Men Were Not Broken Hearted, Nor Were They Even
Melancholy; But They Were Simply Ruined.
That is nothing in the
States, so long as the ruined man has the means left to him of
Supplying his daily wants till he can start himself again in life.
It is almost the normal condition of the American man in business;
and therefore I am inclined to think that when this war is over, and
things begin to settle themselves into new grooves, commerce will
recover herself more quickly there than she would do among any other
people. It is so common a thing to hear of an enterprise that has
never paid a dollar of interest on the original outlay - of hotels,
canals, railroads, banks, blocks of houses, etc. that never paid
even in the happy days of peace - that one is tempted to disregard
the absence of dividends, and to believe that such a trifling
accident will not act as any check on future speculation. In no
country has pecuniary ruin been so common as in the States; but then
in no country is pecuniary ruin so little ruinous. "We are a
recuperative people," a west-country gentleman once said to me. I
doubted the propriety of his word, but I acknowledged the truth of
his assertion.
Pittsburg and Alleghany - which latter is a town similar in its
nature to Pittsburg, on the other side of the river of the same
name - regard themselves as places apart; but they are in effect one
and the same city. They live under the same blanket of soot, which
is woven by the joint efforts of the two places. Their united
population is 135,000, of which Alleghany owns about 50,000. The
industry of the towns is of that sort which arises from a union of
coal and iron in the vicinity. The Pennsylvanian coal fields are
the most prolific in the Union; and Pittsburg is therefore great,
exactly as Merthyr-Tydvil and Birmingham are great. But the
foundery work at Pittsburg is more nearly allied to the heavy, rough
works of the Welsh coal metropolis than to the finish and polish of
Birmingham.
"Why cannot you consume your own smoke?" I asked a gentleman there.
"Fuel is so cheap that it would not pay," he answered. His idea of
the advantage of consuming smoke was confined to the question of its
paying as a simple operation in itself. The consequent cleanliness
and improvement in the atmosphere had not entered into his
calculations. Any such result might be a fortuitous benefit, but
was not of sufficient importance to make any effort in that
direction expedient on its own account. "Coal was burned," he said,
"in the founderies at something less than two dollars a ton; while
that was the case, it could not answer the purpose of any iron-
founder to put up an apparatus for the consumption of smoke?" I did
not pursue the argument any further, as I perceived that we were
looking at the matter from two different points of view.
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