It all came from land speculation. According to what they
said, there was more land then laid out in town-sites in Kansas than in
all the cities and towns of the settled parts of the country. In Iowa
there were town-sites along all the streams and scattered all over the
prairies. Everybody was in debt, in the business world, and when land
stopped growing in value, sales stopped, and then the day of reckoning
came. All financial panics come from land speculation. Show me a way to
keep land from advancing in value, and I will tell you how to prevent
financial panics[14].
[14] The author, when his attention is called to the Mississippi Bubble,
insists that it was nothing more nor less than betting on the land
development of a great new region. As to the "Tulipomania" which once
created a small panic in Holland, he insists that such a fool notion can
not often occur, and never can have wide-spread results like a genuine
financial panic. In which the editor is inclined to believe the best
economists will agree with, him.--G.v.d.M.
But, though we knew nothing about this general wreck and ruin back east,
we knew that we were miserably poor. In the winter of 1857-8 Magnus and
I were beggarly ragged and so short of fuel and bedding that he came
over and stayed with me, so that we could get along with one bed and one
fire. My buffalo robes were the things that kept us warm, those howling
nights, or when it was so still that we could hear the ice crack in the
creek eighty rods off.
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