Hoarding.
Men will be hoarding something in times of peculiar uncertainty. One time gold, another time salt, another time flour, another time meat, another time sugar, etc., etc.; and now they are after the favored securities and the five dollar notes and their fractions. They must be ever speculating, and thereby ultimately making things worse for everybody, and of course for themselves. Yet it is a passion so natural that it is idle to rail at it. We may denounce it as we choose, yet it spreads like an epidemic, until the nation becomes involved, and the difficulty is to find those who do not deserve censure. So it was with extortion and speculation at the beginning of the war. A holder of a cargo of salt initiated the era of speculation by demanding $10 per sack, that had cost possibly, all told, $1.75. This advance was considered so enormous, and "such an unjustifiable speculation in the necessaries of life," that it was made the subject of grave complaint to no less a body than the Virginia Convention, by a body of Farmers, who have, sooth to say, since proved that they are as great extortioners as any in Jewry. Yet salt ran up in a few months to such prices that $10 per sack was nothing in comparison to it. At $10 per sack we could now manure our fields with salt.Everything has been speculated in, and everybody that has had anything to sell has yielded, willingly or not, to the circumstances surrounding them and accepted exorbitant prices! A turning point in trade and finance is about to be reached, and the boarding takes a turn. Men are hoarding the currency, strange to say — and even checks upon the Banks are deposited in secret drawers and strong boxes, to be held up till after 1st April, in order to get in payment of them a better currency than that now disbursed. But the Banks have made a move that checkmates these smart hoarders completely. They have given notice that hey will decline paying any undrawn dividends, certificates of deposit, and checks, of any date prior to the 28th March, in anything save the currency now existing, and a now rated and valued ! So that winds up the speculation in checks.
The Confederate small notes, however, will continue to be hoarded. The five dollar notes because they are receivable at par and fundable in Government 4 per cents. till 1st of July; and the notes of smaller denomination because they are not proscribed at all, and will be at par with the better currency until otherwise ordered by Congress. Indeed as they are essential for change, and as the Government derives an immense profit from their destruction, it is probable they will not be called in during the war.
But what avails the hoarding? It is an evil to the community. If small notes are hidden away by avaricious dealers, trade must be obstructed as much to the injury of the seller as the buyer; and if the evil becomes very great, some expedient will arise for the remedy. With reference to the five dollar notes their fate must be the same as that of the larger ones, it is only delayed three months; and the probability is that by their free circulation, together with the smaller notes, retailers would make a great deal more than they can by hoarding them to escape temporarily the full effects of the currency bill. What if the fractional notes be hoarded even unto the end of the war? Is any man sure they will be receivable for taxes? that these notes will have an immunity from the fate of larger ones? that the Government will not conceive it a duty to itself and the people to estimate them when redeemed at the depreciated value at which they will have so long floated through the channels of trade?
The hoarders in these notes will be obliged to meet the fate of hoarders in general, and that is finally to have profited nothing by their hoarding. There is an invisible power that cuts them down to the average, and few men who have flourished with millions will, after this drama is concluded, be able to boast of more than an ordinary profit upon their labor and ventures, while hundreds of thousands will be hopelessly wrecked, never to recover their fortunes.
