Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 June 1891 — FEAR A MONEY PANIC. [ARTICLE]

FEAR A MONEY PANIC.

GRAVE FINANCIAL SITUATION IN LONDON. Op nion Prevalent that a Crash Is Inev table in Case the Portuguese Loan Falls—Collapse of the Barings anil the Bankruptcy of Argeut'ne Have £ cared. the Mcmey-JLon<l r*. All this week the air has been full of gold, says a recent dispatch from London. City men are all talking gold, editors are all working gold, English financiers overloaded with bad securities are pledging good ones in Paris for gold, Russia is swallowing all the go'd she can get, taking 8750,000 from this market, Tuesday, as bonne bouche for §12,500,000 more, which she will swallow next week. American steamers are bringing millions i t gold weekly, and altogether on the great stage of European history Internationa! money lias completely usurped the place of international murder, and grim-visaged war Ras smoothed his wrinkled frontiiwview of the painful and unsupDortable void in his trousers pocket, which must bo filled forthwith. Tho situat on is peculiar; perhaps the most peculiar thatyEuropian finance has ever seen. Its primary cause was the Argentine bankruptcy and the failure of Baring Bros. If the storm had blown itself out tho weather would have cleared again and suspense passed away. The intervention of the Bank of England, while it averted Uhe crash, instituted at the same time a period of uncertainty and depression, the gloom of which has steadily deepened. Argentine finances are completqly hoi oless. Capital has fled the country. The new national bank bill sent by its Government to its Congress this week is simply a futile .attempt to cure a chronic invalid. Tho people have very clearly proved their inability to govern themselves, and the country now owes §000,000,003, or over §l5O per capita of a population that would .*not themselves bring that average under the hammer — judging from their late idiosyncrasies of action. Of this amount §400,000,030 has come out of the European market, nj£.inly from London, and is destined to be for tho present a dead loss. The great financial checker-game of the last few months, has simply been a Christian endeavor on the part of some energetic and ingenious people to see that the .loss fails not on them, but on somebody else. The months of depression thus inaugurated have reachod their climax in the partial failure of the Portuguese loan. All this week the Paris bourse has been feverish and full of disquieting rumors. Pessimistic prophets foretell an inevitable crash when the Portuguese account comes to bo settled at the beginning of June. French bankers have managed to scrape through and place a third of the loan, but there is a wonderful lack of confidence in Portugal's condition, as her people have been taxed beyond endurance, and her borrowing capacity is exhausted Trouble is expected-among the German banks, which haV& failed to place Portuguese stock which they contra ted to take and for which they must pay. Rumors even asserted that Barons Alphonse and Gustav do Rothschild of the Paris house had quarreled over questions of policy and vrouid dissolve, which report now takes the form of a statement that haion Gustav has c ased actively to concern himself with the firm through ill health. Spain is in trouble and has proclaimed its pressing need of §20,000;000 to pay for new railways and a new fleet. Italy is even woegg off with a deficit of millions, which can only be supplied by borrowing, as tho last drop has been squeezed out of the popular orange by overtaxation: while the worst sign of all is that each tax brings in le-s than before. Customs receipts in April alone wer£ §2,000.003 less than the Minisfer of Finance had calculated, and the poverty and misery of the people, thousands of who id are in Rome without work or bread, are portentous. All the Latin countries, in sact —European and South American—seem to be more or less in trouble, and quite .equal of themselves to bring about a great and phenomenal crisis in the money market. Strange to say, however, they are likely to be assisted in this work by the queer financiering of M. Vishnegradski, Russian Minister of Finance. M. Vishnegradski ever since he assumed office has had one ambition, viz., to swell the value of the Russian ruble. This by the aid of French financiers and through buying -up Russian papier, he has succeeded in in doing in spite of the bitter objections of all the exporters and manufacturers of tho country. Vishnegradski, having now by financial chicanery raised the status of the ruble and of Russian securities to a degree entirely unwarranted by any increase of commercial j rosperity or any certainty of peace, is struggling tooth and nail to mainta'n his position, and if he is forced to withdraw all the §65,000,000 which Russia had 7 until recently in London and which he has begun to draw upon, it will probably bring about with a crash the overhanging panic. At any rate all financial talk is gloomy, and the money crisis has entirely put in abeyance any possibilities of war for 6ome time to come.