adventures. Recently he had sold one of his vessels and freighted the other, which had enabled him to divert a considerable amount of capital into the new channels of profit that had opened all around him. This Cleveland was half owner of a western city, a map of which hung up in his counting-room. The name of the city was “Eldorado.” As could be seen by its position, relative to other parts of the State in which it was situated, it was plain that “Eldorado” was destined to become, at no very distant day, one of the most important places in the West. It was situated on the bank of a rapid river, with a fall close by, affording water-power for mills and manufactories to any extent. The country around was healthy, and the lands were rich; and, moreover, a railroad, now in process of erection, would pass through it from north to south, and another from east to west. One of these roads started from the lakes at the north, and was to terminate at the Ohio river. The other started from, and terminated in, deep navigable rivers.

This “Eldorado” Mr. Cleveland said he looked upon as the most valuable of all his interests. His half of the city cost him twenty thousand dollars, and he had already sold lots enough to realize fifteen thousand dollars and expected to sell enough to net him fifteen or twenty more, and still have a little fortune safely locked up in “Eldorado.”

Besides his western town interest, he was largely concerned in a manufacturing company; owned shares in all sort of internal improvement and banking corporations; and was, according to his own showing, making money so fast that he could hardly count it as it came in. Some time after, Mr. Townsend met with the loss of thirty thousand dollars by the wreck of a vessel, upon the cargo of which no insurance had been effected. Mr. Cleveland said to him: