Year: 1873

IT is impossible to see, much less expe-
rience, financial panic without an al
most appalling consciousness that new
and terrible form of danger and distress
has been added in comparatively recent
times to the list of those by which human
life is menaced or perplexed. Any one
who stood on Wall street, or in the gal
lery of the Stock Exchange and saw the
mad terror, we might almost say the brute
terror, with which great crowds of men
rushed to and fro, trying to get rid of
their property, almost begging people to
take il from them at any price, could
hardly avoid feeling that new plague
had been sent among men, that there was
an impalpable, invisible force in the air,
robbing them of their wits, of which
philosophy had not as yet dreamt. No
dog was ever so much alarmed by the
clatter of the saucepan as hundreds seemed
to be by the possession of really valuable
and dividend-paying securities; and no
horse was ever more reckless in eXtricat-
ing himself from the debris of a broken
carriage than these swarms of acute and
shrewd traders in divesting themselves of
their possessions. Hundreds must really,
to Judge by their conduct, have been so
confused by terror and anxiety as to be
unable to decide whether they desired to
have, or not have, to be poor or rich. If a
Roman or a man of the Middle Ages had
been suddenly brought into view of the
scene, he would have concluded without
hesitation that ruthless invader was
coming down the island; that his ad-
vanced guard was mOmentarily eX-
pected and that anybody found by
his forces in possession of Western I'm
ion, or Harlem, or Lake Shore, or any
other paving stock or bond, would
be subjected to cruel tortures, if not put
to death. For neither the Roman nor the
Medieval could understand a rich mans
being terrified by anything but armed vio-
lence. Seneca enumerates, as the three
great sources of anxiety in life, the fear of
want, of disease, and of oppression by the
powerful, and he pronounces the last the
greatest If he had seen Wall street
brokers and bankers last week, trying to
get rid of stocks and bonds, he could not,
of course, have supposed that they were
poor, or feared poverty; he would have
| judged from their physical activity that
they were in perfect health, so that he
would have been driven to the conclusion
| that some barbarian host, commanded by
! Sitting Bull or Red Cloud, was entering
the city, and was breathing out threaten
| ings and slaughter against the owners of
personal property. If you had tried to
| explain to him that there was no conquer
or at the gates, that the fear of violence
was almost unknown in our lives, that
each man in that struggling crowd enjoy
ed an amount of security against force in
| all its forms which no Roman Senator
could ever count upon, and that the terror
he witnessed was caused by precisely the
same agency as the flight of an army be-
fore it has been beaten, or, in other words,
by ''panic," he would have gazed at you
| in incredulous amazement. lie would
have said that panic in an army was
caused by the sudden dissolution of the
bonds of discipline, by each soldiers los
ing his confidence that his comrades and
his officers would stand their ground but
these traders, he would have added, are
not subject to discipline; they do not be-
long TO an organization of any kind each
buys and sells himself; he has his prop
erty there in that tin box, and if nobody
is going to rob him, what is frightening
himY Why is he pale and trembling
Why does he run and shout, and weep,
and ask people to give him trifie, only a
tr1e, for all he possesses, and let him got


The only thing which Seneca would
have called wealth is perhaps his wiie's
Jewels, which would not bring a few
thousand dollars. You think his money
must be in the bank, but you go there
with him and find all that he has there is
a page on the ledger bearing his name


with few figures on it, The bank bills
which you see lying about, and which
look a little like money, are not only not
money in the sense Seneca understood
the term, but they do not represent over a
third of what the bank owes to various
people. You go to some safe-deposil
vaults, thinking that it is perhaps there


he keeps his valuables, but all you find is


a mass of papers, signed by Thomas


Smith or John Jones, declaring that he Is