Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 July 1893 — SMALL DEBTS: [ARTICLE]

SMALL DEBTS:

We recently copied from the flies of a paper printed by us in 1859, a little story adapted to all times, and more especially during a flurry in the financial world, entitled

OR WHAT $5 PAID.

The cases cited went to show how much inconvenience and Buttering might be saved the toilers of the land dependent upon their daily earnings for the support of themselves and families and at the same time neither incur hardship nor discommode those from whom “small debts* may be due. Lyman J. Gage, the well-known Chicago banker tells the following story in illustration of how much a single bank note can accomplish when in active use: “After the panic of 1873 I visited a not distant town of moderate size, and from the most important merchant in the place I heard this story: “For a week or ten days during the panic," he said, “business here came to a standstill. We did absolutely nothing, but one day we received a one-hnndred-dollar bill by express irom a distant town, with a direction to credit it upon the open account of the sender. We looked at the one-hundred-dollar bill with interest and curiosity, and, after conferring together concluded to send it to Mr. A., to whom we owed a small ac count, knowing that he was in need,— About 3 o’clock in the afternoon a wagonmaker in the village came into our office with a bread smile upon his face and said: ‘I am glad to pay you $ 100 on account. It is the first money I have seen in a good wnile.’ Wejtook the money from his hand and discovered it to be the same note we had received by express in the morning. We asked him where he got it, thinking he would reply that he received it from Mr. A., to whom we had paid it. He informed us that he had received it from Mr. E. We then followed the history of the note back, and found the facts to be that it had paid us SIOO of debt in the morning and had liquidated six other debts of SIOO each during the day, and in the afternoon it had come back to us, liquidating another debt of SIOO, and we still had the note for fresh operations on the morrow.’' An exchange very properly says that the remedy tor the pre ent hard times is for each individual to exert himself to pay every little debt he ow.s, to keep industriously at work, to hold his confidence in his neighbor, and to look hopefully into the future.