The E-Sylum:  Volume 6, Number 23, June 8, 2003, Article 17

CHEATING RASCALS

  Dave Ginsburg writes: "I'm a new subscriber to the E-Sylum
  and I've been bringing myself up to speed by reading the
  archived issues on-line, which I've greatly enjoyed.

  Henry Bergos encouraged me to join the NBS a year or two
  ago, just after he sold me Lester Merkin's copy of Walter
  Breen's pamphlet on "United States Eagles" published by
  Hewitt Brothers, and I've finally gotten around to doing so.
  (Just for the record, the pamphlet has a book plate, but no
  marginalia.)

  I haven't seen anyone reply to this, so I thought I'd comment
  on Joel Orosz' note from the 12/23/01 E-Sylum in which
  he refers to Scrooge's poor opinion of the soundness of
  American financial obligations with these quotes from Chapter
  One of "The House of Morgan" by Ron Chernow:

  "When Baltimore merchant George Peabody sailed for
  London in 1835, the world was in the throes of a debt crises.
  The defaulting governments weren't obscure Balkan nations
  or South American republics but American states.  The
  United States had succumbed to a craze for building railroads,
  canals, and turnpikes, all backed by state credit.  Now
  Maryland legislators, with the bravado of the ruined, threatened
  to join other states in skipping interest payments on their
  bonds, which were largely marketed in London."

  Later, Chernow states:  "During the severe depression of the
  early 1840s - a decade dubbed the Hungry Forties - state
  debt plunged to fifty cents on the dollar.  The worst came
  when five American states - Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Indiana,
  Arkansas, and Michigan - and the Florida territory defaulted
  on their interest payments."

  "British investors cursed America as a land of cheats, rascals,
  and ingrates.  State defaults also tainted federal credit, and
  when Washington sent Treasury agents to Europe in 1842,
  James de Rothschild thundered, "Tell them you have seen
  the man who is at the head of the finances of Europe, and that
  he has told you that they cannot borrow a dollar.  Not a dollar."

  Clergyman Sydney Smith sneered at the American "mob"
  and said that whenever he met a Pennsylvanian at a London
  dinner, he felt "a disposition to seize and divide him. . . .  How
  such a man can set himself down at an English table without
  feeling that he owes two or three pounds to every man in the
  company, I am at a loss to conceive, he has no more right to
  eat with honest men than a leper has to eat with clean men."

  Even Charles Dickens couldn't resist a jab, portraying a
  nightmare in which Scrooge's solid British assets are transformed
  into "a mere United States' security.""

  As you can see, Dickens wasn't the only person at the time with
  a poor opinion of US securities, and not without good reason!

  Keep the great E-Sylums coming!"

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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