powers, and they ask each capitalist to invest not on the intrinsic strength of the plan, but because every body else to is investing.
Such delusions are most fertile in an age of financial ignorance. There has been too large a development of educated common-sense, too much of a study of the principles that underlie the making of money, and, above all, the press is too enlightened and powerful to permit them to beggar whole nations as they once did. The financial crises of the present day are short-lived and confined to commercial centres, but three centuries ago they ruined whole peoples. And what singular speculations they were! Of all things in the world in which to make a corner, to excite a speculation, to be puffed by brokers, it would seem as if flowers would be the last. But that a whole nation should grow mad over bulbs, that the industry of a people should be turned aside from the pursuits of agriculture to that of horticulture, and that the mania should spread from the phlegmatic Dutchman to the phlegmatic Englishman, seems almost incredible. Yet in the beginning of the seventeenth century the desire for tulips had so spread over Europe that no wealthy man considered his garden perfect without his rare collection of tulips. From the aristocracy the rage spread to the middle and the agricultural classes, and merchants and shop-keepers began to vie with each other in the rarity of their flowers and in the prices paid for them. A trader at Haarlem was actually known to pay half his fortune for a single root, not from any expectation of profit in its propagation, but to keep it in his conservatory for the admiration of his acquaintances.
The first tulip in Europe was seen in Augsburg, in Germany, in 1559, and was imported from Constantinople, where it had long been a favorite. Ten or eleven years after this the plant was in great demand in Holland and Germany. Wealthy burghers of Amsterdam sent direct to Constantinople for their precious bulbs, and paid extravagant prices for them. The first roots planted in England were brought from Vienna in the year 1600, and were considered a great rarity. For thirty years tulips continued to grow in reputation. One would suppose there must have been some virtue in this flower that made it so valuable in the eyes of so prudent a people as the Dutch. Yet it has neither the beauty or the perfume of the violet nor the fragrance of the rose. It hardly possesses the beauty of the humble sweet-pea. Its only recommendation is its aristocratic stateliness, and this should hardly have commended it to the only democratic republic on the globe. But it is by no means the first time that fashion has turned ugliness into beauty and rarity into wealth.
In 1634 the rage for tulips among the Dutch was so great that the ordinary industry of the country was neglected, and the whole people turned to the production of tulips. As this mania increased, prices increased with it, until in 1635 merchants were known to have spent $40,000 in the purchase of forty tulips. At this time each species was sold by weight. A tulip of the kind known as the Admiral Lietkin, and weighing 400 grains, would sell for $1800; the Admiral Von der Eycke, weighing 450 grains, was worth $500; a Viceroy of 400 grains would bring $1200. Most precious of all, a Semper Augustus, weighing only 200 grains, was thought to be cheap at $2200. This last species was much sought after, and even an inferior plant would readily sell for $800. When this species was first known, in 1636, there were only two roots of it in Holland, and those not of the best. One belonged to a dealer in Amsterdam, and the other was owned in Haarlem. So anxious were the purchasers for this new variety that one person offered twelve acres of valuable building land for the Haarlem tulip. That of Amsterdam was sold for $1840, a new carriage, two gray horses, and a complete suit of harness. As a specimen of the value of these bulbs we give the actual copy of a bill of sale of certain articles given in exchange for one single root of the Viceroy species:
| Two lasts of wheat | $179 |
| Two lasts of rye | 223 |
| Four fat oxen | 192 |
| Eight fat swine | 96 |
| Twelve fat sheep | 48 |
| Two hogsheads wine | 28 |
| Four tuns beer | 13 |
| Two tons butter | 77 |
| One thousand pounds cheese | 48 |
| One bed, complete | 40 |
| One suit clothes | 32 |
| One silver cup | 24 |
| $1000 |
Since that day tulips have declined in value, but wine, butter, and cheese have decidedly advanced.
Strangers who came for the first time into Holland were wholly unable to comprehend the great mania that speared among the people. One wealthy merchant, who prided himself not a little on his magnificent tulip bed, and on the new flowers he was expecting to grow the coming year, received a call one morning early from a sailor, who told him that a ship of his had just arrived, and that he was sent to give him the news. The glad merchant immediately went to the back of his store, selected a nice red herring, and gave it to the sailor for his breakfast. The sailor loved herring much, and onion more; and having just arrived from a foreign voyage, his appetite for vegetables was proportionately sharpened. Seeing a small pile of onions, as he supposed, lying on the merchant's counter, he slyly seized his opportunity, took the top onion, and deposited it in
