Reviewed for EH.NET by Frank Steindl, Department of Economics, Oklahoma State University. His point of reference and departure is Oliver Mitchell Wenworth Sprague's 1910 classic History of Crises under the National Banking System . The allusion to the Gilded Age derives from the title and tenor of Mark Twain and Charles Warner's tome of the first of the banking panics, a period of gross materialism and blatant political corruption during the 1870s. But more on this later. First, let us tour the book, and a fascinating tour it is.
Wicker seeks to do three things.
Secondly, there nonetheless are gaps, and these Wicker seeks to fill by going beyond Sprague in garnering evidence on the number of bank failures and the location of runs on banks, particularly outside New York. His evidence is based in large part on the financial publication, Bradstreet's . Lastly, he concentrates on the NYCH and its vacillating and finally inept role. Another is his attempt to detect whether the financial panics had any real effects. The Balke-Gordon and Romer GNP data are the basic materials.