BLACK TULIPS

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 23 February 1929, Page 9

BLACK TULIPS

QOMMERCIAB prosperity and the concentration of a nation’s energies upon trade and nroney-niaking lias at all times—but more especially during tlie period when men did not fully understand the workings of a credit system—led to mad outbursts of speculation, writes a correspondent of ‘-‘The Outline.” England had its South Sea bubble, France its Mississippi scheme. When Holland was infected with the spirit of gambling, the madness was' not centred upon stocks or shares but, appropriately enough, upon the flower wo most associate with. Holland—-the tulip. It did not matter that, at the time, Holland was engaged in a costly war; the Dutch thought only of the precious bulbs whose flowers they loved so much and which would bring them in such a large profit. Haarldm, still the capital of -the. tulip country, was the centre of the mad speculation in which hundreds of pounds were paid for a single bulb. There was one, called ‘ ‘ Semper Augusta, ” which fetched over a thousand pounds, and then fell to five pounds, .when the gambling was suppressed. Dumas has told the whole wild story vividly in his romance, “The Black Tulip.” The novel is founded upon fact, for Haarlem offered a prize of on c hundred thousand florious for an absolutely black flower, now almost as common as the black swan, itself regarded by the ancients as a symbol of impossibility _ * In the end the madness subsided, under an official ban, but those who visit the amazingly beautiful tulip fields

WHEN HOIzLANI) GAMBEED

ii of Holland to-day may recall the time - when tulips were the subject of one of i the most extraordinary chapters in the ■ history of finance. In modern Holland the traveller will ; find constant reminders of the millen- • nial struggle of the people against the : sea, which is, perhaps, the greatest of . all the epic stories in European history. The dunes and sea dykes rise to-day forty feet above the waters of the r North Sea; behind them, under sealevel, are the polders, as the fields re- • claimed from the sea are called. Ever : since the sixteenth century'this gigantic works of reclamation has been going on, and is now being extended to the task of draining the Zuider Zee. ■ But apart from this particular area won by the sea from the land, the' waters have in historical times wrested 400,000 acres and man has restored over a million. When the Zuider Zee is won back, at the end of thirty years’ labour, the greatest of all Dutch victories will have been won, cheaply, at the cost of twenty millions sterling. Dykes,, polders, canals, and windmills —these are- the distinctive features of the Dutch landscape. The tall houses with their stepped gables, the town I halls with their fantistic spires ana vows of dormer windows—these give their character !<to the cities. The people are a stolid, good-natured, and comely race. But Holland is Something ! more than a land of quaint survivals, I It is the home of a-vigorous and individual people, proud of the great- past, ' and convinced that they still have a part to play in the world.