Fayette County herald. [volume] (Washington [Washington Court House], Fayette County, O. [Ohio]) 1860-1???, 1873-10-16

OF here-could not be had at any rate
on ordinary promissory notes and bills
OF exchange. Commercial house after
commercial house, bank after bank
succumbed to the panic. The panic
extended through the entire country.
The failure of the Bank Of PENNSYLVANIA
IN Philadelphia. was followed by that
of the other banks of that city. and bv
| those of Baltimore and of the South
ern Atlantic States generally The
panic was no respector of persons :
/ Merchants, bankers, monied corpora
tions, and manufacturing companies
were swept down without distinction.
Commercial business was everywhere
suspended; the purchase and trans
Aportation of produce entirely ceased:
Hand the climax only was reached when,
kon the 14th of October, the bank sus
Epensions of New York and New Eng
Hand took place, For this almost uni
,versal suspension the banks could not
Iclaim the want of faith among the de
Ipositors to be the cause Despite the
igdistrust that early began to affect the
Ientire country, the depositors stood
well by their guns, and not till the
29th of September did they begin to
be alarmed. For the five successive
weeks preceding, they withdrew less
from the banks each week than the
banks withdrew from them by the de
preston Of loans Although the pan
lic started on the 25th of August,
caused by the contraction of loans,
and was at once carried by the tele
gram with the speed of light TO all
parts of the country, no marked with
Edrawal of deposits by individual de
Ipositors took-p place anywhere till
more than an entire month later Up
to that tithe the depositors presented a
steady front, apparently determined to
sustain the ublic creti5 if anything else
failed. But when October came in, re
sistance ceased at once to be a virtue,
and on the third of that month, q
marked change came over the spirit Of
the depositors. Over four millions
of the deposits were Withdrawn in the
seven days following, and over four
teen millions in the next twenty. The
| 14th ofOctober was the date of the
banks suspension. On the day fol
lowing, Withdrawals ceased and rcsto-
ration began. One Of the causes al
feged by the banks themselves for their
suspension was the sudden withdrawal
of country balances, and for this
the telegraph was responsible. 1t not
only took the news to the country
banks Of the collapse of credit in the
city, but Brought back their orders de
manding their deposits in specie. The
| Clearing House, too, was alleged to
aid in increasing the general collapse,
! It's daily settlements in coin forced
smaller banks into contracting their
loans, into sacrifices of property, and
finally into bankruptcy, Default at
tie Clearing House became the Ban
aaEasss ghost.and appeared at the bank
! Soard OF all the smaller Institutions
The most universally accepted cause
for the panic of 1857 is the violent
contraction of bank loans Immediately
after the oath Of August. And this
was entirely the action of the banks
and they had only themselves to blamo
1t was, too, the expansion Of the
banks previous to the panic that lait
the foundation for the memorable cri
sis of 1857.