Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 February 1894 — FINANCIAL BALLOONS. [ARTICLE]

FINANCIAL BALLOONS.

The present condition of the money market womd seem to be a positive assurance that the bubbles and schemes of the Western land agent, which have been ah important factor in bringing about the present,unsatisfactory status of affairs, would, for the time being, at least, cease to sail upward. The disastrous results that have attended so many Western boom towns in their attempts to rival the great cities of the continent in the splendor of their buildings and street improvements are well known, and the average Hoosier had settled down into the belief that, although the fools are probably not all dead, the confidence men who had so industriously “worked” them would for a time give thpm a rest. Such, however, is not the case, as appears from a transaction brought to light at Minneapolis, Jan. 17, wherein it was shown that a job lot of balloon mortgages to the amount of $100,060 or more had been floated in the East, the security being" twenty-five acres of land, fifteen miles west of that city, which had been platted and called “Wayzatta Revised. The assessed valuation of the property is $10,530, and It is doubtful if that sum can be realized. These and a large number of other “balloon mortgages” were placed by the Union Debenture Company, the security in each case given being inadequate and largely fictitious. People who have placed their money in these ill-advised ventures are likely to receive from ten to twenty-five cents on the dollar in the course of human events. Be ware of boom towns in the woolly West.