Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - XII. Visit in Minnesota and Philadelphia—Conversation with Jay Cooke—The Crisis of 1873—Negotiations in Holland—Draining of a Lake in Skåne—Icelandic Colony in Manitoba—Return to America
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has never been proofread. / Denna sida har aldrig korrekturlästs.
IS 134.2
Story of an Emigrant.
company, George L. Becker, and its land commissioner,
Herman E. Trott, had previously visited Holland on the
same business. But all our representations were in vain.
The Dutch were stubborn, and would not give out another
dollar. "It is of 110 use," they said, "to throw away a
small sum of good money after a large sum of bad money,
for it is all lost, anyway." The crisis of 1873 aggravated
the situation still more, for this company, and its bonds
were continually depreciating. The St. Paul Pacific
railroad had pledged itself to accept its own bonds at par in
payment for its land, and as I and others had sold hundreds
of thousands of acres of this land to new settlers on credit,
I tried, and also succeeded, in perfecting an arrangement
with the Hollanders, by which the new settlers who had
purchased land on crcdit, were allowed to buy on time the
bonds of the company, at about twenty-five per cent, of
their face value, and apply the same, without discount, on
their debts for the land, a method of liquidation that was
highly advantageous to the settlers. As soon as this was
o . o
found out in Minnesota, bankers and other capitalists sent
agents to Holland to make similar arrangements, and, in
the course of the next three years, a brisk business was done
iji exchanging those bonds for land, by which thousands of
settlers saved large sums of money, and a number of bankers
and agents made small fortunes. If I had returned to
Minnesota immediately I could have realized a very handsome profit
by this arrangement; but I had made agreements which
compelled me to stay in Sweden some length of time, and I left
this business in the hands of my former partner, Consul
Sahlgaard, and the St. Paul Savings Bank. But they did
not grasp the importance of this matter until it was too
late, and the lion’s share of the profits went to new parties,
who thus reaped the benefit of my plans, as is often the case
under such circumstances.
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
