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Show ""' '"l '' ' M i - Are mere Breakers Ahead? When the bankers of Salt Lake formulated and put into effect the rule discontinuing overdrafts on open accounts ac-counts they probably, in fact almost had something in view besides the j making of a little more money out I of thejr regular customers and get- ting the use of a little more money free- of interest. The recent so called flurry in stocks has more significance than anybody cares to admit. That the now two big drops in the quotations quota-tions of leading stocks was ibrought about by a few "Wall Street Gamblers" Gamb-lers" trying to get the best of each other and that the general business interests of the country would not be affected thereby is all very well to , talk about, a very handy explanation to put before the public, but at the same time its a delusion. Stocks have had two big falls and two small advances ad-vances following as the natural reaction re-action each big drop. Stocks have not gone back to anywhere near the price they were before the alleged al-leged war among the stock exchange gamblers commenced. It was no fight among stock gamblers that brought on the flurry. It was the general industrial conditions, particularly partic-ularly the outlook for the future which these fellows on Wall Street are quicker to read than most other people. The railroads stopped letting contracts for extensions, they not only stopped ordering material, but canceled can-celed contracts made before and r? which they were not absolutely bound w by. Orders are not flowing into the iron masters as they have been doing for some years past. Manufacturers of all kinds are not being given orders for future delivery as liberally as they I were. "There is a general curtailing all around. Those are the real reasons rea-sons for the Wall Street flurries. 1 Things have been going too rapidly. The pace was the pace that kills. Business has been at white heat for years. When anything is maintained at white heat for a long time it dis-'.' dis-'.' integrates. The necessaries of life are too I high, food stuffs of all kinds are too deal, so is clothing, so is everything t which is consumed by the public gen erally. Crops were abundant, everything every-thing is plentiful, but costs too much. Labor has advanced some, but not at least on its face in proportion to the cost of living. The efficinecy of labor however, has deteriorated, that is a man dpes not now do any more work in eight hours than he did some years ago in five or six hours, so that it realy costs a great deal more now to build railroads, and bridges to ereci buildings and manufacture goods than it did four or five years ago. With the high prices of material the capitalist can hardly figure out a re-sonable re-sonable re'urn for money invested in buildings and other improvements. The people have become extravagant, running into debt for luxuries and amusements and a day of settling is near at hand. The nation has had ten years of unexampled prosperity. For several months the indications all have been that the nation has reached the crest of the wave ot prosperity and that a reaction in the ordinary course of events is due. The bankers read the signs of the times quicker and more readily than the general public. The curtailing of loans and the stopping of overdrafts was in the nature of a reefing of sails, getting rcsuorces in good shape for a possible coming storm. The slump in industrial stocks, however, should not hurt the mining industry of the west. On the contrary it ought to help mining, because people with idle capital when they are bitten bit-ten in industrials will turn their attention at-tention to mines, and take a chance there. Utah generally and Salt Lake in particular ought to benefit, because be-cause of that. The Salt Lake people are very foolish in giving so much of their capital and energy to Nevada. There are just as good and better opportunities to make money in mines right here at home as there are in Nevada, but people are carried away by excitement and wilfully falsified fal-sified reports. A very, very large percentage of the Nevada excitement is hot air. Utah people would bo better bet-ter to spend their time and energy right here at home and at the end of a few years would have more to show for it. |