MISSISSIPPI BUBBLE SCANDAL IS CLEVERLY PORTRAYED BY NEW BOOK RECENTLY ADDED TO BAKER LIBRARY

Of interest in connection with the present stock market decline is a book in the Baker Library of the Business School which deals with the first big stock inflation in history. It is called "He Groote, Tafereel der Dwaasheid" (The Great Picture of Foolishness) and is a collection of Dutch cartoons and satires on the speculative craze that resulted in John Law's Mississippi Company on the Continent and the South Sea Bubble in England. The book was stated on the title page to be "Printed as a Warning for Posterity, in the fatal year, of many Follies Among the Wise, 1720."

The Mississippi Company was organized by the Scotch economist and gambler, John Law, to run the French finances and monopolize the Mississippi trade. Shares were put on the market at 500 livres and mounted in the course of the craze to 20,000, although French finances were in a bad way and there was no Mississippi trade to speak of. Men sold their all and hastened to Paris, crowding the Rue Quincampoix, the Bourse of that day. Shares even were sold for a company to exploit perpetual motion and "for a design which will hereafter be promulgated." In 1820 the whole thing burst, but John Law had long ago sold out and left the country.

The accompanying picture shows John Law turning the wheel from which Damo Fortune showers her gifts over all mankind. Other pictures show him as Atlas supporting the world, or as Don Quixote tilting at the windmills, or as monopolizing the winds.