Hi Bonnie! Some reading about events of 1720 (from MacKay's "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds") Very long post--no URL for this excerpt--please hit "NEXT" if bored. This does sound somewhat like the recent launchings of new Internet companies:
In the mean time, innumerable joint-stock companies started up everywhere. They soon received the name of Bubbles, the most apropriate that imagination could devise. The populace are often most happy in the nicknames they employ. None could be more apt than that of Bubbles. Some of them lasted for a week, or a fortnight, and were no more heard of, while others could not even live out that short span of existence. Every evening produced new schemes, and every morning new projects. The highest of the aristocracy were as eager in this hot pursuit of gain as the most plodding jobber in Cornhill. The Prince of Wales became governor of one company, and is said to have cleared 40,000 pounds by his speculations. [Coxe's Walpole, Correspondence between Mr. Secretary Craggs and Earl Stanhope.] The Duke of Bridgewater started a scheme for the improvement of London and Westminster, and the Duke of Chandos another. There were nearly a hundred different projects, each more extravagant and deceptive than the other. To use the words of the "Political State," they were "set on foot and promoted by crafty knaves, then pursued by multitudes of covetous fools, and at last appeared to be, in effect, what their vulgar appellation denoted them to be -- bubbles and mere cheats." It was computed that near one million and a half sterling was won and lost by these unwarrantable practices, to the impoverishment of many a fool, and the enriching of many a rogue.
Some of these schemes were plausible enough, and, had they been
undertaken at a time when the public mind was unexcited, might have
been pursued with advantage to all concerned. But they were
established merely with the view of raising the shares in the market.
The projectors took the first opportunity of a rise to sell out, and
next morning the scheme was at an end. Maitland, in his History of
London, gravely informs us, that one of the projects which received
great encouragement, was for the establishment of a company "to make
deal-boards out of saw-dust." This is, no doubt, intended as a joke;
but there is abundance of evidence to show that dozens of schemes
hardly a whir more reasonable, lived their little day, ruining
hundreds ere they fell. One of them was for a wheel for perpetual
motion -- capital, one million; another was "for encouraging the reed
of horses in England, and improving of glebe and church lands, and
repairing and rebuilding parsonage and vicarage houses." Why the
clergy, who were so mainly interested in the latter clause, should
have taken so much interest in the first, is only to be explained on
the supposition that the scheme was projected by a knot of the
foxhunting parsons, once so common in England. The shares of this
company were rapidly subscribed for. But the most absurd and
preposterous of all, and which showed, more completely than any other, the utter madness of the people, was one, started by an unknown adventurer, entitled "company for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is." Were not the fact stated by scores of credible witnesses, it would be impossible to believe that any person could have been duped by such a project. The man of genius who essayed this bold and successful inroad upon public credulity, merely stated in his prospectus that the required capital was half a million, in five thousand shares of 100 pounds each, deposit 2 pounds per share. Each subscriber, paying his deposit, would be entitled to 100 pounds per annum per share. How this immense profit was to be obtained, he did not condescend to inform them at that time, but promised, that in a month full particulars should be duly announced, and a call made for the remaining 98 pounds of the subscription. Next morning, at nine o'clock, this great man opened an office in Cornhill. Crowds of people beset his door, and when he shut up at three o'clock, he found that no less than one thousand shares had been subscribed for, and the deposits paid. He was thus, in five hours, the winner of 2,000 pounds. He was philosopher enough to be contented with his venture, and set off the same evening for the Continent. He was never heard of again.
Well might Swift exclaim, comparing Change Alley to a gulf in the
South Sea,--
Subscribers here by thousands float,
And jostle one another down,
Each paddling in his leaky boat,
And here they fish for gold, and drown.
Now buried in the depths below,
Now mounted up to heaven again,
They reel and stagger to and fro,
At their wit's end, like drunken men
Meantime, secure on Garraway cliffs,
A savage race, by shipwrecks fed,
Lie waiting for the foundered skiffs,
And strip the bodies of the dead.
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