Year: 1873

The best simile we can find to describe the
week of panic in Wall street is that of simple
confagration. Indeed, it would be almost as
easy to make a map of the burned district as
it was of Chicago or Boston or Baltimore A
few streets in the neighborhood of
Wall and Broad included all that there
was OF real financial danger or actual
financial disaster. A few daring and specu-
lative brokers, and fewer unsound banks and
trust companies, yielded to the flames for
which they had provided the combustibles
but beyond these no business interest suffered,
and trade generally was unaffected. Even the
failure of Howes & Macy yesterday added
little to the excitement and it seemed appar-
ent on every hand that the panic is slowly
dying away. In the end it will scarcely
be regarded as disaster certainly
not national disaster. The great
lesson Of the panic is, that while it caused
fear and alarm almost everywhere, it was in
reality confined to those who created it, and
it is apparent at last that Wall street may be
convulsed to its very foundations without in
volving anything beyond it. Hereafter the
bulls and bears of the street may tear each
other to pieces and they will only be regarded
by solid business men as SO many marionettes
playing their puppet parts for the amusement
of people who delight in witnessing the curl
GUS effects produced by cleverly managed
machinery.


The panic came almost without forewarning,
but it was the result of causes long in active
operation. The war had left us legacy of
shams and false growths. Though it is more
than eight years since Grant took the sword
free from the fatal poison of war specu-
lations and the loose notions of business
and business integrity with which the
people were innoculated And other things
grew out of the war equally hurtful with this
constitutional disease. 1t gave us an inflated
currency, which enticed men into speculations,
certain at some time to create a stringency for
them. Overtrading, consequent upon the
war spirit of speculation, depleted the country
of its gold and made q return to specie
payments impolitic, if not impossible Watered
stocks became common species Of fraud
and rendered shares comparatively worthless,
while their values were unsettled and uncer-
tain. Congress turned the system of pro-
tective tariffs into robbery of the people
without any corresponding returns to the
Treasury. The national banks proved a lumber
ing device, useless as an aid to ordinary busi-
ness, and with circulation entirely dependent
on the national credit. The reckless manage
ment of trust companies and savings banks
was in keeping with the daring spirit of specu-
lation which has just caused the bankers in
Wall street who sowed the wind to reap
the whirlwind. Log rolling in legisa-
ton, both State and national; the constant
recurrence of defalcations by men holding the
most sacred fduciary relations to the
people and the government; the Tammany
frauds; the criminal management of Erie, q
word long synonymous with reproach and
bad faith; the general corruption in and out of
Congress; the manifestations of Cesarism in
the dominant party and the deadening moral
tone among all classes of society, tended to
bring about the crash which well nigh involved
the country in ruin. 1t is remarkable circum-
stance that financial houses antedating the war
have fallen because of the evils generated by
the war; They caught the infection, and,
though they seemed to fatten on the poison,
they were swept away by the plague in the
end. The results have been fearful but they
bring with them promise of purer health
and sweeter strength in the future.


1t would be easy to prophesy that so many
concentric circles Of evil, all tending to de-
struction, would, sooner or later, bring terrible
punishment /; but it was not so easy to foresee
that among 80 much of evil there should be
even more of good. The commercial and in
dustrial interests of the country are sound and
secure. The national credit is firm and un-
shaken. Gold is as stable as in ordinary
times. All these are healthful signs-especially
healthful when Wall street is convulsed with
out convulsing anything beyond it 1t was
almost tradition that when the street is sick
the country is also sick, and at such times it
proclaimed itself very pool of Sloan to the
decrepit Now, however, it is astonished that
it lacked the power to disseminate disease and
that no angel troubled the waters that


it might heal itself. The failures which
followed each other in such rapid
succession were only SO many pebbles thrown
into the pool, which had no effect except to
make ripples on the surface. No imitation of
the currency was needed beyond the wants
of few spectators, and herein it was that
President Grant met the situation with true
wisdom. He gave them greenbaclks for bonds
and refused them everything else but even
here the spectators were unfortunate, for
those who most needed the greenbacks did not
have the bonds. Nothing was left to them except
to go to the wall, and in going they have so
far hurt nobody outside of the whirlpool of
speculation. The great business interests
which centre in the metropolis see that they
are Independent of the men who toss stocks
up and down, and in the future fancy shares