Another “ Swindlicate.”

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 296, 9 May 1889, Page 2

Another “ Swindlicate.”

Belfast, May 7.

A syndicate, with a capitalof a million, is being formed in Dublin with the object of controlling the whiskyj’trade to a great extent.

Perhaps no one would care much how stringently the whisky trade were controlled, but this syndicate business is becoming an evil so great that it promises to kill itself The failure of the copper syndicate is now a matter of history, and it has caused a great deal of attention to be directed to the subject of syndicates. Before the failure, an excellent article of a prophetic nature appeared in an English newspaper, from which we make the following extract Now, why do unmistakably able and experienced men, men who have succeeded i i business, make blunders of this kind,-and risk splendid fortunes in-specula-tions almost palpably impossible ? That they should buy up perishable articles of prime necessity, we can understand, for they are sure of an unending market, and therefore of a long time to “get out;’’ but that they should buy up a perishable article, not of absolute necessity except for some limited electrical requirements, and thia in the face of an over-supply which was ruining little producers, ana then, in the teeth of statistics, should buy more and more copper, and make longer ana longer contracts, this is to mere observers a real intellectual puzzle. We shall be told that with some of them the compelling force was vanity, which is as strong with some business men as with litterateurs and poets ; that with others it was the well known dislike to make a loss and be done with the matter; and with others, positive, inability to face their bankers and other lenders of the necessary cash. But there must be some reason beyond all this. Our contention, and, right or wrong, it is that of persons far more qualified than ourselves, is that at one time everybody In the speculation could have got out with a moderate profit, and that the amazing thing is not the original operation—which had only this fault, that it was too big for any ordinary knowledge even of one trade — but the later undertakings. We cannot but suspect that cool business men -get intoxicated with gain, even if it is only visible on paper; that they think anything possible, that they lose the sense of proportion, and that the impulse which so often destroys conquerors comes upon them also. Their brains oease to act steadily. We see that in small individuals every day, and the big men have no exemption from human qualifi nation, It it not at all likely that any man at the centra of ths copper speculation was more qualified to conduct It than Napoleon was to conduct his later wars. Ho could not know his maps batter, or have the essential figures more perfectly at his fingers' ends. If at wo all know th it Ntpoleon was beaten, and not wholly by Providence or fatal that success had, in some way which none of us quite understand, but which all of us instinctively compare to drunkenness, impaired his mental power. We do not aee why a speculator should not suffer from deterioration of brain or morals, or both, as well as Napoleon; and believe that it happens muon oftaner than is st all suspected. At a point in his career, the groat finandler has, in fact, no judgment, la subject to the mania which infects speculators in Mississippi or South Sea stock, and must land all who follow him in greater or lees loss. That, and not ill-intent, is our own explanation of M. de Lesaeps,' whose “Campaign of Russia " was the Panama Canal; audit is one which our readers will do well to recollect, for the special peculiarity of the speculation of to day is the readiness to follow successful and wealthy individuals into anything, however wild, or however demonstrably certain to end in final disaster.