ition to
the legal seven per cent, per annum for call loans on first-class
collaterals--during all of which time stocks were firmly supported--it
is not to be supposed that Wall street or the general public felt much
uneasiness about the loan market or the financial prospect generally.
The deposits in the New York banks not only showed no falling off, but
were over two hundred and twelve millions against two hundred and nine
millions at the corresponding period in the previous year. The fall
trade had opened auspiciously; the earnings of the railways were
from five to fifteen per cent., larger than in 1872; the crops were
abundant--the cotton crop, in particular, being estimated at four
millions of bales--and it was supposed that the experience of
stringency just referred to had placed the banks, the speculative
community and the merchants in a conservative attitude, prepared
against a recurrence of dear money, and that therefore we should
escape a repetition of the painful ordeal.

The element of distrust, however, aroused by the suspension of
the Brooklyn Trust Company, and subsequently that of the New York
Warehouse Company, in connection with the failure of Francis Skiddy &
Co, and another old-established mercantile house similarly situated,
had not died out when the suspension of Kenyon Cox & Co., involving
that, also, of the Chicago and Canada Southern Railway Company, fell
like a thunderbolt on Wall street. This failure derived its importance
from the fact of Daniel Drew being a general partner in the house,
although originally he had gone into it as a special partner with
$300,000 capital, and from its being the financial agent of this new
but important enterprise--a line of large extent, and involving very
heavy expenditures in construction and equipment. Kenyon Cox & Co.,
as financial agents, and Daniel Drew individually, as a director and
officer of the company, had approved its contracts and endorsed its
acceptances. A large amount of the latter became due on the 13th
of September, and a million and a half of them in amount would have
matured within thirty days afterward; but on the morning of that date
the firm formally suspended, and the joint obligations of the
house and the railway company went to protest. Fortunately for the
bondholders, the road had just previously been completed, although
much still remained to be done to put it in the condition originally
designed. Here comes the rub and the cause o