The Industrial Revolution

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Multivolume work

Identifikator:: 1895264332

Document type:: Multivolume work

Author:: Myers, Gustavus

Title:: Geschichte der großen amerikanischen Vermögen

Place of publication:: Berlin

Publisher:: Fischer

Year of publication:: 1916 -

Collection:: Economics Books

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Volume

Identifikator:: 1895265185

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-241581

Document type:: Volume

Author:: Myers, Gustavus http://d-nb.info/gnd/10190651X

Title:: Geschichte der großen amerikanischen Vermögen

Volume count:: Bd. 2

Place of publication:: Berlin

Publisher:: Fischer

Year of publication:: 1916

Scope:: S. [415] - 800

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

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Chapter

Document type:: Multivolume work

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Fünfzehntes Kapitel. Das Carnegie-Vermögen

Collection:: Economics Books

A.D. 1689 —1776. and bubble companies were formed PARLIAMENTARY COLBERTISM These violent fluctuations must have given great oppor- tunities to stockbrokers; and one of the reasons why the new finance was condemned was because of the stimulus it gave to this gambling spirit; it seemed to divert men from honest enterprise, and encouraged the wildest specu- lation’. In some cases, indeed, Government played for this gambling spirit; the great financial expedient, in the year before the Bank of England was floated, was a lottery; a sum of money was raised, on all of which interest was to be paid in the usual way, but every fortieth share was to be entitled in addition to an annuity of a larger or smaller amount lasting for life. This speculative element proved a great attraction, and it may have been the cheapest way of floating the loan, extravagant as the terms appear; but it was severely condemned at the time, because of the sountenance which Government gave to the gambling spirit. This spirit showed itself in its most startling fashion, in 1720, when an extraordinary number of wild projects were floated?; and the shares of other undertakings were quoted at fancy prices. The public were not accurately informed as to the possible profits in various lines of trade. They formed the wildest estimates of the gain that might accrue from certain political concessions or from new industrial ‘nventions. Of these schemes the most celebrated was the 4.8 1 Compare Sir John Barnard's speech during the debate on the Bill to prevent he “infamous practice’ of Stock-jobbing. Parl. Hust, 1x. 54. 15 W.and M.c. 7, § 89. 8 There had been many such schemes before. Defoe, writing in 1697, complains »f them bitterly. * There are and that too many, fair pretences of fine Discoveries, sew Inventions, Engines and I know not what, which being advanc’d in Notion, and talk’d up to great things to be perform’d when such and such sums of Money shall be advanc'd, and sach and such Engines are made, have rais'd the Fancies of Credulous People to such height, that meerly on the shadow of Expectation, they have form’d Companies, chose Committees, appointed Officers, Shares and Books, rais’d great Stocks, and cri’d up an empty Notion to that degree that People have been betray’d to part with their Money for Shares in a New-Nothing and when the Inventors have earri’d on the test till they have sold all their own Interest they leave the Cloud to vanish of itself, and the poor Purchasers to Quarrel with one another, and go to Law about Settlements, Transferrings, and some Bone or other thrown among ‘em by the Subtlety of the Author to lay the blame of the Miscarriage upon themselves....If I should name Linnen-Manufactures, Saltpeter- Works, Copper Mines, Diving Engines, Dipping and the like for instances of this = should I believe do no wrong to Truth.” Essay on Projects, pp. 11—13.

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