scope to a talent for
realistic description, we must protest against allusions bordering on
personality.--ED.]

HISTORY OF THE CRISIS.

The crisis of 1873 seems destined to be the most memorable of all the
purely financial panics in the history of the United States. Certainly
no panic, involving such widespread disturbance of the ordinary course
of business was ever before known, either in the Old World or the New,
on a paper-money basis, for the collapse of the speculative bubble at
Vienna a few months earlier was a mere trifle in comparison, although
it set us the example of throttling a panic by closing the avenue to
the exchange of securities. I mention Vienna as a case in point, for
Austrian finances are such that the nation is kept in a chronic state
of suspension, and I am not aware that any prominent _bourse_ in
Europe except the one mentioned ever adopted a similar proceeding in a
like emergency.

This panic was not the result of paper-money inflation, nor of
inflated values, nor of reckless over-trading, nor of in-ordinate
speculation. The trade and commerce of the country were in a sound
and prosperous condition, and the prices of securities in Wall street
were, on the average, hardly in excess of real values, and in some
instances a little below them. It is true that the old trouble of
tight money was beginning to be felt, and the bears on the Stock
Exchange were trying to aggravate the natural monetary activity which
invariably attends the flow of currency westward to move the crops
early in the fall of the year, by "locking up" greenbacks and
otherwise. On the 6th of September the weekly return of the New York
banks, State and National, belonging to the Clearing-house, showed
that their legal-tender reserve had fallen to a little less than half
a million above the twenty-five per cent., which the National banks in
the large cities are required by the "National Currency Act" to
keep on hand against their deposits and notes; but this excited no
apprehension, and hardly occasioned surprise among those aware of the
drain of money for crop-moving purposes--the outward flow from Chicago
and Cincinnati to what I may call the agricultural districts having
been much larger than usual this season. After the four months of
unparalleled and continuous stringency experienced in the previous
winter and spring, when rates varying from a sixty-fourth to
seven-eighths of one per cent., per diem were paid in add