3. A Land Flowing With Milk and Honey (Cont.)

All this sea of grain, flowing out of the country in its primitive form, returns to the Yankee’s pocket as pure gold. This trade alone is sufficient to fill the country with precious metal; but it, moreover, produces it on a large scale, and this production is in the process of increase. During the last ten years, silver production has risen from 17,320,000 dollars to 45,846,100, and gold production from 33,750,000 to 44,880,223 dollars. Experts in the matter assert that during the next decade this production will increase at least four times. From 1870 to 1877, gold mining exceeded silver mining in the state; but since then silver has surpassed gold by almost five million dollars, partly due to the discovery of large silver deposits in Leadville, partly due to decreased gold production in Nevada. Of the precious metals mined, 4,000,000 is annually used for ornaments and arts. In the past year, to domestic production was added about 76,000,000 in imported gold, which together with gold production in the year before last (31,470,262) will constitute an increase of 107,470,262 dollars. If to this we add the amount of silver produced, valued at 37,032,857 dollars, then the entire increase in national wealth in pure coinage will be expressed by the figure of 142,903,119 dollars. However great this quantity is in itself, it is, in essence, insignificant in comparison with what is expected in the future. The great outflow of capital from the east into states lying beyond the Mississippi River will have as its consequence an extraordinary development of the mineral wealth of the west.

Vast riches, spreading across the country with particular force in the last few decades, have accumulated in the hands of individuals, and now America overflows with such wealthy men before whom the legendary rich men of antiquity—the famous King Croesus—would appear almost destitute. By his wealth he long ago entered into proverb, and historians with particular diligence endeavored to determine the magnitude of his fortune. But however much their imagination was fired, they cannot find it possible, given the economic condition of the ancient world, to assign any figure for all of Croesus’s wealth greater than 15–20 million gold rubles, or in American currency from 10 to 15,000,000 dollars. Meanwhile, at the present time in New York there are at least forty men who possess more than he did, and some ten such men whose wealth exceeds Croesus’s by five times. In this way, on the New York stock exchange, the proud king of antiquity would have been entirely overshadowed before the Yankees. The greatest rich man of Rome, in the time of Julius Caesar, was Mark Licinius Crassus, a shrewd speculator renowned for his avarice. His wealth was often calculated by historians, but it was never valued higher than 9–10,000,000 dollars. An Athenian or Roman who could reckon his wealth at approximately one million dollars was already considered an immensely wealthy man; but inhabitants of New York at the present time with a fortune of one million dollars are considered merely well-to-do people and are not ranked among the city’s rich. Such millionaires are so numerous here that they scarcely count when speaking of the city’s financial magnates. In ancient times there were no such fortunes as, for example, those of New York’s tycoons Vanderbilt and Astor, possessing nearly 100,000,000 dollars each; there were not even such fortunes as those counted by the tens not only here, but in Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, San Francisco and other cities of the country. In the course of the present generation the increase in wealth has been monstrous. Some of the largest fortunes have been formed in no more than 40 or 50 years. Half a century ago in New York there was only one man who possessed a fortune of 1,000,000—namely, Astor. Now whole hundreds of persons have far more, and they sooner consider themselves insufficient than wealthy. When in 1841 the banker Girard died, by the property he left behind he was considered the richest man on the entire continent; no one even approached him in monetary matters, and yet all his fortune in value did not exceed 9,000,000 dollars. People who do not yet consider themselves very old remember a time when 100,000 dollars was considered a good fortune, even in large cities, and 10,000 provided independent living in small towns. At the present time 100,000 is considered scarcely sufficient to surround a person with more or less decent comfort, and ten thousand is so trifling that it is shameful even to mention such a fortune. Only somewhere in a remote village would a Yankee girl with a dowry no larger than the latter sum be considered a beauty. It is quite probable that in the course of the next half-century private fortunes will increase in a far greater proportion than they have increased in the same period in the past. In the 30s and 40s of the next century, there will surely be not a few American citizens who will have fortunes of from 150 to 200,000,000 dollars, and at that will complain that they do not have more.

Having this time decided to tax the readers’ patience with figures, I shall carry my tyranny to the end and conclude the picture of the wealth of our trans-Atlantic friends with a general review of the country’s finances. This country, now awash in wealth, was recently on the edge of bankruptcy, namely in the early 1860s, when civil war exhausted all its resources and forced it to sink into billions in debt. According to the last official report, this unfortunate war cost the state 6,189,929,908 dollars. So dearly did the liberation of the Negroes cost the state! Had political passions not mixed in, this sum not only could have bought all the slaves at the highest price that greedy slaveholders could demand, but could have purchased all of Africa itself. It was almost impossible to suppose that the state could ever deal with this monstrous figure. And yet, except for the remaining national debt, this sum has now been cleared from the accounts, namely in the amount of 4,275,000,000 dollars. This constitutes, for the past nineteen years, an average of 225,000,000 in military expenses per year. Such enormous state expenditures led to a boundless issue of paper money and to mad speculative enterprises, which in their turn inevitably had to be followed by a devastating crisis, financial panic, and the poverty and ruin that accompanied it. On August 31, 1865, the entire national debt was 2,756,431,571 dollars with an annual interest of 150,977,696 dollars. Now, after the lapse of 15 years, the total remaining debt is 1,900,000,000 dollars, and the actual interest-bearing debt is 1,723,993,100 with an annual interest of 79,633,981 dollars. Fifteen years ago each inhabitant of the United States had a share of the national debt of 78 dollars 25 cents with an annual interest of 4 dollars 29 cents. No one believed that the country could ever shed this burden, and all thought that this debt, like in England, would be an eternal curse, passing from fathers to children and to future generations. And yet now each inhabitant has a share of the debt half what it was in 1865, and the annual interest per capita is no more than one-third of what it was fifteen years ago. A wonderful change has taken place in trade transactions since that time. For 25 years before the last five-year period, the excess of imports over exports is expressed in the figure of 1,500,000,000 dollars, that is, each year the country purchased from abroad 60,000,000 dollars more than it sold. During this quarter-century there were only three years when exports exceeded imports, but the average excess was no more than 9,000,000. In the last five years, however, the trade balance has finally tilted favorably for our friends. The excess of exports over imports was as follows: in 1876—79,643,481 dollars; 1877—151,152,094; 1878—257,814,234; 1879—264,661,666; for the first half of 1880—167,908,359 dollars. In total for five years 921,179,828, or an average annual trade balance in favor of the country of 185,000,000 dollars.

The balance of trade is in inverse relation to the balance of gold and silver. For 30 years prior to the last year, there was only one year when the country received more gold from abroad than it sent out. This was an exceptional year—at the beginning of the war, namely 1861, when the import of gold and silver exceeded the export by 16,548,531 dollars. In all other years, except the last, the excess in the export of precious metals fluctuated annually from 4 to 90,000,000 dollars, or on average about 40,000,000 per year. In 1880, in the last fiscal year, by contrast, the import of gold and silver exceeded the export by 75,891,391, which constitutes a gain in precious metals for the country of 80,592,832 dollars as compared to the previous year, or a gain of 115,000,000 dollars against the average annual balance of the past thirty years. If we consider that this gain coincided precisely with that year when the paper dollar finally equaled the gold dollar, then the significance of this gain is immeasurably more important than its entire figure. This is the beginning of a strong influx of gold and silver into the country after a prolonged outflow. This means that the Old World’s pockets have loosened, and its gold will flow irresistibly like a stream into the bottomless pocket of the Yankee.

“The stars shine brightest for the fortunate,” said some obscure poet. The truth of this maxim in our mercenary age will perhaps be better understood if instead of “fortunate” we say “wealthy,” and it has perhaps never been vindicated so completely as it has been in recent years for the Yankees awash in riches. Never before has the American theatrical horizon been lit by so many bright stars of the first magnitude as shine now. At the time when in Russia, according to newspaper accounts, famine has affected the stage so lamentably that opera goes with a bound throat and drama limps on crutches, American wealth has drawn from all corners of the world such a multitude of first-class luminaries that even the sky itself scarcely sustains them. Remarkable, indeed, is the attractive force of gold for free servants of the arts. They cling to it like flies to honey, and sometimes like moths to flame. To the latter can be ascribed none other than the very famous creator of the music of the future—Wagner. He pulled off a curious trick. Having heard that Yankees are great lovers of music, and even more possessors of gold, he, in a private letter to a Bostonian, proposed to Americans to purchase him from Europe in eternal possession. Namely, he made such a proposal: if Americans through a subscription should gather one million dollars and pay him, then he would agree to settle in America forever, where he would produce all his operas and devote his remaining life and all his future labors to the great republic. However enticing such a proposal from the great creator of the music of the future might be for ambitious Yankees, Yankees are first of all a practical people, and before entering into a final agreement, they weighed thoroughly the terms and advantage of the proposal and—to the great, surely, chagrin of the great self-seller—found the proposal not entirely favorable to themselves. They calculated that Wagner was already quite an elderly man, 67 years of age, and therefore, according to the ordinary course of nature, could not live, or at least could not maintain the full vigor of his creative genius, beyond 75 years. Thus, for one million dollars he could serve America for only eight years, so that each year of his presence in America for the Yankees would cost 125,000 dollars. By their mercenary reckoning, this would have been quite dear, and they—O barbarians!—rejected the magnanimous proposal of the selfless self-seller. After all, only one million, and besides, the self-seller might perhaps have exerted himself to live a bit longer.

Thus, to the creator of the music of the future was not granted to appear on the American horizon. Instead, all the more grandly swept across it the greatest dramatic luminary of Europe, the intrepid subduer of the diplomatic eagles of the iron chancellor, the wonderful embodiment of all seven liberal arts, the semi-divine Sarah Bernhardt. She arrived in New York at the end of October of last year, having taken a tearful farewell from her beloved France, and having endured a rough ocean crossing. The semi-divine Sarah suffered terribly from seasickness, could not eat at all, and subsisted only on the scent of bouquets that were presented to her each day by ship’s officers and passengers. The enthusiasm and kindness of the reception from the Yankees soon, however, rewarded her for the sufferings she had endured. She was received as a queen; nay, even as a goddess. Several steamships set out to meet her in the open ocean, and upon the very meeting of the ship with its precious cargo, speeches rained down from various delegations, to which Sarah barely managed to respond merci, merci, merci—charmingly displaying her pearly teeth. The Americans are an extremely impressionable people, and the comedy with Sarah Bernhardt was simply hilarious. The entire city for two weeks thought of nothing but Sarah. This was greatly furthered by a clever impresario who chose the semi-divine Sarah as an instrument of his speculation. Theaters in America are simple trading establishments, often run on shares, and therefore speculation on “the greatest stars” is quite the ordinary affair. The proprietor of many theaters here and in other cities—Abbey—decided to “make” money on Sarah and engaged her on extremely expensive terms. He engaged her for one hundred performances, with payment of one thousand dollars for each performance to herself personally, and one thousand dollars as well to her accompanying, self-chosen company, which amounts to a total of 200,000 dollars for the hundred performances, which were distributed between New York and other principal cities of the country. Having paid such an enormous sum, the impresario took every possible measure that the wise science of speculation had at its disposal to produce the greatest possible noise and fanfare for his expensive semi-goddess. Two months before Sarah’s arrival, he sent forth loud and eloquent advertisements, distributed photographic cards of the “queen of drama” through the streets, published an illustrated biography and translation of her repertoire dramas, distributed illustrated programs at every performance filled with anecdotes from Sarah’s life and facsimiles of several of her intimate letters, and wove various anecdotes from Sarah’s life into the performances themselves. All this was the reason that Sarah truly captured the hearts of the Yankees, and when she finally arrived, the Americans rushed to see her as if she were some miraculous rarity. Despite doubled prices, tickets were snapped up eagerly by the public, and in the hands of speculators rose to monstrous figures. The Americans admired the genius of her execution of subtle details in classical drama, but on the whole found her below what the advertisements had promised. But her wardrobe by its richness and variety dazzled the envious eyes of American ladies. To what degree great and valuable is her wardrobe can be understood from the fact that when transporting it through customs, it was necessary to pay 6,000 dollars in duties. Besides performances, Sarah organized special evenings in which she demonstrated her art to the astonished public in painting, sculpture, and modeling, and decided to mold with her own hands a bust of the famous American poet Longfellow, to the no small pleasure of the great old man, who perhaps on his side will perpetuate with a poem the already immortal Sarah.