Business Prospects For The Summer

Some of the timid ones are fearful of a general stagnation of business after the first of May. They reason that the provisions of the tax bill are soon to go into effect on articles manufactured after that time, and that dealers of every kind are laying in large stocks in anticipation. Consequently business will come to a dead stand after the tax bill is in force. But such a conclusion is a very fallacious one. It must be remembered that people will need food to eat and clothes to wear, taxes or no taxes; and everybody has been living for the past year on the most economical plan, and under the general buoyancy of feeling occasioned by our recent victories, they will be more disposed to spend money than they have for sometime past, unless – which is not likely – we meet with some sudden and severe reverses. This will make the retail trade lively, and the small traders will soon dispose of the stock they may have accumulated in anticipation of the tax. – They in turn will call on the wholesale merchants again, and thus the circuit will be continued, the people will pass from the untaxed into the taxed condition of things, as easily and unconsciously as a river glides into the ocean, and there will be no break in the stream of commercial intercourse. And again; the trade with the South will soon be very considerable. The inhabitants of Kentucky and Tennessee are already renewing their business connection with the North, and we are among those who believe the rebellion will soon be so thoroughly put down that the whole South will be opened to trade before another winter. – After so long a dearth of the necessities, not to say luxuries of life, the South will do a large business in northern merchandise; and recent events in Virginia, where the federal arms have advanced, show that there is still money in the South, which has escaped the grasp of Jeff. Davis, and which will be paid for northern wares.

To those who are still more fearful, and in addition to a general stagnation of business are anticipating the speedy bankruptcy of the government and the people, on account of the large expenditures of war purposes, it may be comforting to be reminded that the expenses of Great Britain for the last year, and in a time of peace, were nearly a million and a quarter dollars a day. This is nearly as much as our expenditures in a time of war; and yet who talks of the English nation becoming bankrupt! If England can safely weather such a tax as this annually, surely we can pay the expenses of this war for the Union, and pay it without groaning, a hundred cents on the dollar. Let the nervous, and the timid, and the speculating, croak on about bankruptcy and ruin. – The nation is not yet insolvent and is not likely to be. We have passed through the hardest financial period, and with the general hope and confidence in the success of our efforts to crush out the rebellion, business must revive. It is impossible that it should be otherwise; for even the tax bill, heavy as it is, is not weighty enough to crush the buoyancy and enthusiasm of the people. – {Springfield Republican.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, May 3, 1862, p. 1