286             HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY

    Farmers, miners, operators and merchants, since we met here a
year ago we have passed through troubles, changes and scenes, that
most have named a “money panic.” Did I say “through ?“ We are
not yet through. We do not see the end yet and, we each guess at,
 the end, wisely, only as we may better understand the causes. He
errs most who lays it all at the door of Jay Cook & Co. The several
causes lay deeper and yet behind them and exploded in the mad-
dened frenzy of fancied speculation that the causes had incited. In
this discussion, here, it is but admissible for me to recite facts and
results. In the north we kept 500,000 to over 1,000,000 of men on
the army roll for years, all taken from the ranks of producers and
put into the ranks of consumers and destroyers, and armed well for
the work. At the close of the war the North found a debt of two
and a half billions of dollars. Since 1861 we have been taxed as
never before and our expenditures of treasure were never so lavish
nor so reckless.
    In the South many billions were destroyed by the war and its
results; from 200,000 to 6000,000 men were consumers and destroyers
to the amount of untold millions. In the South the most remunera-
tive industries were overthrown or destroyed, for the time, and not
yet restored.
    “Greenback legal tenders” exported gold from the country, and
the use of this paper money soon doubled, then trebled the expense
account of the war and deranged industry, adding yet other millions
to the loss account.
    Another step on the road to ruin was the inviting capital from
productive industries, when it was aiding in recuperating the wasted
energies of the country, and setting it to paper money banking, to
gloat and fatten off of industry. The stable measures of values,
that gave guarantees to labor and production, thus destroyed with
money for the printing in the hands of shylocks, or in the hands of
gambling adventurers, such as the Credit Mobilier ring and Jay Cook,
to sink other millions in railways that pay naught. Add all those
items to the profit and loss account of the ledger and you have the
sequel to the crash. It is bankruptcy, not an ephemeral panic. “The
bond has been altered” and our debt has been doubled by enacting
that it shall be paid in gold. We ask each the other when will this
money crisis and business paralysis be over? Now that we have just
measured the load, shall we guess when it can be thrown off? I
saw, and to some extent felt, the crash of 1817. It came of the war
of 1812 to 1815, done on paper money, and was recovered from in
1828. I was in the crash of 1858 that was recovered from in seven
years. The suspension of 1858 or 1859 was less disastrous. This,
the worst in the century, may be recovered from in seven years:
yet it will be more likely three times seven. No resumption of
specie basis for finance and healthy business can come soon, with a
gold export drain to pay interest and dividend on United States
bonds and stocks held in England and on the continent. An assured
sound business basis cannot be reached, save by industry and yet
greater sacrifices on our part. It will not be found in leagues,
societies, nor strikes. It cannot come of tariffs or free banking, nor
of eight nor ten—hour labor systems. It must come of less waste,