here formerly the
banker had lent money on local security, now he gave credit to vast
enterprises far away. New inventions or industrial processes brought
on new speculations. This new demand for capital made necessary a new
system of credits, which was erected at first, as the recurring panics
disclosed, on sand, but gradually, through costly experience, on a more
stable foundation.

The economic and industrial development of the time demanded not only
new money and credit but new men. A new type of executive was wanted,
and he soon appeared to satisfy the need. Neither a capitalist nor a
merchant, he combined in some degree the functions of both, added to
them the greater function of industrial manager, and received from great
business concerns a high premium for his talent and foresight. This
Captain of Industry, as he has been called, is the foremost figure of
the period, the hero of the industrial drama.

But much of what is admirable in that generation of nation builders is
obscured by the industrial anarchy which prevailed. Everybody was for
himself--and the devil was busy harvesting the hindmost. There were
"rate-wars," "cut-rate sales," secret intrigues, and rebates; and there
were subterranean passages--some, indeed, scarcely under the surface--to
council chambers, executive mansions, and Congress. There were extreme
fluctuations of industry; prosperity was either at a very high level or
depression at a very low one. Prosperity would bring on an expansion of
credits, a rise in prices, higher cost of living, strikes and boycotts
for higher wages; then depression would follow with the shutdown and
that most distressing of social diseases, unemployment. During the panic
of 1873-74 many thousands of men marched the streets crying earnestly
for work.

Between the panics, strikes became a part of the economic routine of
the country. They were expected, just as pay days and legal holidays
are expected. Now for the first time came strikes that can only
be characterized as stupendous. They were not mere slight economic
disturbances; they were veritable industrial earthquakes. In 1873
the coal miners of Pennsylvania, resenting the truck system and the
miserable housing which the mine owners forced upon them, struck by the
tens of thousands. In Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Maryland, Ohio, and
New York strikes occurred in all sorts of industries. There were the
usual parades and banners, some appealing, some insulting,