Achieving Prosperity - Ultimate Collection. Thorstein Veblen
fact the transaction was not real, it was a stock gambling one; neither party owned tulips or meant to, or expected the other to; and the whole was a pure game of chance or skill, to see which should win and which should lose that $5,000 at the end of three days. When the time came, the affair was settled, still without any tulips, by the loser paying the difference to the winner, exactly as one loses what the other wins at a game of poker or faro. Of course if you can set afloat a smart lie after making your bargain, such as will send prices up or down as your profit requires, you make money by it, just as stock gamblers do every day in New York, London, Paris, and other Christian commercial cities.
While this monstrous Dutch gambling fury lasted, money was plenty, everybody felt rich and Holland was in a whiz of windy delight. After about three years of fool’s paradise, people began to reflect that the shuttlecock could not be knocked about in the air forever, and that when it came down somebody would be hurt. So first one and then another began quietly to sell out and quit the game, without buying in again. This cautious infection quickly spread like a pestilence, as it always does in such cases, and became a perfect panic or fright. All at once, as it were, rich people all over Holland found themselves with nothing in the world except a pocket full or a garden-bed full of flower roots that nobody would buy and that were not good to eat, and would not have made more than one tureen of soup if they were.
Of course this state of things caused innumerable bankruptcies, quarrels, and refusals to complete bargains, everywhere. The government and the courts were appealed to, but with Dutch good sense they refused to enforce gambling transactions, and though the cure was very severe because very sudden, they preferred to let “the bottom drop out” of the whole affair at once. So it did. Almost everybody was either ruined or impoverished. The very few who had kept any or all of their gains by selling out in season, remained so far rich. And the vast actual business interests of Holland received a damaging check, from which it took many years to recover.
There were some curious incidents in the course of the tulipomania. They have been told before, but they are worth telling again, as the poet says, “To point the moral or adorn the tale.”
A sailor brought to a rich Dutch merchant news of the safe arrival of a very valuable cargo from the Levant. The old hunks rewarded the mariner for his good tidings with one red herring for breakfast. Now Ben Bolt (if that was his name—perhaps as he was a Dutchman it was something like Benje Boltje) was very fond of onions, and spying one on the counter as he went out of the store, he slipped it into his pocket, and strolling back to the wharf, sat down to an odoriferous breakfast of onions and herring. He munched away without finding anything unusual in the flavor, until just as he was through, down came Mr. Merchant, tearing along like a madman at the head of an excited procession of clerks, and flying upon the luckless son of Neptune, demanded what he had carried off besides his herring?
“An onion that I found on the counter.”
“Where is it? Give it back instantly!”
“Just ate it up with my herring, mynheer.”
Wretched merchant! In a fury of useless grief he apprised the sailor that his sacrilegious back teeth had demolished a Semper Augustus valuable enough, explained the unhappy old fellow, to have feasted the Prince of Orange and the Stadtholder’s whole court. “Thieves!” he cried out—“Seize the rascal!” So they did seize him, and he was actually tried, condemned and imprisoned for some months, all of which however did not bring back the tulip root. It is a question after all in my mind, whether that sailor was really as green as he pretended, and whether he did not know very well what he was taking. It would have been just like a reckless seaman’s trick to eat up the old miser’s twelve hundred dollar root, to teach him not to give such stingy gifts next time.
An English traveller, very fond of botany, was one day in the conservatory of a rich Dutchman, when he saw a strange bulb lying on a shelf. With that extreme coolness and selfishness which too many travellers have exercised, what does he do but take out his penknife and carefully dissect it, peeling off the outer coats, and quartering the innermost part, making all the time a great many wise observations on the phenomena of the strange new root. In came the Dutchman all at once, and seeing what was going on, he asked the Englishman, with rage in his eyes, but with a low bow and that sort of restrained formal civility which sometimes covers the most furious anger, if he knew what he was about?
“Peeling a very curious onion,” answered Mr. Traveller, as calmly as if one had a perfect right to destroy other people’s property to gratify his own curiosity.
“One hundred thousand devils!” burst out the Dutchman, expressing the extent of his anger by the number of evil spirits he invoked—“It is an Admiral van der Eyck!”
“Indeed?” remarked the scientific traveller, “thank you. Are there a good many of these admirals in your country?” and he drew forth his note book to write down the little fact.
“Death and the devil!” swore the enraged Dutchman again—“come before the Syndic and you shall find out all about it!” So he collared the astounded onion-peeler, and despite all he could say, dragged him straightway before the magistrate, where his scientific zeal suffered a dreadful quencher in the shape of an affidavit that the “onion” was worth four thousand florins—about $1600—and in the immediate judgment of the Court, which “considered” that the prisoner be forthwith clapt into jail until he should give security for the amount. He had to do so accordingly, and doubtless all his life retained a distaste for Dutchmen and Dutch onions.
These stories about such monstrous valuations of flower roots recall to my mind another anecdote which I shall tell, not because it has anything to do with tulips, but because it is about a Dutchman, and shows in striking contrast an equally low valuation of human life. It is this. Once, in time of peace, an English and a Dutch Admiral met at sea, each in his flag ship, and for some reason or other exchanged complimentary salutes. By accident, one of the Englishman’s guns was shotted and misdirected, and killed one of the Dutch crew. On hearing the fact the Englishman at once manned a boat and went to apologize, to inquire about the poor fellow’s family and to send them some money, provide for the funeral, etc., etc., as a kind hearted man would naturally do. But the Dutch commander, on meeting him at the quarter-deck, and learning his errand, at once put all his kindly intentions completely one side, saying in imperfect English:
“It’sh no matter, it’sh no matter—dere’s blaanty more Tutchmen in Holland!”
CHAPTER XXVI.
JOHN BULL’S GREAT MONEY HUMBUG.—THE SOUTH SEA BUBBLE IN 1720.
The “South Sea Bubble” is one of the most startling lessons which history gives us of the ease with which the most monstrous, and absurd, and wicked humbugs can be crammed down the throat of poor human nature. It ought also to be a useful warning of the folly of mere “speculation,” as compared with real “business undertakings.” The history of the South Sea Bubble has been told, before, but it is too prominent a case to be entirely passed over. It occupied a period of about eight months, from February 1, 1720, to the end of the following September. It was an unreasonable expansion of the value of the stock of the “South Sea Company.” This Company was formed in 1711; its stock was at first about $30,000,000, subscribed by the public and handed over by the corporators to Government to meet certain troublesome public debts. In return, Government guaranteed the stockholders a dividend of six per cent., and gave the Company sundry permanent important duties and a monopoly of all trade to the South Pacific, or “South Sea.” This matter went on with fair success as a money enterprise, until the birth of the “Bubble,” which was as follows:—In the end of January, 1720, probably in consequence of catching infection from “Law’s Mississippi Scheme” in France, the South Sea Company and the Bank of England made competing propositions to the English Government, to repeat the original South Sea Company financiering plan on a larger scale. The proposition of the Company, which was accepted by Government, was: to assume as before the whole public debt, now amounting to over one hundred and fifty