THE WEEK IN TRADE AND FINANCE.

MARCH 10, 1873. THER HERE is no change to report in the condition of the money market. Borrowers on stock collaterals have paid as high as seven per cent. per annum, and one-eighth per cent. commission in addition. These rates softened for a time after the Comptroller's call, for a statement, showing the condition on the 28th of February of the national banks, was published; but the softening was temporary, and the close of the week saw the rate quite up to one-eighth per cent. per diem.

The report that $44,000,000 legal tenders would be reissued caused considerable comment on the Street. We are glad to say that the proposition receives little favor from business men in this city. Beyond the fact that an inflation of the currency is in itself an unsound measure, and of doubtful legality, the idea prevails that any relief afforded to the money market would be ephemeral and more than offset in its benefits by the increased cost of all productions. We sincerely hope that all the talk about a "right" of the Secretary of the Treasury to inflate the currency at pleasure is merely for the purpose of justifying Mr. Boutwell in what he has already done, and, if any "right" really exists, that he will look further into the propriety of such inflation than he has apparently yet done, and will cease listening to the clamorous voices of men imprudently expanded in their business, and now, when in trouble, rushing to the Government for aid. It is really time that the Treasury Department adopted a policy and lived up to it; and, as the present Administration has another four years' term before it, and all parties admit that return to specie payment is desirable, it is certainly useless to seek to accomplish that result by giving the people any more irredeemable paper.

The weekly statement of the city banks is favorable, mainly so on account of the decrease of their deposits. The national banks, which are obliged by law to hold 25 per cent. in legal tenders and specie against their liabilities, are in better condition actually than the statement would show, because this also includes the reports of the largest State banks.

The total liabilities of the national banks are $200,474,300, against which they hold $51,242,300 in legal tenders and specie, or $1,123,725 in excess of the arbitrary amount required.

The following is the statement of the New York City banks for the weeks ending March 1 and 8:

March 1. $281,344,900

27.601,300

202,066.100

40,724,000

March 8. $280,351,300

17,149.600 27,801,200 199,508,700

Differences. Dee. $993,600 luc. 779,100 Inc. 199,900 Dec. 2,557,400

39,473,000 Dec. 1,251,000

The leading features of the week in the stock market were the recovery in Panama, the fluctuation in Pacific Mail, and the rise in Harlem. Panama opened at 1064 on Monday, rising to 113. On Thursday it touched 119, and on Saturday the closing quotation was 12211⁄2 bid, after selling at 12311⁄2 during the day. The stock of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company early in the week made a still further decline to 49, which proved "hard pan." The necessities of the leading operator in the stock caused the selling of a large amount at low prices, which, at the decline, passed into the hands of stronger parties, and at the close of the week the price was 564. Harlem advanced on Saturday to 139 from 127 on Monday. The speculation in this stock during the latter part of the week was quite active, especially so on Saturday, when the prices fluctuated between 13334 and 139. The general market has been fairly active, and the feeling generally in favor of higher prices, especially for the better class of stocks, like Central and Hudson or

Lake Shore. We see no reason why the general market should go higher under existing circumstances. It may be that in the Vanderbilt stocks something is going on, at present unknown to the public, likely to increase their value, but what incentive people have to buy such trash as "C. C. and I. C.," Boston, Hartford, and Erie, and Union Pacific, we can't imagine. Pacific Mail and Western Union are enormous foot-balls to be knocked about, and as they pretend to have some intrinsic value, and the former has recently declined about 54 per cent., it is not to be wondered at that people buy them. Taking prices as they are, and looking at the condition of the money market, the gold market, and the amount of foreign credit loaned to Wall Street, our advice to those outside of speculation who contemplate entering it is, "don't do it," at least not now.

The following shows the highest and lowest sales of the leading stocks at the Stock Exchange for the week ending March 8:

"The gross receipts from traffic were $122,584 52, or about 2 less than those of the preceding year. The net receipts were $318,938 02, or about 141⁄2 per cent. less than those of the preceding year.

"The operating expenses of your lines (exclusive of taxes) amount to 61 per cent. of gross receipts; including taxes, 63.0 36 per cent. During 1871 the operating expenses were 5610 and 581 per cent. respectively.

36

"The causes that have produced this unsatisfactory result may be mainly traced to the 'Chicago Fire,' and are, therefore, exceptional. During the greater part of the year, owing to the destruction of warehouses, it was impossible to obtain storage for grain arriving at Chicago on your line, without resorting to very expensive expedients, the cost of which was charged in the account of Operating Expenses. For a considerable portion of the year storage could not be had at any cost. Traffic in grain to Chicago ceased, and was forced by different channels to other markets."

The above explanation of the unsatisfactory results of the year's business will answer for that of other railroads running westward from Chicago, all of which have been more or less affected by the want of storage accommodation, since the fire, for grain brought to the city.

The Treasury programme for the month includes the purchase of $1,000,000 5-20s on the 5th and 19th and $500,000 on the 12th and 26th. On Wednesday, the 5th, the offers of bonds to the Assistant-Treasurer amounted to $3,097,250, at prices ranging between 113.53 and 114.15. The million was taken at 113.60 and under. The price of gold at the time the awards were made was 115. The market for Governments has remained steady during the week both here and in London. Prices have changed but little, and the list has presented no interesting features.

The Treasury will sell during the present month $1,000,000 gold, on each alternate Thursday, making $4,000,000 in all to be sold. Just now the gold market is in a very peculiar position. The price has been advanced to a point at which it actually pays to ship coin from abroad to this country, and the operations of the "clique" engaged in advancing the premium will be watched with interest. The " clique" are reputed to hold $20,000,000their control of a large amount being clearly shown on Saturday, when, by withdrawing a portion from the loan market, they were enabled to force borrowers into paying and per diem for its use. Fortunately, the mercantile community are not largely short, having very generally purchased, when they needed coin for their business operations, at current quotations. The "clique" is said to be under the leadership of Jay Gould. During the week the price has ranged between 1144 and 1154.

The total shipments of specie from this port since January 1, 1873, amount to $11,067,800, against $3,163,100 for the same time in 1872, $9,833,900 in 1871, $5,946,700 in 1870, $7,258,500 in 1869, and $14,097,700

in 1868.

MR.

NEW YORK, THURSDAY, MARCH 20, 1873.

The Week.

R. DAWES has been defeated by Mr. Boutwell, who becomes VicePresident Wilson's successor in the Senate. Mr. Dawes's defeat is due to various causes, but he made so good a fight after the affair was generally supposed settled in Mr. Boutwell's favor that it appears as if but a very little more weight in his scale would have turned the beam in his favor-perhaps it would have been enough if he had kept himself out of the Crédit Mobilier business and had not equivocated when McComb's memorandum came out. If so, his failure is another reading of the lesson that a little thin-skinnedness, where personal honor and delicacy are concerned, may sometimes turn out as valuable to a public man as the most pachydermatous tough

ness.

Mr. Bayard, for example, makes no bad showing beside Mr. Colfax, even regarding the thing as one of good policy alone. Some friends of Mr. Dawes, who adhered to his cause to the end, felt from the beginning that his record in the matter was badly against him. Every member from Massachusetts west of Worcester County, and about half the Worcester County members, voted for him, giving him half the total number of votes that he obtained. But a line drawn

through Charles Street in Boston is said to divide the population of the State into two parts nearly equal, and the east of the State was strongly for Boutwell. Suffolk gave Dawes but 15 to Boutwell's 35; Middlesex stood 10 to 35, and Essex 11 to 22. Mr. Boutwell goes out

of the Treasury with all the respect due in these days to a man who has remained pure and above reproach under no ordinary temptations.

Mr. Boutwell having passed the Senate, the vacant place in the Treasury Department has been filled, in spite of divers rumors about other gentlemen, as was anticipated, by Mr. Richardson, the Assistant Secretary. The objections to him are that he is an obscure man, who has not as yet given evidence of ability in any department; that he is a friend of General Butler; and, although last not least, that he holds firmly to the theory that the Secretary of the Treasury has the right to expand the currency of the country to the extent of forty-four millions of dollars, in his discretion. He carried out this theory to a limited extent last fall, and for so doing was severely reproved by a Committee of the Senate in language which public opinion found none too strong, and which ought to have rendered his further tenure of even the subordinate office he then held impossible.

In appointing him therefore to a seat in the Cabinet, the President not only disregards the opinion of the Committee of the Senate but public opinion on this important matter, and adopts

the Richardson doctrine.

Mr. Boutwell and Mr. Richardson have themselves shown their disregard of the report of the Committee by issuing two or three millions of greenbacks within the last fortnight to meet appropriations made by Congress, and hold, we believe, that where any doubt exists as to the right to do this, it is to be presumed that the Secretary possesses it. The Forty-second Congress, which had time enough to vote itself "back pay," had not time enough to settle this most important question, and Mr. Richardson goes into office armed with a power over the property and contracts of the people of the United States such as nobody but a despotic ruler in the worst times of European or Asiatic history has ever claimed. We see in this, in spite of the separation of the executive and legislative branches of the Government, the necessity created by the increasing complications of modern life for thorough knowledge, on the part of the President, of human experience on great economical problems.

Mr. Richardson was for some years a judge of probate in his native State, and in his own and Mr. Boutwell's county of Middlesex, and we do not know that he had held any other office till Mr. Boutwell called him to Washington to be Assistant Secretary of the Treasury. This place and his judgeship he continued to hold at one and the same time, in spite of public comment on conduct felt to be somewhat indecent, Massachusetts being still tender on the subject of judicial dignity as well as judicial probity. At length somebody introduced in the Massachusetts Legislature a resolution which, if we recollect right, was passed, enquiring whether any judicial officer of the State, etc., etc.; whereupon Mr. Richardson sent in his resignation of his judgeship and kept his secretaryship. In this latter position he is best known for his connection with the famous Syndicate affair, in which, however, he acted as the agent and messenger of his chief.

The last week or two has finished a chapter in the history of civilservice reform which we shall sum up without note or comment. When the Surveyorship of this port was vacated by the resignation of Mr. Cornell, Mr. Benedict, who has filled the Deputy-Surveyorship for a great many years, was nominated by the President, and all the leading papers warmly applauded this adherence to "the rules," and the Administration organ called attention to it as an illustration of General Grant's fidelity to his promises. While Mr. Benedict's name was before the Senate, the members of the New York Ring began to proclaim that he would never be nominated, promised to withdraw him. A week later, he did withdraw him, and finally one of them declared positively that the President had

which at first looked badly, but cavillers and doubters were silenced by the announcement that the place would still be filled "under the rules," inasmuch as the next best man for it would be selected from the other Custom-house employees by a committee of examination consisting of Messrs. George William Curtis, Jackson S. Schultz, and Collector Arthur. To an arrangement of this sort it was impossible to refuse confidence, so we waited patiently. No examination or report by the committee, however, was heard of, and last Friday Gen. Sharpe, the Marshal of this District, and an active politician, was nominated for the place. On Monday morning there appeared in the Tribune a letter, evidently written by Mr. Curtis's authority, declaring that the committee "had never, to the knowledge of Mr. Curtis, taken any action in the premises whatever"; and that if they had done so, "it was without consulting him, and against a specific promise of one of them "; and that "if 'Marshal Sharpe had been apointed in violation of the rules,' it was without his [Mr. Curtis's] knowledge or consent," and adding significantly that "men do not willingly consent to be thus publicly snubbed." The Postmaster here has resigned, too, and his place been filled by a Custom-house officer.

The rule under which this odd performance has taken place prescribes that, when a vacancy occurs in the Surveyorship, "the Secretary of the Treasury shall ascertain if any of the subordinates in the customs district are suitable persons qualified to discharge efficiently the duties of the office to be filled, and if such persons be found, he shall certify to the President the name or names of those subordinates, not exceeding three, who in his judgment are best qualified for the position, from which the President shall make the nomination to fill the vacancy." If no subordinate be found qualified, or the nomination be not confirmed, the place can be filled at the discretion of the President. The general impression left by the whole affair is that the Ring has got complete control of the patronage in this city, and laughs heartily at "the rules" over its "poker."

The civil-service news from New Orleans is not very cheerful either. Casey the Collector, who has been one of the main insti

gators of the trouble there, and to whose gross misconduct in office we have made frequent allusion in these columns, was "investigated" by a Committee of Congress last year, and a very damaging report made on his performances. The report was withheld for a good while, apparently in the expectation that he would resign, and a rumor was spread abroad that he had resigned. If he ever sent his resignation in, however, he withdrew it, and went back to his post from Washington with unblushing front, and he has just been reappointed for four years more. Mr. John M. G. Parker, Mr. Ben. Butler's brother-in-law, has been appointed Surveyor of the port. Parker was one of five "arbitrators" recently appointed to settle the terms on which the city should purchase certain water-works from a private corporation. They fixed the price at $2,000,000, and recommended the purchase, which was accordingly made. Soon after, they made a demand for compensation for their services, which the city refused to pay, and they thereupon sued it, and it was brought out by the evidence of the president of the waterworks corporation that he had paid them $15,000 at the close of the negotiations. The plaintiffs then meekly and calmly discontinued their suit.

Governor Dix has, as we anticipated he would, disregarded the decision of the extraordinary tribunal described by us last week on the degree of Foster's guilt, and has refused to commute his sentence. We trust Foster's fate will be a warning to all roughs. We will take the liberty of adding that we hope his case will bring wisdom to a large body of clergymen, lawyers, and kind-hearted persons generally, who are in the habit of signing petitions for pardon. To the ministers in particular who mix themselves up in these matters, we would say that their conduct is very mischievous. In the first place, their letters and petitions are not candid and truthful, and hardly can be, when the writers are acting as pleaders, and this brings discredit on their profession. In the next place, they help to create distrust of the law and its administrators, and to confuse the moral notions of the poor and ignorant, by the notorious fact that the cases in which Protestant ministers and members of the wealthier class generally display their interest and "work" for pardons, are usually cases in which the offender has had every advantage, in the way of money and education, and is blessed or cursed with wealthy and "influential" relatives. Witness the Ketchum case, and the Foster case, and—we hope we shall not have to say the Stokes case. On the other hand, when a poor devil who has had no teaching of any kind, and whom poverty and all its temptations have followed from the cradle, kills somebody, he is left to his fate without a murmur. No lawyers overhaul the statutes for him, no ministers pray for him or weep for him, no editorials rend the air on his behalf.

We would also advise all sensible men and women who have sympathy to spare, to pour it out in all murder cases first of all on the unhappy victim who has been taken off without a moment's warning, next on his poor family, and finally on the millions of decent men and women who throng our streets day and night relying on the law for security, their pockets filled not with "deadly weapons" but with the tools of honest trades and the hard earnings of honest toil, and their heads filled with dreams of affection and the plans and schemes of useful industry and economy. We cannot watch over them too carefully, and feel for them too tenderly; and it is only after doing our whole duty to them that we ought to go to the Tombs to save the men who have been cracking their skulls or shooting them down. We are told that the murderers now in the Tombs, who have for the last fortnight been very cheerful, became very "silent and thoughtful" when the news of Governor Dix's refusal in Foster's case arrived. This is very singular if it be true, as we are assured, that murderers dread imprisonment for life more than hanging; or more singular still, if, as we are also assured, they do not care when they commit murder whether they are hanged or not.

The contest between the people and the railroad corporations assumes novel forms in the West. In Illinois and Iowa, local organizations, known as Farmers' Clubs or Granges, are said to have been formed, and to have succeeded in making the railroad question more prominent than any which has occupied public attention since the close of the war. Large public meetings are held, and resolutions of the most emphatic character are passed, affirming the right and the duty of the State to control freight and passenger tariffs. There are many practical difficulties, however, in the way of this. Illinois has passed laws fixing maximum rates on all of the leading railroads, and forbidding discriminating rates for freight, on penalty of forfeiture of charter; but in the only case which has come to a decision in the Supreme Court of the State, the court has virtually declared the law worthless. It recognizes the right of the State to prohibit "unjust charges," but puts upon the plaintiff the burden of proof to show that given charges are unjust. The decision has called forth violent denunciation of the judge who gave it. As he is soon to be a candidate for re-election, his decision will probably cost him his position.

That the people have reason to complain is evident. It costs more to carry goods from Chicago a hundred miles into the interior, than from New York to Chicago, or from Pittsburg to Chicago. Wherever competing lines cross each other, or come in close competition, freights are cheap. Shippers of through freight to the East often save money by shipping westward forty or fifty miles to some competing point, and paying the local tariff on freight which repasses them on its way to the East. The "fast freight" companies, particularly the "Red" and "Blue" lines, are largely owned by stockholders of the road, and the local business of the towns is neglected to give preference to the favored lines, which are thus able to compel shippers to pay extra rates or to suffer vexatious delay. Meanwhile, abundant corn harvests are burned as fuel, and it costs farmers living east of the Mississippi the price of three bushels of grain to place one in New York. Wages are still high, and the habits and expenses of the people are still based upon the inflated scale which war prices made common. The distress in many communities is great, and never since the commencement of the war has money been so tight. This state of affairs is said to be producing its natural result in threats of violence, embodied in the Farmers' Clubs' resolutions. Parties of farmers tender the legal fare, and compel the railroads to take it. The "bloated Eastern aristocrat" is much abused, and members of the Legislature have been even forced to give up their railroad passes.

The operations of the Memphis, El Paso, and Pacific Railroad afford a good instance of the International Swindle. This road was incorporated by the State of Texas in 1853, and its history to the present time may be summarized as follows: 90 miles of track graded, 3 miles laid, and "loose rails dropped along the track a few miles further." Ten locomotives imported from France, and various lots of railroad iron seized in New Orleans and New York for nonpayment of duties and for debt. Stock issued, $40,000,000; bonds and land certificates, about $13,000,000; total length of road, three miles; total debt, $53,000,000. In 1866, General John C. Fremont began to take an interest in the enterprise, and a large number of bonds were sent to Paris for sale. By a judicious manipulation of the market, fraudulent representations that the bonds were guaranteed by the National Government, and a forged certificate that they had been admitted to the New York Stock Exchange, which was indispensable to secure their admission to the Bourse, some five million dollars' worth were sold to some "three thousand French peasants." The road then passed into the hands of a receiver, and the bonds are admitted to be worthless unless they are shouldered by Mr. Thomas Scott, who needs the Memphis and El Paso road as part of hi Southern Pacific, which it is needless to say is a great transcontinental railway.