The Forgotten Man, and Other EssaysSumner, William Graham
Science
The Forgotten Man, and Other Essays
Sumner, William Graham
Economics; Social sciences
The success of the cotton speculation led to a plan for renewing it on
a grander scale. On June 6, an unsigned circular was published at New
York, which proposed a scheme for advancing three-fourths of the value
at fourteen cents on all cotton consigned to Biddle and Humphreys.
They were to “hold on until prices vigorously rally.” The agent, Mr.
Wilder, declared that this had nothing to do with the United States
Bank, so far as he knew. It was, however, a scheme of the Bank. The
Southwestern notes were falling lower and lower, and the post notes
issued in the Southwest the year before were now falling due, and were
not paid. The pressure of this fell on Philadelphia, where money was
up to fifteen per cent and the banks were curtailing. The news from
England was also bad. Cotton was down two cents. The specie of the Bank
of England was rapidly declining and money was at five per cent. The
arrangements from this side in 1837 had simply consisted in renewals
or extensions, and as yet few payments had been made. Stocks, etc.,
were sent over, but they fell upon a glutted and stringent market and
the prices declined. These securities therefore did not furnish means
of payment, and specie shipments were found to be necessary. The Bank
of the United States had prevented any shipment of specie by offering
all the bills demanded at one hundred and nine and a half, and Mr.
Jandon had been obliged to adopt the most reckless means to meet these
bills. In August he wrote to Biddle and Humphreys to supply him with
money at any sacrifice of cotton. “Life or death to the Bank of the
United States is the issue.” The Bank here urged Bevan and Humphreys
to direct their agents to meet Jandon’s demands and the Bank assumed
the loss. In August the Bank sent an agent to New York, to draw all the
bills he could sell on Hottinguer at Paris, to draw the proceeds in
specie from the New York banks, and to ship it to meet the bills, the
object being to force the New York banks to suspend in order that their
example might again be quoted. The Bank also sold its post notes at a
discount of eighteen per cent per annum in Boston, New York, Baltimore,
and smaller places, and gathered up capital to meet the emergency at
Philadelphia caused by the failure of the Southern remittances. The
money markets in all these cities were very stringent until October. On
the ninth of that month the Bank of the United States failed on drafts
from New York, and on the tenth the news was received that the drafts
on Hottinguer had been protested. He had given notice that he would not
pay unless he was covered, and the drafts arrived before the specie
did. Jandon succeeded in getting Rothschild to take up the bills. The
amount was seven million francs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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