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Show THE FINANCIAL 0TTTI00K. '1 he f.iiiur.' of joy G -.he A Co. is one of the rno4 gt::fnMnt that ha.s occurred for yea:-. T!i-- firm w.is not oidy tho ti-cil ;i-"iit of guv.Tiinicnt and manager ot t'.i" y i id i -a te tra:n-a tra:n-a tions, hiit w. v.5 t'ic piiw.Le ag..nt, fi-n.ui'-ial ;ulvior, a:i-! grind d ;i '-it .rv for the Admitii-tra'.io:! and th.- 1:"-p".iihc;m 1:"-p".iihc;m parly. A- the ag--:it of the Xurth'Tti Pacific r.uln -.i l my. all the pittinees th;it cmld b- av.d up by government employ.'.- in Wa.-h-ington went into it- ,-afe. for bonds of that road; the lor uva.-ury giri-i wUii their nci-f.sional hundred dollars ami clerk.i drawing h.g' r darlei with larger susns, paying u.-r lac ciaiiU-r of .lav Cxiko A Co. and receiving l-jiids for the amount, of which the was paid out of the principal. The linn was al.-o the agent of the Kopub-lican Kopub-lican party during the late Presidential Presiden-tial campaign, and to it was. paid the i millions ewjupczed out of the otlice holders to reelect Grant by the "voluntary "vol-untary suffrages of a free people."' Of this sum it had thcehtirodUbursement; and it lias held tho "honest savings'" ot the heads of Government up till v, c have no data'to say how near this enuh, but feel confident the President and his Cabinet have la-t nothing by this failure Governor. Cooke would never have permitted th;-t. Vet with the finest opportunities for "stealing" which any single firm has ever possessed in the country; with the profits arising from its public Government patronage, and its still more extensive private patronage bestowed be-stowed upon it by the Administration nnd the governing party; with the pickings from the syndicate and the campaign disbursements; and with its : Northern Pacific railway business, it ' has succumbed, the New York., Washington Wash-ington and Philadelphia branches going with a crash. It is said that the London branch Cooke, McCul-lough McCul-lough & Co. is sound; and that tlio real cause of the collapse was heavy drafts in favor of the Northern Pacific road. But if the interest on the X. : P. i. R. bonds was paid out of the principal, and that principal w:us gathered from thousands of sources without extra ca-t to the agents, this "heavy drafts'' explanation is hanlly calculated to satisfy the inquiries, of business men. The failure is significant in a political politi-cal as well as in a financial sense, but the latter only wo w ill note at present. It tells of a rotten condition of the finances of the country, notwithstanding notwithstand-ing all our vaunt in-' and (he sonorous boasts of the Treasury department. Wc have been rushing on in a ma'd race of extravagance, borrowing on the strength of an undeveloped future, like a man mortgaging a mine before ho has opened it, being satisfied of its richness nnd selling that richness and his labor in advance to gratify the appetite ap-petite of the hour. The imports of the L'nitcd States are exceeding the exports by from a hundred hun-dred and fifty to two hundred millions per annum. And yet there arc pcoplo who, knowing this, think our illimitable resources will prevent a financial collapse ruinous to the country. Our railroads are being be-ing largely built and our mines extensively ex-tensively worked with foreign capital; and, as a result, the development of these vast resources add to theweallh of foreign capitalists, white we are content to sec our gold and silver borne away from our shores in daily shipments to meet the cost of our extravagance. ex-travagance. In the eleven months ending with the close of last Xovera-ber, Xovera-ber, our imports exceeded our exports ex-ports by $141,912,097 in coin, or about one-fourth the total amount of the imports. The result of such a course must be a financial crash of the moat terrific character sooner or later. It may come now, with tho collapse of Jay Cooke fc Co.; Fisk fc Hatch, and other leading houses; or it may be staved ofi" a few weeks or months-even months-even longer; but it is is sure to come as that a lake receiving ten thousand gallons of water a minute and pouring pour-ing out a hundred thousand gallons in the samo time, is certain to leave its IkxI dried up in a definite period. |